So Sad … Blaming Myself

One of LuLu’s kids was dead this morning! I can’t understand it. Yesterday evening around 6:30, everything was fine. All the goats were just like I posted yesterday. The kids were prancing and playing and the adults were minding their own business.

And then this morning, at 6:15, I went out to open up the coop like I usually do. All the dogs were at the house when I came out, but Champ followed me to the coop like he always does. I didn’t even notice the small body of the little kid on the mulch pile in front of the coop until Champ laid down next to it. The body was still limp, and was not messed up at all, but the poor little kid’s head was missing! I kicked Champ away from it, even though he was not doing anything but laying there.

If I knew for sure that Champ killed it, I would take him to the pound today! I don’t know what happened? Were the dogs playing with him, and inadvertedly killed him? I can imagine the horrid sight of them playing tug-of-war with the little guy. For some reason, one of the dogs must have brought the body down to the coop. It is a good tenth of a mile up to the barn area, and the goats have never come down to the coop before.

Well, even though I was just in my sandels and sweats, I marched on up to the barn to make sure the others were ok. I imagined all of the goats being masacred by some mysterious predator. Thankfully all was peaceful and all the goats were accounted for. The three remaining kids were running around and playing and the grownup goats came over to me to see if I had a treat for them.

Just yesterday, I thought about putting LuLu and her kids back in a stall. When I first went up to feed them, her two kids were not around, but they showed up about a half hour later. I figured they were just asleep somewhere. But they were only 8 days old, and we would not have let them out of the stall yet if LuLu had not just kept getting out on her own! Now I am blaming myself a bit for not going ahead and putting them back up last night. Was God trying to tell me to put them up, and I just did not listen clearly enough? They were just having such a good time when I was ready to leave yesterday that I did not have the heart to pen them up. But, obviously, had I done so, this poor little kid would still be playing today.

Sigh…

Does anyone out there want a nice Chocolate Lab?



But then again, it is hard to say for sure that Champ is to blame. He usually sleeps at the house all night. Luna and Mamoo are the ones who usually roam the hills at night.

I am just rambling, I guess. I will continue to think and pray about this.

What lesson do you want me to learn through this, God?


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2 comments
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mama on June 2, 2009 at 7:37 am
Hi ,

Don't blame yourself (easier siad than done I know) and don't jump to conclusions about your dog. Since you don't know if that dog ahs never hurt kids before he most likely didn't. I would be on the look out for how the dogs act around the kids. Like you said learn from this and be careful about kids running around! I have a yearling doe who is having some leg trouble and I think it is becasue I haven't gotten the winter hay layer out of there. And it is a very big job so I don't know how fast it will happen. Oh the many things our goaties teach us and suffer for it too.

I lost my first born kid here this winter because I got too cold at 2 am and too tired, who was a first time freshner and a bottle baby herself. I shoudn't have left her. She suffered ( longing for her baby) and I did because I left.

Blessings,

Mama
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sandra on June 2, 2009 at 11:03 am
Don't beat yourself up about this – things just sometimes happen. I don't know a lot about goats but I do about labs – and they are usually a gentle breed I don't think Champ is responsible – more so I thing his sense of smell made him notice it and he laid down to call your attention to it.

Also, don't dogs usually bring their master's their kills? I know cats do – growing up my cat would leave mice and moles on our front porch. If it had been one of the dogs I think they would have brought it up to the house. Maybe there is something else in your area?

Sandra

The New Kids On The Block

OK, that title just popped into my head, and instead of pushing it back into the dark recesses of my consciousness where it belongs, I went with it. Of course, I’m not talking about a 90s pop group, but instead I’m talking about real kids!

Our does Little LuLu and Mama Belle have each kidded for us this spring. Since they are the first kids on our homestead, I wanted to post a few more pictures of them before they get much bigger. I expect they will grow quickly.

Belle’s kids were 18 days old and LuLu’s were 7 days yesterday when these were taken.

Here they are, all together in the goat barn. LuLu’s are on the steps while Belle’s are laying on the board:



The names have stuck for Glady and Tom. They are named after the LOTR charachters Galadriel and Tom Bomadill:



They jump and prance and play, but it is easier to take their picture when they are relaxing:



We still do not have names for LuLu’s. It is difficult because they have identical markings, and we haven’t had a chance to be with them much. Here is LuLu with one of them: (if you’ve seen one, you’ve them both)



Speaking of both you can see how identical they look in the next picture. It is interesting that they are almost the identical markings that Tom Bomadill has. I like this shot because you can see the same side of all three:



Just a couple more before we leave the goat barn. I like getting the feed bucket in the pictures so we can get a size comparison. You also get to see Mama Belle:




Here is the herd on the hill next to the goat barn. If you look closely, you can see all 9 of the goats. Little Joe is almost invisible in the upper left.



