Saturday, June 30, 2007

up to lots...

OMG, it’s nearly the end of June and the month has gotten away from me! It has been so long since I have updated, and I have much to report. I don’t really know where to start…

We are all great. My mom came to visit, and we had a great time showing them the farm. My mom and I made some goat’s milk beauty products, and she wants to start selling them. She has agreed to do the work, so hey, what more could I ask for? It continues to be a fun project to launch.

L is getting ready for our county fair, in mid July. He just came back from visiting his grandparents in California today, and he has a long list of things waiting for him to do! We will clip her tomorrow.

M came back from Arizona a couple of weeks ago. It is good to have them both back, but they did enjoy their time away.

Back in May I said we had some new livestock. We have chickens! Twenty six chickens were delivered, but we recently lost three of them. So we are down to 23. They spent the first few weeks of their lives in a kiddie pool in our basement, but are now in a larger enclosed pen in the garage. Hopefully they will move outside to the yet-to-be-built coop soon.

We also have four geese. M named them Greta, Lucy, Jemima and Harriet. We don’t know which one is which, but they don’t really answer to their names anyway.

Everyone else is fine, just more of them. We have a new goat, Victoria, who is being bred to the amazing buck Diamond. We should be getting her in a month or so, when we’re sure she’s bred. Yay!

We have put in more fencing, and now have another pasture for the goats. Soon we will bale hay. We should have put our first cutting up by now, but circumstances have just prevented that, including rain. Soon we hope!

The most exciting news is that we have some new puppies! They are officially, “Cane Pastore Maremmano-Abruzzese.” Americans call them Maremmas. They are Italian sheep guardian dogs, and we were lucky enough to find a breeder a couple of states away. We visited last weekend and snapped them up. We named them Roseanne Roseannadanna (Rosie) and Guido Sarducci (Guido). You can read more about maremmas here. And I’ll close my update with a photo of Rosie and Guido. Aren’t they adorable?!

More soon!!

Sunday, June 10, 2007

So Sad

This happened in my hometown. I lived in a small town nearby, and attended school in this town. I lived there for 19 years before I married B and moved away. In fact we were married in this town.

So, so, so tragic. : ( It just makes you realize how anything can happen even in your idyllic little corner of the universe.

Wisconsin Tragedy