Well, this is probably THE most overdue update as it stands today.  Our guest bedroom has been finished for almost a year now.  You may recall that we had to gut the room over a year ago due to some rotten studs we found in the walls when we replaced the old windows.  While we were at it we decided to move a wall so we'd be able to have a closet in the room instead of at the end of a narrow little hallway, which was detailed in this post if you'd like to re-live the action.  Things progressed slowly but steadily and we were so happy when we were able to finish it up and have a comfortable room for when we had family or friends stay over.

In celebration of our finished room, I'd love to present you with the before and after photos that I've been holding on to for so long.  So, here we go!

Back in February of 2009, we closed on our house and immediately got to work.  I recall that evening very clearly, it had been snowing and the roads were greasy.  We hit a pothole the size of my car and lost a couple hub caps but that couldn't dampen our spirits; we had just bought our first home.  When we arrived at the house we went upstairs and started ripping down wallpaper and tearing up flooring in the largest of the four rooms.  We had intended that this room be our master bedroom but changed our minds after realizing that the back of the house had less noise from the road.

This is what the guest bedroom looked like back when we moved in.  Complete with two low, cracked windows, layers of peeling wallpaper on the walls and ceiling, Congoleum on the floors, and a bare light dangling from a ten foot long cord.

I have to thank you all for sticking around during my almost 2 month absence here on the blog.  I have no good excuse, and I hope to get back into writing regularly again now that I'm "back".  So, in my ridiculous effort to get you all caught up as to whats going on here at the Senesac Family Homestead, I give you this blog post- which will be the first of many long-overdue updates.  Bear with me.

The end of October brought a flurry of activity with the pending baby shower paired with the dining room renovation.  As the party was to be at our house (as we are rather centrally located for our family members) we wanted to be sure we didn't have bare sheet rock welcoming our guests into our house.  So, in the week and a half leading up to the shower Kyle tackled the taping and mudding of the sheet rock.  Instead of our typical technique of hand-sanding the seams, Kyle (in a stroke of brilliance, I swear) decided to pull out his orbital sander.  We were sure to put up plastic in all the doorways to try to keep the drywall dust migration to a minimum which worked relatively well.  The walls and ceilings ended up looking great- much smoother than when we would sand by hand- so we're sold on the new technique.

The weekend before the shower we had my Mom come down to help paint.  We purchased a VOC-free paint from the local hardware store in a dusty yellow-green color (can you tell we're suckers for green?).  We were able to get the entire room primed and painted in a single day.  I was psyched.  The room went from this:

To this:

*the paint is still a little wet in these photos so the walls look a little less than stellar*

Rest assured, nothing ever goes perfectly.  We ran into a little comic relief towards the end of the day when my Mom decided to be a joker and step into the paint can.  She says it was by accident but I'm pretty sure she just liked the color and thought her shoes could use a little update.  But a little bit of water and some uncontrollable laughter solved the problem and we quickly righted her shoe and sock, although I'm fairly sure her pants will never be quite the same again.

The floor still needs to be refinished and we have yet to find the perfect chandelier, but we've been making due with the light we removed from the nursery when we upgraded it a few months ago.  We were able to get the trim up and painted around all the doors and windows, so our dining room was perfectly presentable in time for our first baby shower at the end of October.  We had a lovely time with family and friends and were given many generous gifts in preparation for our little girl.

Speaking of which, our little girl (as it turns out) isn't all that little.  She's a little monster in there and the doctors are telling me that if she doesn't flip over soon (as she is currently head UP instead of head DOWN like she's supposed to be) they'll have to schedule me for a cesarean section.  I'm not terribly pleased, what with my feelings of wanting to keep things as natural and drug-free as absolutely possible, but in the end all that matters is that we are blessed with a healthy baby girl in late January.  Until then, I am blessed by being able to stay home, relax, and prepare for baby.  Almost a month ago, the doctors decided that I should stop working and thanks to my company's short-term disability plan we are able to afford this turn of events.

So, thats my modest update for today.  Please stick around- I hope to get another blog post up tomorrow to continue in my efforts to get you all caught up before the end of the year!

We were all geared up to get some work done on the house this past Saturday.  My Mom was coming down from Montgomery to help me with a bunch of little odds and ends in the rooms on our second floor, while Kyle was ready to really tackle the sheetrock in the dining room.  He had been whittling away at it through the end of the week, and was excited (if anyone can really be excited about hanging sheetrock) to have a full weekend to devote to covering the bare walls.

I was a little bummed to miss out on gathering drops over at Shelburne Orchards, but with time running out before the end of the year and baby getting bigger by the day, I was happy to help finish up some rooms.  Most of the upstairs (except for the hallway/stairwell) was finished for all intents and purposes.  So I hashed out a list of things to do in each room to keep my Mom and I busy.  We started in the guest bedroom, where the room has been mostly finished for the past year or so.  After installing a switch plate cover to the light switch in the closet, a door stop, and the hardware for the doors to the built-in cabinet Kyle made, we were finished.  One room down, three to go.

