Completion

About a week ago, we bought two more nanny goats. We needed a couple more to complete our herd. These two that we bought are Nubian cross. Nubian goats are dual purpose breeds but tend to be used more for their milk than meat. Since they are not full blood nubian it is hard to know if they will be useful as milk goats or not. We think it would be nice to have a dairy goat at some point in order to have some goat milk. Who knows, maybe one of these will turn out to be a good milker. They seem to be really nice goats so far. One cool thing about these two is their coloration. Here are some pics.

My favorite is the black one with brown markings, her coloring is really cool.


Here is a close up of the black one.

More Veggies and Heat

The garden has just started to get really cranking. We have canned 40 cans of green beans so far. We have also been getting squash, zucchini, peppers, and cucumbers. Hopefully we will can some pickles this weekend. The tomatoes, corn, watermelon, and cantaloupe are doing really well also. There is only one problem. We are having one heck of a hot and dry spell. The weather right now is more like late July or early August. It is like 10 degrees hotter than normal. We have been in the upper 90's for over a week now and it is supposed to continue to be that hot as far as the meteorologist can foresee. This would be ok if we were getting rain but we are not and once again the meteorologist does not predict rain any time soon. The garden and plants are really starting to dry out. Usually I don't have to water for another month. Even our grass is starting to die. If we go a couple more weeks without rain I will have to start feeding hay in the summer.

One more day

The Razorbacks did not play today. There next game is tomorrow evening. So, we decided to do some other things in Omaha. This morning we went to the Zoo because we heard it is really good. It is right next door to the stadium where the college world series is going on. It was a pretty good zoo. I don't think it was the best we have been to but it was in the top few. We did get to see a one day old sea lion which was pretty cool. After the zoo we went over to the stadium and went to the North Carolina vs. Arizona State game. We did not stay for all of it since we don't have any connection to either of the teams and did not really care who won. The razorbacks have already beat Arizona State twice this year. After we left the game we went to a local ice cream place. It is called Ecreamery. They are doing an ice cream world series where they make up a special ice cream treat for each of the teams in the CWS and the one that gets bought the most wins the ice cream world series. We saw about it on an Omaha local news station yesterday. We got the Arkansas Razorback one of course which was vanilla ice cream with butterfinger and toffee pieces with peanut butter chips and red sprinkles. It was pretty good. After that we came back to the not so Super 8 and took a nap. For dinner we went to a local seafood restaurant that was really good. Tomorrow the plan is to go to the Razorback game at 6pm and then drive home after the game. Which means we will get home between 3am-4am. We need to go to work on Tuesday so that is going to be a rough turn around. There is a good chance of rain tomorrow so if the game gets postponed even a little while we will probably have to go ahead and come on home and miss the game. So, hopefully it won't rain and we won't fall asleep at the wheel.

Awesome Game

Today was the first day of the College World Series and the first game was the Razorbacks vs. Cal State Fullerton. We had general admission tickets, which are all in the outfield. At the CWS they oversell the general admission tickets and the tickets are good for any game. Therefore, it is first come first serve on seats. They stop letting people in when the seats are full. We were unsure how early we would have to get in line to make sure and get seats so we decided to go really early. We got in line about 3.5 hours before game time, which is 1.5 hours before they even let you in the stadium. We were semi close to the front of the line and got pretty good seats. We were in right field on the second row for half the game and then the first row for the rest of the game after some people left. It was a great game for the razorbacks. We were the underdogs but we played really well and ended up winning 10-6. Now we play our second game on Monday at 6pm. We have decided to stay for that game and come home after it is over. That will put us getting home between 3am and 4am. And we need to go to work on Tuesday so that is going to be a rough day. But, it is one of those once in a blue moon things so we are up for it. After the game we went back to the hotel to wash off the layers of sunscreen and then went to Omaha's downtown area for dinner. It was a pretty nice area, it looked like they are working on revitalizing it. We ate at a pretty good brewery and then went and got some coffee at a coffee shop. Now for some pics from the game.

Proof that we really are here (I think Russ thought we were just putting him on)


This is during the game


Here is the final scoreboard showing our win

Take me out to the ballgame

Guess where we are? Margo and I came up with the crazy idea this week to go to the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska. The Razorbacks are in it this year which is awesome. We checked into tickets and motels and we were able to find a motel in Omaha even though we just decided a couple days ago to come. We left after work today and just arrived a little bit ago. It took us right at 6 hours. The Razorbacks play Cal State Fullerton tomorrow at 1pm and then win or loose they will play again on Monday. So, we are going to stay for the game on Monday and then drive home. We are going to try to hit some other games as well. We got a booklet of 10 tickets that we can use for any games. There are 8 teams in the tournament. The motel we are staying at is a Super 8. Super 8 is not so super but it will do for this trip.

