HOT!

It has been really hot here lately. Praising God that our well has not went dry this summer. We usually do not have any water in the summer except enough to take a shower and that is if we are lucky. God has blessed us with an abudance of water this summer and I will keep on praising him. The last week or 2 it has been really hot out and we are not using air conditioners this year. We would like to save money on the electric bill and I have also been trying to live on the basic necessities and even though I have been really tempted to ask Doug to put the air conditioner in I have not done it yet and I dont plan on doing it. I was so proud of my daughter yesterday because I was talking about putting the ac in and I figured she would be all for it but she told me that we have come this far lets go all the way through the summer without it! She is such a good girl. Always there to support me in all my crazy endeavors. Time to go find a way to stay cool! God bless all who are reading this!

CHICKEN THIEF

Last night some very daring creature decided to reach in one of my chicken pens and drag a chicken through it so it could eat it for dinner. Well, this thief does not know who he or she but probably a he is messing with!! We will find out who the culprit is and bring him or her to justice!! I thought my poor girls would be safe inside a pen but I guess not and the girls also seemed to be too dumbstruck to run into the coop and hide. Maybe they were mesmerized by the intruders good looks!! A cute face can even turn the smartest hen into a blubbering fool. Oh well, Doug has his camera all set up and hopefully we catch the culprit and can convince him it isnt a good idea to be messing with my hens!!

I decided to go pick raspberries today. I have always believed in sharing the bounties of nature with the animals. I do not consider my vegetable garden to be a bounty of nature by the way so I do not share it. I do however believe that we are sharing the things that grow wild like the blackberries and raspberries with all of the animals that share these woods with us but however this year the deer have decided that they do not need to share with me. They eat the bushes clean and leave hardly a berry for poor me so I only have one thing to say to those deer "GAME ON!"

Today has been a long and busy day so it is time for these tired eyes to go to sleep, goodnight and God bless everyone who is reading this.

CHICKEN LOGIC

Today I worked my butt off trying to make the chicken pen roomier for my 21 silver laced wyandottes. I drug heavy things around, I broke things, I rearranged things so that now they have a bigger coop to nest in and ALOT more room to move around in. Do you think these gorgeous poultry appreciated all my sweat and energy. NO! The only thing they appreciated was the little pile of wood my husband laid beside the pen because it made it so that they can get on top of the pen and roost!! It took me an hour to finally get them all to go into the wonderful home I made for them today, we will see who does and does not get the warm oatmeal this winter when it is cold. The goats! That's who! They appreciated the nice comfy clean barn I had worked and tioled to clean out today, lol! I will still spoil all of my animals even when I am underappreciated, but it sure felt good to vent.

Jelly making day

I decided that today would be a good day to make jelly from all of the blackberries I had frozen in the freezer so I thawed them out and squeezed the juice out of them a couple days ago and today I made some blackberry jelly. Of course I had a headache today and didnt really feel like making it but I did anyway. Didnt do much else today that didnt absolutely have to be done though. Headaches wear me out. I did decide to let the baby goats run around with the bigger goats today. It worked out well until about 4 this afternoon when the youngest ones decided they didnt want to be in there anymore and kept coming up onto the porch. That is when I decided it was time to go back into their pen. Caitlyn is spending the night at one of her best friend's houses so I am here alone, her friend will be moving day after tomorrow so this is the last day they will get to see each other at least for awhile. We will miss her.

milk

I have 2 goats that I am milking right now. I have to milk them twice a day and each time they give me about a quart of milk each. So each day I end up with around a gallon of milk that I have to figure out what to do with. The three of us definitely do not drink a gallon of milk a day so I have been trying to get creative. First I made some soap with it and I think that turned out quite nicely but it has to dry for 6 weeks so I have not tried it yet so I am not gonna say for sure until I have used it. Yesterday I worked all day trying to do stuff with the extra milk so it does not go bad. I made pudding and froze it, some of the pudding I froze inside sugar cones but we are not too crazy about those so from now on I will just freeze the pudding and not try to be creative with it, I also mixed up some strawberry ice cream with fresh strawberries in it. We tried some of the ice cream today and it was yummy!! Today I mixed up a batch of chevre cheese and it is in the oven (turned off) right now so that it can sit for about 16 hours to seperate. I will know about 4:00 tomorrow if it is turning out right. I am also planning on make some fudge, and a syrup called cajeta to freeze and jar. Hopefully by this time next year I will be a pro at knowing what to do with all of the milk because next year I will have 4 milk goats. :-)

Soap

I am attempting to write this while high on fumes from hair dye because my daughter and her best friend have decided to dye her hair red. Pics will come from that tomorrow. :-)

One of the things I was most excited about getting to do whenever I started getting lots of milk from my goats was to make soap. I have used it before and it is really good on my dry skin and I absolutely love being able to make my own stuff and know what is going into it but most of all to make my own stuff because it makes me feel a little bit closer to being self sufficient. Even though I had to order lots of stuff for it off the internet, lol. After reading up on how to make the soap I was starting to get nervous about it, it all sounded so complicated. Making sure you use seperate pans and utensils for the soap that you do not use for anything else and making sure you have on protective gear because the lye is dangerous. The lye even comes with a little warning label so that the deliverer knows it is in there. I almost decided not to try it but I am so glad I did. It took me awhile to get all the stuff I needed. I bought most of the ingredients at the grocery store. The shortening and oils and such and then I ordered the molds and lye from Hoegger's. I absolutely love that site, I order lots of stuff from there for my goats and for cheesemaking also. Back to my soap tale. After all the stuff finally arrived, I thawed out some of my pausterized milk. Yes I pasteurize it to make soap but not to drink, noone even tries to understand my mind anymore, lol. After the milk was nice and thawed and Doug was off at work and I could have some uniterrupted time I got dressed up like a lab scientist and went to work. First you stand there and slowly melt the oils which seems like forever but then once you get to the part where you are adding the 12 ounces of lye one tsp at a time to the ice cold milk you realize that you zipped along through the part with the oils. All in all though the whole process wasnt as hard as I thought it would be. I did splash some lye onto me and learned a very good lesson about being very careful but besides that there were no more mishaps. It was so amazing pouring it into the molds and realizing that I was one step closer to making all of my own products. The only thing that topped that was today when I took the soap out of the molds and saw the beautiful bars of soap. Next time I might try adding some color to them. Will just have to wait and see.

Another day

Feeding time at our farm is a busy time. All of the goats want to have their turn at eating. I feed Bella and BabyLynn in their own pen that they live in now. I had to put them in a pen seperate from the other goats because they could get right under the fence in the bigger pen. They want to be with me so they are always trying to get out and run around the yard. It was ok at first but now they are starting to get into my garden.

These are my other 4 kids. Starting with the red head one their names are Cheddar Fry (Cheddar for short), Patrick, Joy and Sweet Pea. Everyone is growing up so fast. They are only a few months old and they are getting so big. They are all getting a personality of their own. I call Joy Queen Joy because she is always standing on the highest thing she can find and I think she looks like she is ready to reign her kingdom.

I realize that this is not a pic of a goat, lol. But, I wanted to introduce you to my grandma and her boyfriend Gary. She is an amazing woman. She is always on the go and she would be the first person there to help you if you ever need it. I hope to be at least half the woman she is when I get to that age. I love you grandma!!