This Week on the Farm

My sister and her kids were visiting last week which left little spare time for me to write. Scilla still hasn't dropped her kids (unless, of course, she did overnight, I haven't been up to check yet).

Onyx is being a horrid devil goat to Trixie. She is seeing her opportunity to move from #3 to #2 in the herd and has taken to biting Trixie. At first, I thought she was just pulling hair out, so I started to shave Trixie so Onyx couldn't grab a mouthful. That's when I found all the places she's broken skin. So now she looks emaciated, half shaved with bald patches, sporting a handful of bite marks.

It reminds me of the story of the twin horses in Tifton that I saw on Yahoo earlier this week. I was so mad at all the do-gooders' comments. Here is this poor mare, who was not made to carry twins, who managed to carry them and successfully deliver them. I'm sure those foals (like Trixie's kids) were putting so much pressure on her stomach and organs, that there was no way she could eat enough to support them so she had to burn body mass. But all these commenters wanted Big Brother to step in and take those horses from that owner. I couldn't help but think that they would demand the same about Trixie even though I managed to save her life and her health continues to improve by the day.

My niece loved the baby goats. I'm working on weaning Magnum now, which is a challenge since BOGO still needs milk for another 3 weeks or so. She was less thrilled with Asher, who is just a little big for her. He was sweet and submissive as could be, but when he would lay on his back at her feet, he'd end up scratching her with his massive paws. She preferred to stay outside the fence. Unless she could talk someone into pushing her on the rope swing!

I can't remember if I posted about it earlier, but a friend and I made a deal that she would raise 50 meat birds if I would butcher them and then we'd split the finished product.

Here's the finished product. I am always so impressed at how nice these turn out. I got up Saturday morning dreading butchering them. Jeff was working out of town and 50 birds is just so many! But then my friends started arriving and brought with them a whole slew of teenage boys.  These were the nicest young men! It is so refreshing to see that there are still some out there. Good job, Moms and Dads- y'all know who you are.

We ended up having a perfect day. Everyone had a great time and we got these birds done in 5 hours! I am so blessed.

The young ladies were also very helpful in catching birds and bringing the decapitated fowl to me to scald and pluck. Pioneer women in the making! You go girls!

My son was even ready to don some gloves and see how eviscerating is done. He gave up when he realized that you really do have to take the gloves off to do it. At least we're making progress.

It seems we have gone directly from winter to summer. The forecast is saying 87 for today and I need to get the vegetable garden in (somewhere in between school, cleaning this house, daily farm chores, and baseball practice).