This is one of the scary treasures in our room. I am trying to dare Margo into sitting in it.


Stay tuned for more updates.

Crazy Sky

We had a pretty big storm come through last night around 7:30 or so. We got some much needed rain which was good. After the storm passed, it was still cloudy but the setting sun was pushing some light through the clouds. It made the sky a crazy red/pink/purple/orange color. It was amazing, I have never seen the sky that color before. I took some pictures which turned out ok but they do not do it justice. I hope some of you in NWA got to see it last night, it was awesome. Here are a couple pics. Have I mentioned that it was amazing.

Garden Update

The garden is doing pretty good. For some reason, I have had a problem with my corn this year. I hope it turns out okay in the end but it has been struggling. Everything else seems to be doing pretty good. We have small green tomatoes on the vine and we should have squash and zucchini towards the end of this week. I am happy it is the time of year again for fresh veggies. Here are things that we got this week.

We harvested our garlic a couple days ago. It turned out pretty good. I planted less this year because I had way to much last year. Our favorite way to store it is to take the skins off the cloves and then put the cloves through a food processor to chop it up. Then we put it in zip lock bags, flatten it out and freeze it. Whenever we need some for cooking we just break off a piece of frozen chopped up garlic and use it. It works really well this way and is a lot easier to store and use.


Yesterday we picked our first green beans of the season, and this evening we canned them.

A tale of two billies

It seems that the Farm of Hale as acquired two billies. We don't need two billies for any reason, one does the job just fine. But "need" and "want" are two different things. Here is the story. We needed a new billy goat for this year. We are keeping some of our girl babies from this past year so we can not keep the billy we had because he would be breeding his daughters. And nobody wants that. So, we needed a new billy. We came across one in the paper for sale that I really wanted. He is a 50% Kiko billy. Kiko is a breed of goat that I really like and would like to get in to. I went and looked at him and he was for sale for a pretty decent price so I bought him. Here he is...

I think he is going to be a really big goat. He is only about 4 months old and he is triple the size of our four month old goats. I am excited to see how big he gets. We decided to name him Albi. His name is actually longer than that but Margo won't let me put it on here so if you want to know you will have to email me or ask me in person. You can probably figure it out and understand where the name comes from if you click here.

Now for the story of billy number two. I was talking to one of our neighbors about buying some of their sheep. They also have a couple dairy goats and they had a male kid born this year that was a really good looking goat. I commented on how good he looked and they asked if I wanted him. I told them I had a billy already. They said they would make me a really good deal. They would like to keep him but they wanted to wait a year before they start using him for breeding. So, if I would house him for a year for them I could use him to breed to my goats this year for free. You may ask, why do I want this billy when I just bought a billy. Well, here is my thinking. I can breed this dairy breed billy to my goats this year and the babies will be half dairy goat and half meat goat which I think would be good to have. So, I would keep any girl babies that he has with my current nanny goats. They would be good mothers and if I wanted I might be able to milk them as well. Then I could breed those half dairy half meat goats to my half kiko and they should produce the ultimate baby goat. At least that is what I hope. I know all of this sounds crazy to you, but to me it sounds fun.

Here is billy number two that we will breed to our goats this year. His name was Valentine because he was born on Valentine's Day. We thought he needed a more manly name so we changed it to Valentino. He is really nice.

New Fence and Learn to Farm Day

We put up a new cross fence last week. We had been using an electric fence as a cross fence but it did not work out as well as we wanted. It did not work for the things we really needed it for like weaning the baby goats and keeping the billy goat away from the nanny goats when we did not want them breeding. They would go right through in those instances when they really wanted to. So, we finally decided to build a real cross fence. We put it up pretty fast, it took us about four evenings after work. I am really happy to have a good cross fence, it really helps a lot and it looks a lot better than the electric fence. Here is a pic.



I also wanted to announce another Learn to Farm day this Saturday. We will be fixing fence. We have one more section of fence that we need to fix that was damaged in the ice storm. This will require taking down the section that is messed up and putting up a new section and stretching it. At the same time I need to cut down a tree that is behind the chicken coop that is dieing. The only direction that I can make the tree fall is in the direction of this fence that needs to be fixed. So, I am going to cut it in the middle of taking down the old fence and putting up the new. If any of you are interested in learning how to put of fence or want to help cut a tree in a very precise direction you should come on out to the farm. We are planning on doing this on Saturday morning so if you want to help let us know.

