Every personal blog I have ever read I’ve seen a post like this.  This is where I appologize for not posting in over a month.  I’m Sorry!  Was there an excuse?  Sure, I never posted anything, that’s my excuse.  Could I have found time?  Probably.  Did I have pictures to post?  Yep.  Was I lazy?  Sure looks like it!  From here on out I will do my best to post every few day but at least once a week with what has been hapening on the farm.

Here’s an overview of what has been hapening over the last month and a half (yep, it’s almost been that long!)

November came and went.  I worked a lot!  I left for work in the dark and came home when it was dark.  I only see the animals (by daylight) on the weekends.  I really havn’t had time to build anything.  My sister Julie visited from Long Beach for a few days, and that was great.  The girls are doing great.

Georgia was in her high school’s musical, The Pajama Game.  She played Rita, and was GREAT!!  She is also haveing a great time in choir, and was asked to try out for the Jazz choir (mainly seniors) and was accepted.  They will be going to choir competitions this year.  She is excited.  She also got all A’s on her first High School Report Card.

Lilian was Student of the Month at Lincoln Middle School.  She is doing great in school as well.  All A’s & one B+!!  She is learning the clarinet, and has been asked to play with a small group of kids at church for the Ward Christmas Party.

Aislyn is really enjoying school.  She is reading everything she can, and she loves to read.  She is taking care of the rabbits all by herself, and enjoys playing on the computer.

Julia has started watching kids everyday at home.  She has three kids she watches.  A very cute little boy, an adorable infant, and a fun 3rd grader after school.

Work for me is going well.  At church I was released as the Sunday School President but then called to be the 2nd Counselor in the new Bishopric.  I am working with 2 great men, and I am looking forward to the challenges over the next few years.  It will take up a lot of time but it will be a good way to get to know the ward (that we’ve now been in about 6 months).

The alpacas are doing great.  The babies are getting BIG!!  We are getting ready to wean them in the next month or so.  We don’t think this will be tough on the babies or the mommas.  The are all growing their fiber wonderfully!  It is fun to watch them grow.

I’m getting ready to add our laying hens in January or February.  We’ll get them as day-old chicks, and then raise them in the shop for 4 weeks or so, and then move them out to the pasture.  They’ll start laying at about 5 to 6 months of age.  We are also planning on doing some broilers this summer on pasture.  We’ll probably just do enough this year for us and maybe some for Becca’s family and maybe some for friends, but this will be more to see how we like raising broilers.  I am also thinking about doing a few turkeys on pasture as well for Thanksgiving and Christmas next year.  We’ll get them in May, and they should be ready by Thanksgiving to be processed.  This will be a year of experimenting on the farm!

Talking about experiementing, I have been doing a lot of research on getting a milk cow.  I have done a lot of research on breeds and weighing the options, and we have decided that Dexter cattle will be the best match for what we are looking for.  Dexters are small cattle.  They are about 1/2 the size of regular cattle.  They stand about 36″ – 45″ at their backs, and weigh between 600 & 1000 pounds (compared to 1000-1800 for other breeds of cows).  Their smaller size means they eat less, they are good milkers and a good beef breed.  They also are more like goats in that they will be pasture as well as browse.  They are good for raising on pasture, and do very well with being grass finished.  Well, I wasn’t planning on getting any cows for a while.  At the earliest, we were looking at late spring early summer.  We are going up on Saturday to look at 5 Dexter cows near Woodburn.  Most Dexters we have seen have ranged from $800 to $3000 for one cow.    They are a little bit older ranging in age from 6-11 years of age.  This would be old for a production dairy cow, but Dexters will live to be 20 years old, and can be bred up to the age of 14-15 with no problems.  All 5 cows have been bred to a Murry Grey bull.  This will make their off-spring a little bit larger, but some WONDERFUL beef.  We’ve talked to some people about going in with us on this.  They are going to buy one cow, and then do with it what they want, and we’ll take care of it.  They’ll be able to have the baby raised and then butcher it for around 500 pounds of beef for their freezers, re-breed the cows, or butcher them for some additional beef, or whatever they want.  I’m looking to see if any of the cows can be trained to be a milk cow, and we’ll continue to breed ours.  It looks like 4 are spoken for.  One for us, and then three others.  We’ll take two if we need to, but if anybody would like to have the last one, let me know, and we can talk!

With adding more animals, maybe we need to look at chaning our name.  So, what do you think?

or

I don’t think I’ll make one for the chickens!