Joy!

Today was a very nice and beautiful day outside. It was pretty windy but the temperature was warm for this time of year and all the snow was melting. I really enjoyed it. Spent some time with my goats, was able to get the rabbit pen clean because everything was not encased in ice anymore, and some of the time I just sat outside and looked around at God's beautiful creation. It got me to thinking about how if we didnt have the really cold days then we wouldnt truly be able to appreciate the warm ones. Just like if we dont know sadness then we wouldnt be able to experience joy, and if we didnt go through hard times, do you really think we would enjoy the good times so much. Sometimes we take life for granted and want things our way all of the time but God has a better plan for us so I am gonna let him take the lead and see where this journey takes me.

The baby bunnies have opened their eyes and are starting to wander out of the nest. I love watching them run around when they are this tiny. That is one of the things I love about raising my own animals, I get to see the bunnies and kid goats at an age where I wouldnt get to if they werent born here. I think the most special time with them is when they are really young. Especially the goats. It is the best time to bond with them and get them used to people. Rabbits are prey in the wild and they have a natural instinct to be on edge but I believe that mine trust me. They dont come to me for pets and hugs like the goats do but they dont run and hide when I go into their cages and they will let me pet them especially when they are young. I have another goat due to have her kids soon, I am not 100% sure about when she got bred so it could be any day now. I will keep you updated and will share pics after they are born. This is my daughter's goat and she is excited for them to come also. I hope everyone is having a wonderful and blessed day! Oh yeah! I forgot to mention I made some chocolate goat milk fudge today, cannot wait to eat some!!

~April

See the duffel bag hanging from the clothesline? That is where a mama bird likes to build her nest.

This is what I see when I look out the window. Snow as far as the eye can see. While I was out being a maid to my goats, what else can I call myself when I am cleaning up their poop, I realized just how much I cannot wait for spring to get here. It seems like the closer it gets the more anxious and tired of the cold I get. I thank God for the warmth inside our home but sometimes I wish that warmth would spread to the outside.  I cannot wait until I can share a picture of a nice sunny day with a wonderful, thriving garden in ithe picture.

As I was out milking the goat today I started wondering what to blog about today. You see, I dont really know why anyone would want to read about my life but that made me start thinking about my life and how truly blessed I am and I want to share it with everyone else and hope to maybe inspire others to slow down and take it a little easier. I love the ideas of the Amish about living simple. I wish I didnt always find it so hard to not  hurry along what I am doing to get to my next thing I need to do and to just slow down and enjoy what I am doing now.

Another thing I am trying to accomplish is to rely on the grocery store less. I want to start making everything from scratch and relying on what I can grow more and going to farmer's markets instead of the grocery store, I believe that what they sell at the store is not healthy and we would all feel better if we bought in season, grew more and preserved what we grow. I know isnt possible for everyone to grow a large garden and put up enough stuff to eat the whole year but I think that most people could take babysteps toward this goal and plant a couple things like tomato or pepper plants. You can even plant these in containers.

You should head over to our simple farm and check out their challenge they have started for replacing the grocery store, I for one plan to accept this challenge. Below is the link to their page.



~April

http://www.oursimplefarm.com/2013/02/replacing-grocery-store-challenge-intro.html

Aaaaa aloe!!

I bought an aloe plant last year on clearance. It was only a couple dollars because it was almost dead and I dont think they wanted to care for it anymore. The plant did survive even though it is ugly as all get out and it was starting to get out of hand so today I decided to extract some aloe from it.

Here is the ugly ugly plant. It definitely gets no points for looks. Now, to get that ugliness out of your mind here is a picture of my handsome son with my full of cuteness grandson.

 

Ok, now back to the aloe. First, I had to cut off a leaf of the aloe plant at the base of the leaf.

Cut the end off and then cut the leaf into 3 pieces, I cut some of them into 4 because they were huge!

Next, you cut the sides off and carefully cut the top off in a thin layer trying to only get the green layer. I have heard that you can eat the aloe and that the aloe in the middle is tasteless and the green part is bitter. I do not know the reason for eating it, I figure it must have some kind of medicinal value but have not discovered that yet. I only use it for topical purposes now. I am planning to learn about natural remedies so I may know the use for aloe before long. Oops, I am rambling, here is pic of cutting sides.

Now, scoop the insides out with with a spoon. BEWARE, the aloe is very slimy.

Lastly, put it in a container, preferrably a glass one and then viola! you have your aloe. Easy peasy!

Have a wonderful and blessed day and enjoy the many benefits of aloe. It is great for the skin, I use it on burns, including sunburn and sometimes just rub it in my hands to help keep them healthy.

 

soap

One of the things I want to be able to do on this journey to a more simple, self sufficient life is to start making my own products and this weekend I decided to start making my own soap. It ended up being fun and not as hard as I thought it was going to be. I used a very simple recipe. It includes 4 cups lard (I didnt have lard so I used solid vegetable shortening but I plan to make it with lard next time because that is something you can make), 4 oz lye and 1 1/2 cups goat milk (frozen). I made vanilla on Saturday and Rose scented on Sunday. The vanilla turned out wonderful but the rose didnt turn out so well. The rose scented soap started to harden before I got it into the molds and was a mess. I did get it into the molds but I do not think it will turn out as nice as the vanilla. The picture above is of the vanilla soap in the mold before I took it out and cut it into bars.