Fresh From the Garden

Sugar Snap Peas!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Yum

Time again for my least favorite farm job

That's right, hauling hay. I have always severely disliked hauling hay. Although it is not as bad now as when I was a kid. Growing up we hauled lots of hay and I was not the strongest kid in the world so it was really hard for me. I really hated it growing up. These days on the Farm of Hale we only get around 150 bales each year which is not too bad, and I have pythons for arms now so it is not as hard. The worst thing is that it is so hot out on the hay field. Anyway, Saturday we went and hauled 100 bales. It was really good hay and we got a really good price on it so that was good. What really made hauling hay not so bad this time around was I had someone else to help me besides Margo. Usually, Margo drives the truck and I load the hay. This takes a long time because I have to load and stack it all and usually I can not stack it as high because I need someone up on top of the hay on the trailer stacking it as I throw it up. Well, this time one of my friends volunteered to help me. He had never hauled hay before so I was not sure how it would work out but he did awesome. It was such a big help and it went twice as fast. I was able to do two loads in the amount of time it would usually take me to do one. And I was not nearly as tired afterwards because I was not having to lift every single bale. So, a big shout out goes to my friend Adriel for helping me. Here are a couple pics from the hauling.

This is Adriel up on the top of the hay on the trailer.


Here we are after we loaded the second load

New Sheeps

We got some new sheep over the weekend. One of our ewes we already had did not have any babies this year. I am not sure why she didn't but we are not going to keep her if she does not have babies. So, we are going to sell her, so let us know if anyone you know wants a ewe. We bought a new ewe to replace her and this new ewe has a baby ram. It's a ram lamb. We castrated the little ram and we plan on eating him when he gets bigger, but for now he is really cute. Here are some pics of the new ones.

Here is the new ewe and the ram lamb together.


Here is a close up of the ram lamb

Billy Goat for Sale

Tell your friends. We are getting a new billy goat so we need to sell our current billy goat. He is a good sized goat and nice. He likes to breed. $50 buys him.

Goodbye Gob

Well, Monday marked the final day of our cow Gob's (pronounced Job like in the Bible) life. It was time for him to go to the butcher to be turned in to delicious cuts of beef. He will soon be in our freezer and then to our tummies and the tummies of those lucky people who get invited over. Beef, it's what's for dinner. Anyway, he was a pretty good cow overall. Didn't get into to much trouble, although he was a little standoffish.

Here he is when we first bought him.


And this is a pic of him on butcher day eve.

Baseball Fun

I know this is not farm related but I have been meaning to post about the Razorback baseball game we went to last Tuesday but I am just now getting around to it. What makes this baseball game more blog worthy then any of the other baseball games we go to throughout the year is where we got to sit. We were able to "acquire" a luxury box for the game. These are usually owned by businesses or rich people. I have never been in one for a game before. We got 20 tickets with the box so we decided to make a community group (our church small group) outing. It was really awesome. There was an inside part with chairs, tables, and tv's. There was also an outside part with seats and the doors between the inside and outside parts would totally open up to make the whole thing open air. All the food was included in the package deal as well. We had hotdogs, bratwurst, cokes, candy, nachos, beer, ice cream. It was really awesome and so much fun. I wish I had the money to get one of those boxes for all the games. Here are some pics from our time at the game.

Inside


Outside


Our view


The hog mascot even came to our box to see us

I'm Not Dead Yet

I know it has been a while since I have posted. Not a whole lot has been going on around here because it has been raining for it seems like forever. I was getting so tired of the rain. Finally though, the sun came out today and it is supposed to be sunny for the rest of the week. I thought I would give you all a mini garden update. The garden has not been doing so well. It has just been so wet for so long. It has rained about everyday for the past 3 weeks. Some of the plants seem to do ok with all the rain but most of them were not growing as well as they should be. And some of the plants even rotted and I had to replant. I hope this week of sun will get the garden back on track. Here are a few pics.

Here is a tomato plant, I think I put in 26 plants


Green Beans


Sugar Snap Peas


Our strawberries have also been getting ripe the past couple weeks, although a good portion of them are rotting before they get ripe because of so much rain


And I will leave you with a flower. I planted these in the fall so this is our first year to have them bloom. I really like them. It is an iris

New Lawn Mower

We decided to try out a new lawn mower (aka cow) in the yard this past week. We are planning on butchering the cow in the next few weeks and we are trying to fatten him up. We decided we would let him in the yard in the evenings while we are home to let him eat grass in the yard. Out in the pasture he has to share grass with the sheep and goats. Our yard has lots of good grass that has been growing like crazy with all this rain. We thought it would help us not have to mow so often and be a good source of really good grass for him. So far it has worked out pretty good except yesterday when he found the strawberry patch and took a few bites out of it. We are not going to do this on a regular basis but we thought we would just experiment with it until we take him to the butcher.

