January

December flew by with lots of holiday parties and little bad weather.  Rain finally came in right before Christmas and nearly filled up our tanks.  We had already begun conserving water because they had gotten so low.  It's always a relief to have nice full tanks of lovely water!

I stopped milking Lacey twice a day before the holidays.  Dad milked for me the two days we were in Stephenville and I wanted the chore to be easier for him.  She still kept her production up around 7-8 cups/day, even though I cut her feed almost by half.  Now, I have taken her feed down a little more and she has dropped to 5-6 cups.  I was planning on having her dried off by the end of January!  I guess I will drop her feed some more and try to have her finished in two weeks.  I'd like those new kids in there to have some of those nutrients.

Freddie sleeping with cousin Kinnie

We got a new puppy on the weekend before Christmas.  I had been searching Craigslist and my local ads, hoping to find a companion for Shadow.  He refused to stay in the yard and kept straying downhill to my parents house (and their dogs).  I had almost decided to call about a cute blue heeler ad in Perrin when we saw a pickup load of eight week old Border Collie cross puppies in the Walmart parking lot.  We got the impression that they were headed to the shelter if they didn't find homes - evidently the mother had already been taken there.  There was an adorable puppy with blue eyes and lots of white.  Liam liked him and immediately named him Freddie.  He looks almost exactly like Shadow did when he was a puppy.  He's now about to be 12 weeks old and his eyes did finally turn brown.  He and Shadow have bonded and they play together all day long!  Freddie went on his first long hike with us yesterday and kept up very well (and hopefully learned a little about cactus).

One of our hens, Bonnie, that was hatched out in August, is sitting on a nest of 16 eggs.  I think I would have taken a few of them out if I had found her nest earlier.  I decided to leave them all since she had probably already been sitting a couple of weeks.  This week is going to be pretty warm, so I hope they choose this time to hatch out.  I have never had chicks in January, so this will be new for me.  Do chickens become broody at a certain age, rather than a particular time of year?  This seems to be the case around here!

This weekend, I hauled about ten muck buckets (mineral tubs) of manure from my parents' barn to our yard for the garden.  Surprisingly, little Bermuda grass came into any of our flower or vegetable beds this year.  So we are about ready for spring planting.  Of course, it would have been better to get the manure up here earlier, but a procrastinator can only do so much!  I think the beds will be wonderfully ready for the warm season crops and the cool season crops should do okay with what they have.  Jason and I are both pretty excited about this growing season.  We are planning to add a few new (4'x4') squares for a total of about twelve.  I'm hoping to plant the peas, snow peas, lettuce, spinach, swiss chard and collard greens this week.  We've never had much luck with peas and we're hoping this year will be different!

We had a pile of gravel hauled here last week for some driveway maintenance.  Jason is planning on renting a Bobcat to smooth and narrow our driveway.  This will be the first heavy work we've done on the road since we moved here in 2002.  The drive is about half of a mile long and runs directly up a rocky hill.  I'm excited about the prospect of a more accessible driveway, especially in wet spring weather.  We'll probably add another load of gravel after the Bobcat work is done, as well.  Fun!