Morning Friend

This has been a wonderful week. I have had the pleasure to have one of my friends here every morning at 6:30 am. She lost one of her goats a week ago. So she is short on milk. Since I am getting plenty for my family, I told her she could milk one of my girls once a day and keep the milk. It has been what I need to get my butt in gear.

It doesn't get light at my house until around 7. So, I had been waiting until then to go outside and do my feeding and milking. Now that I have a friend to share the morning with, I have been getting up at 6. This gives me extra time in the day to do what I need to get done, plus it makes the job of caring for the animals move faster.

My friend is someone I look up to. She is doing what I want to do. She is a homeschooling mother to her wonderful children. She is working on living a more natural life. I love learning new things from her and being able to share things I learn. It makes working for what I want easier when you have someone there that believes in what I am doing and wants to do it also. I am so thankful that I have a friend like her. I love the ways God works. He brings those that you need into your life. I feel that he has brought her into my life for a reason.

A busy farm life

I can not believe I haven't posted since July. So many things have changed since then. We have added two milking cows to the farm. Celine is a mid-sized miniature Jersey. Annabell is an Aryshire. They are both four years old. I love having all the extra milk.

With the extra milk, I have started to learn to make more milk products. I have became a pro at making butter. Our freezer is starting to fill up. I have just staryed making kefir. Next, I want to start making more cheeses. My goal is to start making hard cheese by next spring. I am hoping to have time this winter to practice.

When I first got the cows, I feed them grain. With more reading I decided to just feed them hay. It took a week of them protesting as they got milked, but they learned that eating hay was just as good as the grain. Having the cows takes up more of my time on the farm, but I really do enjoy them. They are very sweet and loving. I can't wait until next year when I will have some calves to play with.