We moved on to the master bedroom which also needed a door stop as well as a second coat of paint on some of the trim.  We also hung a shelf on one of the walls, where I like to keep a mirror and some candles.  The closet also got a bit of an upgrade with the installation of some simple lights that we got from Ikea last month.  Two rooms down, two to go.

The nursery didn't need much that we could do (Kyle still had to install the new window to replace the broken, single-pane one) but we put on a coat of paint on the trim, attached the changing pad to the top of the refinished dresser, and installed a new light to replace the ugly brown one that had been plaguing the ceiling for the past couple of years.  We still need to get the dimmer switch installed but we weren't ready to cut the power to do that- so we left it for Kyle.

Finally, the bathroom has been sitting unfinished for...well, I honestly don't remember the last time we touched the bathroom.  I guess it was this past spring.  But with an additional coat of paint on the trim and wainscoting it was looking a little closer to being done.  We took the hooks off the back of the door so I could get up the towel bar (the old hooks were not only UGLY, but kind of dangerous if you ask me) and put a fresh coat of white paint on the door as well.

While we were toiling away upstairs Kyle was busy in the dining room, he managed to get the majority of the sheetrock finished, except for a few sheets on the ceiling that he finished hanging last night.  Things are really starting to come together in there.

Holy cow were we busy this past weekend!!  The weather was so terrible it kept us from partaking in our "apple weekend" a la last year's but we were able to tackle so many projects, big and small, on the house (thanks to my Mom, for helping with all the little odds and ends!).  I'm so excited to share with you what we've been doing and I just can't believe how motivated my dear husband has been.  He's a machine I tell ya.

So, that being said, I haven't prepared any pictures yet so this is more of a little teaser.  No pictures, nothin.  But I promise to be back soon with a full update and some amazing pictures of whats been going on.  So, until tomorrow my friends!

Hi folks!

We've just been in a whirlwind of activity the past month or so and I am falling desperately behind on posting about our home renovations.  Progress is being made and I'm excited to share pictures with you.  I'm hoping to get a few posts up this week regarding the hearth pad and the dining room especially.  But as I still need to upload some pictures I won't be able to get to those topics today.  Instead, I just want to make quick introduction.

Blog friends and family, we are pleased to announce our newest addition to the farm, one that will enable us to keep pushing forward in our dreams of becoming self-sufficient.




This, my dear friends, is NC PromisedLand Jokers Wild, who has come to us from our favorite Nigerian Dwarf Goat breeder, Sharon at Willow Moon Farm.  Joker is the first male to be welcomed to our farm on a permanent basis- he'll be servicing our does in the months to come.  As our girls are not quite ready to be bred, the younger ones especially, we're keeping this sweet little guy up at my Mom's house with her eight wethers where he has plenty of company and generally stays out of trouble.  Once we have our buck house built and a buckling born on the farm we'll be able officially welcome him home.



Isn't he just the cutest?  Ok, so he'll be one big stud muffin in a couple more months but until then I'm going to call him "cute".  This little guy will enable us to breed all our girls later this fall and winter so we'll be milking five does next year.  This should provide our family with plenty of milk and I hope to start dabbling in cheese making and bit of goat's milk soap.

But this is just the start, stay tuned for all the excitement to come!

A couple weeks ago, demolition of our house moved to a whole new level, literally.  We are getting ready to install our woodstove in a couple weeks which means we have to prepare walls and a hearth.  Piggie-backing that project is the renovation of our dining room.  So, after stopping over at Johnson Farm and Garden for some chicken feed and a quick dinner of veggies and beans with spinach gnocchi, Kyle broke out the reciprocating saw and crow bar and got to work on the wall dividing our dining room from our living room.

Saturday was a busy day of home renovating which, luckily, kept us sneaking back outside into the welcoming sunshine that we've missed for what seems like an eternity.  It was the kind of day that leaves you tired and sore where you just feel like huddling under the down comforter with a cup of hot chocolate and a good book by the end of the day.  We had spent the morning buying supplies to build our hearth pad for our wood stove.  The plan is to move it in this Friday evening with the help of a few friends and more than a couple beers followed by a hearty, homemade dinner made by yours truly.  As I am carrying our little bundle of joy I will not be partaking in the moving of the wood stove and the drinking of the beer- a fair tradeoff if I do say so myself.

Saturday evening we heard some peeping from the hayloft and sure enough the eggs had hatched!!  We ended up with seven new chicks.  This spot in the hayloft had been the favorite spot for all the hens to lay their eggs so we got quite a variety from our broody Dominique.  You can only see one of the chicks in this picture here- they were just born when I took this picture and most were still hiding underneath the hen.

