Visitors from Washington

Well, its been long enough since I updated this that I forgot my username and password. It was a great summer on the farm. We are up to 27 calves (heifers and bulls) and needless to say this provides plenty to do in our "free time". Our latest batch of chickens has just started to lay and we are enjoying about a dozen eggs per day and anticipating that number to go up to 2 dozen. Time to start advertising and selling around the school again.

Biggest news around here has been the recent visit of our friends the Brewers and the Felmley's from Bellingham, WA. The two families went in together to buy a 1973 Winnebego Brave for the road trip. After buying it, they tuned it up, modified it slightly to fit their needs, and successfully drove it across the country and back! The 4500-mile trip was made with 7 children, all 4 or under. The time was such a joy, and a great chance to remember how the Lord blesses us in our marriages, our frienships and with our children! See the video below for some of the action!

New Video

Summer is off to a great start here in Iowa. Enjoy the video! (Make sure to scroll down and see previous post too)

Toad on a Tractor

Not much to say other than the toad is on the tractor~

More pictures

The kids at Uncle Gary's model railroad open house.

Swimming in the "cool"

Some recent pictures

Nora swinging at "Grandma's Park"









Benny swinging too. (Not too high Grandma!)









Eating dirt cake.









Kristin's chore-mobile.









Ben fully outfitted for his bike. Training wheels, helmet and all.

Gardening...almost

The man at the equipment rental store assured me that cutting the sod for a 30'x30' garden would only take about 15 minutes. True...but rolling it and removing it took an extra 8 hours. Good thing I had some help from the kids. Finally, when all the sod was gone, I was excited to take the tiller to the soil and get started only to find the soil so hard and clay-like that the tiller just bounced around on top of the earth. SO, I called up a farmer friend of mine...






Grandpa with the plow.










Thanks, Grandpa!

Heifer Calves

Since our last update, a new opportunity has come our way! We will be raising "replacement heifers" for a local dairy farmer. We will pick up calves from his farm when they are two days old, bring them to our farm and feed and care for them until they are 6 months of age. At that point we will take and sell them back to the farmer we got them from. This allows him to free his facilities and his time to concentrate on the milking herd.

We picked up our first two calves on Wednesday night. We will be bottle feeding them twice a day for a few weeks before we start the weening process. Also, we'll start taking all newborns from now on. When we are fully "up and running" we will have somewhere between 10-16 calves and up to 40 cows here at a time! We will also raise 1-2 bull calves per month to sell to a friend who will raise them for meat.

We are very excited and learning a lot! They kids were skeptical at first and were fearful of getting bit, but are now comfortable and very excited to see the "baby cows".