These are the proud uncles, Tiny Tim and Big Jim. (They have very similar marking to the new kids) Big Jim is a very large goat, and I was hoping to get him standing up straight so we could compare his size to Tiny’s. Tiny has actually grown quite a bit, and is doing very well now. He was the one the vet told us to expect to die:



So there we have it. Our new kids on the block along with some pictures of the other goats. I didn’t get any good pictures of Little Joe this time, but he has not changed much.

I like our New Kids much better than that other group of New Kids.

Ours even sing better.

Maaa, Maaa…….


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2 comments
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sassyfras on June 1, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Now thats a set of cute kids……….lol….
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kathy on June 1, 2009 at 7:54 pm
They're so precious. Even the grownups! Thanks for sharing.

Kids Born at Purewater Hollow! (Take 2)

It has been 11 days since Mamma Belle gave birth to her kids, in which 2 of three survived. (One boy and one girl.) Belle and both kids seem to be doing great!

Now, Belle’s kids will have some nephews to play with! Little LuLu gave birth to 2 cute little black and white boys today! LuLu had bolted out of her stall earlier today when Matthew opened it to feed her and she headed up the hill! She did not seem to be in labor at that time.

A bit later, the pigs came down to the house, (which is unacceptable). When the children ran the pigs back up to the barn, Matthew noticed that LuLu was not with the other goats on the hill. A brief search revealed 2 little kids and LuLu just a bit above the goat barn. The kids were dirty from rolling down the steep hill some, but they were ok otherwise. We carried the kids down to the stall where we had been keeping LuLu and eventually rounded LuLu up and got a rope around her neck to take her back to the stall. She was not very cooperative, but after some sweat and work, Matthew persuaded her to get back into the stall.

Here is what they looked like when we found them:





You can sort of tell how steep the hill is in these shots:




And here they are exploring the barn stall:



And starting to nurse off LuLu:



When we left the barn, mother and babies were all doing fine. LuLu was cleaning up the kids and they were both nursing some on each side of her udder.

Belle gave birth to the first kids of Purewater Hollow, but LuLu gets an asterisk in the record books as giving birth to the first kids actually born on Purewater Hollow soil. (Belle technically gave birth over the ridge about 50 feet off of our property, but LuLu delivered right in the heart of the goat lot on the hill.) !

So, our goat herd of 5 has now increased to 9 with the addition of these three boys and one girl. We will probably keep them all for the foreseeable future, making the boys wethers, and allowing them all to continue clearing up the briars and kudzu, making the hillside suitable for cattle one day, hopefully.

This may not be the best time to mention this next fact, but LuLu, the mother, is half Alpine and half Boer. Alpine is a milk breed, but Boer is a meat breed. It is possible that LuLu’s kids could be very benefitial to our homestead as a meat supply, someday, even though that is not neccessarily our plans for this litter.

We are thankful to God, and the future of our homestead is in His hands, as always. We just want to be good stewards of what He gives to us!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 comment
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sassyfras on May 25, 2009 at 4:32 am
Sounds like things are going good.There is just something about an animal being born on your own land, for the first time that just makes you step back and just praise !!!! Have a wonderful day.

You've Got To Be Kidding!

The 13th of May was a beautiful, windy afternoon. The sun was shining, but fluffy, rain filled clouds were encircling the sky like a school of hungry sharks surrounding a life raft in the ocean. There was a magical feeling in the mountains this day, as the trees swayed in the breeze and the sky continuously swirled and churned. The distant rumbles of thunder were both foreboding and exhilarating.

We were not in the mountains today just enjoying God’s wondrous nature. We were on a mission of serious importance! The entire goat herd was missing and Belle had been seen earlier in the day with the early discharge that would precede kidding. We had wanted to put Belle in the barn to give birth, but she had disappeared during the time it took the children to return to the house with the news. Matthew, Christina, and Simon spent all afternoon searching the entire east side of our hollow for the goats to no avail. It is quite a hike up to the ridge, and after criss-crossing the goat pasture hill and beyond they were pretty wore out!

