Christina's First Peach Cobbler

We were blessed with a delicious peach cobbler for dessert at dinner today, compliments of Christina! Christina made it completely by herself from scratch with the peaches from our own peach tree! It turned out wonderful!

The pictures don't really do the tasty dish justice, but I'll show you anyway. Here it is fresh out of the oven, placed on top of the stove:



And here is my piece on my plate after dinner today. It sure was good!



Here is a picture of what this peach cobbler looked like last week:



And this is Simon doing his part in making the delicious dessert; picking the ripe peaches from the tree:





He is using a neat item that is new to us this season. It is an official fruit picking tool we got from Virgie. It has a sturdy wire basket that is open on one side with protruding "grabbers" that allow you to snag the fruit up in the tree and allow it to drop into the basket. 3 or 4 peaches would fit in it before it was too full.




We needed a step ladder and someone taller than me or Simon to get the peaches from the upper branches. Matthew was the right man for the job!




And here is some of the soon to be peach cobbler setting on the truck bed:



We are thankful for the peaches we were able to harvest this year, but we were a bit disappointed also. We did not get enough to can this season, even though we have plenty of trees. For some reason, the 4 peach trees on the river bank did not give us any peaches at all and neither did the other mature tree up by the house. This year the river bank trees did not have any excuse, as they had not suffered through the flood that ruined their peaches last year! Our other old tree had a good excuse in that it was broken and split apart pretty badly last year under the weight of all those peaches! I guess it was not expected to do much this year.

The tree you saw in the pictures was the only tree this year to bear any peaches to speak of, and it yielded much fewer than it used to back in it's prime. It may be soon reaching the life expectancy age for most peach trees, so we are very blessed that we got any peaches at all! We were trying to remember exactly when we planted those old trees and we concluded that it had to be a Mother's Day before Christina was born! That would put the trees being there since spring of 1996 or earlier, making it at least 15 years old! A quick search on the web seems to indicate that most peach trees only live to be 15 to 20 years old. I do hope this good peach tree will give us several more decent years.

We were excited that one of our little peach trees that we have grown from seed actually produced 2 fair sized peaches this year! And what was better is that the peaches were free stone and very tasty! We've read that it is not likely for fruit trees to reproduce true unless they are grafted, but at least this one seems to be a winner! We have a total of 7 little peach trees grown from our seed in our front yard. This year they all had some blooms, but the others did not bear any peaches. Maybe some of those others will be good trees as well, and our homestead will again be blessed to can and freeze peaches in a couple more years to come!

This has been a lengthy post to be completely peach related, but I don't think I have written about our peach tree experiences for a while. We do love peaches and peach cobblers!

Thank you Christina for preparing the peaches and making the Peach Cobbler, and thank you Simon and Matthew for getting the fruit in before they got too ripe/rotten! And thank you Lisa for cutting many of the peaches up and for just being you!

Where's The Septic Tank? (Plus an Update)

Was I a WWI soldier digging a trench to protect my company from enemy artillery? Or perhaps I was a pirate of old, trying to follow a faded and worn treasure map, digging for the hopelessly lost buried treasure?

Or maybe I was just a foolish homesteader who had lost a septic tank that was in desperate need of pumping out!

We had the tank pumped out once before, and I dug holes all over the yard that time, too. The septic guy said that they recommend pumping every 5 years. We have lived in our present home for 17 years now, and this was just the 2nd time we have needed it pumped out. It has probably been 8 or 9 years since we last had it done, but we were pretty sure where to dig. We were wrong!

I decided to post about the location of our septic tank here on the blog, because I have high hopes that these records will be preserved for my posterity, and therefore also preserved for myself in 8 or 9 years from now if we need to dig up the tank once again!

The magic spot to dig in the future is:

32 feet from the house measured from the bathroom window. 28 feet from the culvert going under our driveway. And 6 1/2 feet from the ash leaf maple we call the "play tree".

Hopefully this will be of future benefit and I will not have to spend all day on a Saturday searching for it! (At least I got a decent workout in because of it, and I have been trying to loose weight.)