My dear friends, there are so many home renovation projects I need to post about its not even funny.  Almost the entire second floor of our house is finished and I have neglected to say anything about it!  So, in my efforts to get caught up, here is the lowdown on our renovation of our nursery!

Back in February of 2009, when we bought our house, we were faced with a lovely old farmhouse with not-so-lovely rooms.  There was either floor to floor carpet (even indoor/outdoor carpet in the dining room), or congoleum throughout the house.  On all other surfaces (yes that includes the ceilings) there was layer upon layer of wallpaper, minus the dining room that has a lovely drop ceiling.  The night we closed on our house we began renovations- we ripped down wallpaper and pulled up congoleum flooring and we've been going ever since.

Hey folks.  So apparently I'm not the only one working on new additions to the family.  After the arrival of our friend's roosters there was, apparently, some hanky panky with our hens.  When we went away for a long weekend to Washington DC last month we had a Black Australorp brooding in one of our nesting boxes.  We were so excited!  After loosing so many chickens to those darned pigs we were looking forward to having some "freebies" to add to our flock.

Unfortunately, when we returned we found that one of the neighborhood kids had stopped in and put all our eggs in a bucket for us.  So we lost those and the hen hasn't shown any interest in brooding since.  I was very disappointed because those Australorps are some pretty and birds and they lay big eggs.  But, it just wasn't meant to be I guess.

Lucky for us, hiding up in the hayloft, one of the Dominiques has been sitting on a pile of eggs for a couple weeks now.  She is very diligent and I'm hoping we'll end up with some new babies in another week or two.  The timing probably could have been better as the days are getting shorter and the temperatures are getting a little lower, but if need be we can move them into a seperate area where we can have a heat lamp set up.  As it is they will have to be seperated from the rest of the flock until they are a lot more mobile.  I don't want to run the risk of the babies being attacked by the other chickens.

Exciting stuff!

Well folks- our lawn is pretty upset right now.  The grass hasn't been mowed in ages, some of the blades are yellowing...its not a pretty sight.  We had been having trouble with the lawn tractor all summer, it kept breaking belts.  Granted, the sucker wasn't in the best of shape, but when it mowed it MOWED.  The thing that really disappointed us was that the main reason we got a lawn tractor was for the snowblower attachment.  We figured we could save ourselves some cash if we could just clear our driveway ourselves.  Well, it worked, we didn't pay anyone to plow our driveway, but we ended up shoveling it more often than not.

So, after a year long love/hate relationship with our 214 (we bought it used from a fella we spotted on Craigslist) we decided to break up.  Kyle posted it and two days later it was sold- luckily the guy who bought it knows all about the crappy snowblowing and the issues we have with the mower- and he still wanted it.  So now we're mower-less.  Our thought is that maybe, just maybe, we could get away with paying someone to mow our lawn once this month and maybe we can let it go for the rest of the year.  Then, we'll look for an affordable walk-behind snowblower (our driveway is just too big to shovel and seeing as I'll either be massively pregnant or taking care of a newborn this winter, I don't forsee shoveling in my near future).

While we know what we want to do regarding the snow/driveway, we are completely unsure what to do next year for our grass.  We could get away with mowing just the upper lawn if we had enough animals to keep the grass down in the lower section.  And, lets face it, a handful of little goats and a flock of chickens don't really have the capability to knock down almost three acres of grass.  So the question is- do we want to invest in some sheep?  I'd love to get couple sheep so I could make some handspun yarn, but I'm not sure if it makes much sense financially.  Maybe a small horse?  One vote for the horse....one vote for a dirtbike....damn.

So the search is on.  We're seriously considering getting a reel mower so we don't have to worry about the gas and the noise (and lets face it, there are fewer things that can break on a non-motorized mower), but that definitely doesn't solve the whole dilemma.  Does anyone have any suggestions?  Perhaps there are some options we haven't come up with yet?

As I mentioned in a previous post, we clipped our chickens' flight feathers a few weeks ago.  It was great for a few days; they stayed in their pasture.  After the initial few days of perfectly behaved chickens, just a few were found on our front yard but then as the days passed more and more would be found outside their fenced-in area.  They stuck to just our yard for quite a while, but lately they have been venturing further and further away again as they did before we clipped their wings.

I'm not sure what to do at this point.  With almost fifty chickens a movable "chicken tractor" seems like it would have to be too large and cumbersome to work.  It may be a combination of a few small holes in our fencing that need to be patched and the fact that they can jump up on our wooden gate to escape, both of these things need to be fixed in the next few weeks.  Hopefully that will remedy the problem because we suffered our first loss yesterday due to a wandering hen.  The poor thing was hit by a car when she walked all the way down the road to where our relatively quiet dirt road meets a paved road where people drive way too fast.  It was no suprise, it was just a matter of time really, but it's just so frustrating.

