Unexpected Blessings and A walkabout( in photos) by Cortney

 My friend Alla blessed me with this milk based soap making books, after she read we got our goats.  I'm thrilled with it and have been getting milk pasteurized and frozen for a couple of batches of basic milk soap.  Alla, again Thank you for the surprise and such a thoughtful gift. :o)

 If you click this photo, you'll get a larger view. This is the view from the bottom of our front pasture looking toward the Beartooth Mountains with the river in the background

 Salad to go along with supper tonight, Ummmm. Ummmmm.

 Button last evening resting with a full rumen, after a day of grazing.

 Chance, he's still so dang cute, you just want to hug him.

 This was taken on the opposite side of the river from our farm, when Cortney was walking the dogs this afternoon.

 Hoss, he has his own personality and it is more reserved and shy, although he enjoys a good scratching under his jaw, on his nub and between his back legs.

 Tuffy and Casino posing for their picture, quite the pair!

 Sarah and Lucy conversing with the chickens.

Just a photo to show we have seen bits of our "Big Sky" here in MT .

Look at what UPS delivered to Cortney!

When Cortney graduated Sept. 09, she received many wonderful gifts, included in them was a gift from Grandma Nita to design and have your own woven afghan made. Well...... it got set aside until we had more time to look at it, and guess what (shamefully I admit) it was forgotten. Grandma asked if we'd ever sent away to have this made( my reminder) so.... we got it out, picked a picture Cortney wanted and a scripture and put it in the mail.  Several weeks or so later, a phone call comes in, saying the picture Cortney had chosen wouldn't work, it was to much of a close up and since they had to enlarge the photo something like 400% well, it just wasn't going to work. The lady who helped us was very nice and said we could email another photo to save time. We found several other pictures and Cortney chose another and we emailed it, this took place just two weeks ago and Monday the UPS man shows up with this for Cortney, see below!

 It's really heavy, such a wonderful keepsake for her.

 This is Cortney's favorite Bible verse and is very fitting, in remembrance of Mo.

Isn't it lovely?  Cortney knows Grandma Nita reads our blog and wishes to say "Thank You and HUGS Grandma"

What a find!

When Cortney and were in the city for her Driver's Ed. last Friday, we had some time to kill before her class, so.... we of course opted to stop and see what was new at Goodwill.  Cortney found some treasures/ deals and I found this! 

                Someone started a crocheted afghan and for whatever reason it was donated and I  found it!

 I came with a pattern, many of the squares are finished while others need the cream colored trim added. There are a few more of each color square that need to be made in order to complete this afghan.

 It looks like there is plenty of skeins of each color to do the job.

 There is even a row assembled to give everyone an idea of what it will look like, sort of a patch work pattern.

and the best part, this was the price and Blue tagged items were 50% off on Friday! YEAH!!!!!!  Now I have something to work on in the evenings during our new cold snap. 
      
Yes, that is correct yet another cold snap! Thankfully it's only a two to three day event, but it is almost rude when you step outside after a week or better of temperatures well into the high 40's F and low 50's F.  Tonight our low is -6F and tomorrow's high is 9F.  I'd rather our temperatures stay more on an even keel, it's hard on everyone with this roller coaster we've been on. Many people are sick with a nasty respiratory virus, which seems to take a quick turn toward pneumonia. PTL, we're all in good health here, even with Mike working outdoors we not suffered even a sniffle. :o)

Mike is again at his EMT refresher course, it's been two long days of 12 hours of classroom work as well as stations of scene scenarios. He said last night, funny how when you sit for long periods of time inactive, you just seem to be exhausted by the end of the day, I told him it was refresher lag! *wink*  Today they'll do their CPR recertification as well.  Monday at his job, they start a new project and naturally this is when the weather will rearing it's ugly "bitter cold" head. Thankfully he has many layers and stays relatively warm, if he gets chilled they just warm up in the vehicle for a few minutes. Most of the time it's just his fingers that get cold, because using nailers , drills and screw guns doesn't work well with heavy winter gloves.  Hopefully this will be our last bout of bitter cold, with February just around the corner, but then again our weather has been so our of character this winter, who knows?

Good news! we've found a bull to breed Button to this June. We just couldn't swing purchasing our own bull this year, so opted to lease a bull from friends for a few months. The bull is a Galloway, a smaller breed much the same size as the Dexter's.  If Button takes in June, she'll calve in March 2012 and finally we'll have raw cow's milk again! So glad we've got that settled now onto looking into other homestead projects.

Today, we're making cabbage buns for supper, as well as for the freezer :o)   I just searched our blog and we don't have any recipe or how to pictures so............ Guess we'll make this into a tutorial and post it tomorrow*wink*

I can't believe it's December 1st already! and an introduction to.......

