Gardening...

From this: To this (and they got even bigger than that!): To this: Lightly steamed with a little salt and pepper...
Our cabbages grew enormous!

I'm afraid we won't be doing much gardening this year....I may put a few plants out, but I have to rig up a good little fence up around it if I want anything to survive. The goats will eat it all or the dogs will dig it up!

This was some produce from our winter garden a year ago. Little Man and I loved the broccoli we grew...who knew it actually tasted like it did; sweet and not bitter at all. We all loved the cabbage.

I would like to put some bell peppers in, some cukes for relish, and we also grow some seriously yummy huge canteloupe. I plan to go to a local farm and pick tomatoes to can and blueberries since we can get them for a $1 a pound! I made so much jam last year, but it's almost all gone!

I will plant the big garden again, but that area has housed the pigs and now calf. We need that meat for the freezer and we're very glad that we're doing that since the prices of meat has really gone up.

Any suggestions on generators? We're purchasing that next. I will not raise all this meat and then lose it all during an outage!

Neighbors....

Some days I wished I had no neighbors for miles around-not that I don't love the families that live around us out here, but I'd like a few less! We will move one day and hopefully we'll have more distance between neighbors.

Any good neighbors out there have property for sale near you? Think I could actually put that in a want ad?

Wanted: 10-15 acres, good strong fences a must, a run-shed or small barn, 4 bedroom house, good water system to fields, good neighbors who like to barter, share ideas, have common sense and believe that good fences and containment of all their animals is important!

Uh oh, I need to wake up now from my dream now! LOL!

On another note we have one more soccer game left and then a tournament held about an hour from here that we were invited to on April 12. Hopefully we can attend that since the boys are really excited about it. The team we coach tied their game 6-6. We should have totally won that one and the boys knew it, but they played really well. I love the progress they have all made. B's team won their game and she almost had a goal. I was a bit saddened to hear her teammate tell B that when she (the teammate) was going after the ball then B needs to leave it alone (the girl was upset after she collided into B and they both tumbled losing the ball to the other team)...um...so we're not a team now? I thought the object was to work together girls...B just shrugged it off and let it slide. She told me today that she wants to play next year and can't wait to go to soccer camp this summer. I think she will really be able to do well.

I've got to head out now and plant some of the border grass...till next time...........

Goats....

We sold two goats today and the big white roo that the kids called Charmin, LOL. Little did I know how my morning would turn out after we delivered them....

It's rained here so much that the guy couldn't get his trailer unstuck so we offered to deliver them for him. We sold him the two older ones since all he wanted them for was brush clearing and not breeding. We got there, pulled the big brown one out and put it into the guys pen. I had told him that his electric lines must be close together and near the ground so they wouldn't get out...his lines weren't and he put them in anyways. That goat got out in 2 seconds flat! We then were led on a good long chase of the thing, which I had just come to realize was a male. I always took it for a female. I guess I wasn't paying much attention to all that. I'd just assumed they were all females! Boy did I feel dumb when I had to tell him. Come to find out, they were both males! LOL. Their bellies are so hairy I actually had to feel up under there. I guess I never really stood around long enough to see them pee! LOL. We had to carry that blasted thing back at one point because he just flopped down and refused to move! What a goob.

The fellow didn't care that they were males and they were eventually put up into the horse trailer he had until he could make a pen for them. I wish him luck!

So we're now down to 8 goats...I need to catch the other wild ones and check them too; or else just stand around for a while and wait for them to 'go'. I'm not in need of any males and I'll sell them too.

We should be getting a Hereford calf this week from a friend of ours. We're going to raise it out for the freezer. The kids are trying to find a funny name for it. Our little neighbor friend wants to call it Angus, which would be cute if it was a Black Angus calf, but it's not. Then B said to call it Chili. I suggested Sirloin, LOL. We'll see.

B and I ran off to town to do some shopping after we delivered the goats and man were the stores packed! It was worse than before Christmas. I don't understand what the deal was.

We are letting the kids stay up late tonight to watch the ball drop. They don't seem to have on any shows for the kids late on TV though. Last year B watched a cute Cinderella movie on TV until right before the ball dropped.

Hope you all have a wonderful New Years tonight. Pray that the kids don't drive me up the wall since I'm sure they'll be ultra tired and just plain silly!