I just don't get it.  We have tons of grass, sun, shade, and plenty of dirt and pebbles in our driveway.  I don't understand what keeps calling these birds away from our yard.  I hope we can get them corralled again soon, I'd hate to lose anymore.

We recently inherited another ten chickens from our friend who moved a couple weeks ago.  Along with the Buckeye and Barred Rock laying hens were four Buckeye roosters.  As I helped Stu unload them from the back of his truck I was a little nervous; we're on pretty good terms with our neighbors and we'd really prefer to keep it that way.  I stood there at the fence after he left, watching the dynamics of the flock to be sure there wasn't going to be any huge fights, especially with the roosters.  They are still young enough that they haven't developed their spurs so they can't do as much damage.  Things settled down fairly quickly after some dueling here and there with some of the larger Australorp hens and the roosters.  I'm hoping that we'll be able to keep one or two of the roosters so we can replenish our flock, but we'll have to wait and see how noisey they are once they settle in.  It seems like they're doing their job, though, because for the past few days one of the Australorps has been happy to stay in one of the nesting boxes.

The goats are doing well.  Juniper's leg healed fantastically and she's gotten to where she doesn't have a limp and can run and jump just as well as the other two girls.  I feel a small sense of accomplishment with that.  Our attempts at milking Chutney were a bust.  Between her unwillingness to stand still and the small size of her teats due to being a first freshener made it infuriatingly difficult to get much milk.  We've been considering investing in a larger goat that would be easier for us both (especially Kyle since he has larger hands) to milk.  But we'll see how that goes.

The second swarm that stopped by one of our trees left last weekend.  Kyle had just finished building the top bar hive and we placed it under the swarm.  It was getting late in the day and we were both exhausted, so we thought we'd give them the night and the next morning to think about checking out the hive on their own before trying to drop them into the box.  The next morning we awoke and found that they had left.  Our own hive is doing well, though, we're ready to take a few frames out to harvest a bit of honey.  Kyle is hoping it will help with his allergies- the poor guy has been congested for weeks.

Finally, our garden.  I was so excited about the garden this year; I was so determined to make it a success.  Well, my friends, you know the saying about good intentions, right?  Unfortunately we've met some difficulty here as well.  We went down to the garden last week to find something had chewed the stalks of our tomato plants that had been doing so well.  They were lost.  Not only that, the black beans are being systematically attacked by something as well.  They were looking great a few weeks ago, but I checked them one day to find a patch of the bed had been demolished, then a few days later, more plants were gone.  I'm not sure what we'll be left with, but I'm not holding out much hope.

The few plants that appear to be doing amazingly well are our summer squash, carrots, beets, and potatoes.  Of course, its hard to say what is going on underneath the potato plants, but I can only hope they are doing well.  Hopefully we'll have enough to save for seed potatos for next year.  Seeing our difficulty with this garden for the second year in a row, we've decided to re-evaluate our garden plans.  Being such non-green-thumbs, why did we decide to take on such a large plot?  Well, because it is there and we were determined to make it work.  Under other circumstances, perhaps if we didn't have the goats, chickens, house renovations, full time jobs, and a multitude of other things, we could have pushed through and made our garden a success.  But, we're too new at this and it was just unrealistic for us.

So, next year we're going to do a smaller garden.  Smaller, but happier.  We're considering moving it up to be right next to the house, on our small, south-facing lawn.  There, not only would it be potentially safer from critters (because the dogs are up there more often), but it is closer to the spigot so we don't have to drag five hoses all the way down the hill and back to water it when necessary.  But my favorite reason for moving it is that we'd be able to see it easily from our picture window.  When things are ripe we'll know sooner so we can grab them and we'd be more apt to weed more often if we see it every day.  So we'll start small and once we get the hang of that, we'll add another bed or two, and so on until we get to where we want to be.

So thats the plan my friends.  Just because things aren't going well doesn't mean we throw in the towel, we take a step back and see what we're doing wrong and what we can do to improve.  We'll get there.  Rome wasn't built in a day, right?  It takes time.  We'll get there.

Wowzers.  A few weekends ago, Kyle and I got home from a neighbor's funeral to find a mass of bees flying around the truck.  I was immediately concerned that it was our bees so suited up to check on our hive.  After checking a few frames and being satisfied with what I found on my hive inspection I went back up to the house to enjoy the show.  The sound of tens of thousands of bees flying through the air was amazing.

After just a few more minutes the chaos of flying bees quickly turned into a solid mass that had attached itself to a couple branches in one of the trees next to our house.  I stared up at them and wished that they had landed on a lower branch where we might have been able to transfer them to a second hive (not that we currently HAVE a second hive...but I had plans to whip up a quick Top Bar Hive).  I mean, FREE BEES people!  Seriously!  How could I pass this up?