Since I am here on the blog, I guess it would be nice to fill in a few gaps that I have neglected over the past month. First off, it is hard to believe that March is just about over already! Spring has been springing with the bright yellow forsythia blooming in front of the house, the daffodills and other "Easter" flowers, as well as the peach trees and cherry bushes beginning to bloom. (We are thankful for the forsythia that we got from Little House Big Garden last year: it is a welcome splash of beauty!)

I pruned the grape vines and peach trees early in the month, and Lisa and I attended an apple tree grafting workshop at the extension office. We grafted 5 trees of different varieties and put them in a pot with some of the garden soil. We will be curious to see how they do. We have pruned some of the old apple trees we have a bit, but I did not get the time to do what really needed to be done on them.

Speaking of the garden, I got it tilled once, but then it rained before we could get anything put out. So, our garden is getting a late start once again this year! The old tiller started up nicely, but we need some new tires.

Other homestead news should be about our livestock. Currently we only have chickens and pigs. The chickens have provided us with some meat as Lisa and Matthew butchered a cockeral earlier this month as well as plenty of eggs from the hens. We are getting between 15 and 20 every day! I sold one rooster for $5 and we have several more waiting to be butchered. We will probably part with some of our hens as well. We don’t really need 29 of them, even though I like them all!

As far as the pigs are concerned, we are expecting piglets any day now. I wouldn’t be surprised if Scarlett has hers today. Crimson may be a few days later? It is so hard to tell for sure. This will be their first litters, so we don’t really know what to expect. I hope they will be good mammas. Right now they are housed in the barn, but we hope to move them back up to the old pig lot before too long. We need to completely re-do the fence up there and one of the sties need some rehab. A few years with 800 pound hogs took it’s toll!

Erica is planning on working at Camp again this summer and is still wating to hear from the colleges she is interested in. Matthew got his driver’s license and has been driving everywhere. We got a ’91 F-150 extended cab that he really wants to drive, but it is still waiting on a gas tank, so he has had to drive my car, or the Pontiac, or the GMC truck. I guess we have too many vehichles, even though we now have 4 drivers in the family. The insurance has gone crazy! It’s not really fair that all 16 year olds get discriminated against just because a majority of them are show-off, dangerous drivers with no responsibility for their actions. Matthew is exceptionally safe and an excellent driver! If GEICO could spend a week or two with him, I’d bet they would be willing to give us a better premium. Oh well…

Christina and Simon started taking piano lessons this month and have really enjoyed it. It has been nice having Erica take them so Lisa does not have to go out. Last week Matthew took them. Having additional drivers in the family can be a benefit (even if the insurance is crazy).

Timothy also had his 2nd birthday in March. We took pictures that I will try to post someday. He is doing great: talking more and more and also learning how to work already. While I was digging all those holes Saturday, I gave him a small shovel and he was moving dirt right along side us! (Matthew was at a Fire School all day, so he couldn’t help. Simon did some digging when he wasn’t babysitting Timothy. Christina helped dig quite a bit before she had to go to the Reformation 2010 meeting with Erica) I wish I got a picture of Timothy with the shovel. Time is getting away from us too quickly, and I’m afraid he is growing up without as many pictures as some of the older children!

Judging from that last paragraph, I am beginning to ramble, so I think I should cut this post off now. I can’t wait to see the blessings God has in store for us as the Spring continues!

Until next time,

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3 comments
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Anonymous on March 29, 2010 at 1:24 pm
Eric,

This post is so very timely for us….we have had some issues with our septic tank and the Health Dept. coming to our home…Marc will have to call and tell you all about it. Marc will be working to find our septic tank today pray that it will not be to far down to locate.

I am glad you are doing well..we had such a good visit with you a couple weeks ago. We are looking forward to seeing you in May:)

We are also looking forward to the spring and summer ..God is so very Good!

Looking forward to seeing how God blesses you in the coming monthes:)

Renee
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Purewater on March 29, 2010 at 2:05 pm
We also had a great time with you all at Winter Jam! That was another happening during March that I neglected to write about! Seeing Third Day and the Newsboys and the other groups was great, but the company was what really made it special!

Septic tanks can be problematic, but I would still much rather have one than being on a city sewer system! They are really maintenance free until they get filled up, and then it is not so pretty.