Weekend in Mena

We took a little trip down to Mena this weekend. We wanted to go down and see all the tornado damage and see our friends. It is amazing how much damage the tornado did. There are so many houses and businesses that were damaged and destroyed. And there is debris everywhere. The really sad thing is where it hit is the older part of town and a lot of the people there did not have house insurance. We heard one figure that 35% of the damaged houses did not have insurance. Most of the people in that area are older and retired and don't have the money to tear down the old house and build a new one. So, it remains to be seen what is going to happen to all those people and all those houses. We really feel bad for all the people there. We did not take any pictures of any of the damage partly because there are so many pictures already on the internet and I felt bad taking pictures of people's damaged lives and them trying to clean up. I really hope that the town is able to recover and not become a ghost town because I really like Mena, it is such a nice place.
On a happier note, we were able to see several friends while we were down there which was nice. We stayed with some really good friends and had an awesome time with them. We took a drive on Saturday night in one of their old cars up on Rich Mountain (second tallest mountain in Arkansas) to Queen Wilhelmina Lodge and had coffee. I was a really pleasant and relaxing drive, I really enjoyed it. We took some pics of us with the cool car before we left that I thought I would post.

Last but not least

Our last mama goat had her baby last week. This goat was one of our babies that was born last year. She is a little over a year old. She may have been a little too young when we let her get bred but I think it was close enough. She had some issues having this baby. We got home last Wednesday and she was laying on her side on the pond bank and she was moaning. We went and checked on her and she was trying to have the baby, we could tell she was in real agony. We were not sure how long she had been trying to have it so we gave her a little longer so she could try to have. After a while she had not made any progress and I was getting worried so I decided to help her a little. The feet of the baby goat were just barely hanging out so I grabbed them and pulled. This did not help a whole lot, the mama goat's "opening" did not seem big enough to get that baby out but I knew it was not going to come out any other way. I kept pulling but no progress was made getting the baby out and I was even moving the mama goat as I was pulling. So, I got Margo to hold the mama goat's front legs to keep her from moving while I pulled on the baby. I also tried to stretch out the skin with my hand to make the opening a little bigger for the baby to come out. Finally, after a couple minutes of pulling and stretching, the baby popped out. And as soon as the baby was out, the mama jumped up and ran off. I had to run catch her and bring her back to the baby but she wanted nothing to do with it. I took her and the baby to the barn and penned them up. She did not want to accept the baby. When the baby tried to nurse she would move away and not let it. We had to hold her to let it nurse. To make an already long story short, she would not accept it and every few hours we would have to go down to the barn and hold the mama and force her to let the baby nurse. We hoped that after a few days the mama would get the idea and accept the baby and let it nurse. Well, today it happened, after 5 days she finally started letting the baby nurse. We are very happy not to have to go down to the barn every few hours. I wanted to wait to post pictures of the new baby until we knew how it was going to do and what it's fate would be. Here are some pics.

Mena Tornado Video

Here is a short video of the tornado that hit Mena in case any of you have not seen it.

Lambchop

While we were on vacation, we had our first baby lamb. In case some of you don't know, we have 3 sheep- 2 ewes and 1 ram. They are hair sheep which means they shed their wool so you don't have to shear them. These sheep are used for meat, which I am looking forward to eating. It's mama is very skittish and therefore the baby is to. It is super fast for less than a week old, and I have a hard time catching it (even with my lightening fast speed). It is a boy by the way, he is really cute. Here are some pictures.

Tornado

My hometown of Mena got hit by a tornado last night. It destroyed a lot of stuff, and killed 3 people. There is a lot of damage to some major things like the community college, the hospital, the biggest factory, the junior high, city hall, and the courthouse. It is really sad. It is such a nice little town with lots of old houses and trees. I thought I would post a couple links to some pictures and video footage. Click HERE to see some pictures. Click HERE to see helicopter footage.

Last Day in St Louis

Today was our last full day of our trip, tomorrow we drive home. It was a pretty low key day for us today. We slept in, then went and ate lunch at a pretty cool Irish Pub. After lunch we decided to stop at the big farmers market here which is located in the Soulard district. We usually try to go to the local farmers markets when we take trips. It was a pretty big market but we were not impressed with this one. In most Arkansas farmers markets to sell stuff it has to be grown or produced in Arkansas. At the Fayetteville Farmers Market, it has to be produced in the three county area. This means the stuff you are buying is coming from actual local farmers who produced the goods and supports the local farmer. Based on what we saw at this market, I don't think hardly anything there was produced even in the state and sometimes even in the U.S. We saw maybe two things being sold in the whole market that would be in season right now in Missouri and I am not even sure those things being sold were grown locally. They even had things there like avocados that are only grown in California, and bananas that I don't think are even grown in the U.S. I think it is basically just vendors buying stuff from farmers in other states and marking up the price and selling it at this market. This is basically the same thing grocery stores do, not that I am against grocery stores but I don't think this is how a "farmers market" should be. As a side note, the Fayetteville Farmers market started last week so all of you in the Fayetteville area should go check it out. You might just see us there this Saturday.

