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.