I have not been on this blog lately, as I had some technical problems. I am glad to be back!

Now that fall is underway, we have been getting ready for winter. Hubby Steve has been busy cutting wood for our woodstove almost daily. He pulls his smaller trailer into the woods using his tractor and cuts a few trees and immediately cuts them up into small enough pieces to fit in our outdoor woodstove. Then he loads up the trailer and drives it to our wood pile next to the stove. If he is not too tired he unloads it and stacks it or waits until the next day to unload.

Today, we took one of our goats over to a friend's house to breed her to a boer male goat. He is bigger than our buck and she offered to see if we can get some beefier babies to sell for meat. Our babies from this past spring are still pretty small so if we can get meatier babies that are faster growing that will be great. Her buck was afraid of our doe at first, which was funny as she is so much smaller than he is. But after a few minutes smelling her and her being in standing heat, they were friends :) He bred her 3 times so I guess we can expect a baby or 2 this April.

When we got home we let our buck out with the does so they can breed and stay together for the winter. We kept the young doe and her brother, a wether, apart from the rest of the herd. The buck would try and breed her, too, and I feel she is too young. Hopefully he wil be in rut for a while yet and she may be big enough in a month or two. I hope she does not break out of her pen to be with the rest of the herd. If she does, all bets are off...

Our pigs had 2 litters a few weeks back. We sold a few as feeder pigs, one male as a breeder, and the rest we are raising for butchering in the spring. The male wanted to get out of his enclosed area as the 2 sows went back ito heat so we let him out with the sows and now they are rebred, too. All the animals are bred and should give birth in the spring when the long winter is over. Except our dairy cow is due to calve in December. I can't wait, as I really miss her delicious, sweet milk. We have been drinking goats milk for about a month and it is wonderful, too, but we are only getting a quart a day. No extra for butter or cheese or ice cream.

Our chicken are laying 2 dozen eggs a day now! We sell some eggs, but still have too many to eat. I am selling to a few girls at work since I put up an ad there. We need look into donating some to a food bank in town. I hope they can use them because we want to donate any way we can. Especially at this time of year and since our ecomonmy is still not good. One of our goals with moving and setting up the farm is to help those who are struggling and just need a hand up. Donating eggs is a way to start.