I'll be interested in hearing about your septic dilemma sometime soon! I hope it all works out ok and Marc will find your tank easier than we did!
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jrejhkids on March 30, 2010 at 8:56 am
We have had a time finding exactly where ours is as well. We ended up making a little planter around the opening, except without the flowers. We have a board that covers it and we can store our garden hoses on top of it.

Insurance is crazy. We only have two drivers at home now. My son got his license before he went to Berea, so we don't have to pay for him. We have another child who will be driving next year.

Enjoyed reading your blog. Have a great day.

~Cheryl

2009 Peach Harvest

We picked three 5-gallon bucketfuls of peaches today from the one Elberta Peach tree in our front yard, and have another bucket of recently fallen ones! Until today, we have just been picking a few to eat and collecting the fallen ones that were good. Lisa made a wonderful peach cobler earlier this week. I think it is my favorite dessert, especially when it is with our own peaches! (My favorite dessert is usually the one that is in front of me at the moment.)

Now we need to get working on the job of peeling, slicing and canning these peaches. Last year we had many more peaches because we had 2 trees that had bumper crops, but this is a good many in it’s own right.

We were able to can so many last year that Lisa was still making peach coblers in late spring, and we still have a few jars left now! The other tree in our front yard, closest to the road, had so many peaches that every limb on it broke by the time they were ripe! That tree had no peaches this year, of course.

Down on the riverbank we have 4 other peach trees that have produced peaches for several years now. This year the Mother’s Day flood ruined most of the peaches and the ones that survived got taken by the wild. We had ripe peaches on the tops of the trees (the parts that were not submerged in the flood), but the last time we checked on them they were all gone! All that were left were some gnawed on seeds beneath the trees!

We are thankful for the abundant crop of healthy peaches the Lord gave us on this one tree. It is really a wonderful blessing to have such sweet, delicious fruit from our own land!

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2 comments
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jlgoinggreen on July 25, 2009 at 7:53 am
I love peach cobbler! Bummer about your other trees, but like you stated, at least the Lord provided if only from one tree. I pray you are able to make these last at least till the winter this year.

God Bless,

JEN
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CedarCityMom on July 28, 2009 at 9:07 am
Hello, been awhile since I've stopped by…. looks as God is still sending emence blessings your way!

May God send many more!

Jessica~CedarCityMom~

Mother's Day Flood

This blog is about many common, everyday sort of things that go on around here, but every now and then something unusual might arise (like the river). When unique events occur, I usually feel like recording them as well.

Today was a slightly different sort of Mother’s Day, in that our church service was canceled. Why would a church dismiss on Mother’s Day, you might ask? There is little choice it seems, when the road coming from either direction leading to the church-house is under water! Our church is the River Baptist Church, so named because it is located adjacent to the river, but today the church building was actually surrounded by the river!

We had fun checking it out, and I took some pictures. Our church is just to the left behind the trees. You can see the maroon church sign if you look closely:





The church is just a mile from Pure Water Hollow, so I am speaking of the same river that runs in front of our house. Normally, we can’t see the actual water unless we walk out to the road. It has been strange today to look out from our living room and see the current of the river rushing by, because the water is so high.

Our rain gauge has collected 6 inches of rain during the past week, and since all the surrounding areas up the river had similar amounts of rain, it was just too much water for the old river banks to handle all at once.

This phenomenon is not especially rare, but it is uncommon enough to be notable. This has only happened perhaps 5 or 6 times since we have lived here since 1993. The last time we remember the river being over the roads was February of 2006. And also in February of 2003 there was a crest of 37.67 feet at our county seat, which was the 16th highest on the NOAA list of historical crests for our area. During those times, we have been completely cut off here at Pure Water Hollow, unless we wanted to cross over the mountains on foot, or risk the whirlpools of the river by boat.

Our Mother’s Day flood today was destined to crest out at only 31.2 feet this afternoon, so it wasn’t really any big deal in the grand scheme of things. The NOAA site lists 28 feet as "Action Stage", 35 feet as "Flood Stage", 38 feet as "Moderate Flood Stage", and 42 feet as "Major Flood Stage". They say that 35 feet is when the streets are flooding in our county seat and parts of the county are cut off, and then at 38 feet houses are getting flooded in our county seat, and at 42 feet the businesses are getting flooded. I’m sure the measurements are probably a bit different out here where we are, but I think it’s a pretty good comparison.

