Hello everyone!
              What a beautiful weekend this is supposed to be :o)  Today we had to run errands in the city and when getting ready to head for the homestead I called Mike to see if he might need something. He didn't answer but I knew he was going to be working on his shop getting prepped for the trusses showing up tomorrow so figured he would call as soon as he could. He did call but was NOT working on his shop, he was instead on a fire on the river bottom, yes, our river bottom and it's burning out of control due to high winds! He was excited and yelling and with the wind blowing it made it hard to hear what exactly he was saying so we put the car in gear and boot footed it for home. Once home we could see the flames in the trees and brush up river from us and the air was very thick with smoke. All of the county fire departments have been deployed to our fire as well as DNRC's helicopter with bucket. The winds are howling at approx. 15-60mph and there are homes& barns threatened and a large haystack is ablaze and the wind is pushing it our way! I'm trying to decide if we should move our animals, or if we'll be okay because we do have a good firebreak on our side of the river, although I fear cinders blowing onto the barn or straw stack. This is I fear going to be a rough year for our volunteer fire departments, as there has been three bad fires already this month and it's not even close to the normal fire season yet. It's due to the above normal snowfall and rain last year, so the grasses and brush really grew tall and this winter has been just the opposite, dry and little moisture and all of that is just like tinder waiting for a spark*sigh*  Keep us in your prayers, please and we'll update you on what happens.

Here is a video from Wens. when the kids were two weeks old, it just tickles my funny bone, so had to share and a few pictures too, so you can see just how quickly these kids are growing.

We ordered our meat chicks( Freedom Rangers) again this year and they are due to arrive second week of April. Our turkey hens are being actively courted by our Bourbon red tom and we hope to have a good clutch from them as well. Our steer is almost ready to head to the butcher but first we have to find a calf or a bull for our Dexter heifer to have for company.  We're looking for a couple of horses, maybe large enough to make a team to pull a small buggy or wagon too, but horses here in MT are extremely high priced, not like in other areas of the U.S. where people are giving horses away, here the average price for a nice horse( maybe registered, maybe not) is $2,000 to as high as $8,500!
We really miss Mo, our fjord gelding but can't find any that we like, it's hard not to compare them to Mo*sigh*  Oh well if we're supposed to add horses to our homestead it will happen, eventually*wink*

Trusses will hopefully be up and held steady in place by Sat. evening :o) Then Mike and I are off to celebrate our 28th anniversary( which is actually tomorrow but I have EMT classes from 7pm to 10pm) and guess what, other than supper out, just the two of us, Cortney gifted us an overnight stay in a nice hotel with a pool and hot tubs, what a blessed treat. We haven't stayed overnight, just the two of us, since our honeymoon! :o) 

Glad you stopped in, hope you giggled at the video, of course Cortney's giggle is contagious, LOL!!! 
Have a full and blessed weekend everyone!

2011 lambing season is underway!

This is the first lamb of Annabel's lambing season, born a week ago. Now, so far the last total we had was 13 lambs, of which all but three are twins. 

This is Cortney's 4th year working with Annabel and this year she'll be doing it alone for the most part. Her Dad and I are so proud of her and she is proud of herself and thankful that Annabel has worked with her and given her the opportunity to learn all of the skills she has, in dealing with sheep.

Here is the little fella just inside the door of the barn. The wind was blowing so hard the day this photo was taken.

Annabel's new herd dog, McKenzie. Coyotes have become such a problem in this area, now even the cattle ranchers are suffering losses of calves.  Annabel shared with us, of how she saw tracks where McKenzie had chased off some coyotes. McKenzie will be worth her weight in gold if she keeps the coyotes at bay, especially during lambing.

    This is one of two Llamas Annabel has with the sheep as well, "Dillon" says Hello! He is very curious and doesn't hesitate to come right over and see what you are doing.
   "Denver", Annabel's other Llama is not so friendly, but he watches over his sheep!

    In this photo of the sheep grazing, you can see the dust blowing( sort of looks like Dust Bowl 2011, I sure hope not.) That evening we had wind gusts up to 80mph.  These winds did damage( tearing down fencing, damaging roofs and even blowing over sheds) in the city closest to us, the news forecaster called them micro bursts

    I'm not sure how many of Annabel's ewes are due to lamb, but it sure is fun to drive up to the barn and see them jumping and playing!  I know that Cortney is hoping for some bottle lambs, but also know that Annabel is hoping just as much NOT to have any bottle lambs.
   We'll post more photos of the lambs, maybe later this week

