It is hard work

No one ever promised you a rose garden.  Some famous guy quoted that about the Marine Corps.  Anyway, its been tough this week working and trying to keep up on the farm chores.  Fortunatelly Ryan handles most of the stuff during the day.  We have one goat in milk that we are milking once a day.  I am trying to figure out how to keep that in the schedule.  Ryan doesn't know how to milk yet.  He will be getting a lesson tonight around 8pm, when I get home. 

I am leaving for a womens retreat tomorrow for the next 9 days.  Whew, it was tough for me to give up and go.  Yes, I did say give up.  I have to give up alot of control over things to go on this trip.  I have to give up a week of work.  I have to give up milking and spending time with the kids, to recharge myself.  It is odd in the past 8 yrs I have only went somewhere by myself once for about 9 days.  But that was to go see my mom, so I was still with family.  It will be tough to let go for 9 days and only focus on me.  I have to set a standard of how much texting and calling I will do when on this trip.  I am always connected.  It is hard not to be connected. 

So I will leave with this picture of our little barnyard this morning. 
I will be back posting after the 28th. 

Kansas Patriot Guard

I am not sure if I have ever written about this on here.  I spent 8 1/2 years in the Marine Corps.  My husband spent 10 years in the Marines.  My little sister, just started her 4 years of service this past summer.  My grandfather was a Veitnam Naval Veteran and I am not sure how far it goes back, but military service is in our blood. 

This morning, I road with my Step mom and aunt, little brother and sister to a funeral for a fallen Naval brother in arms.  The Kansas Patriot Guard was creating a flag line to protect the family from protesters of the funeral.  I will not post the name of the organization that was protesting as I do not want to give them the "honor" of advertisement of their group.  Regardless, I was given a flag on a large staff and asked to stand tall and proud along side 200 plus other people.  The respect for our fallen comrad was so wonderful, I was brought to tears on a few occassions.  I saw veterans, babies, families and fellow military members, line around the funeral home. 

I pray that our presence, even at this sad time in their lives,  brought some peace to the grieving family.

Time Change, Snow, and goats feet

I worked most of Saturday, so my weekends are Sunday and Monday now.  Of course there was the time change and then the weather decided it wanted to hang out with winter some more.  So I awoke at 5am, but it was really 6am.  So I got up and started on mount laundry.  After starting the laundry, I ran out and did morning chores.  While doing morning chores I noticed a few things, one being that for some reason the chicken coop door was loose and no longer staying completelly closed.  So I knew we needed to get the door fixed with a latch. 

So I came in and had breakfast. 

After breakfast, I went out and fixed the door latch. Got the baby chicks set up in the big coop with some chicken wire to keep the big chickens out of their area.  Next, I worked on the  milk stand for the goats.  The head gate was not holding the goats properlly. So I went to Fias Co Farm website and adjusted my milkstand just a bit.  The headgate now matches theirs.  Although I still need to tweek it with the feed bucket.  Not sure but for some reason mine sits way to low and it makes milking difficult.  I am thinking of attaching it to the barn wall and just setting up that way.  Not sure.  Always a learning experience here on the homestead.

After I finished the stand, I started trying to figure out what is going on with JarJar one of my milking does, who I thought had dried up.  The other day I noticed her 1 yr old doeling was still trying to nurse. All the more reason to bottle raise your babies.  She also had some redness in her utter when she climbed up on the fence. I put her up on the stand to see what was all going on.  She had some flaking on the udder and was engorged.  I milked her out and cleaned the udder really well.  I have done research on mastist, but she does have a fever or hot udder.  So we will be continue to monitor. I looked at her hooves also.  I trimmed the hooves of two of the goats.

Then starts the rain. I went inside and created dinner.  Woke up to snow this morning...um where is Spring.

Daytime Job and Farm work

Yesterday I started my new job.  My commute to work is 50 minutes one way.  Fortunatelly I do not have to be at work til 10am and am headed home no later than 6pm.  Obviously, being on the farm, I have to do chores.  So we are working on a system to get the chores done in a timely manner, so I do not feel as though all I do is work and come home to work.

Ryan did great yesterday making sure things with the kids went well.  I did make it home by 5pm yesterday as it was the first day of work.  Once it gets busy though I know I will be later in the evening.  I am fine with doing the morning set of chores.  I get up with the kids at 6am anyway and don't leave for work til 8:30 or 9:00.  So I have time to feed and check water.  Overall the morning chores minus milking take about 30 minutes to complete and that is so I can spend some time with the animals. 

We are currently down to 4 goats, 1 horse, 22 chickens and 15 chicks, plus 3 dogs.  The snow is gone right now and the horse and goats have a big round bale they are working on.  So they get feed in the evening and water is checked morning and evening.  The chickens get fresh water morning and evening, plus grain.  The dogs all get fed morning and evening, plus fresh water.  Right now it isn't much.

I am also spritzing my plant seedlings twice a day.  Some have already popped up through the soil.  I hope they will fair well.  So far its marigolds, broccoli, califlower, and corn coming through. I plan on Sunday to plant the peas and corn in the garden, if it dries out enough for my cousin to come work the ground.  I would like them in the ground before I go on vacation next weekend.

After the spring really sets in the work load on the farm will increase to garden working, possibly milking, egg collecting and general clean up.  Summer time will require extra watering during the day, the goats are picky about dirty water so we have a small trough that if need be we will drain out and refill with fresh water.  The warmer weather also brings into account new projects.  We need to lay floor in my boys' room and paint.  Then we will move the boys into one room together.  My daughters room needs painted and we will move her to the front part of the house.  After that we have a college exchange student coming to live with us in the fall, so her room will also need to be painted.  She has lived with us before and is like family.  We will also be putting in the window a/c's this summer again as I think we faired pretty well with them last year.  We did buy a new thermostat for the house and that may help the regular a/c run better, but we will have to test it on a hot spring day.   Otherwise we will stick with the window a/c's one more summer and then with work will be able to get the new central air unit next fall.

So lots of things going on but hopefully we will get in the groove with all of it soon.  Off to day two of the new job.