Hoffman Homestead

Names

You will take the bottle!  By the 3rd feeding they knew what to do.  It no longer takes 2 of us to hold a calf and feed them, thank goodness!

Now we are trying to come up with names.  I've been warned not to name them if we're going to eat them but it's too hard not to.  Bottle feeding, we're going to get close to them anyway and it's going to be hard no matter what.  Right now the favorites are Buttercup for the heifer and Fezzik for the bull.  We're reading The Princess Bride right now and those names seem quite fitting.

So far our biggest problem with all of our spring time farm activities is keeping up with our normal day to day activities.  I haven't had the energy to run since this last weekend.  I'm not too upset considering I'm getting lots of other exercise.  Laundry is backed up.  The floor badly needs mopping.  And I just need to pick up but I'm tired.  Oh and school.  Yeah, almost forgot about that.  Can we call this week "Life Lessons on the Farm"?

Here are the boys catching some rays on the back porch (we had to move the couches outside for a bit).  They think we should leave them there.  Ahh, no.

Say Moo!

We got our calves today!  Going to the farm to pick them up was a bit disconcerting.  Why didn't anyone tell me calves got big?!  I don't mean big, I mean BIG honkin' BIG.  Ok, maybe I was warned but I didn't know you were serious.

At least for now they are cute.  I felt awful taking a baby away from it's mommy.  Only one of them had a really hard time about it.  He's still sulking, poor guy.

Seriously, is that not the saddest little cow face you've seen?  I want to go give him a hug now.  This little guy isn't so little.  He was born on the 24th (making him 3 days old!!!) and weighs at least 100lbs.  He was the biggest calf out there and about twice the size as our heifer.

And here is my girl.

Love that sweet white face!  We are contemplating keeping her as a mommy cow, breeding her so we have a new calf to raise every year.  She's not a dairy cow so no milk for us :-(

A#1 is trying to make them feel better.  They like getting scratched on the back.

We're working on A#4 saying, "Mooo!"  No go yet.  He still likes to be part of the action.

Tonight after James gets home, we'll give them their first bottles.  Since I'm a bit of a lactivist (breastfeeding advocate), it seems sooooo incredibly wrong.  I am a bad person.

Spring, finally.

Finally, spring is actually here!  It got to 70F, the sun was shining, it was just a beautiful day.  We took advantage of it and headed out to the garden.  James and I dug up our 2 smaller plots which will be home to our salad and herbs.  

We cleared out the goat's old pen and put the chickens and ducks there.  They are finally big enough to be outside full-time.  This won't be their final home as James and I are planning on building some chicken tractors that we can pull around the yard.  But for the time being, this is their home.  

All cozy.

This next week I plan on plotting out our other beds and preparing the soil.

A#4 was a big helper.  

These are some of our seedlings.  The wind here worries me.  I tried setting them out on a not too breezy day and almost killed the tomatoes and peppers.  We'll hardy them up with a fan inside and work up to putting them outside.

I even dyed a skein of yarn today in left over Easter Egg dye.  I used onion skins and paprika.

Yesterday was A#4's first birthday.  I can't believe how fast this year went by!

First bite of cake (made with all natural, healthy ingredients of course).

I think he liked it :-)