Thursday, May 21, 2009

The babies are here!



Our first batch of baby chicks are here! They are cornish cross broilers (meat chickens). Sarah loves the babies.

Chicken RV



Our chickens needed a vacation. So we got them a camp trailer. Actually our yard and garden needed the vacation from the chickens. We free range our chickens and their ranging ruined our yard. Biff is going to fix that for us. Any way.......... We bought an old camp trailer and gutted it. Lyle added nest boxes and roosts. Now the chickens are out in the hay field and loving it. They spend the day scratching and eating bugs and grass and seeds. They spend the nights in their cozy safe trailer. We can move the trailer from place to place so the chickens always have a fresh place to eat. Pretty nifty huh!?!

Monday, May 11, 2009

Mother's Day


Yesterday was a good day. I use to hate mother's day, I would listen to all those talks glorifying mothers and feel inadequate. It made me think of all the things I wasn't doing and all the things I needed to do better. Now that four of our kids are adults, I know that I was right, there were things I needed to do better and things I didn't do that I should have done. But I also know now I really did do the best I knew how in the circumstances I was in. My four "kids" turned out great! They are thinking, caring, responsible people who support themselves. Are they perfect? NO! But that is ok. I now know that they get to choose, and I need to stand back and let them. Now for the present, and this mother's day. I went to church with the two little girls. They refused to go up on the stand with the rest of the primary to sing, they said they were too scared. Hannah sang softly in my ear though. When I got home, I talked to my MOM which I really like to do. Biffy made dinner for us. There was a present from them all (Sarah had a hard time keeping that secret!). We had fun and talked and laughed through dinner (my favorite thing in the world is to spend time with my family). Then Biffy and Beky cleaned up. The little girls played and Levi got ready for a fishing trip. Then the big girls stuck around and we visited until about 9:00. Lyle missed all the fun, he is at work until Thurdays night. I went to bed last night feeling like maybe, just maybe I had done an OK job at being a mom. Thanks kids!!!!

Friday, May 8, 2009

Uno is born today!


Our first calf was born today. It is out of a light colored red angus cow (#744). Obviously the bull was black! The little girls were so excited. We went to take pictures right away. They have decided to name the cow Freckles. She has a pink nose with black spots. Since this is our first calf we have named it Uno.

Thursday, May 7, 2009




The next generation all ready outstanding in their field!

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Lyle with one of our boars.


Today we took some pictures of our younger boar. He is a Large Black pig. It is a heritage breed that is not very common, especially in the west. Hannah likes to call him "Jacko". Lyle was busy today getting things ready for his regular 8 days at work. He works in the Jonah oil field and is gone from home for those 8 days. He always has the feed for the pigs and chickens ground and in the barns to make it easy for me to do the chores. We have found that the pigs and chickens do much better on fresh ground feed. We also can control what they eat if we mix our own. We tried the "ready bagged prepared" feed from the stores and were not satisfied with the results. Lyle is always resourceful and found a feed grinder on ebay and we started to grind our own feed. Thank goodness for a wonderful high school ag teacher who taught us how to figure feed rations (Thanks Mr. Wallace)! We saw instant results. Our animals were much more active, and just acted healthier. Plus we KNEW what they were eating for sure............