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

Ok, I'm sure any genuine roofers out there wouldn't appreciate my work, but hey, I put up a metal roof yesterday all by myself so I think I get a few bragging rights.  Its not much to look at seeing as though it's just four sheets of salvaged metal roofing from when we tore down half our barn a year ago.  But, along with the plywood roof that is now underneath it, the shed should keep our four little piggies nice and dry for many rain/snow storms to come.  With the wet weather we are due to get in the next week and a half I was really pushed to get the roof finished so the precipitation wouldn't just seep through the cracks where the sheets of plywood meet.

Kyle and I had intended on finishing the roof last weekend but between finishing the electric fence for the pigs, all the lawn work, Relay for Life at Trapp Family Lodge, snowboarding at Jay Peak, and wedding dress shopping with my BFF, Ali, time got a little tight.  So, I decided that on Wednesday, the most beautiful day of the week (in the mid to upper 40s and sun sun SUN), I would take the day off from my '9-5' job to finish it up myself.

The first order of business was to sort through the sheets of roofing we had stashed away.  Not all of the sheets are really in great shape, but we kept them all because we figure there might be a time we need some cheap covering for something.  Like, its probaby OK to have a slightly leaky roof over what will someday be a cover for firewood (seeing as we'll probably cover it with a tarp as well).  So, once I sorted through and found a handful of extra-long, fairly-leak-proof panels of metal roofing I was ready to go.

I slid the first panel up onto the roof and positioned it so there was a bit of an overhang on all sides (especially on the front- due to the length of our panels it was either way to short or a bit too long).  I had all my tools on the roof so climbed up and got to work.  I used a combination of roofing nails and screws.  The nails punched through two layers of roofing alot easier than the screws but the screws were crucial along the edges of the roof where I couldn't quite see if I was hitting a 2x4 or not.    For the most part I used the pre-existing holes from where the roofing nails had been, but added a few extra here and there if the edges weren't sitting quite right.