   Saturday Mike worked on tearing apart some hydraulic cylinders he was given to repair, Cortney cleaned her room and helped me trim up all but our plum trees. Our established apple trees were a mess of sucklers. For some reason the "Wealthy" seems to have 50% more sucklers than the "MacKintosh"*sigh*  I trimmed all but the very top ones, Mike came and did those because I won't crawl up on a ladder tall enough ( not afraid of heights, just unstable ladders*wink*)  We have two established plums to trim and top and we'll be done with the fruit trees, then onto finishing cleaning up branches from the fruit trees as well as the elm Mike took down in our front yard, last weekend.  Maybe if our weather holds and we don't get alot of moisture, we can begin cleaning up some of our larger flowerbeds, getting the seeds shaken in for our flowers this year. You see; I love to garden, but I am an admitted lazy flower gardener, LOL!  I like to just shake the seeds back in and see what comes up. It's ALWAYS beautiful and besides God combines colors I would have never thought to :o) 
   Yesterday was our local volunteer Fire Departments annual "Chili Feed" So most of our day was consumed with setting up, serving, visiting and then clean up and tear down.  They netted around $2,000 between their Silent Auction, Chili dinners, and Donations. The Fire Dept. was very happy with the turn out.  Cortney and I enjoyed visiting with old friends, as well as meeting and making some new ones.
It looks as if our CSA memberships may be; "SOLD OUT!" A lady approached me and asked if we still have memberships to our CSA available, I shared that we still had one 1/2 share and we were waiting in a deposit for a "Full share". She said she and a friend would be splitting one and I told her the 1/2 share would most likely suit their needs the best. She's going to drop off her deposit this week
 I bid on one silent auction item, as a surprise for Mike, it was a toy replica of a Farmall IH Super M tractor, just like the two we own. It became a bidding war and unfortunately I had a cap and lost the bid*sigh*  Cortney's necklace had several bids and I believe it sold for $35, which was good, the materials involved were approx. $25
   Not much else new here, just working, cleaning( Spring type) and enjoying our warmer weather.
   Blessings for your week
                     
                    
                         

The forecast was true!

The snow has arrived, now awaiting the bitter cold!  Sunday's high is supposed to be 21F with a low of -2F Monday and Tues. aren't much better and then by Wednesday we'll be warming back up into the mid to high 30's F. As I've said before I don't mind the snow, but the bitter cold is hard on the animals, the vehicles and well..... not much fun to be out in period.  

 This was taken at 6:30 am this morning, we'd already shoveled the walk and patio once but it is still snowing. We're forecasted to receive 10-14" of snow by tonight. All I can say is we need the moisture and it's a good wet snow( high moisture content, of course snow is WET! LOL!!!!)

 Everything looks so clean and crisp, glad everything is tucked in for the winter. Well, not 100% true, we still need to cut back the asparagus and mulch them with compost but we can do that this weekend.

 The sunflower heads are already picked pretty well clean buy all the little birds, but I like the look of them with snow on them, sort of a redneck winter flowerbed*wink* Plus the stalks and heads make excellent fire starters. :o)

 Oooppps! Cortney's sheets are all full of snow, nothing a good shaking won't get rid of and then we'll opt to bring them inside to finish drying on the wood racks by the stove.

The Mum a friend blessed us with, we thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful flowers and now it's time to plant it in a big pot tote of soil in the hoop house, for a long winter's rest. Next Spring I'll figure out where to permanently plant it. 

We milled and processed down approx 20 qt of tomatoes, down into a nice thick sauce, canning into 7 qt jars. Their destiny will be decided when the time comes to use them.We still have approx. 15-20 qt of tomatoes ripening yet!

 I hope to can the kraut this afternoon. I have to round up jars and get them sterilized first.

Mike is still enjoying his job, even working in these conditions. He has plenty of good winter clothes, insulated bibs, really good snow boots, good heavy winter gloves, and a stormy chromer hat!  They are finishing up a 20x 24 x10ft shop building, being totally wrapped up on Wednesday and, moving onto their next job. He is learning new techniques for building and has been a great value already to the foreman.
The nice thing about this job, even though weather plays a role, is that they have jobs set up for building sheds and small buildings and they can build the walls and floor in their big shop and haul to be assembled on site, placing the trusses, roofing( all metal roofing now, it's to cold for shingles at this point) and siding on them a the site.  So we're hoping they'll keep enough work to get through the winter weather and into Spring.

Well ...... I need to get a load of firewood hauled and some other misc. outside chores done.
I'm thinking the left over pot of vegetable venison soup and homemade biscuits sounds good for supper.

Blessings for your day :o)

This was one of five tornadoes that hit the Billings area today at 4:30 pm. This video does contain the use of bad language in the very beginning. So far no injuries are reported, PTL!  Several building were destroyed. This particular building is the designated Civil Defense building, I guess they found out it isn't structurally safe for tornado protection.  This sort of stuff just isn't in the norm for Montana, makes me worry about what the rest of the summer has in store for us.

This storm passed right over our place,PTL we only say lightening, thunder, 3/10th of an inch of rain in 20-30 minutes and some wind toward the tail end of the storm.