Even with all the snow we have it just doesn't seem possible, where does the time go? We just finished up the last of our tomatoes and will begin cooking down pumpkins. Next thing I know it will be time to start our seedling*Sheeesh*  So much for a long winter's rest*wink*

 The greenhouse held up well under the snow, we did go out and push some to slide off from the inside but otherwise it slid off well on it's own. Now we have to dig the snow away from the sides this afternoon.
Below( next few pictures) you'll see our early Christmas gift! We'd like to introduce you to "Licorice"( my Dad picked out the name). A friend of ours called yesterday morning early and asked if we'd be up for another bottle calf. I said, " Joe, a calf in December?" He told us it was from a cow he'd purchased through the sale barn back in Sept. and they were all supposed to be "Open" heifers. Even though the mama cow was being a good mama, this little guy was struggling to suckle on her small teats and Joe didn't want to see him( BTW, Licorice is a bull calf) go down hill in the cold weather and they just don't have the time nor the inclination to care for a two day old calf. So he made a proposition we couldn't refuse and he delivered him around 10am. Poor little fella was cold and hungry, so we started him off with a 1/2 pint of warm calf replacer, with some colostrum( saved in the freezer from our dear old Bessie, my jersey cow who passed away a little over a year ago.)  He drank it so, so and then we bedded him down in a thick straw bed and pushed it up all around him, within minutes he's stopped shivering and was so.... sleepy.  Joe had given him a bottle( a full bottle, which was way, way to much for this little guy but....., so now he does have some pasty poop, which we'll clean up off his butt with warm soapy water and dry him off good this morning, after it warms up a bit. I dosed him at 8pm with some yogurt mixed with colostrum, and he really seemed to like it. 
The wind blew all night and I worried about Licorice, but when I took out his warm bottle( a pint with colostrum added) he got right up and was happy and hungry :o)  I think if we can keep the weather warmer for a few days, to help get him off to a good start he'll do just fine!  He's so cute and it's amazing how much coat( hair) he has, I guess the good Lord knows he needed a good thick coat of hair!  So this is a project for us girls to keep us out of trouble this winter*wink*  Mike thinks we made a good bargain.

 These were taken this morning and he is now 4 days old. Licorice is a Black Angus bull calf( soon to be a steer)

 This is a bit blurry, he was moving looking for his bottle.

"Button", our Dexter heifer wants to mother him and "Hoss" the other orphan Angus calf( now almost 7 months old) is acting like a wild man, so we housed Button and Hoss together last night, giving Licorice Hoss's stall.  We'll probably do this for a few weeks and see how Hoss settles down with Licorice, then the plan is to house them together, because Button is well... sort of a pig about feed and eats all her hay and then pushes Hoss aside and finishes his off too *sigh*

Life certainly is never dull here and we wouldn't have it any other way :o)

Blessings for your day.

Look at what we received in the mail!

I got an email early last week, to be expecting a package from our friend, Irene. We had no idea what it could be, but we anxiously awaited it's arrival. She thought it might come on Wednesday, if not Friday, because of Veteran's Day on Thursday. Well it did come on Wednesday. but our postman didn't deliver it but rather put a notice in our box. When I went down to the Post Office, the post lady informed me he had the package with him and wouldn't be back until after the she'd be closed, so... now we had to wait until Friday.  Below is what we received and was it ever worth the wait.......

Here is the picture it was taken from, one of my very favorite photos of Cortney riding Mo!

Irene does beautiful oil paintings, which she's shared with me via email photos but never in our wildest dreams did we think she'd ever bless us with an original and especially one so near and dear to our hearts. I had share some photos of Cortney with Irene months back. This painting is so near and dear to our hearts because....... I haven't share this until now, when it happened it was simply to hard to tell. A little over three months ago, we lost our beloved Fjord, Mo. He seemed fine the morning Cortney put him out for his grazing time, but when we went to get him in he was obviously not feeling good. I was worried it may be colic and had Cortney walking him, while I got in touch wit the vet. Mike came home and was busy working on a cylinder repair( an emergency situation) for a friend. I told him about Mo and that we needed to haul him ASAP to the vet. While Cortney was walking him, he tried to lay down several times and was very sluggish. Mike got the trailer and we loaded Mo and headed to the vet. To make a LONG, hurtful and complicated story short, Mo's spleen was swollen to double the size it should be, creating a blockage of his colon( not a twisted gut, but very similar).  The vet talked to us about options, such as surgery, which is VERY costly and not often successful. We told her that wasn't an option at this point. She continued to work on Mo until she called us at 2am, explaining that he was no better with the treatments she'd given him and he  was in a great deal of pain. Mike and I had already discussed with Cortney that we may have to make the choice to have him put down and we all agree if he was suffering that that was the best choice. Well, as painful as it was we opted to have Mo put down. The loss was almost more than any of us could bare and it still hurts deeply today.  So Irene knowing of our love for Mo and captured him in a painting for us all to remember. Thank you again Irene, we just LOVE it and have hung it right in the living room.  It's taken this long to share the loss of Mo for several reasons but with time and healing we wanted to share our loss with all of you. There will never be another Mo, but someday maybe when we've healed and are no longer mourning Mo, we can love another horse.  Until then we have this gorgeous painting to remember Mo.

