We have all our baby lambs on the ground and thriving, our baby calves are all healthy and happy, and now it’s time to garden.
We plan to save all our Finn ewes, but will have a few registered Finn rams for sale. We are trying to build our flock and will cross our ewe lambs with a Texel/Dorset ram for market lambs in the future.
We are slowing growing a registered White Dexter herd with this little beauty.
And our cutest disappointment! He is half miniature (Sure Shot Otis), half standard Jersey. Both parents are A2/A2 and sire is Homozygous Polled. We plan to sell him since we cannot use him for breeding since he is related to both our Jerseys.
So far he is much smaller (and older) than our other miniature calves.
We are swimming in milk, 10 gallons a day. We are supply milk to feed 11 Savanna bottle goats at mom & dads, helping a few lambs here, and raising a bottle calf we purchased from a friend.
I have also done some winter canning. I love canning winter fruit, meat, and stocks while the added heat to the house is appreciated.
Cranberry juice & teaflowers from my husband just because
A much needed Girls Day Out! A little shopping, arcade, and ice cream after a long season of being homebound waiting for babies to be born.
Soil blocks are almost ready for planting.
I did asparagus, vinca, and onions. I will never go back to pots. This worked so well!
It was just a really cold month here. To add to the temperature cold, we were all recovering from illness and still not 100%.
But the little ones came anyway, despite how we were feeling.
Our sheep tote and heated corn bags got a workout this lambing season. With our little Finn babies being so little and it being so cold and windy out. A few spent the night in the house before returning to mom when the temperatures crept back up the next day.
We ended up with four rams we will sell as registered breeding stock, including this little guy below.
Our Jersey heifer also calved. We were very grateful mama and baby were both fine. However, we were utterly disappointed to find out that this precious little baby, who we AI with 95% guaranteed, heifer sexed miniature Jersey semen turned out to be a bull. Of course, we adore him and are going to try to sell him off the farm since he is half mini, half standard we hope he will stay small and be a good addition to someone else’s farm.
I also tried my hand and soil blocking and seed starting and will never go back to trays and regular potting soil. It was a total success!
January is a time of new beginnings, new habits, new endeavors. Our January started with Christmas. Since we were all sick over the Christmas holiday, we had to post-pone time with family until New Year’s Eve. It was actually really nice extending the holiday season, so we didn’t feel the after-Christmas-depression as much. We celebrated Christmas morning with Randy’s mom, who was visiting, and had a second Christmas with my family New Year’s Eve…it was perfect!
The weather this January has been very different from past years. We have had ice, a blizzard, and already more snow than in years past…and it’s still early in winter. Lots of sledding days!
Canyon had to have her wisdom teeth taken out which was no fun, but went smoothly. It was just following lots of snow and sledding, so snuggling up through the cold that followed wasn’t too bad either. She’s really good at entertaining herself with sketching, legos, and reading. All cozy winter hobbies.
When you farm you learn to take life as it comes. So many things are out of your control, you have to learn to let go. I have had to do that already this year when my Jersey milk cow ended up not delivering a baby on the day she was supposed to have delivered an AI baby from a miniature Jersey bull. Luckily, we had her out with a bull just incase, but money, time, and effort were all sadly lost. Finding the silver lining-it’s too cold and snowy here that delivering would have been risky for the baby, so we will welcome our Jersey/White Dexter cross a little later in winter instead.
Fortunately, our Jersey heifer appears to have had a successful AI experience and should deliver her “Midi” (half standard, half miniature) toward the end of February.
Probably the biggest heartbreak was processing our Scottish Highland/Jersey steer, Muddy.
I bottle fed him for eight months and then crossed over to bucket feeding him. Took a small break where we used him to detect heat and AI our Jerseys before bucket feeding him a small amount of organic whole corn for 100 days before having to let him go.
We’ve processed chickens, I’ve sold lambs, but this is the first time I have personally grown out a beef to feed our family. I kept waiting for the day when he would get naughty, and I wouldn’t feel so awful. The day came to load him in the trailer and he wouldn’t budge, so I went to the front of the trailer, called his name and patted my legs and he hopped right in and came to me like a dog. I closed up the trailer, went inside, and cried the rest of the afternoon.
It’s also been a great month to can and preserve. In preparing for our beef, I have been canning things out of the freezer to make room.