Next we went to the Budweiser Factory for the brewery tour. It was pretty impressive to see how big they are and how much beer they make. Their facilities are really nice. The tour was not that exciting, we definitely liked the Coors brewery tour in Colorado much better (and the Schlafly tour was the best).

Tonight we ate at Zia's for dinner which is a Italian Restaurant in the part of town called the Hill which is an old Italian Neighborhood. It was good, especially their fired seafood ravioli. Later after dinner we went to a place called Bailey's Chocolate Bar, I think you can guess what their specialty is by their name. Besides chocolate dessert their specialty is also martinis. I had their signature chocolate martini that was pretty good even though I am not a fan of martinis. Their desserts were really good. Margo had their brownie with ice cream and it could have been the best brownie I have ever had (and I have had a lot of brownies). This has definitely been the trip for eating out.

Tomorrow we head home which will be nice.

Learn to Farm Day

Margo and I will be coming home from our trip tomorrow sometime. I wanted to let you all know that we are planning on planting in the garden on Saturday. We will probably put in most of our veggies this weekend. So, if anyone is interested in helping or learning in the garden come on out. We will probably work on it some in the late morning and in the afternoon. just let us know if you are interested and when you want to come out. Hope to see you Saturday.

Another day in St. Louis

Today was another busy day on our trip. First thing this morning we went to the Missouri Botanical Garden. It was awesome. I think it might be one of the best things we have done. They have all kinds of plants, it is a huge place (79 acres) and really nice. They also have a home gardening area that gave me some good ideas. One really cool thing they had was a huge biodome type thing that had a rain forest in it. I have always wanted to go to the rain forest but never have. It may sound kind of boring to some of you to go to a botanical garden but it is really good and I recommend it to everyone.

After lunch, we went to the St. Louis Zoo which is in Forest Park. Forest Park is a 1300 acre park (50% bigger than Central Park in NYC). Some of the things that are in the park are the zoo, the art museum, Missouri history museum, planetarium, and many other things. The zoo is rated one of the best in the U.S. It was a good zoo, I don't know that it is our favorite zoo we have been to but it was nice. But the best thing about it, it is FREE. I think that is great and the way it should be for all zoos.

In the evening we went to the Loop. It is their cool street in St Louis (kind of like a big Dickson Street for you Fayettenamese people) that has cool local shops, restaurants and music venues. We met up with one of Margo's good friends from high school and her husband and ate at Blueberry Hill which is a famous restaurant and music venue. Chuck Berry plays there regularly. It was alright. After dinner we went across the street and got root beer floats at Fitz's.

It was a good/busy day overall. To see some pictures from today and the rest of our trip, click here.

Busy St. Louis Day #2

We did a lot today, almost too much to talk about. First we went to the old historic courthouse building. It is run by the national park service and gives a history of St. Louis and the westward expansion. It was not anything amazing. Next, we went to the Arch. It was amazing. I think it is one of the coolest architectural things I have ever seen, right up there with the Eiffel Tower. We took the tram ride to the top of the tower which was a little scary since you ride in the huge steel barrel type things that I have to duck in the whole time. It was a pretty smooth ride overall and it was cool to see out the top. It was also very cool to see some of the pictures of them building it. I took lots of pictures of the arch. Next we went to this really old cathedral down the street, it was the first Catholic cathedral west of the Mississippi. They had lots of pictures of the church dating back a long time that showed all the changes that had happened around it which was pretty interesting.

It was then time for lunch. We went to the Schlafly Taproom. It was really good. Margo had a steak sandwich and beer cheese soup and I had a roast beef sandwich with mashed potatoes. We really like their food. It was the restaurant of the brewery we went to yesterday. Have I mentioned that their beer is really good, especially the APA.

After lunch we went to the City Museum which several people had recommended to us. It was amazing. It is probably the coolest place for kids that I have ever seen. It is really hard to explain. It is like a huge McDonalds playland but 1 billion times better and made with wood, cement, metal, and recycled materials. There are all kinds of amazing places to climb and explore and they have some amazing slides. I highly recommend taking your kids there if you are ever in the area.

Next, we went antiquing a little bit. There is a street we read about called Cherokee street that has lots of antique shops. It was pretty good, we bought a couple things. I think I like our antique shops in Arkansas better. As a side note, the best antique stores I have ever been to where in Pennsylvania.

After antiquing we went to Ted Drewes Frozen Custard which is a famous place on old Route 66. It was really good but I did not think it was much different than Shake's in Fayetteville.

After relaxing at the hotel for a little while we went to hang out and have dinner with an old high school friend of mine who lives here, Travis and his wife Emily and their son Owen. It was really fun to hang out with them and reminisce about old times. Travis was president of our senior class and I was vice president. Our 10 year high school class reunion is this year so we worked on planning that a little bit.