What the heck happened to the first half of July!?  We're in the final two weeks of this month and we're getting perilously close to August, the month of school supplies and talk of fall.  Thinking back to what we've done so far this summer, I'm a little sad to say that we've only been out in the kayaks a handful of times, hiked even less, and have yet to pull my bikes out of the work shop.  It always amazes me how quickly time flies, and yes, I'll agree that it gets faster with each year.

But, fall is a great time of year in Vermont.  At least until stick season when everything just looks too bare for comfort.  So there is still plenty of time to get out in those boats, and on the trails, and maybe even wear down some tires as well.  Winter seems to take its time getting here, it hangs on for sure, but real snow fall doesn't show its face usually until January.  Sure it'll be freezing and bitter, and I'll long for Spring to come, but this year we'll have our woodstove.  There's nothing quite like the dry heat that radiates from the belly of a cast iron and hearthstone beast, and I'll smile at its flickering glow each night.

But lets not get to ahead of ourselves, right?  After all, summer is barely a month old now and I'm certainly not showing it the door.  Over the weekend we harvested some lovely little beets and planted a new crop of peas, carrots, and salad greens.  The garden hadn't been touched in (dare I say it?) at least a month and a half and lets just say it didn't look like much of a garden.  My Mom came down to help give me a boost and we tackled it all amazingly enough, and not too soon either because the next day it rained.  The garden is looking lovely again.

The bees have been enoying their 'front porch', as Kyle calls it, lately with all this heat.  Most days when I come home from work there are a fair few out on the front of the hive, cooling off.  I need to get in there and check on the honey stores and the brood to be sure all is well.  Its just so hard to 'suit up' with the sweltering heat, hopefully now with the temperatures regulating again I'll be able to bring myself to get out there.

Things around the farm have been going well.  The absence of the pigs has been felt mostly during feeding time, when the familiar sounds of oinks, grunts, and squeels are decidedly absent.  Juniper's leg has been healing over the past few weeks in her splint.  I'm going to take it off this weekend and see how she does walking without it.  We may set up Ollie's old dog crate for her to stay in to keep the other girls from jostling her around too much during the first couple days.  And of course, the chickens are doing well, they come and go as they please and lately have been spending the early morning hanging out in front of our porch hoping for an early breakfast.  One was at the front door this morning, clucking at me through an open window.

Last night I took some down time in our hammock, with Juniper and Poppy on my lap, while Kyle brought the bigger girls down the rock face to the taller brush in our lower field.  There was something so calming about swaying under the canopies of three giant maple trees with two tiny ruminants chewing their cud, their eyes barely staying open.  Sometimes it dawns on me what my life has come to mean and I am humbled by it.

Can you believe its that time already?  It seems like only yesterday that we stuffed these four boys into the back of the Scion Xa and welcomed them to their new home.  They were so little then.  I remember thinking how cute they all were and how hard it would be when the time came for them to be butchered.  Over the past months they've grown amazingly fast considering they were raised mostly on bread, kitchen scraps, and whatever was growing in their pasture- with a bit of grain supplementation just to be sure they were getting enough calories.

Last night, Kyle and I got lazy and decided to just do sandwiches for dinner.  With the sweltering heat and humidity lately neither of us has had any inspiration to cook much.  We had thawed out one of our broilers so Kyle pulled it out to cut off the meat.  We were left with a couple, medium-sized chicken breasts that he graced with some salt and peppers and threw on the grill.  The rest of the chicken was cut up into chunks and placed into the crock pot with a couple cups of water to simmer on low for the evening.  There was no way I was going to get water boiling on the stove in almost 100 degree weather.  We'd use this for chicken tacos later this week, perhaps tonight, with some black beans and salsa.

Our dinner consisted of some homegrown chicken breast between a few slices of homemade bread (honey and butter bread, courtesy of my dear Mother) and some lettuce that we happily plucked from the garden.  The only thing not homemade was the stone ground mustard that I slathered on one of my slices of bread.  It was the most satisfying dinners we've had in a while.  We sat in our living room, in the relative coolness of our house, and enjoyed our sandwiches with a glass of sun tea.  After having such a hectic weekend and week it was a welcomed respite and I daydreamed about a homegrown BLT.  Soon my friends, soon.

Our lives need a little drama here and there.  It keeps things interesting.  Without the drama we might not appreciate the little moments of peace that we are graced with every so often.  But sometimes those drama-filled moments are enough to make us sit, place our faces in our hands and just take a moment to breathe and pray for a positive outcome.

