On The Farm 6/5/14

So, my plan to update this weekly isn't going so well..  but considering the whirlwind May was, that's not really a surprise.

The big news on the farm has nothing to do at all with the actual farm (other than his intent to take it over from us in 20 years, after he retires from the Military).  Our oldest son is officially engaged!  He flew home from WA and proposed to his girlfriend earlier this month.  We've been BUSY planning and getting ready for their September wedding. :-)

Along with his visit home, a trip to Philadelphia, a skeet shoot here on the farm, the younger kids were in a school play, wrapping up the school year, football...  I keep reminding myself that in two years all the kids will be grown, this chaos is so temporary, and I'm going to enjoy it as much as possible!

Some of the Misc projects we got done before the skeet shoot:

The fire pit - we dug it deeper and made the stones look neater.

Took the bushes out in front of the house, moved the picnic table up

I made a chalkboard paint sign to hang off the fence

cleaned up & painted the date stone (I hate the red, & will repaint it again)

Put in the bean pole teepee

built the dog pen beside the house - all fenced in (we use this only when visitors are afraid of the big dogs - or most recently, we used it as a temporary goat pen for the goat that just gave birth...)

Cows:

We moved Bubba to a friends house, where he will finish growing.  They raise deer, and want him to eat the grass the deer will not eat, in the deer pen.  When he is fully grown this fall, they will pay to have him processed, and we will split the beef.  I struggle so much with this yet... 

We're working on selling Betsy - she's two years old now, and sterile.  I so wish she could have babies here on the farm, but since that won't happen, she'll be sold for beef.  Preferably soon, while the prices are high.

That leaves us with the three herfords in the lower pasture, who will hopefully have babies here next year, and 3 young steers.  We'll add more steers when they are more affordable, the prices have been insanely high this spring.

Goats:

We had two new babies born, twins.  One of the nannies didn't give birth early this year with all the others, which is nice, I like having babies here all the time.  One is a boy, one is a girl.  We're looking for an unelated billy to add to the herd, then I'll split the goat pen in half, and keep the girls born this year with the new billy, so they aren't bread back to their dad.

Hay:

I could cry when I look at our "timothy" field.  It's more of a dandelion field.  Last year we had such beautiful timothy..  but this year that is a corn field.    It's a late year, the temperatures have been cold much longer than in recent years.  Usually we are baling this week, but it will probably be another week or so this year.  We'll have plenty of good hay, just not good timothy.