We took lots of pictures today but I am having problems uploading them to the blog. I think it has something to do with the crappy hotel internet. I was able to upload the pictures to our Picasa web album so you can check them out there. Just click HERE. Some of the pictures have captions to tell you about them.

We Arrived

Today was the start of our little getaway to St. Louis. We arrived today and we are returning to NWA on Friday. It was cold today so we did not have much planned for today except getting here. The drive was pretty uneventful. We did stop on the way to our hotel at a smaller St. Louis brewery called Schlafly. They do a tour of their brewery and have tastings. They also have a restaurant there and a restaurant downtown, we are going to the downtown one later on in the week. The beer that we tasted at the tour was really good. The hotel we are staying at is the Millennium Hotel which is across the street from the arch. We got a super good deal on it by bidding for it on priceline. We were hoping for an amazing view of the arch like they show on their website but instead we got this view.

Pretty nice, love seeing the interstate and a railroad bridge. I am not complaining though because we got such a good deal on the hotel.

As some of you may know, we love eating out and when we travel to somewhere we love to try out local restaurants. Thanks to my old high school buddy Travis (more about him in a later post) who gave us several suggestions of places to try. We have several places we are going to try out while we are here. Tonight we tried out a pizza place called Joanie's Pizzeria in a part of St. Louis called Soulard which is an old Irish part of town I think. It was really good. We had a double crust pizza which has a crust on top and bottom.

As a side note, we made one of our best purchases ever a few weeks ago. We are realizing how great of a purchase it was on this trip. We bought a Garmin GPS thing. It is awesome in directing us to where we want to go and if we get off our route for some reason, it automatically recalculates to get you back to where you should be going. It has already saved like ten fights between Margo and I because I am usually yelling at her for not being able to read the map while I am driving and tell us where to go. We downloaded from google maps all the places we wanted to go while in St. Louis so all we have to do is select one of those places and it takes us there. It is amazing.

I think that is all I have for today. Stay tuned for updates throughout the week.

Deer: 1 - Margo: 0

Well, Margo went deer hunting with her car tonight. The deer won. She was coming home after dark and said it was foggy. Apparently, there was a whole herd of deer on the road and she could not stop in time. She did not hit it that hard because it did not do tons of damage but it is going to have to have some work done. Luckily it was the CRV which we have full coverage on so the insurance will pay for it all. It does not look like it messed up any vital parts, just messed up some exterior pieces. Looking at it in the dark, it looks like the front passenger fender, the hood, front bumper, and grill will all have to be replaced. She didn't kill the deer, so we did not even get any meat out of the deal. The bad news is we are going on vacation leaving Monday. We are driving to St. Louis and we were going to take the CRV but I don't think I want to take a messed up car just in case it does have some problem I can't see. So, we might have to take a rental car on our trip. Be sure and give Margo a hard time when you see her, maybe you could call her the deerslayer.

It is hard to see the damage in this picture, but it is messed up

Free Firewood

Yes, you read that correct....FREE. I am not giving away all of our wood, just a little. I cut too much last year for us to use in our wood stove during the winter. We are just about at the end of the wood burning year and I still have 3 or so rick of seasoned wood left. I don't really need to save it for next year because we have tons we have been cutting up after the ice storm to use next year. I just thought that some of you might like to have some if you were going camping sometime or you needed it for your home firepit this spring. The wood I am giving away is seasoned and ready to burn. Let me know if you want some and you can come get it sometime or if I am going to see you, I can bring some to you.

Easter Goats for Sale

These really aren't any different than regular goats, it is just that it is close to easter. We have been seeing people trying to sell "Easter bunnies" so we thought it might work to sell our goats as "Easter goats". We have decided to change around our goat herd a little this year so we are selling three of our grown nannies at this time. I will have some of this years kids and our billy for sale coming up in a couple months as well. I am putting pictures and description with prices of the goats up on our website. On the for sale page, click on animals for sale . If you know anyone that might be interested send them our way.

New Birds

On Sunday we acquired some new chickens and ducks. We had been looking for additional ducks for a while. We were down to one lone duck because something had caught our other two. We didn't really want to have to get babies and raise them but we were about to that point because we could not find adult ones for sale anywhere. Finally last week someone on craigslist advertised grown ducks for sale. When Margo called her she said she also had chickens for sale. So we bought all the ducks and chickens they had because the price was so good. We got 5 ducks (3 males and 2 females) and 9 chickens (1 rooster, 8 hens). Now we have a total of 15 chickens and 6 ducks. We are going to get rid of three of the chickens soon, I have traded them in exchange for borrowing a wood splitter for a few weeks from a friend at work. I am not sure if we will keep the rooster or not, it just depends on how annoying he is. We are getting a lot more eggs now. And I really like having ducks around, I like the sounds that they make.

