Blogging blahs

So I'll admit I have been in the blogging doldrums a bit recently.  I just haven't found things to be super excited to write about and I don't want this to be a place of boring ramblings (which this post will probably end up being anyway...). The kids have been very uncooperative in letting me take their pictures so I haven't even been able to indulge in their cuteness.  Outside has been dull and dreary most of the time so I haven't been able to take cool pictures of the outdoors and all in all I have been keeping very busy. So here's the wrap up on farm and home goings-on and I apologize in advance if I bore you all to tears.

I think we have decided not to do chickens again this year. All things considered they just haven't been very cost effective for us.  While I love the fresh eggs vs the store bought ones the amount of money we spent feeding and housing them far outweighed the cost of eggs. Right now we need to focus on some aspects of the farm that are more profitable or at least have the potential of being more profitable. The problem with the ducks and chickens is that we have had a real predator problem and have lost many birds. So much for free range being healthier- they are only healthier if they don't get eaten by a fox! We took both pigs to the butcher, one for us and one we sold so I am looking forward to some fresh bacon- yummm! Pigs have actually worked out well for us so far so we may get some more in the spring but for now we are content to not have to worry about watering them in the cold weather.

Frank has continued to have difficulties with the "frost free" faucet in the barn freezing up on him and preventing the automatic waterers from functioning properly.  He purchased some new heat tape this week so hopefully that will remedy the problem because having to drag a hose from the house to water the cows and sheep was certainly becoming a tiresome business. All 5 winter lambs are doing well and thriving.   We'll have a few to sell in time for Easter but I think that we will keep a few of these girls back for breeding stock. Currently we are at 15 ewes so here's hoping that we are in for a robust crop of spring lambs.  I believe that Bob has been trying his best! We moved the geese in with the sheep which may seem like an odd pairing but they seem to enjoy each others company.

We acquired a new Hereford bull this month named Buckey who will hopefully sire at least 2 calves. Unfortunately Molly is getting to the age where she may no longer be able to calve and then we'll have to look at retiring her. Jack is shaping up to be a nice looking bull calf and Little Bit is living up to his name.  He is a sweetheart though.  Annabelle is still a bit skittish but she's slowly coming around.

That is the farm updates and on the house front we are doing some more renovations. The plan is to take the playroom and turn it into a big boy room for James.  Mostly the carpet in there is gross and I have been looking for an excuse to rip it out and replace it with new flooring. James decided the theme of his room should be trucks (how original right...) so we are painting the walls a lovely warm yellow color, putting in new hardwood floors, and updating the outlets and light fixtures. I plan to paint the corner behind the door with chalkboard paint so he will have someplace to express himself on the walls! In the process of cleaning the playroom out I have been doing some major swilling.  I took a whole carload to the dump today and out a whole list of stuff of freecyle to get rid of. We'll call it early spring cleaning!

We have some rotted floor boards by the front door and what we hoped was just a leaky door has turned into a much bigger project that is going to require a backhoe to come and remove the front steps. Once those have been ripped out we'll just have to see how much water damage is behind them.  Fingers crossed not too much! But refinishing the living room floor has been put on hold until we can get a handle on the amount of water damage that is there.  The plan is that once that has all been taken out and repaired then we can replace the rotted floor boards and refinish the living room floor. That will leave us without any front steps so we'll be saving our pennies in the hopes of building a front deck in the nearish future. The joys of home ownership!

So that is what we have been up to behind the scenes.  I'm going to be spending a lot of time painting in the near future because we are having the new floor installed in James room Feb 20th, but I'll try to accost the kids with the camera so you can see how big they are getting!