Looking back, maybe juicy new wasn't a good choice of words.... Here's the update!

 This past week Cortney attended a Workforce Skill seminar  and she received this certificate as well as one of two award given out for Most Professionally Dressed. In this seminar she learned how to create a resume, a cover letter, the proper way to fill out an application, interviewing techniques and practicing interviewing . Then they worked on follow up skills such as; follow up phone calls a few days following an interview and writing a Thank you for their time involved in interviewing you. She did very well and we are proud of her.

Now for the interesting news and the blessing of how God works in our lives.....  You may or may not know that Mike is the manager of a Farm and Ranch Coop, has been for a little over 3 yrs, and this store is in the midst of a building a new facility, so currently the store is in a temporary location. Over the course of the new building being constructed Mike and his employees have been asked about the arrangement of the new store, what will be new, how many gas pumps, etc..... Well... this is where the story begins; Mike passed on some of the questions to the main store and asked how they should answer the questions, because they hadn't been told, in fact during this whole process neither Mike nor any of the 3 employees were asked for input of their ideas. Two weeks ago the Farm and Ranch boss and the main store boss were up meeting with contractors and stopped in to fill in Mike and his crew with some of the news of the new store. After everyone asked their questions and made comments the two bosses informed the crew that they needed to submit resumes and what job they'd like to have in the new store. Mike was then told that he too would have to re-apply, submit a resume and interview, as they were opening up his position via an ad in the local city newspaper. This caught Mike totally off guard, especially when there was never any complaints with his job performance, in fact quite to the contrary and the company had just shelled out over $600 to send Mike to a management training seminar, a two part seminar with the last week being completed just a week earlier. In fact, Mike did so well he received an award ( see below)

That Saturday the ad in the city newspaper came out. Of course Mike was barraged by all the local customers, asking if he'd resigned or been fired. He could only say neither applied and if they really wanted to know they'd have to contact the main office. It was very humiliating for him though. When he submitted his resume, he was told that the interview would be set up the following week, all of this was handled in a very cold and distant manner. The interview was scheduled for Wednesday at 9am, upon his arrival he was informed he was the first of 10 interviews being held that day for his currently held position. They also informed him they wanted to act as if he were a stranger to them in the interview. Many things didn't feel right and the interview ended with the question," If you don't get chosen for this position how will you feel?"  Well, really! how do they think he'll feel, he will effectively be demoted or possibly even laid off. Mike refused to answer that question. They then informed Mike they'd notify him by Friday of their decision( which they did not do). When he came home that evening we discussed this for hours, prayed about it and discussed it some more and prayed some more. You see when Mike attained this job, he wasn't looking for a job, but rather was approached by the company via a friend's suggestion. We'd always prayed to find a job closer to home but most local town jobs didn't pay enough to make our mortgage and other monthly expenses. Thursday morning a friend came in and out of the blue offered Mike a job, knowing what had been happening over the past few weeks. The job is a family owned business, working from 7am to 4 pm with weekends off, unless you so choose to work if weekends are needed to finish up a project. The pay offered is approximately the same as he's making as manager of the Coop. So once again God provided a job before it was even needed! Mike will give his notice, Monday being his final day. Considering the circumstances of how poorly this whole situation was handled, he would typically give a two week notice as a courtesy, but he considers the last two weeks his fulfillment of that courtesy. He starts his new job Tuesday morning :o)

    Herbs and millet drying on the front entryway.

More herbs drying, many have been taken down, and prepared for storage, stored in glass jars.

This week, we'll be canning pickled carrots........ After we stored all we could in the cellar we still had several gallons of carrots to do something with, so.. we'll store some in the refrigerator for immediate use as well as make pickled carrot sticks. :o)

 and canning tomatoes, they've ripened up nicely on the front entryway.  The salad crops in the hoop house are coming along nicely and have withstood several freezes. I'll be glad to enjoy fresh greens well into Nov. and possibly even Dec.

Blessings for your new week. :o)