Leisurely Afternoon Drive Home??

Weather said 40 mph gusting this afternoon and we had another 3-4 inches of fluffy stuff ontop of more than a foot and a half of barely settled snow last night. Wind is not a good combination. While I kept an eye on the storm in town at work...I finally decided to grab the boy from school early and get for home. I didn't want to be stranded in town. I have one more cow about to calf and I am a little anxious. Next time ..I just won't go to work! Hopefully the electric poles don't come down in the future..they make good ditch markers. Seems it was the only way sometimes I could gauge if I was on the road or not....My son and I were both a wreck by the time we got home. It will take me all day tomorrow just to dig out again, so another snow day..YEEHAAWW!

Soap Opera

So I said I would post some pictures of soaps and No...I don't do Soap Operas, but did once upon a time. Although, I was hooked on a couple of them, that phase of me is over....way over...

So onto a little Real Soap making

The Green swirl soaps are a fragrance of eucalyptus and energy.

The Bluish soaps When Pigs fly and plain ones are a Lilac and Sweet Grass,,,now thats a really nice light scent.

The purple swirl handmade marked soaps are Cucumber Melon and Lime and if I would had a little more green mica that would of been a better coloring but I like swirling stuff.

My friends and family will be tickled with the new scents and Shanster if your out there, send me an email with your address..I really want you to have a When Pigs Fly! Not that that says anything,,,I just love the quirky and that's not saying you are quirky either....OK...I stop with that! You are just a sister in Kind and I wish Everyone a Happy Blue Moon and Wonderful New Year!

Boredom Buster and Snow removal

Well...I was trapped in my home for a few days and a raging blizzard happening outside. I decided I couldn't nap the entire time and remembered I had all this frozen goat milk soap just waiting for me to make a batch or two of soaps. I made 3 batches and was a little creative with the colors and the fragrance. It sure felt rewarding to get so many different scents and soaps cut and drying today. I made Cucumber/Lime and a very nice fragrance of lilac and sweetgrass, also a holiday scent of Energy/Eucalyptus. They all turned out nice and I will show photos tomorrow.

Today I am showing the snow removal and some pretty amazing piles of snow left over from the Christmas Blizzard. I now have tunnels of paths to the barn and to the goats and to the haystacks. Also a tunnel to get the cars down the road and out to the Highway. It took two of us all day and many gallons of gas. Oh...and thankfully my son could pop the tire back on with a little ingenuity, ether and a match. I couldn't watch him do that part...made me nervous. We were up and running in no time again and everything stayed running.

My newest addition, my guard dog, alright..big Pet dog did something interesting though. I was busy doing chores and she follows me all around keeping an eye on me. It is the only real time she leaves the goats, when I am outside doing stuff. Anyway I was forking some hay into the cows and she ran under my feet and sat down and was looking up at me. I looked down to see she had brought me a pheasant and laid it at my feet. Still alive but pretty cold and had been snowed into a hole no doubt. I put her in with my chickens and later saw her come out of the coop this afternoon and flew off down the draw. I really think that Tess would of chewed on her if I hadn't taken her and put her in a safe spot..but I like to think she was being a good girl and rescuing a lost one. My photos I show today are of the haylot where I spent 3 hrs piling snow and cleaning out the hay feeder. Seems we only got 12 to a possible 22 inches of snow but the wind put it in some pretty amazing piles. I think it was pretty hard to tell what we got for snow as I think most of it blew to Kansas.

Who wished for a Snow at Christmas!??

....and it can stop blowing anytime now! Regardless, we did have a wonderful Christmas and a memorable one at that. No power outage and the fridge was well stocked. Also everyone outside is comfortable and protected but I note a little "cabin crazy" in the goat arena this morning. Hopefully this afternoon when the wind finally puts the last of the snow in its final resting spot, I and my trusty Bobcat can make a dent in it! ...the second photo is of my basement walkout sliding doors...NO walking out those anytime soon!

Merry Christmas all!!

Reunited!!

And Mother and Baby are doing fine! She cried and cried when she saw her baby again. If you look hard in that first photo of the calf before the fire you will see a very bright red nose! He was extremely COLD!! A coworker suggested the name "Rudolph". So Rudy, Welcome into this cold and miserable world...I promise ...it will be better!!

I would make Greg proud!

It has been 1 year today, my husband Greg died from a heart attack. He was chopping ice for the cows. It was a blizzard and we were left grief stricken. I have tried very hard to keep our commitment to doing what we wanted to do. Raise some cows and enjoy the country. Today the weather was just about as miserable as it gets. I have been worrying over one of my Jersey Milk Cows, who had a due date of Dec 13th. I have been hoping she would just wait a few more days until it would warm into the 20's. I arrived home tonite and after tossing some hay to the big girls I didn't notice Thelma with the bunch. I didn't intend on putting her in her own pen until she it was a little closer. I had her AI'd so I could time it pretty close.

I made it to the barn and the calf had been born but was pretty cold. I tried several things..heat lamp..blow drier...straw...towels. Then decided..my own feet were freezing and I didn't think it would be any better for this baby. The cow was easy to milk and I brought a bottle of her rich colostrum milk. My youngest son, 15 and I managed to get the calf hauled up to the house. Greg would of loved the idea of us bringing this baby into the house and would of been so excited for the beautiful cross of Guernsey/Jersey we got. I think he is smiling and also...chuckling over our fumbling around trying to figure out a solution. I think they call this weather "character building". We definitely got a dose of it tonite!

Autumn Agate Hunts in the Badlands of SD

It doesn't get any better.

We started our morning in the agate prairie and ended up in a Creek Bed of the Badlands with an escort of a Bulldozer making the creek a little more manageable with 4WD of course. Also had the security of the National Guard flying drills along the remote part of our hiking. We never see people this far down the basin and we saw old friends and made some new ones along the way. What a Great Day!