Here are the ducks


Here are some of the new chickens

Learn to Farm Day

Tomorrow (Saturday), we will be having another day for people to come out and learn on the farm. We are actually not doing anything that involves a lot of learning but it is more of a fun thing. At least to me it is a fun thing and I thought some other people might enjoy it as well. I have borrowed a hydraulic wood splitter from a friend and we are going to be splitting a lot of wood, weather permitting. So, if anyone has any interest in helping split a bunch wood with a wood splitter come on out Saturday morning. If it rains we will not be splitting but will be doing inside out of the rain type things.

First

We had the first fresh veggies of the year from the garden yesterday. And even more exciting is this is the first time we have had this vegetable from our garden. Any guesses? That's right....ASPARAGUS. I planted it last year in a special bed I built for it in the garden. It takes it at least a year to get established and produce pieces big enough to eat. We got three pieces and they were yummy. Hopefully we will much more in the weeks to come. We are looking forward to the months ahead of gardening and more fresh veggies.

Happy St. Patty's Day

I hope everyone has a good St. Patrick's Day. I wanted to post a St. Patrick's related video that a friend, Travis, had on his blog last year. This video is so funny to me and is one of my favorite videos of all time.

Springtime

We are very excited that spring is well on its way. Even though it snowed some today, it has been getting a lot warmer and some of the trees and flowers are starting to bud out and bloom. Another sign of spring that I really enjoy is the frogs are back at the pond calling. One big project we have been working on is planting grass seed the past week or so. I have cleared out some areas this past year in order to get more grass growing for the animals. I have been moving around the hay feeder all winter and throwing out grass seed around it whenever I move it to a new area which has worked well for me establishing grass. Some of the grass from doing that is already starting to come up. This past week or so Margo and I have been going around spreading grass seed on bare areas and then raking it in. Some of it that we raked in a week or so ago is already starting to come up. Hopefully a lot of it will do well so we will have more grass for the animals and maybe even be able to have more animals. Another exciting thing about this time of the year is it is garden time. I have been planning out the garden and deciding what I am going to plant and what is going to go where. I have already planted a few of the cool season veggies. I put in my onions and planted some lettuce seed last week. The lettuce I do is a mesclun mix. Last year I had problems with lots of grass and weeds getting in the bed with the lettuce. I decided to do it in containers this year in hopes of preventing that from happening so I thought I would try making some planters. I cut down a oak tree a while back that was hollow and I did not cut it up in case I wanted to use it for something. I cut a section out of it and split it in half with my froe. Then I cut some thin sections off a solid piece of wood and attached them as ends. It may not be pretty but I hope it works well for my lettuce. Here is a pic.

The Farm of Hale is Worldwide

Sorry it has been a while since I have posted anything. We have had lots of stuff going on here at the farm but nothing too exciting. I will try to do better at posting more often. I wanted to tell you all something I think is amazing and really cool. On my last post about learning to farm I got a comment from a lady that said she was excited about the learn to farm opportunity but sad because she would not be able to attend because she lives in the UK. That's right another country, across the Atlantic. And it is not like this is one of our friends that lives over there, like Walt and Annie who live in Germany and read our blog (at least I think they do). This is someone I don't know and have never met before. Her name is Danielle Gohin and she is a science technician (teacher type person maybe?) at a school. She has a blog, click here to see it. Our blog is on her list of blogs she follows. I think this is really awesome that somebody that does not know us in a different part of the world follows our blog. It makes me wonder if there are other people out there who don't know us that follow our blog and I wonder how they came across it. If there is anyone else out there who reads our blog, who we don't know, I would love for you to leave a comment so I can find out if there are others out there.

Learn to Farm

I had an idea the other day. We often have people tell us that they would like to learn some of the stuff we do on the farm such as taking care of animals, gardening, etc. It gave me the idea that when we have stuff that people might be interested in helping with, we should plan on doing those things on Saturdays and invite people to come out and help/learn if they want. This isn't a situation that we are saying we need help to do these things (although extra help is always nice). We just thought we would open it up so if people had interest in what we are doing they can come check it out. So, this weekend will be our first "Learn to Farm" Saturday. This Saturday, we are planning on doing goat care. We are going to check all the goats to see if their hooves need to be trimmed, check to see if they need to be wormed and worm if needed, and castrate the baby goats that need to be castrated. Sounds like fun doesn't it. If this sounds like something you might be interested in checking out, send us an email or leave a comment and I will let you know what time. Who knows we might even let you stay for dinner. If it rains all day Saturday, we will do it a different day.