This is a picture of the vanilla bars after I took them out of the molds and cut them into bars. Now they will sit for 4 weeks before I will use them. I cannot wait to try them, they smell wonderful and goatmilk soap is supposed to be very good for the skin.

 

Another great thing that happened this weekend is that we are beginning to get more eggs from the chickens. They dont lay as well in the wintertime and we were usually getting no eggs and would be happy when I found 1 but now we are getting 4 or 5 a day. I consider that to be a good sign that spring is coming! Hooray!!

 

 

Rabbits

This is a picture of my doe half stash (original name isnt it, she has a half mustache so I named her half stash), she was due to have her babies on January 30th and rabbits are usually on time so I wasnt expecting them until the 30th. On January 29th I looked in the rabbit house and found this.

 I know this looks like a pile of cotton but what it is actually is a nest. When a rabbit is about to give birth her fur will get loose and she will pull lots and lots of fur out to make a nice warm nest for her babies to keep them warm.

I dont usually bother the babies except to count them and check to make sure they are all alive for the first week. After they are about 10 days old they will open their eyes and start to move around and that is when I like to try and get them used to being handled and it makes it easier for me when I move them to the grow out pen until they are old enough to be butchered. We raise rabbits for meat so we try not to get to attached to them but it is hard.

I raise my rabbits in a colony setting so they are all kept together. I keep them in a dog pen that has chicken wire around the bottom of the walls and fence underneath the dirt on the bottom. Hopefully in the summer I can get a better pic for you. This picture was taken when it was raining and it is muddy and the tarp on the top is weighted down. In the spring I will add some more dirt to the bottom of the pen and make it look pretty again. There is a large box connected to the back of the pen with a hole big enough for the rabbits to go in and out, this is their house where they go out of the weather and have their babies in it. This set up works well for us but might not work well for everyone.

Rabbits are easy to feed. A 50 pound bag of rabbit food lasts us at least a month for 5 rabbits and they also get hay and veggies from the kitchen. In the spring and summer I also give them grass, they love it. You can see in this picture one of the spots that need dirt over top of the fence. The rabbits love to dig and they dig in the dirt down to the wire, which makes more work for me but that is ok because they are worth it. Raising animals and having food that comes right off my farm is great and I love knowing where my food comes from and what all is in it and I know that my animals were treated wonderfully while they were on this earth and that is a great feeling.

Winter on the farm

 I think wintertime is the hardest season when living on a farm. I spend most of my time inside opposed to the other seasons where I can enjoy lots of time outdoors. I do spend time outside though. I have to go out 3 or 4 times a day because I have to bust ice out of water troughs and add warm water or I have to change water bottles on the rabbit pens with unfrozen bottles. It is also very cold out so I have to add extra bedding for the goats, rabbits and even though the chickens are in a nice enclosure we still put some bedding in for them to nest in more to keep warm.

Not everything about winter time is bad, as you can see from the top picture, there are some very pretty cardinals that like to come to my bird feeder. I love to watch birds and I think in the winter the colors are magnificent. We also have had a new addition added this winter. Joy had a single buckling and we named him Bardock and he is growing nicely. I have 2 more goats due next month. This is my first winter having goats kid but they seem to be doing well. We have an extra stall that has a heat lamp in it and momma and baby spend the first week or 2 together at night in it and after that there is a small door that only the babies can fit through so that they can get to their mom to eat as needed  (unless it is the baby of a milkgoat and then they are seperated at night after a couple weeks so that I can milk) and then get back into the warmer stall to sleep. I do not know if this is how others do it but it works great for us. Another great thing about winter is that it makes me really appreciate spring when it arrives. I have a rabbit due to kindle in a week so I will be posting soon about that.

First new baby of the year!

This is a picture of my first new baby this year. He is a buckling and he is the son of Joy. She is a nubian/boer cross and the sire is almost full boer so he is about 73% boer as an estimated guess. I dont know the percentage of his mom so I am just guessing. I named him Bardock after a character on my son's favorite tv show, Dragonball Z. This was the quickest birth I have ever had any of my goats give. I was checking on her every hour because her ligaments were gone and I was waiting for discharge from her to put her in the birthing stall. I decided to check on her after lunch before I did the dishes and when I went out to the barn she was happily cleaning off a tiny white buckling. I think he is a keeper because I am in need of a new buck and I am trying not to buy anymore goats.

 These 2 cuties are my last babies of 2012. They will be 4 months old on Friday. The cutie on the top is named Moo because the girls thought she looked like a calf when she was born and the bottom one's name is Precious. They are the kids of Cheddar Fry and Champ. As you can tell from the picture of Precious they are very well fed, lol.

Yesterday ended up being a good day which was nice because lately I have been feeling kind of down in the dumps. Not only did we get a new baby goat but my husband also got a raise. Woo hoo!!!

~April