We bought a steer that will be going to the butcher soon. We are really looking forward to having all that meat in the freezer. On the first day we had him he escaped within two hours of being here and it took us most of the day to find him. After we found him we had to get the neighbors help to bring him back to our pasture and then spent all evening fixing fence so he didn't leave us again.
We also bought two dairy goats. One of them is actually my brother Zanes and the other is ours but we care for both of them. We are having lots of fun making all sorts of good stuff from their milk. We are now regularly making yogurt which is my new favorite breakfast food. And if you know me you know this must be special yogurt because I really am not usually much of a yogurt eater. We have also made soft cheese with the goats milk and it is delicious. I want to expand into making more types of cheese but cheese is actually a lot of work so I am still contemplating where to start and when to start. The goats themselves are just fun because they each have such a unique personality. Having baby goats this spring was quite the experience as well. Both goats gave birth while we were not home and neither had any complications which was really nice since it was our first time at this. The babies were fun but they are a lot of work. We bottle feed our babies so that means up every four hours during the first week and then feedings every six hours...which was not simple with both of us working full time. And Jeremy was out of town with work when the second set of twins was born so I had my dad's help thankfully in the mornings but other then that I was on my own.
Then there's the horses. We started out with Cimmy (Cimmeron) a mare we bought from a friend of Jeremy's. She is 4 and has some training but we have basically restarted her from the ground up and she is coming along quite nicely. We now have her in a snaffle bit and have been riding her in the arena as well as out in the yard a few times. She's kind of a small horse but she has a lot of go and even though I was skeptical of getting a mare I am really starting to enjoy her. After we got Cimmy some friends of ours approached us about a horse they had. They just were no longer able to put the time and effort into him that he deserved so they wanted to see him go to a good home. We went and looked at him and even with a minor snafu (he did a little crow hopping at first) we decided that his new home needed to be with us. He is an older horse named Charlie. He is also HUGE...but he is a gentle giant. We have been working some basics with him so far just to build that respect between us and him. Both of the horses are out at my grandpas house right now because he has the round pen and arena where we can work them plus he has really dense pasture for them to graze on and our pasture was getting pretty sparse.
Some of our friends may think all of this sounds crazy but for us we are living the dream! We have wanted to be out of town and be able to have animals since we got married. We are so happy with the move we made. We both love our jobs, love the animals, and are thoroughly enjoying our house.
PS...on top of the farm animals we still have the two dogs who have become good old farm dogs.
This is one of Cocoas babies...I'm pretty sure this is Little Miss.
This is Cocoa. She's the more vocal and outgoing of the two goats.
This is Cowgirl one of Daisies daughters and her other daughter Bubbles has her bum in the picture.
Here I am with Cimmy when we first got her. She is friendly to a fault.
This is Daisy. She's much more timid then Cocoa but once she warms up to you she is very loving.
Here is Jeremy riding Cimmy. This was one of the first days that we got on her. She is doing so great with her training. I don't have any pictures of Charlie on my computer but I will try to take a few over the next week or so and get them posted.
