December 1, 2018

We are so excited (and a bit overwhelmed) that we finally bit the bullet and got our first dairy cow for milking!  Thanks so much to Tucker ( and his kids) at Lilly Den Farm for helping to make this happen, helping to add to our education and make sure we had what we needed! Welcome home to Sage and her son to Powell Acres!  For tonight, we have tucked them into a stall (a wee bit unfinished as we have been adding a milking stanchion) with food and water to try to shake off the stress of the move.  We are hoping to get everything completed tomorrow, and work on getting into a milking routine.  Wish us luck!  So glad to have found friends along the way who have gone out of their way to educate me in the art of having a dairy cow and how to milk.  Thanks so much to Jeannette and her cow Fern for being so patient with my milking attempts and helping me get ready for the big day.  Thanks again to Joe and Michele.  It takes a village!

Their cozy new home in our pasture.

We finished the library, including adding some new lighting, that we of course found for a bargain which meant there was some bead stringing to do.  However, my handsome, free electrician installed them for me, so they really put the icing on the cake.








A friend came over (Thanks Jeanne!) and we worked on items for the church bazaar together.  Jeanne was creative with the faces on her snowman marshmallows.  We were able to put the food coloring on them with toothpicks.  We put them in white hot chocolate mix, as well as on their own and made some jars of chocolate chip cookie mix.






We were having trouble with way too much water in our barn area as well as the water draining off of the roof and landing right in front of the barn door which made for a mucky entrance and a floor you could sink into up to your ankles.  Knowing we had a cow and calf coming, we knew something had to be done.

John and I put some cheap plastic gutters on backwards as the water was draining under the metal trim.  The great thing is, you could hardly tell they were up there.  We attached them with some self tapping screws.  They did a great job of channeling the majority of the water away from the door.





This inspired me in turn to try do do something with the wet mucky floor.  So when I was trying to figure out what to do, I got a vision in my head of the Egyptians stomping straw into clay to make bricks.  So I started peeling layers of hay off of our round bale of hay, laying it down on the floor and stomping it in.  As I was stomping, I was working to flatten the floor.  If I found a place where I would sink, I added more hay and stomped some more.  The floor is much better!  Sometimes we don't even think about the cheap solutions.  Cost us less than the $25 we paid for the bale of hay.





I took a name off of the Angel tree at church and the child asked for a Barbie and some clothing.  You should have known that I found a Farmer Barbie and found the little girl some clothing to match.  I even threw together a matching chicken.   When the boots arrived, it really was a perfect matching outfit.  I sure hope she likes it.

 

With the cold settling in, I have been having trouble with getting cold shoulders as my shoulders stick out from the bed covers.  I knew I needed some pajamas that covered my shoulders a bit, but I wanted something that looked more attractive and used warm fabric.  I bought a long flannel night gown for $1.99 at the Goodwill store and remade it into an updated farm girl look with the no trespassing sign removed.   No tangling up in a long skirt in the middle of the night!  The things we do to save money so we can spend it on cows!  Ain't life Grand!