Saturday morning I decided it would be prudent to clean up our riverbank, just in case the river continued to rise. At 9:00am the water was still below our big flat area where we try to have a garden and some peach trees. We had down there some chairs, milk crates, and many hundred feet of chicken wire that I had used last year to deter the rabbits and turtles from the veggies. I didn’t want to loose all that fence material and I thought it would at least get mangled if left down there in flood waters. We worked on it all morning, and by that afternoon the water was beginning to creep up on the riverbank and surround the trunks of the peach trees.

Fortunately, we have been behind in getting our garden sites ready and planted, so there was no time-investment or seed-investment lost with this flood. Our four peach trees were loaded with small peaches, and unfortunately, they may suffer some damage.

These peach trees are kind of special in regards to Mother’s Day. The children each presented Mom with a peach tree for Mother’s Day back in 2002 (I think that is the correct year). We planted them on the riverbank and they found themselves under water the very next February! The first tree you come to is a Belle of Georgia semi-dwarf, the next is called Sugar Princess, and then Diamond Princess, and lastly a JB Hale semi-dwarf.

The Belle of Georgia seemed to have the greatest early yield of baby peaches this year, and being in front, it had to take the brunt of the current from the river. And being a semi-dwarf, it is not quite as tall as the Sugar Princess and Diamond Princess. This being said, the Belle of Georgia only had about 6 inches of one limb left protruding above the floodwaters as the river crested this afternoon for several hours and the current pushed the tree at an angle! Some of the limbs from the other trees were also submerged, but the top halves of the Princess trees were still visible above the water, and some of the JB Hale. Just last week I was saying that I should have pruned the middle of those Princess trees so they wouldn’t be so tall! Once again, being too busy may have actually proved beneficial! Perhaps we will still be able to harvest some peaches from the riverbank. We will have to wait and see what they look like after the floodwaters recede.

Here is a picture of a couple of the peach trees before the river had crested. It got much higher than this. What you can’t tell is how strong the current is going by the trees.:



Well, the river continued to rise all through Saturday, Saturday night, and Sunday morning. I took a strange pleasure in checking the river level regularly. When I went to check at 7 am this morning, the road to church was already underwater. We placed stakes in the riverbank to mark the progress of the encroaching water. I guess we had about 8 sticks in the ground starting yesterday, but the early ones became submerged quickly. We could still see the stakes from midnight, 7 am, 9 am, and 11 am. The water level held steady until about 3 PM, and then it began to gradually go down. The weather service on the computer said that the river crested at 31.2 feet at 11:00 am.

Historically, the biggest river flood here was on January 31, 1957. The NOAA site says that the crest for that one was 45.92 feet! I wonder if the water was actually in our house during that flood? In the book Swimming Upriver, an earlier flood is described when the floodwater got up to the top of the cellar, stopping just short of coming into the house. If that flood was February 3rd, 1950 the NOAA site lists that crest at 38.88 ft, which was the 13th highest crest on record! (There is an excerpt from the book on the website about that flood if you would like to read about it. It is pretty good.)

A flood on Mother’s Day is not the best present for an incredible mom like Lisa, especially since it preoccupied my time yesterday instead of working on remodeling the bathroom! We did not have church today, but Lisa still had a nice Mother’s Day. The children presented Lisa with homemade cards and Erica fixed a wonderful brunch of biscuits and gravy, sausage and scrambled eggs, juicy bacon, and fried apples. It was a meal consisting of food that was all home raised here at Pure Water Hollow except for the grain for the biscuits!

After our family Bible reading we drove up the road to look at the floodwaters and walked out on the suspension bridge spanning the river. We then took a nice walk through our hills identifying various plants and trees, which is one of Lisa’s favorite activities. We found a plant that Lisa had never positively identified before. She was happy to discover that it was what she thought it might be; purslane. It can be used in salads or boiled as a green and is supposed to be high in vitamin C, vitamin A, calcium, and phosphorus. I bet we will try it sometime soon!

After our walk we relaxed and had a nice dinner of pork loin roast. Lisa read to the children until bedtime while I finished typing this post.

All in all, I thought it was a nice Mother’s Day, even with a flood. Of course, Lisa deserves so much more than we can ever do. She is the most wonderful wife and mother I could ever dream of. The love I feel for her is impossible to put into adequate words!

