This Saturday

Today was full. My Man and I went out for breakfast and to discuss our budget for this year. Sounds crazy in April, but we just got part of our tax return after a couple months of tight purse strings, and it's a good time for us to plan our budget out. 

My Man, Son, Sissy and Honey burned drain ditches with a neighbor. I worked some on digging ditch on our property. We are re routing the way it drains from our pasture. After burning, my Man and Son worked on this also. I also was involved in showing off the lambs. The office lady from my Man's job brought her grandkids and their parents, to enjoy the lambs, sheep and goats for a while. We had crock pot meatloaf with salad and green beans for dinner. We are working on baths now, and I'm about to wash some hair. Little Guy got six hours and twenty-seven minutes outside today. 89/1000! 

Spring lambing finished

This morning, we finished off lambing for a bit. Six ewes have lambed within two weeks, and they added 12 ewe lambs and 2 ram lambs to our flock.

The proud mothers;

Raspberry, Strawberry, Splash, Frost, CD, Rose.

The bereaved mother; Blackie.

We went through quite the ordeal holding down Blackie for a few days of milking. We wanted to freeze the colostrum in case of future emergency, and we milked her for 4 days just to get all the best beginning milk. We were going to ease her off slowly, but we wound up deciding to just let her try to dry off cold turkey. Hopefully she won't be hurting too much. She does seem a little more comfortable now than she was a few days ago.

Raspberry had triplets. She is raising two ewes and lost a ram.

Strawberry had triplets. She is raising ewes.

Splash had twins. She is raising ewes.

Blackie had twins. Stillborn rams. 

Frost had twins. She is raising ewes.

CD had triplets. She is raising one ewe, one ram, and she lost a ram.

Rose had triplets. She is raising two ewes and a ram. 

We had several present with elbow lock this spring. My Man had to assist in multiple births and I had to assist with one. 

We anticipate that Hairy and Blondie are likely pregnant, but they just lambed unexpectedly in November, so we don't think they are far along. We have the adult rams locked up for now, just in case. 

My Man got the 50% ram he was hoping for out of Rose. 50% Dorper and 50% Romanov. He's a cute little guy, too!

Needing Cold Water

 My sister has been sending screenshots to the family group chat. Screenshots of posts from my Mom's blog. Back when she was in the throes of raising and homeschooling 8 young children. Those are precious memories, and I'd like to fill my blog in with more of the same, for my kids to reminisce over as adults.

Here is a scene from my life, while in the throes of raising and homeschooling 7 young children.

My Man has a tradition of taking the kids out early on Saturday mornings for breakfast. It has evolved through the years, but for the past couple years, they take turns. Today was Sweetie's turn, so she was up quite early. She had a wonderful day, but by the time bedtime rolled around, very exhausted! After dinner, I sent her to start her bath, which her older sister had run for her. She started having an emotional breakdown because she had to use the hall bathroom. I helped her calm down. Then she had an emotional breakdown because the water was too hot. I felt the water as she was stepping into the bath, crying "I need cold! I need it cold!" It wasn't overly hot, but I turned the cold on and she immediately put her hand in the running water.

"AAUUGHH!!!" she screamed. I can just imagine a cartoon strip with the character screaming, with their hair all standing on end! It's exactly what she sounded like! She instantly turned the water off and started swishing the "cold" water in to the "hot" water. There was still a tiny stream coming from the faucet because it always does that after it's turned off. So she started pushing and pushing on the knob until the stream stopped a couple seconds later.

"That's how much I needed, Mama. That's enough cold now."

(The water was on for possibly one full second.)

