Stella mooves on

Stella has found a new home with a wonderful family in the nearby town of Granite Falls. Here she is being led to the trailer. It was not an easy decision, but one that should put us in a better place to work on all the other aspects of Seven Trees we have planned. Having a milk cow was a great experience, but with both of us working full time, we were running full speed to keep up. We may look for another cow in the future, but for now we'll enjoy working with Gemini and raising the two boy cows.
Now it's time to get ready for winter. We expect first frost any night now, and most of the garden has been harvested. We're both suffering from some horrific cold/flu bug, so the chore list is much too long for the time we have. With the economy going nuts, planning nexts year's garden is even more crucial. We'll be evaluating veggie varieties that we have tried to see what we want to repeat, and eagerly awaiting new seed catalogs for new things to try.

Thank you Stella!

I was rummaging around the fridge for pastitso-makings, and realized just how much Stella provides. Here's a literal snapshot of what's in our fridge/freezer right now, thanks to Stella...The row of jars on the far left, with the little one on top, is today's milking. There is a glass bowl of fresh feta, with the 3 quarts of whey behind it, that the chickens love. Rolls of frozen butter in the left foreground, what's left of the sour cream, and the start of this week's cream jar are front right. And jars & jars of milk We also have a little frozen colostrum, but I left that in the freezer.

Another animal interlude...

This is our Magnus in his favorite chair, favorite position. Never had a cat that prefers sitting like a person, but this one does. All we need to do at this juncture is photo-shop in a beer, bag of chips and TV remote. If you can think of a good caption for this image, please add it to our comments. When I found him like this I was as usual, speechless... with laughter!

Looks like a lovely spring day here for the cows, but weather has been running about 10 to 20 degrees cooler than normal this spring. We've been covering the garden starts on certain nights and still need a fire both AM and PM to warm the house. Low was 29 degrees last night.

And our new laying flock is almost grown up now. That's a Barred Rock in the front with a couple Cherry Eggers and a Buff Orpington on the left. The barred rock are curious and friendliest of the bunch, and come right up close and personal as you can see here. So far they are our favorites, but lets see how they lay! Maybe a few months or less and they'll start that as well. In the meantime they are happy and healthy living in the brooding coop.

And Magnus again. We have 3 other cats, but this is the one always finding the photo op moment it seems. We'd dug out the game Risk, set it down for 5 seconds and this is what happened. Do you want to "risk" a digit moving that little gray monster? Go ahead, make his day.

Lessons in milking

Here are the future layers of Seven Trees, finally living it up in the spare coop. This weekend they'll get to go outside for the first time. They're getting adult feathers in and seem to be thriving. The gal in front is a Buff Orpington, and the one doing the penguin impression is a Barred Rock.Here's me, going for milking attempt #2. I milked in the stall and thought Stella was done, but when I looked again she had let down more milk. I tied her to the fence and ran inside for the bucket to see what more I could get. Cows have the uncanny ability to withhold milk when they want to. And the cream is usually the last bit out of the udder, which they try to save for the calf.
A little clip of me trying for the last few drops. She had more, but was saving it for Douglas, and I was getting tired of trying. Practice makes perfect, and we had some good lessons tonight in standing still for milking. Stella is still not sure about the whole process and needs to learn to stand still, not lash me with her tail, eat her hay & grain, and let down her milk!

It's a boy!

His name is Douglas (Fir) of Seven Trees, since we're going with a tree theme here.About 7:00pm, I heard Stella holler and knew something was up. I grabbed cell phone, camera, towels, iodine, a lantern and a bucket of hot water & headed out.

Stella was in labor for less than an hour, but it was stil quite an effort for her.

It took a bit for Douglas to get up & nurse. And Stella was kind of nervous about letting him. But they seem to be sorting out the routine, and when we last checked on them, they were resting.