First Seed Catalog

I got my first catalog of the year last week..... http://www.jungseed.com/default.asp

Even though it is only 30 degrees outside, with two inches of snow on the ground, it looks like I better start thinking about the garden again... it will be time to plant before we know it.

My Grandfather Bell always said you should try something new in your garden each year. So what is it going to be this year?? hmmm... there are so many things I'd like to try I usually can't pick just one.

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas

As you can see all the festivities around here have tired our little boy out to the point he can't even finish looking through his favorite magazine.

I couldn't resist this picture. The magazine had fallen off the coffee table and I hadn't gotten around to picking it up, then shortly after Ace laid down on his blanket and fell asleep ... I thought it was just too cute not to take a picture.

More Snow and Ice

This is what I found when I opened the back door this morning to let the puppy out. During the night about an inch of sleet and snow came down and covered the 4 to 5 inches of show that we had gotten the other day. The ice and snow are slowly sliding off the tin roof. I knew that it had been sleeting all night, but I was not expecting to open the door and see icicles pointed straight at me.... eek! I'm just glad that I was the one who discovered it. And I'm glad it wasn't like that around 12:30 a.m. when *T* had to leave for an emergency call. He would have ran right into those icicles in his haste to get out the door and to the scene of the car accident that the Department got out to. In the picture below you may be able to see the layer of ice that has built us on the vehicles during the night. The Blazer was completely clean at 10:45 last night when we got home from my store's Christmas party and the pickup truck was clean when he got home at a little after 3:00 a.m.

This snow is still falling and it is predicted that we will get 2 to 4 more inches of snow and ice today. So it's hard to tell what we will end up with by the end of the day. I'm just glad we don't have to go anywhere today, unless of course there is another accident or fire... we just never know.

Our family has grown again

Somehow I failed to mention that we added to our furfamily last week. I was looking for a buck for my one doe ... long story short... I found one. But I also found one of the biggest goofiest goats I have ever met in my life. So, we just had to bring him home too. :-s

First I'll introduce you to Burner, the buck. I'm not fond of the name but that is the one he came with. I am told he is an eight month old Oberhasli. I think he is quite handsome and I think deep down he does too, but so far has been to bashful to show it.

In this picture he was challenging the other goat, that is why he looks all distorted.

Now meet "Lucky"! He is the biggest, fattest Nubian I have ever seen in my life. You really cant get an idea of how big he really is in this picture, but trust me he must weigh over 200 pounds. I'll try to get a picture of him next to the other goats as a comparison. Granted he is a wether and 8 or 9 yrs old. But he is a big baby and I can tell he is going to be the personality of the barn.
This picture was taken the first day we brought Lucky home and he was checking out the geese. As you can see they were not to keen on meeting him.

Lucky really needes his hooves trimmed and I will be doing that tomorrow as that is when I will have help to hold him. I would have had it done by now, but he is too big to fit in my goat stantion.

All of this just today

When I left the house yesterday morning at 5:50 a.m. to go to work it had just started snowing and there was barely a dusting of snow on the back steps. This is what I found when I got back home at 3:00 p.m. When had snow last week but during the week the temps had risen and we got rain so the ground was bare again .... until this morning!

It could have been worse the prediction was for 8 to 10 inches for the day, so we got pretty lucky. After shoveling a path to the barn and feeding all the animals I took this picture of Ace (the Jack Russell) and Dawson (the Aussie) in the snow, on the way back to the house.

As you can see I didn't make a very wide path (I hate shoveling). All the tracks on the right hand side of the picture are from Dawson and Ace playing. By the time I took the picture Ace was starting to get cold and had stopped running around like a lunatic. I'm still curious to see how he will react to the snow when we get a real storm and it piles up higher then he is tall.

I've been AWOL

Sorry I disappeared on all of you. I'll try to keep up on posts now.

Thanksgiving was great. We went to Mom and Dad's and there were only half the number of people as usual but we had a good time, and lots of good food.

The Monday after Thanksgiving is the start of a two week deer hunting season here in Pennsylvania.

I can't believe it but I finally shot a buck with antlers (My very first set of antlers).
A seven point with a 15 1/2 inch spread. We didn't weigh him but we are guessing his dressed wieght was about 175 lbs.
*T* and I went out back behind the house and I was at "my post" by 6:40 a.m. Monday morning. I shot this buck at 7:18 a.m. I didn't even want to go out that morning, it was cold and supposed to rain... I only went because *T* was so excited about it and told me that he had a good spot for me to sit. (I had a good spot in mind too ... it was warm and dry.... My bed...LOL).
After I shot this deer *T* was more excited then I was... seriously... I really didn't care that it had antlers, I just kept looking at all that meat, a doe would have been just as good.. I don't eat the antlers anyhow :-P
I was back to the same spot Wednesday evening while driving deer for my brother, and paced off the distance the buck was from me when I shot him... he was 50 of my paces away.... roughly 113 feet from me. LOL...Troy is bragging to everyone that the deer dropped like a rock when I shot. I'm not surprised... the deer never knew I was there and he was so close the gunshot alone would have given me a heart attack. At that distance I'd have been ashamed if I hadn't killed him.

Now I've got all this meat to take care of ... it's great. I would like to make some jerky, summer sausage and country sausage too. I'm hoping that we get a couple more deer, between us we have four more doe tags and a buck tag left to fill... wish us luck.

The Turkeys Are Gone

I know ... it has been almost a week since I've posted anything, but I haven't had anything to talk about.

*T* and I butchered the two turkeys Sunday evening... that was interesting, seeing as *T* has never even witnessed poultry of any kind being butchered....lol... I shouldn't have laughed at him but it was funny. I started helping my parents with butchering since I was old enough to pluck feathers, so it is amusing to me to see some one's reaction who has never done this. LOL.... like I said, I should not have laughed at him, but he took it well :-)

We sent the turkeys to be smoked and will have one for Thanksgiving and the other for Christmas. I tried to weigh one of the turkeys on the bathroom scale but I'm not sure how accurate that was. The scale said it weighed 28 pounds, dressed, but I'll get the true weight from the slaughter house where we sent them to get smoked. A friend of mine, *R*, works at the slaughterhouse were the birds are being smoked so he took them with him to work last night, and I haven't talked to him to see what the total weights were.

Today I am going to pick up three female rabbits. I have been wanting to get rabbits to raise for meat for quite some time. Our last attempt failed when the female we got last year died from an unknown cause. I still have the male rabbit, so I'm going to try this again.... wish me luck.