February 10th
Well it didn’t take long for me to drop off on the Diary posts! Things started to get busy, I skipped posting a couple of nights, it just got easy to procrastinate the posting until “tomorrow”….then tomorrow was a busy repeat of “today”….and, well, you get the picture! I will try to do better moving forward, but I know not to make promises! I will say that ONE of the reasons for the lack of diary entries is the latest addition to the Homestead family. Gemma Nicole was born late on the night of January 25th (her great, great grandpa’s birthday). She is a feisty, beautiful little girl who decided to join us 2 months early! She weighed 4# 7 ounces and had to spend a bit of time in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at a local hospital until she could coordinate her sucking/breathing/swallowing to be able to eat without a feeding tube. She mastered all that like a champ and has finally gotten to come home. She and her Mama are staying on the Homestead for a bit so that the rest of the family can help out Mama and allow her to get the rest she needs; as well as getting our daily doses of baby snuggles.
In addition to the pork processing class we held in January, we butchered our first Zebu and turned it into a class for a couple of amazing couples who wanted to learn what went into processing their own meat. They seemed to enjoy the class, learned a lot, and worked hard. They took some meat home to try and reported back that it was very good. I believe the Zebu will be a great addition to the homestead for meat/milk production. They take a lot less grass when they are grazing, and don’t eat nearly as much hay. I believe I can recommend them to anyone who wants to homestead and be more self-sufficient on a small acreage.
Jessa and I got a chance to visit with Sam and Cherelle when we delivered their greenhouse fan. They ordered a greenhouse identical to ours at the same time we did. They have made more progress on the construction of theirs. We are still needing to do some prep work on the site where it will sit, so we have not started construction. We got a chance to check out some of the construction points and see the size it will be. Papa always said, “Go big or go home!” I think we have done just that. However, since the price was a lot less than one a lot smaller, I don’t think we made a mistake. We may not utilize it to its full potential, even the first two or three years, but there is no doubt we will grow into it very quickly.
I almost forgot! Remember the baby rabbits that got wet and almost died? We saved them by putting warm water in ziploc bags, covered with towels, in a bowl and carried them around in the truck, under the heater for half a day? If you don’t remember that, got back to my entry on January 9th for the back story.
The picture to the left is a picture of those little critters now! They are beautiful, fluffy, fat and sassy bunny “teens” that are doing well!
I know this doesn’t even begin to catch you up on the last 4 weeks on the homestead, but at least, maybe, I’m back in the swing of posting and will be able to more diligent once again about about posting diary entries on a regular basis…..but, then again, I am still ME…..so we shall see!
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