Down on the farm

Our farm is growing!  We had 3 little kittens born on Mother's Day.  They are very cute and still haven't started venturing away from their momma.  Leah is very drawn to animals and these babies are getting a lot of her attention.  She doesn't handle them yet, but she crawls under the table where they are and stares at them...for a long time.

We hatched chicks...twice.  We've come to admit that we are no good at hatching eggs.  We don't know what we are doing wrong, but the first time we started with 2 dozen and ended up with 4 chicks (though many more had been moving the day before they should have hatched).  The second time we started with 32 eggs and had 5 eggs hatch, then one chick died several days later.

Luckily, there is a mill in town where we can buy as many chicks as we want.  We bought 15 chicks to go with the first batch.  One of those chicks died; I mentioned it in a previous post.  Then we had our 4 chicks and got a call from Chad's dad.  He had access to free chicks and we could have as many as we wanted.  So we weren't really in need of more chicks, but the price was right.

Fast forward to the present...we have 54 chicks.  FIFTY-FOUR!  We'll see how that works out.

We did sell 3 of our lambs a couple of weeks ago.  We still have our bottle-fed lambs since they are not afraid of us.  We have staked them out in the orchard to help us keep the grass down out there.  But lambs are not very smart and we are constantly going out there to untangle them.  I'm glad it's summer and we can send the kids out there.

Tonight, Chad and I held a mini-rodeo and caught the last two lambs to put them in a back corner of the orchard that is all grass.  We hope it's not too late to tame them (though my hope is weak).  It was quite a site to behold.  When lambs don't want to be led, they lay down.  So we dragged two lambs and got tired and sweaty.  It was so much fun.

I am grateful we have the opportunity to raise these animals.  I watched Joseph help me wrangle the tame lambs as we hooked them up tonight.  He got pretty firm with one of the lambs and smacked her on the rear to get her moving.  It was funny...I don't think she even noticed.  There aren't very many 4-year-old boys having that experience.  Even Sarah tries to manage the lambs sometimes.  :)  The kids gather eggs, fill water troughs and throw hay over the fence.  Tonight they helped plant more of the garden.  It's a great life.  If we ever have to leave it behind, I will be sad, but grateful to have lived it at all.