We had gotten Mama Belle back in the spring of 2007 along with her three 6-week old kids. During the past couple of years we have gradually worked on our goat fencing and facilities until we decided that we would finally be ready to start raising goats from birth. (We still have much we need to do to complete the goat pasture and things we want to do in the goat barn. I guess things will never be “perfect” enough, so may as well trudge ahead!)

We borrowed a buck from a friend in December and kept him all winter long. Apparently he and Belle bred almost immediately, because she was now giving birth just 151 days after she had first met this buck! (150 days is the gestation period for goats, give or take a week.)

After work I hurried home to help look for the goats. They had never disappeared so completely before! I guessed that Belle had set off to deliver her kids in private and the rest of the herd had followed her far away, but at the same time I was prepared for the worse. I hoped the goats were ok, but I also instructed the children to search for signs of an attack from a pack of wild dogs or coyotes and we were prepared to find some seriously injured or killed goats. There are some very steep cliffs up at the ridge, and it could be possible that an ill-timed jump or a slip of the hoof could cause a goat to plummet to its death. We organized a search party of Matthew, Christina, Simon and I, with Lisa and Erica holding down the fort at home.

Christina and Simon trekked once again up the ridge beginning at the house. I started at the goat pasture, following the trails to the ridge top. I sent Matthew to check the neighboring hollow on his four-wheeler, in case they had gone up and over and perhaps gotten lost. All the while we were noticing the beauty around us we were also looking under briars and next to rock cliffs for signs of destruction!

We were connected to each other via two way radios, so Lisa could listen in to our progress as we gave periodic reports. It wasn’t too long before Christina and Simon reached the spot on the ridge above the goat lot where I was, with none of us seeing any sign of the goats. Matthew drove as far as he could on his four-wheeler before he was blocked by fallen trees in the road. Since no one lives over in that hollow, no one had cleaned up anything after our February ice storms and wind storms. Mathew had to backtrack out of there instead of coming on up to the ridge like I had hoped.

We spread out, once again, and started combing the ridge and hillsides “manhunt” style, being just far enough away from each other that we could not hear each other unless we yelled pretty loudly. Simon and I took the lower spot on the opposite side of the ridge, Christina took the top part of the ridge, and Matthew was going up to the North rim to come back toward us.

It wasn’t too long before Simon and I thought we heard strange sounds up in the distance. It sounded like it could be horns butting each other in playful combat! After hearing it a couple more times, Christina broke the radio silence with a euphoric, “I found the goats! At least some of them…” When I asked where she was, it was a bit comical at first, because she couldn’t say for sure. I thought, “Christina found the goats, but now we’ve lost Christina!” A couple minutes later we heard her come over the radio, “Here’s Belle. She’s ok.” And after a few moments of silence she came back on, “And she has kids! They’re adorable!”

I soon ascertained the position of Christina and the goats. Belle was way up under a rock-cliff cave and the other goats were on top and around the giant rock. It was a rather strenuous climb to get up to where they were from the angle I was coming from and Simon quickly outpaced me up the steep hillside.

It is difficult to describe the topography of this spot. There are sheer cliff sides that are impossible to climb, some as much as 20 to 30 feet while others are just 6 or 7 feet. There are several crevices amidst the cliffs and overhanging rock ledges. It is similar to the areas on our side, but we had not been on this land much, since our property line stops at the top of the ridge and this was on the other side. The unfamiliarity lent to the excitement and wonder of the whole situation!

It was also impossible to get any pictures that really do the spot justice, since we couldn’t get back far enough to take in the whole spot in the viewfinder of the camera. But perhaps these shots give some idea of the terrain we were navigating to get to Belle and her kids. This was the rock that Belle was hiding out in:



Here is Christina next to what I am now calling "Goat Rock":



Here is a picture of Belle on guard; probably something like Christina first saw when she rounded the side of the rock:



We did not have our cameras with us on the search and rescue mission, so all of these pictures were taken after Matthew volunteered to go back to the house to get the cameras, a rope, and some sacks to carry the kids in.

When I got up the cliff, Christina and Simon were admiring two very cute, little goats that were still wet. Belle was in the process of cleaning them off, and she had the beginnings of the after birth material still attached to her backside. (I don’t know how to describe that delicately.) We figured that these kids had to only be perhaps 30 minutes old, since we have read that they dry off quickly. There was a female that was mostly black, and a male that was mostly white. Unfortunately there was also another male that looked just like the black female that was lying to the side, dead.

