...i need to stop looking for information on raising calves and lambs online because the pictures out there make me want to raise them in my own home. i mean...how can you want a plain old dog or cat when you can have...

a jersey calf. adorable and doe-like, yes? how can you possibly resist?

recently, we met with a local shepherd who raises romney and border leicester sheep. kenny also met with a local suffolk shepherd. both shepherds will sell us lambs when we're ready (and when their lambs are weaned). suffolk sheep are raised for their meat, while romney and leicester sheep are known for their wool, specifically for hand spinners.

kenny, dad, and i spent saturday cutting down all the low branches from the trees that will be inside the fence of the pasture. now we can see a bigger area of the pasture from the house. we have a small shed that's already in the area that will house the lambs until the barn is built. we hope to begin digging post holes this weekend, and then quickly get the fencing set up. as soon as the fence is up, we're ready for the lambs!

we hope to build the barn over the rest of the summer and fall as the sheep get bigger (and woolier!) for hay storage and more room for indoor feeding when it snows.

we also called a very local jersey cow farm (5 miles away) and they always have a calf that they're weaning and are also willing to sell us a calf. we hope to get a calf sometime in the spring. she will be housed in the barn with the sheep but won't be milking-ready until after she has her first calf (you aren't supposed to impregnate a jersey until about 18 months of age). so she'll be a pet for a while before she becomes a "working" pet. we haven't decided what we'll do with her calves - either raise them for meat, if they're male, or to sell as another milking cow.

a lot of work to go...but we're getting closer and closer! the shepherd who raises the romney and leicesters is also a hand spinner, and he promised me a few lessons once we get our sheep. i'm very eager to get started back on the wheel again...especially with our own wool!

we need to locate a shearer for the sheep, a vet for all the animals, and an "inseminator technician" which is exactly what it sounds like. apparently, it's not much money to have a technician come out with a syringe of bull semen, but there is an "arm fee" that comes with each insemination. we haven't asked yet what that means, but we're pretty sure we have figured it out. i would certainly not want THAT job.

we are enjoying a very busy week this week what with two birthdays and a wedding, parties, rehearsals and perhaps a new car!

but our patch of life...our living garden, our chickens and bees, our time to sit and enjoy the homestead we're building has been a bit neglected as we run from place to place, party to rehearsal, meeting to credit score check. and we've been running at this speed since summer started.

we have had a few moments to sit and reflect...this morning kenny and i drank our coffee on the deck while we watched a coyote "play" with a very sneaky and fast cat down by our row of pine trees. while we watched this, we remembered one of the big reasons we moved up here, to work the land and raise animals not usually "raised" within city limits, was to slow down. way down.  but we haven't figured out how to.

i have a feeling that by adding more "simplicity" to our family homestead, we'll be able to slow down more. sure, we'll have more work, but it won't be work that makes us sit in rush hour traffic. we won't have to pile in the car and eat even more gas (that just keeps going up in price). it will force us to be home more (something i will WELCOME!), force us to travel "into town" much less, and force us to be home to use up all that extra milk (making butter one morning, yogurt the next, cheese another time). it will allow us time to sit and watch our animals graze, teach our children that our milk comes from cows, not the refrigerator aisle at the grocery store. it will allow us to be more hospitable to friends and family (something close to my heart!)

maybe this makes me sound pretentious. if it does, then i'm willing to sound pretentious.  i am a full believer that God put animals on this earth as gifts for humans to take care of. they aren't to be protected from death, they are to be raised and used for food, for clothes, and for companionship. they are not to be abused; we are to be thankful (to God) for the gifts they are to us. they are not our equals, they are our gifts. and i don't know one person who would take advantage of or abuse a precious gift. i want to be able to teach our boys how to be stewards of the gifts God gives us. all the different types of gifts we're given, not just our talents or spiritual gifts...but the physical things we have been given.

i'm ready to work more ground, dig our heels in deeper, stay close to home for a while as we raise our family. i'm ready to slow down. way, way down.

adam is 3 at noon today. i never tire of looking through birth pictures, especially on their birthdays. as i look through the pictures, i can still feel the atmosphere and feelings we all went through during those first days of our "babymoons."

my three-year-old:

since all talk around our house lately is of fence posts, types of fence, dairy cows and the family sheep herd, i thought i'd begin a blog series on the steps forward (and backward!) we're taking toward an actual, functioning family (hobby?) farm here in our hills of western pennsylvania.

the two biggest reasons to get a family dairy cow and a few sheep in the same pasture is:
 - the amount of grass that we have and don't want to mow ourselves anymore
 - our own family dairy and free wool!

we've been looking almost everywhere for fencing. right now we're still looking for fence posts. kenny eyes trees that line our woods and wonders if they'll be sturdy enough. we've learend that locust trees make the best posts - as they last the longest without rotting in the ground. this is good to know as we'd kinda like the fence to outlast us!

our barn is old and rusty (not rustic - very rusty and is almost a hazard at this point!) so we want to use the wood from it to construct a smaller, more manageable barn where the pasture will be (on the other side of the property from the barn). it will be big enough to have a milking area, and house the animals at night. we'll reconstruct the chicken coop off this new barn. after the new barn is up, we'll burn down the remainder of the old barn. or the fire department will burn it down for us.

then, once we have the fence and the barn up, we need to buy animals! i've been researching what we need to know before we show up at a cow or sheep auction and i think i want to take a dairy cow farmer with me. we don't want to end up with a mean cow or sheep that run from us each time we come to feed and/or milk them.

the pros outnumber the cons at this point in caring for our own dairy cow AND sheep. but here are the "cons" that creep up every now and then:
 - cows do not take a day off, therefore you cannot have a day off. we have to be around to milk the cow twice a day (some jersey cows go down to once a day after their calf is weaned).
 - the vet bills for farm animals are much higher than house pets. i'm planning some bartering. :)
 - we're going to have a LOT of milk if we can't find enough families to share it with. we'd like to share the milk and have the families donate towards the winter feeding of the cow (when they can't graze) or help us milk when we need a vacation day or two.

we are at the very beginning stages of the process. it could be a year or a few years before we're set up and ready for our family farm to start working. all i know at this point in the game is that our cow will not be named betsy. or bessie or any derivation of the name "elizabeth."  she will have a very cow-appropriate name.

and don't say "betsy" is cow-appropriate name. :)

there is a great post up at Homemaking Through the Church Year that lists different home traditions for Pentecost and also thoughtful posts about celebrating Pentecost.
go there now!