If my love for Lisa were changed into drops of water, my heart would quickly overflow. It would run into the river, but the river never would crest. It would flood not only the riverbank, but also our house as well, and the surrounding land, the county seat, and the whole state of Kentucky! The flood would continue until the peaks of the majestic Rocky Mountains would become victim as the great nation of the United States and the whole continent of North America and, yes, even the entire world became submerged by the water from my love for Lisa! But since God promised he would never again flood the entire world I’m quite certain that He would never turn my love for Lisa into drops of water. Every one reading this should now breathe a deep sigh of relief!

It has gotten late. If the preceding love analogy seemed corny to you, just chalk it up to my being sleepy. But even when I am sleepy, I am thankful and grateful to the mother of my children, and I do love her that much! I am even more thankful and grateful to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ for saving me, for giving me such a Godly wife and mother for my children, and for blessing my home and family here at Pure Water Hollow!

Good night everyone, and God bless.

When It Rains, It Pours

The saying, "When it rains, it pours" has a ring of truth to it when considering the current state of our homestead.

On the literal side, we got 3 1/2 inches of rain over the weekend, which caused flash flooding in our hollow. It made the rest of the dam break on through, so that it is now beyond repair with the tractor I have been hoping to get. I will not have a stocked fish pond this year, nor will I be able to use my ram pump with the supply lines from the pond.

The water again flooded our lower yard, part of the garden, and driveway, leaving debris all over the place once again.

Various places in our roads have been rutted out by the water, and we lost part of the road above the clearing that we had made last summer. I spent all morning yesterday digging trenches to divert the water, clearing out debris from the ditches on the roads, and opening up the culverts that had gotten stopped up.

Also our cellar is filled up with water almost to the top, completely submerging the kereosene heater I had stored down there. Another $100 loss?

Meanwhile, some critter got the goose eggs and ran Mother Goose off her nest, so no goslings this go around.

Also yesterday, we moved Nellie and Sally back to the barn again. Nellie is seemingly in heat and Rufus was not leaving her alone and we were afraid he was going to hurt her. This time Rufus, (the giant 900 plus pound boar) was not going to stand for it. He snapped the post (which was in concrete) that the gate was hung on, and proceeded to follow the sows to the barn. It was just a stick in the mud to him, it seems. It will take some work to repair it. We put the gate on the other lot and eventually moved Rufus and Nellie in there. We may need to sell Rufus sooner than expected. Sally is still in the barn. I don’t know if she is pregnant or not?

More rain is expected. The peach trees on the river bank are looking very good. I hope the water does not get over them as it is apt to do if the river floods out of it's banks.

But, when it rains, it pours.

A Virtual Tour of Pure Water Hollow Homestead

It is an honor being one of the “featured bloggers” on Homestead Blogger once again, and also a bit overwhelming. Part of me wonders why anyone would be interested in my little homestead here. But then I look around me and quickly realize that I have an absolutely wonderful life and I am getting to experience some awesome adventures that are made up of the types of things that homestead minded people dream about. My desire is always that our homestead will in some way point to our glorious Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Everything we have or do is ultimitely because of Him!

I’m really writing this blog for my immediate family, extended family, and for posterity as well. I must confess that I also have a selfish motive. In many ways I am recording this adventure just to aid my own memory. Sadly, I have had to realize that I do not have a very good long term memory at all, and 20 years from now I do not want to hear about all kinds of wonderful things we shared as a family and not have a memory of them for myself!

I was not intending to get so contemplative on this post.

What I am striving for with this entry, is to just give sort of a virtual tour of what types of things we have had going on lately at Pure Water Hollow Homestead. We had a few beautiful days Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, so I asked Christina, my 11 year old, to walk around and take pictures of our property and animals with her digital camera. She took some great pictures and I also borrowed her camera and took a few more.

The first animals you are likely to see are our dogs and cats. I don’t have any pictures of the cats right now, but here is our Pyr named Chief:



And this is Mammoo:



We also have Luna, a black mixed Pyr that didn’t make the cameras this time and a Lab named Champ that you will see in a minute.