Friday afternoon, a couple hours before I got home from work, Kyle was outside checking on the pigs.  We had moved them back under the trees so they could tear up the ground a bit before the meat processor comes to get them next Friday.  While he was outside he heard a scream from the barn and ran to see what it was.  Apparently, Juniper had jumped up on the top of the manger, got her left front foot stuck between a couple boards and then tried to jump down.  We had plywood on top of the manger to try to keep chicken droppings from getting down into the hay, we never thought much about the tiny gap at one end, but these girls' feet are so tiny, they can fit in just about anything.  Needless to say, the manger has been moved, and a new, safer cover has been attached.

But the damage was done.  Kyle thought that maybe it was just sprained because she seemed to be moving around relatively well.  Her adrenaline must have been running because any time we'd go out to try to catch her to take a better look she'd just run.  I didn't want to aggrevate the condition so we decided to leave it until Saturday morning when we fed them breakfast.  Sure enough, Saturday morning brought us the truth.  Her leg was very swollen and obviously broken.  We ran to Johnson Farm and Garden to pick up some rolls of Vet Wrap and a couple wooden paint stirrers.

When we got home I gave Juniper a baby asprin and started icing her leg to try to help the swelling go down a bit.  Then, while Kyle held her, I felt her leg and carefully pulled on her hoof and fetlock to be sure all the bones were straight and where they should be.  Using a clean, old sock, I padded one side of each of the paint stirrers and made sure they were just long enough to extend just a little past her hoof.  With one paint stirrer on the inside of her leg, and the other on the outside I carefully wrapped all the way up her leg with a few lengths of the Vet Wrap.  Once I was finished with the splint we held her up to the higher branches of the surrounding trees so she could get some of the leaves as a treat.

After a few minutes of greedily eating leaves, we set Juniper down to see how she fared with the splint.  She's still working on three legs, but she can put her other foot down when she wants and it won't put any weight on the broken leg.  If not for the leg she looks fine; her eyes are bright, she eats and drinks with as much energy and enthusiasm that we are used to seeing in her, her rumen is working well, and her digestive system is working fine.  It is a relief.

We've had to re-wrap the bandage a couple times already, it kept getting pulled down a little too far, I think its because she drags it when she goes to lay down.  But last night I used a piece of the wrap over the top of her shoulders which I think should eliminate the problem.  She seems to be doing well, though, she can even run around again and climb on things, which is good to see.  We gave her a baby asprin each day for a few days, just to help with any pain or swelling.  But even when we re-wrapped her leg on Sunday the swelling was completely gone.  So I'm confident that as long as we are diligent at being sure her wrap is in place, things will heal well.

I just feel horrible that the cause of her injury was something that we neglected to recognize as a possible danger.  Sometimes it takes some drama to get you looking at things in a different way.  But if you ask me, I'm ready for some drama-free days now, thankyouverymuch.

On Monday, I had my first day back at work after taking a week off to spend with Kyle for our first anniversary.  As always I had a ton of work to catch up on and, before I knew it, the day was over and I was headed home.  I stopped at the grocery store to pick up some items and drop off a handful of movies at the Redbox kiosk that we had rented a couple days earlier.  I pulled into our driveway, herded a few stray chickens back into our yard and greeted Kyle on his way out of the house.  We've been thinking about clipping the chickens' wings and the further they venture into the neighbor's yard the more we think its for the best.  Our original plan had been to let them be, but they have been wandering further and further away and spend too much time on other people's property, or in the road, for our liking.  We shall see.

After feeding everyone out in the barn we returned to the house for some downtime and I got a good look at what my husband had been up to all day.  Apparently, Kyle had just as busy a day as I had.  In my absence he had relocated our bed to the guest room so he could begin working on finishing our master bedroom.  By the time I had returned home he had taken down all the bead-board and trim (carefully enough that we should be able to reuse it all, yippy!) and ripped down the plaster and lathe.  We were not suprised to see a lack of adequate insulation, which is exactly why we wanted to tackle this project in the first place.  But we were pleasantly suprised to see that so far all the studs appear to be in great condition.

He was just about finished putting up sheetrock over the second half of our ceiling.  The room is divided by a long header and one side of the room has a ceiling that is fine, the other side was a little less than lovely.  He had also been sanding and mudding the sheetrock that he put up in the "carpet sample" room over the weekend to cover the horrid, old "wood" paneling.  We're close to being finished with this room and as we move along to the master bedroom I'm beginning to think our goal of finishing the upstairs before the end of the year is a little more feasible.

We're hoping to have the insulation and sheetrock finished in our room by the end of the weekend, and begin the painting of the "carpet sample" room any day now.  Things are really rolling!

