Fingers and Toes Crossed

We have an offer on the house! We are currently in negotiations with the potential buyers and hope to have a signed contract within the next day or two. Lets hope the home inspection goes well with no surprises. Cris has to get the pool up and running from its winter hiatus for the inspection.

Getting that house sold will be a breath of fresh air. Between the property taxes, homeowners insurance, electric bill and home equity loan (used to buy the farm), and lawncare, we have been paying alot for an empty house. Hope it will all be over soon.

The next six weeks will be super busy. I am going to Maryland the last weekend in March for about 4 days, sometime in the third week of April, I am driving to Texas to see Robbie come off the plane from Afghanastan (so happy about that!), the house closing will be April 20th (yeah!), sheep shearing April 14th, have to get ready for three sheep we are getting, the last weekend in April is the sustainable living groups Nature Weekend where we learn what Spring plants growing in our woods are edible or medicinal. April 21st I am playing bells at church, finish emptying the Memphis house and in between all this Cris has to travel for work, we have to get stuff planted in the garden and oh yeah, Easter! Our April is full. May should be a breeze.

We sold a 5 mos old gilt and two more piglets since my last post. We have one more 5 mos old gilt to sell, one piglet is going to Alex's fraternity for their bbq pig roast, one we are keeping to breed, one piglet is spoken for in the fall for butchering and two are suppose to be picked up next week.

We have run out of hay rolls so we moved the cows into the pasture to start eating the grass that is growing. They prefer fresh green grass.

I forgot to add to our April list; make a chicken coop and set up electric poultry netting for the 25 chicks coming the second week of april. They will stay inside the coop for the first month until they are old enough..... About 4 weeks i think.

Our other hen is laying as of today so we are going to be getting two eggs a day which is good because the pigs love hard boiled eggs.

Come on Spring

Our piglets are almost 8 weeks old and are super cute. We sold a male and female piglet last week and are selling 4 more on craigslist. We also plan to sell one of the 4 month old gilts to reduce the number of girls we have. We moved them further into the woods and they love it. So much area to root around.

We picked up a Scottish Highland Bull 2 weeks ago to breed with Mandy in May. He is all black except for some reddish brown on his ears and top of his head.

We now have four hens and a rooster living in the chicken tractor that Cris built. One of the hens started laying yesterday and we have two eggs so far!

The chickens are americaunas and buff ophingtons. We ordered 25 black australorp chicks that will arrive in April. We plan to raise them both for meat and eggs and they will live in the tree orchard area to help keep the trees pest free. The chicken tractor works great We move it every few days in the garden so the chickens scratch up the ground and fertilize it for when we plant vegies.

The sustainable living group got together a week ago and harvested sassafras root to dry and use to make sassafras tea. Other projects we plan to do this year with the group is take a handgun course, first aid/cpr training, Ham Radio training to get our license.

There just aren't enough hours in the day though. Trying to get everything done and adding more things to the list all the time and the never ending things that need repaired....like the $450 tractor tire that had to be replaced, the wires on the lawn mower and UTV that the dogs tore up trying to get to a mouse, the roof on a storage shed that has to be replaced after a hail storm.

But for all the aggravating things that happen, there are the great things that make it all worth while. Like the first egg that our chicken laid, watching piglets being born and growing up, watching the boar run over to us like a puppy dog when we come home from work, petting our hairy highland cattle.

We are still trying to sell our house in Memphis. Hopefully the few repairs we do and the spring yard cleanup will help us get it sold. It is a buyers market for sure.