Christina took several pictures I really liked from an angle that I have not seen much in picture form. I had the truck down in the play field to unload some hog manure over the garden spot. That is our Chocolate Lab named Champ with me(he is always with us even when we do not want him to be):



While we are down here I’ll show where we planted the new fruit trees and bushes this spring. You can see the milk crates behind me. This is where we planted 8 new blueberry bushes.



They are Blue Crop, Blue Ray, Earliblue, and Jersey from left to right and then the pattern is repeated in the next four. So far they are all living, but we never tested the soil there to see if it is a good place for blueberries. I hope they will grow and thrive there.

In front of the house I planted a new nectarine tree next to the peach trees:



We still haven’t gotten everything cleaned up from the ice storm, and these pictures do not show up very well. I’m putting them here mainly for us, but you can at least see the mess we have been facing. We went ahead and planted two plum trees and two new apple trees next to the old apple trees across the lane from the garden. Here are the new plum trees:



And here are the new apple trees:



Across from the apple trees is the garden spot and play field that you saw a minute ago. The geese had come down from the pond to visit. They are in the children’s playfield in the fore-ground. Those poles you see are a grape arbor and the cherry tree in bloom is to the right. You can see the outbuilding we call the tool shed, the side/back of our house, and our white van to the left. In the mid-ground is the children’s play-tree and swing-set:



Let me show you the grape arbor closer up. Once the leaves come out, this is a beautiful spot and we usually have plenty of grapes for jam. The Chery tree next to it always has an abundance of cherries:



This is a shot from further back. Here you can see the flower garden and you get the first glimpse of the creek that flows by the garden:



Come on back a little farther, up on the school house hill. From here you can see the chicken coop and lot, and in the distance the garden spot, the children’s play field, play-tree, the roof of our house and the tool shed:



Since we are here at the chicken coop, let me show you the other side of it. Those rectangles are the nest boxes for the hens. The nests are on the inside of the coop and we can gather the eggs from the outside:



And when Christina opened up the nests to check for eggs she found some hens in the process of depositing their rent money. Both of these are Buff Orpingtons, but they share the coop with Light Brahmas, Partridge Rocks, Black Giants, Australorps, and Dominiques. If you look close you can see the egg from the one on the right as she is getting up to leave:



We also have an area we call "the chicken duplex", because it is a two room compartment. Currently we have a game hen mama raising a brood of chicks in each section. Wingleg has 8 Buff Orpington chicks she hatched as well as 6 from TSC. On the other side is Onefeather who has 6 Black Giant mix chicks that she hatched as well as 6 Rhode Island Reds from TSC. The pictures didn’t come out the greatest through the fence, but you can get an idea.

This first one is of Onefeather and her brood. She is 5 years old and the only one left of our original group of hens and pullets from 2004. She has proven to be a good mama hen many times now:



In this picture you can see the duplex better on Wingleg’s side with Wingleg and her group. Wingleg is from the 2005 generation of pullets, so she is pretty old too. She may have been in one of Onefeather’s early groups of hatchlings.



Let’s go up that dirt road that swings around to the right in the above picture and then down to the left to the ravine lot:



Here is the ravine lot closer up. It is totally enclosed with wire to keep predators out. I originally designed it to keep our pet raccoons in, so we made it pretty tight. This is where we have been separating various hens and roosters in order to get specific eggs. The most recent group to have called it home was the Black Giants, which are the chickens you see in these pictures:



Now we will walk up the hillside via the steep dirt road to the barn areas. In the below picture the path to the ravine lot is in the middle on the left. It goes downward and this other road goes up to the pigs, goats and pond. Behind us is the chicken coop and lot:



Here we approach the old barn. Believe it or not, it is standing up much straighter now than it was a month ago. The pigs had played a number on it the past couple of years, eating out the main poles so that the barn had begun to lean quite a bit. We just had new posts put in and the walls pulled up straight as well as some new roofing where it was leaking very badly. I hired the work out, but I did get to help a few hours one day. The two guys were here a good part of 6 days working on it and only charged $600! I feel that it was well worth it because I think the barn will be able to stand for many more decades now. The alternative was tearing it down and building new. We still have work to do on it to make it a real nice barn, but it is very usable right now:



I like this view that Christina took from a distance. In so many of these pictures you can tell what a rugged terrain our homestead is located in:



Here is part of the new roof. We used remnant pieces of metal that was much cheaper to purchase. To get it cheap, we couldn’t choose the colors we would get. This picture won’t mean anything to you, but I like it, and now we can store things in a dry loft:



Inside the barn, we have moved our two sows. They should be giving birth to piglets very soon. We have now raised several litters of our own piglets born here. We sell most of them and keep some to raise to butchering size. This year we actually butchered and cut up our own pork right here on our property! We hope to keep a couple from these new litters and butcher them before Christmas this winter.