Milking

I've been a pretty busy woman. I mean, always, but especially the past couple weeks. We started milking (meaning Son and My Man). It takes a lot of work for Mom to keep all of the equipment clean; jars and lids, milk pail, filtering funnel, cloths for cleaning her udder. We have a Dexter, which is a dual purpose breed, so we aren't getting as much milk as a dairy breed would give us. But we still get between a gallon to a gallon and a half per milking, and that's 2-3 gallons daily to handle. I guess she's giving a bit more than that, but they are keeping a certain amount out for bottle feeding her calf. We are sharing milk so far with my brother-in-law's family, and with dear friends who have shared with us several times in the past. We still have way more milk than we need. Milking began on monthly grocery day, and we don't have an extra fridge. So we've been having to move milk fast.

I think I've decided that if I make a batch of mozzarella each day, we'll probably keep pace. I tested how the homemade mozzarella freezes, and it does fine. Son wants to make butter and whipped cream, so I've begun skimming the cream before cheese-making. We bought an "antique" countertop butter churn around the time we had to stop milking last time (because she'd gotten a bad wound on her udder and couldn't handle the milking). My Man and Son used it for the first time a few evenings ago and it worked quite well. That night, we ended up with a big slab of butter, a quart of buttermilk, and 2 mozzarella wheels. That consolidated 2 gallons of milk plus some additional cream from an earlier cheese making session. I may attempt converting the whey into whey powder, but we'll see how it goes. It's supposed to be pretty easy, but... I've been a pretty busy woman.

Monthly Groceries Day

 Yesterday was a busy day.

 I started on 3 hours of sleep, and didn't eat anything until 3:00 pm (except two slices of canned peaches). My Man took Punkin and Sweetie out for breakfast. He also took Son, Sissy and Honey out to Walmart and Ace (we had a broken toilet seat that needed replaced). And then he took the big girls to the library. He and I (and Little Guy) visited the local secondhand stores, looking for Corelle dinner plates. And My Man was looking for something else, but I don't recall what it was. Neither of us were successful. Then Little Guy and I went for our monthly grocery orders. That took longer than usual for various reasons. I also visited Goodwill, but still no luck finding dinner plates. I picked up Burger King for my super late lunch. Once home, our wonderful children unloaded everything and helped me put away, but we only got the perishables put away this time. Then My Man left once more, this time going to visit some out-of-state friends who were staying with their family, other friends of ours. He did take Sissy and Honey, but I stayed home and started tackling meat preparation tasks. I cooked and froze 30 lbs of ground beef, separated and froze about 12-13 lbs of raw ground beef into meal-sized portions (about 2.5lbs), seasoned, formed and froze around 7 lbs hamburger patties, chopped/sliced and froze 25 lbs of chicken. I also put a 10 lb roll of ground beef into the freezer, and a 5 lb package of chicken in the fridge to deal with later, because it was getting late. Other things that I did during that time, were to unload and reload the dishwasher, give Punkin a bath, put Precious down for bed, nurse Little Guy more than once, and take the sleeping Sweetie up to her bed. I had Son complete some other tasks for me, and he also watched some episodes of History in the Dark and took a shower. Honey also bathed after they returned. It was very nice to go to bed, although late.

 And while writing this post, I see that Little Guy (who was pretty cranky with the events of yesterday) is truly mobile now! He's enjoying rolling and scooting along to get whatever he wants to play with next. Super cute! He's a very happy little guy!

Braids

 I've been fixing Honey, Punkin and Sweetie's hair in braids to keep it out of the grasp of Little Guy. And Precious gets upper pigtails. Punkin and Sweetie aren't very happy about this, but I told them it's temporary. They have been losing hair to their little brother like crazy. And he's been getting hair in his mouth sometimes. And I've NEVER had so much hair in the vacuum cleaner before. So braids it is.

She Looked At My Face

 I see all these memes about "what made my toddler cry this week" or "reasons my 4yo had an emotional break down this week". They include things such as "he looked at me!" Or "because her banana was yellow".

Now I have six children, and for the first time ever, my fourth child nearing 4, was crying and kicking her sister. In distress, she cried "She looked at my face!! 😭😭😭"

Also, Son had the thought that I should add to my blog posts things such as "My Son bought a bike that he can do skids on." He has been pretty aware of the importance of this accomplishment for the last few days.