Hey folks!  I'm not sure if anyone is following the "ticker" on the sidebar for May's due date but if you have (and probably now, if you haven't) noticed that it isn't counting down anymore that is for a very good reason.  We've officially flown past her due date.  Today marks the sixth day since she was due to kid.  I've sent a note to our breeder to ask for advice.  I know it is common enough for goats to kid up to five days early or five days late- but I didn't really think we'd make it this far along.  She still has her tiny udder and her tail ligaments are solid as can be.  I keep expecting to go out each morning to find a new kid in the barn but nothing yet.  I've read that it is possible for does to create an udder without being pregnant, but I just think the timing is too perfect for it to be this.  She started her udder exactly when she should have for a pregnant doe getting into her last month of gestation.  So, nothing we can do now but keep waiting...

We drove into the city last night for a lovely dinner in Burlington for my sister-in-law's birthday.  Its always nice going out with family.  The way home felt long, though; I was exhausted and lingered somewhere between sleep and gazing, dazed, out the window.  Kyle and I were discussing the next big home renovation now that the guest room and upstairs bathroom were finished and sometimes its just a bit overwelming when there is so much to do.  But we arrived home and there was a sweet, mild breeze in the air that greeted us.  I went out to the barn to shut in the goats and chickens for the night while Kyle checked on the pigs, who had been moved back under the trees next to the house.

We scheduled a date with the meat processor for July 16th, a mere month away, and we wanted to try to get them to eat the greenery and till up the soil there before they left us.  They were happily running around, like the pig races you see at the fair, and we watched them for a little while before heading inside.  As I was getting into bed half an hour later the dogs started barking wildly.  I looked out the front windows to see a neighbor's friend leaving our front yard- he must have been at our door a minute ago.  I mentioned it to Kyle as I looked out the back window- the pigs were out.

I hastily threw my jeans on again as I watched Freddy make a bee-line for our freshly planted garden, the other three were ahead of him in the tall grasses.  I ran downstairs to grab my boots hoping that the novelty of being loose would keep Freddy from exploring the soft soil in our garden beds.  Sure enough, by the time I rounded the corner to the back of the house they had moved on and were headed for the road.  I freaked at the realization that they really were loose and not contently eating grass in our backyard like they had done the few times they escaped before.

As I called them from the top of the hill, carefully picking my way down along the edge of the drop-off, Kyle arrived with a bucket of grain.  As soon as they saw him they forgot all about their adventure and trailed along back to the barn.  We're lucky the neighbor stopped by, if we had gone to bed with the pigs loose, who knows where they would have ended up, or the damage they could have done.  Once they were safely back in their fenced-in pasture we surveyed the electric-net fence that we hastily put up over the weekend.  Brick Top must have been chasing one of them because it appeared that one of the pigs had gone straight through the fence, leaving a nice hole in the netting.  I'll have to fix that so we can resume using it for the goats and chickens.

So, now the task is to get a better fence up out there for the next few weeks so they can continue eating the grass and ferns.  Kyle has the next two weeks off so he'll have plenty of time to work on fencing.  But I'll say it again, I'm ready for some bacon.  Pigs.

Last week we were fully into June and our garden had yet to be planted besides a few cold weather plants here and there.  The major road block was that we hadn't touched our garden beds in weeks and the weeds took up residence with a vengance.  All our lovely rye grass and crimson clover that I planted last fall as a cover crop really burst into life and the beds looked more wild than ever.  As it was a little late in the game to try to cut all this into the soil we decided to just weed it all out and feed it to the pigs.  Oh yes, they loved that rye grass.  They squeeked and grunted as they picked through the piles of grass, finding the best pieces- pigs never save the best for last.

My family took pity on us and our lack of enthusiasm to get the garden in and they came over to help weed and plant.  We managed to get all the weeding finished and our potatos planted before the black flies forced us to retreat back to our porch for a bbq dinner.  Sometimes you just need a little help, ya know?

This past weekend the weather decided to take a break from the rain so Kyle and I decided it was time we finished this project up.  I planted the rest of our seeds while Kyle transplated the rest of the tomatos and peppers that were ready to go.  We still have a good deal of tomato and sweet pepper plants that have been started but just are still too small to move outside I think, they can wait.  I planted the dry black beans, sweet corn, summer squash, spinach, broccoli, bush beans, and our started celery plants.  I'm going to plant another round of carrots soon, once the rain lets up again.

So our garden is officially in.  Of course I still need to get our sunflowers and pumpkins planted, but those are just for fun.  Now its just a matter of getting weeding into my daily routine so we don't let it get out of hand again.

On another note, May is due to kid this weekend, give or take a few days.  Her udder is still small, but she has time.  I think she's just got a single kid in there as she is just so narrow still.  I'm hoping for a buck.  Chutney's doelings are growing strong and Poppy runs up to me each time I go out to the barn.  We ordered our disbudding iron last week so I'm hoping we'll see it soon, their horns are growing and with all the neighbors and small children that we have stopping by to check out our farm we don't want to risk it.

