The last two weeks around the farm

The kindness of neighbors…

Our neighbors have an old camper they are gutting and turning into a trailer. So, they offered us the appliances inside if we wanted them. We spent the day taking out the fridge, stove, kitchen sink, and shower basin for our school bus. We didn’t know if we would put a kitchen in our bus because of the cost, so this was such a blessing.

Our “neighborhood” is just a wonderful group of people who help each other out. There are just a handful of us, but work together to keep things moving along smoothly. Sometimes I think that is slipping away in the world, but so grateful it still exists here.

Besties…

We finally got a little bit of moisture, in the form of snow.

What a difference a couple of hours makes here.

I canned apple pie filling in the fall which made it really easy to whip up an apple pie for the weekend.

We have two of Dad’s billy goats here at the moment and took on a stray black cat the girls named, Wolfgang. These two have become the best of friends. This billy goat lets Wolfgang wrap himself around his legs and the billy gentle licks and nibbles at the cat. So sweet!

Another neighbor came down over the weekend to take a look at our pond to get a plan together for getting it cleaned up and stocked. We will hopefully spend a great deal of time down here through the spring, summer, and fall. We love to hike through the trees in the winter, but the ticks are already out in full force, so this was probably our last tromp under the trees.

We worked at the pond to clear a spot for the picnic table mom and dad got for us as a Christmas gift.

We also planted some zinnias and hollyhocks. We hope to put up some hanging ferns and solar/battery lights.

When we stopped breeding and raising sheep to raise our girls, we held onto the last of our old ewes as pets. Our oldest ewe just passed away at the age of 15.

We now have Buddy as one of our oldest ewes at 14. She has lost all her teeth, so she gets to go into a special pen everyday for alfalfa, beet pulp, and sheep pellets. Keeping them into old age has been hard in so many ways, but I just love sheep. They are so lovable and personable it is worth the extra effort physically and emotionally.

The nice thing about the weather here is the fact that it is everchanging. You have very little time to get tired of the weather before it changes on you. We had snow this week and we had sunny days in the 70s. The sandplums and peaches are blossoming, so we are praying temperatures don’t dip below freezing again. We would love to have peaches from our tree this year!