Well, the biggest news is that we just had a new baby!  Henry was born Friday February 24th.  He was born just under 3 weeks early, but at 7lb 12 oz, was a good weight and is very healthy.  He eats good, sleeps good and is full of sleepy newborn smiles.  I could just watch him all day.  I will be home for at least the next 12 weeks and hope to get caught up and get some projects done around here. 

Christopher started working full time last July.  It has been hard to try to keep up with all of the family, farm and work responsibilities, but Christopher really does enjoy the mechanical design work that he is doing now.  It gives him a chance to put his amazing ingenuity  to work every day.

I'm back to milking just 2 cows, which is where I like to be.  Milking only takes about 25 minutes and these two cows are great milkers who give enough to supply us and our customers.  I recently sold one of my young milk cows to a young family near Kearney who wanted to start milking a cow.  They love her and are enjoying milking, which makes me very happy.

We're thinking about offering some classes on farm topics for anyone who is interested in learning more about this lifestyle. We would offer the classes for a low cost here at the farm.  Topics would include such things as: Dairy Cows 101, Milking 101, How to Butcher a Chicken, How to Make Butter (with samples to take home), How to Make Fermented Vegetables (with samples to take home).  Please let me know if you are interested in any of these topics or have another topics in mind that you would like to learn about.  We will schedule the classes as soon as we get a couple of people interested in the same topic and then post the outline and schedule for the classes.

I hope everyone has a happy Easter!  We will be searching for easter eggs, followed by a dinner of ham accompanied by potatoes from last years harvest with plenty of fresh butter,  fresh salad from the cold frame, deviled eggs using the eggs that the kids found and the dogs didn't eat :) and of course, a tall cold glass of fresh milk.
Speaking of ham...we only have one pig left unspoken for.  If you are interested in half or all of it, please let us know right away.  We will be taking them to the locker in the next couple of weeks.
HAPPY EASTER!

I am so thankful Christopher made cold frames on our raised beds to cover the greens and the strawberries.  Not only do we have early garden treats, but they were all saved from the mountain of grape-sized hail that pounded us last week.  As I laid awake at 4:30 am listening to the deafening sound of hail on the roof and windows, I didn't have any worries.  I knew our plants were covered and all of the animals had shelter to protect them.  Thank goodness Christopher loves to build things!  We have added some things to his site (www.kranzman.com), including raised bed and cold frames.  He also just got some netting, so if you have trouble with the squirrels or birds eating all of your garden goodies, have him make you a netted cover to keep them out.
I finally got some new pictures and videos up on this site as well.  If anyone has specific questions or something you would like me to talk about in this blog or take pictures or video of, please let me know.

I'm sorry I'm so behind with keeping this updated!  The recent rains have made the grass pop up and given the cows, soft, shiny coats.  We got the cows out on pasture last weekend.  They all ran out, kicking up their heels. We have video of it as well as videos of the cows grazing and a short discussion about appropriate grazing.  Even though pasture is the perfect natural diet for cows, the first weeks out on pasture is stressful for them because it is a sudden change in their diet from the dry hay they eat all winter.  Bring out the peppermint rub!  We are still feeding them hay to reduce the stress of a sudden diet change and to keep the flavor of the milk from getting too grassy and bitter.  Their milk production is up and the milk has a nice yellow color from the chlorophyll in the fresh grass.  

We butchered all of our old hens last weekend.  We debated on whether to butcher them all because we knew some of them were still laying pretty good.  But our young chickens are laying just fine and the old chickens have bad habits of laying eggs and roosting in places other than their chicken house, so we decided to go ahead with it.  We were pleasantly surprised by the amount of nice yellow fat these chickens had on them.  We canned them all and ended up with 21 cans of chicken.  I have a short video of the jars of chicken, just before the video camera died.  It will be so nice to have these for summer dinners, when I don't want to be inside cooking and heating up the house

The cows are really testing the fences.  They can smell the grass starting to grow.  Christopher has been walking the pastures to see how the grass is looking so far.  Last year, we were able to graze by mid April.  It's been so dry this year that the grass is still very short.  We don't want to harm the pastures by grazing them too early and if we don't get enough rain this spring we will need to maximize our pastures, and can't afford to lose any part of them.  I know rain really complicates outdoor plans and makes our cars and houses dirty, but we really need it!  So, if we get some good rains, you can think of the farmers and the cows and smile a little. 

Christopher started a new website.  He has several of his products available.  We will continue to post pictures of his projects.  If you have ideas, please let him know.  Check it out at www.kranzman.com!

Last weekend was so beautiful!  We got so much done outside on Sunday.  There is always so much to do around here.  We raked and put up some new catch pen fencing where the cows come in to the barn.  It looks so much neater around the barn.  On Sunday I heard the frogs for the first time.  Unfortunately, the mosquitoes also came out.  The cows were covered in them when they came in for the evening milking.  I was a little sad to see that the temperatures were dropping this week, but maybe that'll knock down the bugs a little longer.  We have radishes, spinach and lettuce rapidly growing in our cold frame.  In about a week, we should be able to make some scrambled eggs with fresh radishes and spinach.  I love it when we can start eating fresh vegetables from the garden.

We now have fresh brown eggs for sale!  They are $2.50 per dozen.  We will put them in the store and you can pick them up when you pick up your milk.   If there are some in the fridge when you come, you can take them.

Well, the snow is almost all melted again.  We're happy and the cows are happy.  This time of year is pretty hard on the cows.  They don't like the drastic changes from frigid to warm and back again.  This last dump of snow made me very grateful for the facilities that we have.  My husband has built me such great buildings for my cows.  They eat their feed inside and they can lay under cover if the weather is cold, rainy or snowy.   In bad weather, cows will typically eat less if their feed is out in the weather because they spend their time trying to keep warm.  If they eat less, they milk less.  Since our cows have shelter over their eating area, they don't lose feed (and milk) when the weather's bad.  We also feed our cows fresh feed twice a day and clean out the feed they didn't eat from the previous feeding.  The more often you give cows fresh feed, the more they eat.  They love fresh feed!  We feed the hay they didn't eat to the dry cows and heifers and they eat it right up.

When I feed the cows their hay each morning, I love to take a few seconds to just stand there and listen to them crunch and breath in the sweet smell of hay and cow breath.  It's meditative.