Here are some pictures of them up in their "birthing room" under Goat Rock.

The boy:



The girl:



A close-up:



Mama Belle knew how to take care of them:




We all enjoyed watching the new kids as we were aware that we had just stumbled upon a miracle of God!





You can see in the above picture a bit of the ledge that this rock crevice was on. We knew that we needed to get them to the barn for their safety. I was afraid that the little goats would hop out to the edge and then fall about 15 feet down and get hurt, or perhaps those wild animals we thought of before would find an easy meal up here, away from our dogs normal patrol route.

The trek carrying the kids down the mountain was full of adventure and adrenaline. For one thing, the sky had clouded up quite a bit and coupled with the wind and thunder, it looked like we could be in for a good storm! We put each kid in a feed sack and hoped that Belle would follow their bleating down the mountain. It turned out that Matthew needed to put a rope around her neck to lead her down the mountain side. For some reason she was more concerned with eating greens than keeping up with her babies. Maybe she knew they were in good hands? Matthew and Belle found their own route off the mountain while Christina, Simon and I did the best we could getting down without shaking or squeezing the kids too hard.

We took turns carrying the kids because of the difficulty of the hike. Christina and Simon had a much easier time than I did! It was difficult finding solid footholds climbing down the hill and I actually fell a few times. Once I caught my leg under a fallen tree and could have broken it had I fallen forward instead of backward! By the time we got down to the goat barn, the sweat was drenching my undershirt. I was glad to get them into a stall in the old barn and that Mama Belle still wanted to take care of them in the stall!

Here they are in the barn stall before we retired for the night:



We took some more pictures the next day. We have been vascillating some concerning names for the kids, but it seems like "Galadriel", named after the elf princess in Lord of the Rings, has stuck for the black girl. We have been calling her "Galaddy" or "Gladdy" for short. It seems the boy will be named after Lord of the Rings’ Tom Bombadil, "Master of wood, water and hill." We have been calling him "Tom" or "Tommy" but we have also been calling him "George" after Curious George.





So this adventure took place last Wednesday, May 13th. We estimate that Tom and Galaddy were born about 4:00 in the afternoon. They are 6 days old today.

A couple final notes:

Lisa milked Belle last night and the evening before! Belle is full Alpine, so she should be a good milk goat. Milking a goat is new for us, and so far we have just taken enough to make Belle more comfortable. For some reason, one side of her utter has been very much engorged compared to the other side. We are considering working out a regular milking schedule, but we definitely do not want to bottle feed the kids. Maybe we will be able to share with the kids. I am pleased with the taste of the milk; there’s not much difference from store bought cow’s milk. Any suggestions on milking a goat would be welcomed!

Our other doe, Little LuLu, seems to be near kidding. We have her in a private barn stall, so there will not likely be such an adventure as we had with Mama Belle’s kidding. This will be LuLu’s first kidding, even though she is over two years old. She is half Alpine (from Belle) and half Boer, so she should be a good milk goat also. The problem with her is that she is not very friendly toward us, and I don’t know if she will let us milk her or not. We are hoping she will be able to deliver without any complications.

It has been exciting to welcome the first goats born at Pure Water Hollow. We didn’t get to witness the birthing first hand, but we were close! We are very thankful for the kids that have joined our homestead and we give God the praise for His creations! Had we not found them in time, this episode could have ended with in a tragic note. Perhaps things are starting to turn around for us at Pure Water Hollow for the better!

There is another sad footnote to the day of May 13th, however. While we were looking for the goats, we noticed one of the Rouen ducks were gone. We later found Champ, our chocolate Lab, with a duck wing in his mouth! We don’t know for sure if he killed the duck, or just finished her off. Either way, it has pretty much sealed his fate. We will try to find a new home for him.

I hate to end this post on a sad note! I am pumped up about our new kids and they are so cute! If you want some cute, friendly little animals at your homestead, all I have to say is, "You’ve got to be kidding!" Ha! Ha!


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2 comments
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
karen in MS on May 19, 2009 at 10:30 pm
Wow!! What a day you've had!! You live in a truly beautiful place way up in those mountains. We don't have any mountains in South Mississippi, but I've always loved them.

Good luck with your new baaaaaaaaaabies, lol!!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sassyfras on May 24, 2009 at 5:34 am
Wow !!! what an adventure, the kids are cute……yours plus the four legged ones….if your lab took the duck could he have taken the chicks ?… .

