Dream coming true!...It'd Hard to believe it!

Well, sometime ago, around 3 years my husband and I decided to approach the man who owned the farm bedise us to see if he was willing to sell.  There had been talk in the area that he was going to sell it and someone wanted to put a subdivision in.  We were mortified about a subdivision and would sell and move where we didn't have to deal with lots of people around us.  So we asked and he and my husband drew up and agreement.  We would make a payment each month to him and upon maturation of the terms set aside the deed would be ours.  This had been the gentlemans inhartience and he was not comfortable letting it switch hands until the passing of his grandmother.  She was allowing a cattle farmer to lease it and he would continue it until her passing.  So we were not aloud to do anything with or on the property until then.  So we watch and wait.  Over the Christmas holiday the dear lady passed away.  We were contacted by the gentlemen a week ago and so the papers are signed all we are waiting on is the closing with the bank and the deal is done.  My husband is like a kid in a candy shop.  Today we are going to walk the propery and see where we will begin the clean up.  The boys said "the first thing we needed to do was put up a new fence,"  when asked why their reply was "we need to move our cows over there."  Very practical I must say but, we have two cows and this is a 30 acer farm.  My husband wants to clean the area where the pond is and clean the pond out first so that he can fish anytime he wants.  It connects to out backyard and he will be there all of the time no matter what the temperature is.  (The boys had not thought of that.)  I want to see what part will be best suited for hay and pasture and then decide how we will set it up for rotational grazing.  I will be able to run more sheep and this will be nice as I will not spend all summer with ewes running me over at the barn and less flies around the house.  Needless to say we have our work cut out for us but that is fine as we are looking at this being a production for our retirement.  I will take some pictures today and post them later.Off to get thehouse work done.

Remembering When.....

Proverbs 22:6 (King James Version) :  Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

I ran across this picture this week as i was cleaning out the attic.  I sat and just boo - whoed.  I know crazy right?  I really can't blieve that this little gitl has grown up into a beautiful 15 year old young lady.  It seems like just yeaterday she was running through the barn yard catching chickes.( Oh yeah that was just yersterday!Lol!)  Well, you know what I mean.  I know that the Lord gives us things to enjoy about each stage of life, but i truely miss the years 3-8, I really do.  That was the time I could solve most of lifes problems for her, not so many of them theses days.  I realize the value of the vere abovemore and more each day when I see her make good choices and trusting that the Lord will lead her where he wants her.  Through all the antics of being a 15 year old and living a Godly life I know that her day is filled with choices I never had to make.  Eventhough I teach in the same school she attends it is not my place to intervine unless it is a major wrong.  She has to live her life and learn to listen to that still small voice.  I think God each day for the blessing he has given me with her.

Here they are! The sweetest little peeps in the world...

I have for a long time been wanting to get back into raising chickens. (This summer had been the first summer since our fifteen year old was five that we have not had some sort of poultry in the barn yard.) After all , chickens are what got us started in the farming business when Emily arrived home from her great aunts house with a box of five little chicks.  That was it she was hooked.  Spending all of her waking hours totein' around a little hen.  She loved those chickens so much.  Soon five turned to us ordering her a surprise box of twenty five for easter.  Never in a million years would one think that a little girl would fall asleep watching those chicks run back and forth from the water to the food trough and then to rest under the heat lamp.  For days she set with the hatchery catalog looking at each picture of the chicks and tring to figure out what she had in that box.  In a small little compostion book she would write down ehat she thought they were and what page they were on.  by the time they were feathered out and in the barnyard she had most of them identified.  Even talking to our extention agent and having him come to the house to help her identify the ones she did not know.  Wow!  I can't believe it has been almost 10 years ago, time sure has flown by.  The summer she was in fourth grade we were at a flea market with my parents and low and behold what does this little brown eye girl wearing pigtails come carring back to my husband and I, you guessed it!  Two little splashed colored silkie chicks.  The cutiest little fluffy babies in the world!  They melted my heart and hers.  We raised them for quite sometime. Really up until she decided to get into showing sheep in depth.  That was when the chicken yard was turned into a sheep pen and the poultry went out in the yard.  This is the reason Wade made us get rid of something.  When the chickens, ducks, and turkeys started pooping on the concrete he said :They are Gone!", and so it was.  (A sad day I must say for the Haney women.) 

Yesterday, a blessed yesterday!  I recieved a late Christmas present per say.  Two of the most precious little silkies I have ever seen!  A hen and a rooster, just perfect for me!  Straight off the Fraker Farm and raised by Paula herself, these little jems make me so happy!  I got up this morning and headed to the barn only to be greeted by a hearty "Cock-a-doodle Do".  Something I haven't heard in a long time.

Good Morning All! And is it ever Early!

So, it was 4:30 A.M.. Yes, in the morning of my first day back to work since christmas break!... What am I doing up?.. I should be sleeping?.. You see my 15 year old wok me up at 3:30 a.m. to tell me that she was scared and couldn't go back to sleep. So after an hour of trying to lay there with her and calm her back to sleep we are up watching Law and Order. I am blogging, as you can see. It is really hard to get hold of a computer around here. I have ment to get these pictures up since I took them a few days ago. As you can see, the barn yard is alive with babies! This picture is of the first two born. Look how much they have grown!

Here is our Little Orphane!  She is just the cutiest little lamb, atleast we think so!  She is a very hearty lamb and is growing quick.

Look how she eats!  She has also started eating grain and hay and here new momma is such a nice girl!  She is a keeper for sure~

Here is another lamb born the day after the big ordeal.  She is a cutie with that soeckled face and black muzzle.  Very shy and quite.  Her momma is a bit jumpy and I have to be super quite and calm when I am in her pen.  She and her mother will probaly get to stay in the droppen for a few extra days just to have time with the extra TLC yo uget when you are there.