The Reality of Farm Life

Farm life isn't always good times. Sometimes unhappy things happen. This evening one of those things happened. A baby goat died. I am not sure why it died, it was very unexpected. Yesterday it was doing great and today when I got home from work, it was mostly dead. I tried to save it but I don't think it was anything I could have helped. I don't think it was sick. The only thing Margo and I can think of that might have happened is that it got butted really hard by one of the bigger goats or it got stepped on or kicked accidentally by the cow. The reason we think that might have been what happened is because it could not stand up or control it's body but it still looked healthy, it's eyes looked fine and it's ears were still perky and moving around. It would not nurse or swallow when I tried to force feed it. It seemed to me like it was a brain injury, spinal injury, or other major internal injury. I guess we will never know for sure. I don't always make a big deal out of a baby goat dieing since that kind of thing tends to happen but this was a special baby goat, and that is the extra bad news. This baby goat was everyone's favorite. It was the baby goat we referred to as Yoda, the brown one with the ears that stuck straight up. We are very sad, we really liked him. We had even talked about wanting to keep him even though he was a boy and we only keep girls. But, that's life on the farm.

New Cabinet

Sorry it has been so long since the last post. Not a lot of exciting stuff has been going on around here. We have still been trying to get the place cleaned up from Mr. Ice Storm. I will have a few posts to make this week though so be sure and check back. One thing I started working on before the ice storm that got interrupted was I was building a new cabinet for the house and more specifically the dining area of the house. Those of you who have been here know that we have one big open room that is the entry, living room, piano room, kitchen, and dining room all in one. One thing we wish we had more of is kitchen cabinets/storage. I built a cabinet for the kitchen a while back that matched our kitchen cabinets to help with this. This new cabinet was the next piece to help solve that issue. I finally got time this past week to finish it up and I was able to debut it for our Valentine's Party at our house on Friday night. I built it with oak so it should be pretty solid. I tried to stain it close to the same color as our table and chairs, barstools and behind the couch table. They are all a dark walnut/cappuccino color. This proved to be more difficult than I thought it would be because those things are all built out of different woods (even thought they are all basically the same color). The table and chairs are out of parawood, which is a type of wood I really like but isn't readily available around here in lumber form, the barstools are pine and the couch table is mostly veneer. I am going to pause here in talking about the new cabinet to talk about parawood since I am sure lots of you don't know about it or have never heard of it. Parawood comes from the rubber tree which is the tree they extract sap from that makes natural rubber. After many years of harvesting the sap for rubber, the trees get old and stop producing very much sap and so they are useless for their primary purpose. Someone discovered that this wood of the old rubber trees is great for making furniture. It has a dense grain (comparable hardness to maple), minimal shrinkage, attractive color and acceptance of different finishes. I am a big fan of it and wish I could get it to build furniture. Now, back to the cabinet. I could not find a stain that would match the color of the other furniture so I had to use 3 different colors of stain layered to get close to the right color: first coat of dark walnut, next was red mahogany, and then dark oak. It is not an exact match but it is close. I think this might be my best piece of furniture I have built to date. The design I came up with worked out well, it came together really well and it looks good without very many mistakes. I think it is definitely something that we will hang on to for a long time. I enjoy designing and making furniture. Maybe one of these days I will get some more and better tools to be able to make all kinds of furniture. Since this post is getting long, I will get to the pictures.

Here it is.


Side view


Open View- it holds lots of stuff which is what we needed


As you can see I made the top part of it a 6 bottle wine rack, I like that part the best.

The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Electricity

Finally, on day eight after Ice Storm 2009 we came home to electricity. It was a very welcome sight. We have really enjoyed staying with friends this past week but it is nice to move back into our house. It got really tiring going back and forth everyday and not being in our own bed. I wanted to say thanks again to everyone who let us stay at your house and fed us meals. And to everyone who offered help to us. I wanted to give a special shout out to Adam and Sarah who we stayed with most of the time and who let us store our freezer and refrigerator stuff at their house. It is really awesome how great everyone was in offering to help us out, I think we have some of the most awesome friends in the world.

Here is a great old music video for all of you to watch in celebration of us getting our power back.

Chainsaw Massacre

We still don't have power. The power company said they hope to have 90% of the customers back with power by the end of the week. I hope I am in the 90%. I want to give a special thanks again to everyone that has helped us out and let us stay with you and cooked us meals. I also want to give an extra special thanks to everyone who came to the farm and helped us out on Saturday cleaning up limbs and trees. We had five people besides us helping out. We got a lot of stuff cleaned up, it would have taken Margo and I like three weeks to get done what we did on Saturday. I cut up trees for five hours straight while everyone else stacked brush. We also have been going around helping other people get their trees cut up and yards cleaned. I am so sore from sawing up trees, that is all I have been doing the past 3 days but there is so much more to do. I have never seen so many trees and limbs down.

Here we are out on the farm cleaning up on Saturday.