Discouragements and Setbacks at Pure Water Hollow

We are abundantly blessed here at Pure Water Hollow, but from time to time we have more than our share of disappointments and discouragements. We are currently in the midst of such a time. I am going to unload several complaints with this post, so if you want to be encouraged, you may want to read something else. But maybe it will be encouraging for some of you to discover that "homesteading" is not always a rose garden, and even those of us who have been successfully striving for self-reliance hit some road blocks at times. In the real world, I’m sure we have all had projects that have gone awry.

I think spring time has the potential to be the most depressing time of the year. Christmas time also. These are the times when expectations are high and excitement is in the air, but when life does not live up to the glorious expectations, it is easy to fall into a “down in the dumps’ type of feeling.

First of all, the geese are getting to us. You saw them down in the play field in my previous post. Well, we do not like them down around the house because they are so noisy and they leave nasty messes all over the yard where the children like to play. They also get close to the road and we are afraid they may get hit sometime. They used to be easy to scare back up to the barn, but lately they have not run back up the hill away from the house when we go out and wave our arms at them. So, we spent some time putting up a fence in front of the pond to block them from coming down to the house. This worked for just a few days and then they figured out a way around the fence (and we are not yet ready to enclose the entire pond area). So now, we have to deal with their annoying behavior everyday. (Mother Goose is still on the nest, thankfully.)

Speaking of annoying, our dogs are driving us crazy also. For some reason they have gotten into the habit of attacking our garbage cans and spreading garbage all over the yard. The dirty diapers are the worse part. Also, Luna has been sucking eggs with a passion and leaving the shells all over our driveway. She can’t get our eggs from the coop, but we don’t like her getting into the wild chicken nests either. Mammoo continues to go crazy and chase cars, and she has now taught Luna and Champ to join in. Champ can be incredibly annoying by wanting us to play ball with him all the time and “nosing us” whenever we are outside. We are considering finding new homes for Mammoo, Champ, and Luna. Chief is the only one who is a “good” dog, (although I think he joins in with the garbage raids).

The yard is getting us down as well. The ice storm left a lot of trees lying around that we have not had the chance to get all cleaned up. Now weeds are starting to grow all around them. We couldn’t get our lawn mowers working early on. Now we have a new riding mower, but we still have to clean up the trees before we can do much mowing!

We are getting down also because the garden is way behind schedule. A tree from the ice storm fell across the fence encircling the garden and the fence was getting in poor repair elsewhere, so I decided we needed a new fence around the garden. At first our tiller was not working, so I didn’t get the garden ready. Now the tiller is working, but we are waiting on the fence. If we don’t have a fence, the chickens and geese will eat all of the seeds we try to plant. We put plenty of composted hog manure on the garden and tilled it in a bit, but I need to get it all tilled much deeper.

Speaking of hog manure, we had moved Sally and Nellie into the barn stalls so they could give birth safely to their piglets. Last time they were expecting, I moved them to the barn one day and they had piglets the next! This time, I had it down that Sally would give birth on April 21st and Nellie on April 25th. Neither one of them has yet had their piglets, and now I am wondering if they are pregnant at all! This is very, very disappointing, especially since I have about 13 of them sold already, as soon as we get the piglets weaned. There has been much interest from folks wanting to buy this group of piglets. We moved Sally and Nellie back to their outside lots because a barn stall is so small. If we have no piglets to sell, I won’t have the $600 plus dollars I was counting on. We will keep watching them, but we really don’t know what is going on.

Meanwhile, the pond behind the barn was looking very good. The ducks and geese were enjoying it and I liked seeing how full it was. In a matter of moments it all changed. It sprang a leak through the dam and washed out a cavern underneath the dam. We can still walk on the dam, but it will likely cave in anytime. It caused a flash flood down by the house as thousands of gallons of pond water came rushing down the hollow. It spooked the chickens and flooded our driveway, leaving all sorts of debris lying around the sides of the creek and in the driveway. I already knew that I needed to get some digging machines to raise the dam up a bit since it had settled so much and slipped some. Now I need to do some major excavation to try to get it right. I would like to have a tractor with a back hoe, but I’ve not found any in my price range yet.