Look I have a new friend and she look a bit like me!

This is the tiny little girl barn the moring of the ordeal!  She is the smallest lamb we have.  I bet she didn't weigh 5 lbs. when she was born.  Her mother is a big old girl and she still doesn't even look like she has even had a baby!  You can't tell from the picture but she has the fattest little belly!

This is the last black face baby born, December 23,2009.  He is a big boy!  I call him cry baby. (Not his official name.)  He crys and crys and crys when he gets lost from his momma.  Every morning I am greeted with his loud voice until I get the grain in the pans.  Once his momma settles into a feeding pan and he finds her, "Baa, Baa, Baa"  is all I here.  He is quite friendly though, following me around if she is not close by.

So, I hope you all enjoy the pictures. For those who follow Paula's Blog, The Fraker Farm, the black face sheep are the aunts to all of the black face babies.  They have a cousin there who is also growing like a weed.  Thanks Paula for all of your help here. 

So...I have been mia for a few days.....

My last post cosisted of a very sorrowing moment for me as I reflected on the life of my grandmother.  I truely love this dear old lady and miss the times I had as a child with her.  She is just a joy even thou her mind is gone most of the time.  The last few days have been filled with children running through the house, several trips to the barn, a whole day spent buying livestock feed and human feed, opening a checking account for our 15 year old and deposting the others Christmas money, taking all the decorations down, and squeezing a little time to crochet.  That almost made me tired typing it all out.  But, knowing it is done gives me energy to move forward.

Onto a more interesting and kind of sad story with a happy ending! Christmas eve night brought a surprise of a baby lamb. This poor little guy was born to a young mommma who just didn't know how to get him moving.  By the time I found him is was near death.  Cold, unable to sit ot stand, and bearly breathing.  I scene not at all what a shepardress wants to find.  So after thirty minutes working with him in the barn and not getting the results I was needing into the house we went.  What start as an uphill battle seemed to make a turn for the better after three hours of constant care.  He was more alert, warm, and nursing.  So every hour on the hour I was up feeding him just one ounce at a time.  Soon morning came and he seemed to be stronger taking two full ounces strong around 8:00 a.m.  Soon he feel asleep and rested for what seemed to be along time.  My family opened gifts and got ready to go to my mothers house all the while checking on this little guy.  Long about nine oclock when we were packing the house to go to grandma's we checked on him and he had died.  You see he had never gotten strong enough to stand and although he tried with all he had he just couldn't do it.  Something was just not right. This put me in a down mood for most of the day.  I always beat myself over a lost lamb.  Saturday was a very busy day here. I made my barn rounds early about 7:30 a.m.  only to find a mother with a baby lamb running through the barnyard.  She was what I call a fat bottom girl who I would have thought would have had twins or triplets.  Well, I sure was wrong, she had tis little tiny baby girl.  After the loss of the lamb before I would take whatever as long as it was alive and doing well.  So, I put her and the baby in a pen to get to know each other, checked the rest of the girls to see if anyone was in trouble, feed all the rest of the sheep and the dog and back in the house to thaw out.  Around noon, my niece comes in the house and says there is a baby running through the cattle field.  So I throw on my barn clothes and boots and run out the door.  I find my husband with the mule tied to the backhoe and my niece holding a lamb.  My thought was that the mother who had just had the baby had gotton lose, I was wrong cause the little lamb my niece was holdong was not the one I had seen this moring.  So to the barn I went in a hurry, as I started into the gate here came the donkey.  This was a circus, with all the actors in all the wrong places.  Hubbie grabed the donkey and started walking him toward the gate only there was no gate between the fields. I jumped the fence and headed to the barn only to see the worst part of the whole ordeal, this little lambs momma was dead.  She had prolapsed.  Hubbie got the gate back up and th donkey out of the way and back to help me.  Now I have 3 spectators holding a very hungry and active baby lamb watching the two of us examine this momma.  So I milked all the milk out of her that I could and sent the human kids in the house to give the lamb a bottle.  Wade and I proceeded to check her out.  Not knowing if there was another baby traped we decided to cut her open and see. Now, one of the kids had slipped out of the house and was watching us from the gate, we were not aware of this, until he said " What are you going to do with her?"  We had just cut her open and blood was gushing everywhere, she had himridged and her utrus ruptured.  Man, it seems like when it rains it pours, the loss of a lamb eariler and now a mother, and the joys of a bottle baby!  Well, there were no more babies and we had to load this poor dead ewe into the backhoe bucket to be buried.  Wade to care of all of that.  I continued to go and milk the mother who had lost her lamb so that I could feed this little motherless lamb.  Once I got about a cup and a half I sent it in with the little observer, Timothy, who just turned 7 on December 23, 2009.  The girls were busy playing and fighting over her in the house.  Oh how much fun they were having.  So a thought came over Wade's mind when he decided I should see if this lambless mother would take her.  Now remember, this is almost a lose lose situation, mothers know there lambs and often refuse and shove other babies out of their way.  I was totally agaist it!  No, No, No!  I do not want another dead lamb.  But, after his gentle coaxing, and a big shove, I decided to stay out there and give it a try.  So the girls brought me this sweet little girl and I set her in the pen with the ewe who had lost her lamb.  This ewe, much to my surprise, did not take a second look, nudged te little girl back with her noe to her udder, and began licking her all over, while that baby nursed like there was no tomorrow!  There is a God in heaven and if you choose to deny that then you have never witnessed a maricle like this!  Thank you Jesus!  All of this long story, and if you are still reading this, Thank You!  ~ One week ago Today!