Here is a recent picture of Sally:



I will try to come back later to show you our other sow, Nellie and our boar Rufus. I can’t seem to find the pictures we took of them last weekend.

This past fall we had a new barn built for our goats on the other side of the ravine. It is a 40 x 12 foot building with a 3/4th loft. We still have work we want to do on it, but I am pleased with it overall:



Here is a nice picture of it from a distance, on the upper road to the clearing. You can see the pond in this shot also:



Here are some of the goats inside the new barn:



We have two does that are expecting next month. Here is the one we call Mama Belle. She sure looks pregnant doesn’t she? The smaller one is one of her previous kids, Tiny Tim:



Little Lulu is also expecting, but she doesn’t show as much. This will be her first time kidding. The little face bottom right is the buck we have on loan that provided these pregnancies:



And here are the other wethers, Little Joe and Big Jim:



Here comes the ducks walking by. They like to stay around the goat barn sometimes. We have decided that the dark ducks are Rouens and the whites are Pekins:



There they go off into the water. They spend most of their time in the pond:



The ducks share the pond with our geese. You already saw them visiting us down at the play field by the house, but here they are where they are supposed to be. The gray ones are Toulouse and the white ones ore Chinese. This white one I call Goosy Lucy and the gander I’m calling Sid:



Here is the other gander, Marty:



We have one of the Chinese setting on a nest of goose eggs, so maybe we will get to see some goslings swimming around next month. (I am looking forward to having goose meat for supper some day.) This picture does not show up very good, but that is the nest we made for her and she is spread out in there over 8 or 10 eggs. I’m naming her Mother Goose:



Let me end with some pretty pictures that Christina found as she walked around our homestead this weekend:







We still did not visit the clearing, the maple grove, or the ridge trails, but maybe some time in the future.

I hope you have enjoyed this virtual tour and I also hope you have seen the hand of God here. We feel His presence eveywhere we turn around. He has been so great to all of us!
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8 comments
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HSB Front Porch on April 20, 2009 at 11:04 am
I LOVE the virtual tour! What a great idea. You have an amazing place. Wonderful job you and your family have done…

Thank you so much for sharing with us.

Blessings,

Chasity L. Burrell

Senior Editor Homesteadblogger
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Sarah (Your Cousin) on April 20, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Hello! How are you? I have been doing great! I just wanted to tell Christina she did a wonderful job with the picture's! I Love your ducks! I hope we can come to your house and see them and all of you soon! We Love you all and Please know that we are thinking of you! I hope you have a blessed week! Talk to you really Soon!

~With Lots of Love,

~Sarah~

Ps. The Flower Picture's are really pretty!
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SimpleFolk on April 20, 2009 at 7:39 pm
I just stopped by to congratulate you on being featured, but thank you so much for the amazing tour! You have a beautiful place.

Amy
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Judy on April 22, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Hey KY neighbor, love the photos of everything. Your place is really coming along nicely. The tour was great, makes you feel like your really there. The animals all look happy to be there to. I enjoy your blogs keep up the good work…See ya'll soon. Judy

congrads on being this weeks blogger…!!!!!!!
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Sharon on April 22, 2009 at 10:36 pm
What great pic's! I enjoyed the "tour"!
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karen in MS on April 23, 2009 at 11:28 pm
You are very blessed to have such a wonderful homestead!!

Thanks so much for the pictures. I enjoyed them very much!
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Manna Milling Moms on April 24, 2009 at 6:26 pm
Congratulations on being the Featured Blogger!

You have a beautiful homestead. Blessings and Provisions from the Lord is our sustainability.

In Him, Jill (the big sister)
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Schatzi on April 26, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Congratulations on being featured…what a beautiful place you have. The virtual tour was great. You are truly blessed. Thank you for sharing it with us.

Blessings,

Connie