Wonderful Weekend

A couple of years ago for Mother's Day V and E got me a blackberry bush.  It has since multiplied and was starting to get out of control. 

 So this year for Mother's Day, J set out to tame the blackberries.  While he was doing this, E was being a wonderful helper with other yard and farm stuff.  (sorry E, no pictures, we were too busy working)

 Even though this is a garden, the soil is not very deep and digging post holes is no picnic.

 But J's might prevailed and he managed to get 2 posts in and now I have a wonderful blackberry trellis.

Then on Sunday, V came for a visit and surprised me with a new grill. (I do have to share it with J for Father's day however.)  Our current grill was a wedding gift from 26 years ago.  I guess it was time for an upgrade.  Mike did a great job breaking it in by grilling some delicious porterhouse steaks. (home grown of course)  What a wonderful weekend.

Happy Mother's Day

Thanks for always being there for me, 

and with such great style!

Love you Mama.

Cattle, Horses and Goats

  We had no telephone service here for 3 days last week so no internet which meant no blog updates.  After a fixed broken wire in the phone company's box, we are now back in business.

 We were going to move cattle on horse back yesterday so J caught Brother.  His shoes had just been reset on Monday but by Friday one was bent.  He spends more time out of commission because of his shoes than any horse I've seen.  So J decided to give Hank a chance.

 I think they got along pretty well.  We got another group of cows and calves across the creek.

 And we got the 4 young bulls turned out on some better pasture.

 We are feeding 10 bottle goats and they are a pain.  They stay in the dog pen in the barn at night. Then in the morning after we feed them we turn them out with the other goats.  The problem is if they ever see us they come running.  It is really hard to get anything done with 10 goats running around your feet trying to suck on your pants.

We haven't had a chance to deworm all of the nannies yet so J has been catching the ones that look wormy and treating them individually until we can get the whole herd up.  The goat hook has really come in handy for this and J is a pro at using it. 

 And 2 of our previous bottle goats have kidded.  Frosty had a single,

and Chocolate had a set of twins.  Always something happening around here.  Maybe we're done with the triples for this year.
Kid count - 70.

More From A Busy Saturday

Here is a little more of what went on here last Saturday.

 V and her boyfriend Mike were visiting so of course we had to go feed the bottle goats to get in our allotment of cuteness.

 After much prying we finally got out of E that she was going to the prom.  This information came out on Friday night.  The prom was Saturday.  Long story but Saturday morning she decided to go shopping for a dress to wear to the cookout.  None of the 10 perfectly fitting dresses suited her.  She chose the 11th dress that needed alterations.  So, get home, fix dress.

 Now we need a dress for the prom.  Luckily, V still had her prom dresses and E picked this blue one.  However, E is 2 inches shorter and 10 pounds lighter that V was so, yes, more alterations.

 V consented to fix E's hair and did a wonderful job with the curling iron despite burning her hand in the process.

 This is V in front of her new apartment.  Yay for V being home to help.

 Don't forget, Saturday was the beehive day too.

 Then my sister A and her son M stopped by for a visit.  A had  not ridden a horse in 35 years but after losing 100+ pounds she was anxious to get back on.

 She rode Pep and even did some cantering.  Just like riding a bike, but maybe a little more sore the next day.

 Mike, back to V's boyfriend, had never ridden so he took a spin on Hank.

 Hank and Mike were content to just walk around in the barn for a bit.

 Then J got on Hank, me on Otoelene, and A on Pep and off we went for a ride around the farm.

 What a great experience to be able to share.

Then we ended up with nephew M down at the barn for the evening bottle goat feeding.
Whew, I need a nap.

The New Bee Man

J got a bee suit for Christmas and finally put it to use this weekend. 

 We thought we might try giving the bees some more space so we added a second hive body.  This meant that I had to watch a you-tube video on how to put the foundation in the frames.  V's boyfriend was visiting and was a great help in this process.

 We also went ahead and added a super.  This is where the bees should store the honey.  Later in the summer we will add a second super.

 The bees were outgrowing their original hive body and making comb on the inner hive cover.  I had a new one we put on and left this one out so the bees could clean it off.  We'll reuse it if the bees swarm and we start a new hive.

The suit worked perfectly, no stings.  But I've also heard that if you are giving the bees things they aren't aggressive like they would be if you were taking things away.  So the true test of the suit will be in the fall when we go to steal the honey.

Just Kit Sunday #86

Kit Kat was on the rafters this week.

 This is how you balance on one.

And this is stretching out to cover two.

The Man From Snowy River I Am Not

I hope you are not tired of hearing how awesome Otoelene is because this will be another post about her awesomeness. 

 We had to round up the yearlings off of the back 40.  This is by far the roughest section of the farm to get around on.  There is no driving a 4 wheeler on it so I took Otoelene, my 4 legger.   There were 3 over on that knoll.

 But the majority were in the trees by the creek.  We finally got them all together and moving into the open.  But then we had to drive them up to the top of the hill.

 J hollered at me at one point to head one off that was cutting down the hill and I commented back, "I'm not the Man From Snowy River!"  Pictures don't do the steepness of this section justice.

But we finally got them together and headed toward the barn.  Otoelene did everything I asked and stayed calm cool and collected.  Most of the time I'm worn out by the time we get them rounded up and we still have to work them.  But this time, because of Otoelene, I didn't have to do any running around on foot and I was still fresh for the next step.