Lastly, was the unplanned lambing of our old Romanov sheep. Our breeding didn’t go quite as planned, of course, and we had one of our old ewes get through the fence with a ram (for like 5 minutes) and that’s all it took for us to get our little miracle lamb.
After going outside in the middle of the night checking to make sure she wasn’t in labor, she finally had her at 10 o’clock at night with some assistance. We now have a half Romanov, half Finn ewe lamb to love on.
There is nothing like staying home for real comfort.
With a long dry season from milking my Jersey, we had time to travel and collect a couple breeding groups of Finn sheep and a Texel/Dorset ram to begin again.
Finns are known for having litters of lambs and for quality wool. We will utilize our Jersey milk to raise lambs and use the wool for spinning and insulating some of our metal buildings. We will also cross them with our Dorset for commercial sales and to fill our freezer. The beauty of sheep vs our cows is the quicker turn around from breeding to lambing. In 5 months we will have lambs, as opposed to 8 long months waiting on a baby calf (and milk).
Finn ewe yearlings
Finn EwesFinn Ram LambDorset/Texel Cross Ram Lamb
My first lambing will begin in December and I hope to have another lambing in April. With a baby llama due in September and Midi Jerseys and White Dexters due in February and March, it’s going to be a busy winter and spring. We can’t wait!
It’s all about traditions and spending time together. This year we decided to do things a bit different. Instead of cramming our last block of school in between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we decided to just take it off and celebrate the season.
Our bucket list for December and the Advent season are:
Advent devotional/Read the book of Luke
Make candy
Gingerbread cookies
Yule log
Yule log cake
Warm drinks (hot cocoa, winter cider, hot apple cider)
9 inches of snow is what we ended up with. Which is just incredible for us for November (or anytime if we’re being honest). It definitely got us into the Christmas spirit!
So I’m WAY behind, but I have been really busy around here trying to take care of our children, animals, and putting food for winter.
We took a much needed day away for all of us and went to my brother’s house at the lake for the day. He took us out on his jet skis, showed us around the lake, before going back to his house to grill and relax a bit. The lake is beautiful and the girls had so much fun tubing and jet skiing.
Just a great day together as a family. We’re hoping to make it back up there soon to do some pictures of the girls and hang out a bit. Then next summer to splash around again.
All I can say about August is, IT’S OVER! The August heat is still hanging around, but now we can move on to all things autumn.
Canyon officially finished speech therapy. So her and I did what her and I do best…hung out in a bookstore together to celebrate.
We have just been trying to keep everyone cool, watered, and alive through the hundred degree days of August.
LailaWolfgang
One of our many rescued cat. He’s still a bit timid, but coming around and fitting in with rest.
Dung Beetle
It’s just good time to diffuse essential oils and read stacks and stacks of books.
There are cows who get stuck and need assistance.
Becky
And baths that need given.
MarleyLexiSimoneGoldieGrandma and Simone
This picture is how we all felt as we neared the end of summer and temperatures continued to climb.
Aspen & Taylor
Girls had the best time at a homeschool party.
apple pickingMoonflower
Somehow we all survived, we always do, but when you’re in the trenches of August, it feels like it’s never going to end. Now we are left with piles of library books to return, fall food to prepare, Gilmore Girls and Harry Potter to binge watch, state fair, pumpkin patch, apple cider, all the good things in life await.
July really was a beautiful month by most Kansas standards. We had an abundance of rain, below average temperatures, and not a lot of wind (which is sometimes good, and sometimes not-so-good).
Summer storms and plenty of limbs to clean up.
It’s been a really long time, if ever in their lifetime, the girls have had mud puddles to play in.
Watching baby calves grow.
And baby goats grow.
Cat hair cuts.
Putting up food for winter.
Trying to find balance in keeping our domestic animals safe while letting wildlife live amongst us.
Praying cats.
Flowers from my husband just because!
The beauty of our garden filled with vegetables, flowers, hummingbirds, and butterflies.
July turned out to be a really enjoyable month this year. The rain saved us in so many ways, and we are so grateful for the moisture and cooler temperatures. Now on to August, my 12th favorite month of the year!
We are selling all our doeling goats and one nanny. We are going to have a lull on our farm (we hope) before possibly getting sheep. We all need a break and time to focus on other interests this winter and into next spring and summer season.
A Simple Prairie Life 