Sunday, March 24, 2013

After many years we have come to a sad day here on the homestead. This will be the first month without any sort of livestock around. Our pretty Fireball went down and the vet had no idea why. Unable to find a remedy for her and now she's gone.
So now we have some time to retool and refine the place but we are up in the air as to which way we should head. Goats or cows, enough to sell or just enough to keep the family supplied.....lots of things to work through. This might be the only bright side to this long winter.
The snow will just not let go. Temps are very low compared to average. We have some plants started but I'm afraid they'll get pretty large before we'll be able to transplant.
Lots of field work to do once we can get out. Will be ripping the fences out on some of the feedlots and trying to make it into 2 2 acre fields or maybe even 1 big 4 acre patch. I am hoping to run 2 acres in corn and 2 in hay. If I can get the old Cat running I may be able to do some more renovation and free up a bit more ground on the west end of the patches.
Hope to try a bit of John Seymours rotation plan for an acre involving 8 plots on the back acre and will be moving the garden area and doing some tillage and cover cropping on the old garden plot. All in all a very ambitious plan and with Chris scheduled to be gone to various camps this summer it may not all happen but we can hope for the best.
Changed jobs in Jan. Still working 3rd shift and will have to drive a bit further to work but the pay should end up being a whole lot better once I get up to rate.
Tammy has been busy, one of the boys that is out on his own will become a father sometime in May/June so she is making a couple of really nice crib quilts for the new arrival plus helping out with a lot of the seed starting.
We are in the middle of re-doing the laundry room. It's a project we've started on a while ago but are finally getting stuff done. Nice that the new job pays a bit more so we can finally get material together.