Sorry I've been a little sporatic in my blog posts lately, things have just been super hectic at home the past few weeks and my laptop has officially kicked the bucket.  Kyle and I had to finish up our guest room (YES, it really is finished!!) before my father and step-mom came up for the holiday weekend.  We also had to clean up the house (which ended up taking way more time than I really thought it would) and semi-finish the upstairs bathroom.  On top of all this we, of course, have been working on barn stuff.  Kyle made me a milking stand a week ago which I took out for a test run with Chutney a couple days. 

I was planning on starting the bottle-feeding this past weekend, my hope had been that I'd milk a little bit every day up until then just for us to get the hang of it before we really got serious.  But unfortunately, I haven't been feeling well and trudging out to the barn twice a day to fight with a goat and her teats wasn't high on my priority list.  So I'm hoping to give it another go soon because the kids are getting pretty skittish.

Our pigs are growing fast.  Bricktop is definitely still the biggest out of the four boys but the other three really aren't that far behind.  Kyle and I are pretty sure we'll be able to have them all processed before fall, which would be great.  They haven't eaten any other chickens, as far as I have been able to tell, and I hope that our barracade that we created around the dividing gate will continue to be successful.

Speaking of chickens, our second experience of the Cornish crosses is nearing its end.  Our fifty (or so) meat birds are amazing.  Last year when we raised these birds it was too late to put them outside because the weather had turned too cold.  This year they've had free range of the pasture and all the tall grasses.  We started only feeding them for a short time in the morning, forcing them to forage for the rest of the day.  I am always amazed about how healthy they seem compared to our first batch.  These birds are active.  The most common thing you hear about this kind of bird is that they have heart and leg problems, they really can only walk from the feed dish to the water dish, and the rest of the time they have to sit down because of their massive weight.  We experienced exactly this last year and it caused us to think we'd never raise these birds again.  But what a difference a diet can make.  I'll be posting some pictures when I get a chance.

I really do have a bunch to catch you up on- I really would love to show you some before and afters of our guest room and bathroom.  Oh, and we started our garden a few weeks ago, still have a lot to plant, but we've got a beginning at least.  May is due in a few weeks, she started making her udder a week ago.  So much has been going on I can barely remember it all!  Please bear with me, friends, life has really been getting in the way of my blogging but I hope to make a full comeback soon.

Thanks for stopping by!!
Melissa

I had read, before we ever got our pigs, that they could be a problem with our chicken population.  When our four boys arrived we noticed a bit of interest and a couple idle bites in a chicken's direction here and there.  But the laying hens are fast, so the pigs never got more than a couple feathers out of the encounter.  We decided that between the damage they were doing to the floor in the barn, the potential snacking that would be at the chickens' expense, and the lovely smell, it would just be best to keep them in their own shed, in a seperate fenced-in pasture.  This didn't solve all our problems, unfortunately.

First off, I have to say that the damage to the barn has halted completely, minus the one time they got out into the other pasture, went into the barn, and ate all the grain we had.  Second, the smell is nowhere near as bad.  They keep their shed very clean and, thanks to the amount of space they have to move around in, only on occasion do I get an offensive odor wafted in my direction when out by their pasture.

The only thing we haven't been able to halt is the snacking.  Yes, the snacking at our chickens' expense.  There is one spot under a gate where the chickens can squeeze under and if they aren't smart enough to figure out how to get back they are, eventually, picked off.  So far not a single laying hen has been the victim, I'm not sure they could even fit under the gate, it has always been one of our almost two month old chickens.

Two or three times we have come home to find a carpet of feathers in the pigs' pasture.  They were like crop circles, once one showed up out of the blue another one did, then another one.  Then last night our neighbor's daughter stopped by to bring us some food scraps (for the pigs of course) and a few muffins (for us, yippy!) and as we were admiring the new baby goats she asked me if the pigs had a toy.  I wasn't really sure what she meant but as we neared the gate I saw the tell-tale feathers next to their water trough.

It was a horrifying sight.  Two of them had legs hanging out the sides of their mouths as they gnawed through the bones.  The other two had something as well, I tried not to look long enough to identify the body part.  I apologized to the neighbor who was probably sorry that she stopped by on her way back home, although she seemed relatively unphased.

That night Kyle and I discussed the impending downsizing of our pig herd.  We are looking forward to sending Bricktop off to our local animal processer more and more as the days wear on.  He is large enough and he gets the majority of the food.  Hopefully once he is gone we'll be able to focus on the other three, so they will grow faster.  Honestly, this is a great experience but I'm just not sure we want to get pigs again.  There are plenty of people who raise pigs, and I'd rather buy pork from a local co-op than deal with these guys again.  Chickens are so much quieter, they don't eat as much, they don't tear up your land, and they taste delicious.  I love chicken.  But then I think of bacon...oh bacon...

Well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see.