There is still a little water in the pond, but we could now see the mud that was once under water. In the mud, we saw dozens of duck eggs! We had found a few duck eggs weeks ago, so we knew they were laying, but we did not know where. Now we know that those sorry ducks had been dropping their eggs right into the pond! That was a discouraging fact to discover, but what was just as bad was when we saw the ducks going around and eating all of the exposed eggs laying around in the mud! We gathered what we could to just keep them away from the eggs. How do you keep ducks from eating their own eggs? Between the ducks bad habit and Luna’s, I doubt we have much of a chance for ducklings. At least I had not stocked the pond with fish yet…

Over in the goat barn, we had a mudslide behind it which has been causing water to back up in the barn from the hill. We have been dealing with that for some time, digging ditches to divert water, but it is still a discouraging mess! I had hoped to have stalls and other things built in there by now, but we are still trying to get it dried up. They have also pushed their fence down in several places and are getting out now, almost at will. We have to repair several places in the fence. Other than that, they have not yet been as frustrating as the pigs, ducks, and dogs.

Inside the house, Lisa has been wanting to remodel the bathroom for some time. She started tearing out the old dry-wall a couple of weeks ago and we purchased materials. Time has been our enemy and we have not been able to get much done on fixing it back up. It is frustrating for her because she knows what to do and how to do it, but each day has found so many more activities to fill it up and the bathroom has not gotten done.

If it were just one or two discouraging events, it would be "par for the course". We could deal with a few adversities smiling. But it seems that we have gotten more than our share of setbacks during the past couple of weeks, and it is difficult to have a cheerful outlook!

We will persevere, of course. We will look for the lessons the Lord is trying to teach us. We will pick up the broken pieces and re-build and re-do. We will continue to thank God in the midst of our discouragements. We are not going to give up, or give in, and we will rely on God’s leadership and help. In a few more weeks, things will be looking up for us again, and if not, we still will try our best for His glory!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5 comments
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
S on April 27, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Sounds like you need help.

Can you hire / barter with someone?

If you had a couple extra sets of hands to get you caught up, I don't think life would be so overwhelming!!

Maybe even a weekend with friends and family helping???

Laura
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
amanda on April 27, 2009 at 2:10 pm
You sound the way my hubby feels right now as well. He is about to "throw in the towel" as far as the garden goes. Too many "critters" have been feasting on all of our hard work.

Not enough money to "fix" the problem. He even came home last week and put himself on the roof acting as a "sniper." A rabbit sniper that is. Wouldn't you know it though, as soon as he went on the roof for a better shot, the bunnies suddenly dissappreared. :- (

Always learning and ever praying. I pray that the end of this day sees you and your family feeling better. it's all on THE LORD'S hands :- )

We are all in this together as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Amanda <><

Matthew 6:33
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
homesteadingwife on April 27, 2009 at 5:53 pm
When we start feeling this kind of discouragement, I tell my husband we need to step back, take a deep breath and do one job at a time. I know you already know this, but sometimes a little humble reminder helps. We are also behind on our garden, due to the fence being down, due to the ice storm. We also had some rabbit copes damaged and my husband has tenditis in his right shoulder, and can barely use his arm. We are slowly getting things back together, it will take time, but with the our help and God's strength we will manage, even if my larger garden has to wait until next year. I still have another little garden site, that can be used this year. I know that God will bless us for just trying to do our best and he will bless you for trying as well.

Just take one step at a time. Take a moment and make a list (lists help me) of what is important and major and check off what gets done. One job at a time really does wonder's when you see it on paper.

Saying a prayer for you and your family.

Lynn
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LittleHouse on April 28, 2009 at 10:55 am
Eric,

We are here for you all!! Would you like us to come an help? We would Love to!!!!!!

Marc and I have so many things we would like to get done… our list seems to grow daily. We also know that everything we do is God's timing.

To me it sounds like you all need to take a deep breath and to re-group. I would suggest to write out a small to-do list and pray over that list…asking God to show you what needs to be done now and what can be put off until you have a little more time.

Don't ever forget how much we Love you….and we think your homestead is great….I wish everyone here at homesteadblogger could come see it!!!!!!!

I will be praying for you:)

Much Love to all,

Renee
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Schatzi on April 29, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Wow…now that is incredible. I have no idea where you find the time to tend to everything you have just mentioned…and I'm sure there are hundreds of things you haven't mentioned. It's great to see you with such a great attitude about it all.

I sure hope your week goes well…greetings to all your family…and look forward to hearing about your wife's bathroom being finished LOL.

Blessings,

Connie

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!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8 comments
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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…!!!!!!!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sharon on April 22, 2009 at 10:36 pm
What great pic's! I enjoyed the "tour"!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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