April Freshens

Have you been wondering about our dairy herd?

I thought you might be.

I had to stop milking at the end of January because of my pregnancy. Extreme morning sickness and cows, manure, ballage, hay and even the milk did not mix well for me. Actually when I'm pregnant, all smells become my enemies - even some of my favorite things. Sadly, many things are ruined for me for life because even after the baby is born, I still have an aversion to that particular smell. I've lost more favorite candles that way. 

And so I had to quit milking.

We dried the girls in February anyway. For the last two months of their pregnancies dairy cows are not milked so all their nutrients can go into their developing calves. We dry all our girls at the same time, so there are two months without milk, and then they should all start up about the same time when they freshen.

The cows, if bred on time should all freshen in April - that is, give birth - and they are surprisingly accurate with their due date. If she's due on the 12th, she'll most likely freshen on the 12th. All but one of the girls bred on time and should freshen this month. One of them will freshen next month. 

A few days after the calf is born, he is removed from his mother and bottle fed and she is milked for human consumption.

Meet our new babies!

Jack, a bull calf, was the first to arrive from our yearling heifer Jiffy Pop. Being a first time mama, and a bit persnickety, she wouldn't let him nurse for a couple of days so Jack was bottlefed from day one. This is a very tiresome process for the farmer since babies are almost constantly attached to the teat!

Blackie freshened with Black Jack another bull calf just a few days later. When the farmer found him the morning of his birth, he was running around kicking up his heals. He's a very robust boy.

Five days overdue, Quatro's heifer calf came early Easter morning. So much for bulls coming late and heifers coming early!

She's so tiny!

Lola's hiefer just minutes old.

As far as I know, the new little girls don't have names yet. 

The heifers will be kept to grow our herd and one of the bulls will be our stud in 2010. He can be bred to everyone except a sister.

That's the news from the farm for now, though I think we're expecting four more in the next week or two.

Our first milk delivery should be next weekend and we are so looking forward to that rich, creamy, full fat, raw organic milk! 

*edit: the vet was out to the farm yesterday and Rosie and Lucy look like they won't freshen until May. But Rosie does have a big calf, so she may be ready in 10 days after all and she may just be a cow whose utter fills at the last minute. 

And I forgot that the large Dutch belted Gator was traded for a smaller Buttercup and she's due in May too. And poor Popcorn had to be butchered, so I guess we're only waiting for three more babies.

The day she was born

Four years ago, we had just had twelve trees felled around the property. 

Doesn't that sound like we have a lot of land?

Actually eight of them were a tangled line of various volunteer trees, planted by birds perched on the power lines. Over the years, no one bothered to remove the saplings from growing up through the chain link fence dividing our property from the neighbor's. 

Three silver maples across the front tree lawn were dying thanks to carpenter ants. 

One was a badly splitting pear tree in the back yard - a highrise for termites and ants.

Our arborist (uh, husbandman . . . uh, tree doctor . . .?) hauled away most of the tonage, but neighbors and family members had spoken for some fire wood. So that morning my boy, my mom and I were carefully making piles of firewood and loading her truck. 

By 11:30 we were done and came inside for drinks. My water broke - two weeks early- and immediately hard and heavy labor set in.

I jumped in the shower to get cleaned up because I was not going to give birth smelling like a sweaty lumberjack, while mom tried to get Josh out of a meeting. 

With work only 7 minutes away, and the hospital only 5 minutes away, we still barely made it. I was creeping along the hall ways to delivery while nurses asked if I wanted a wheelchair. 

Who wants to sit down when such radical things are going on where you're supposed to be sitting? I made it to the room and remember waiting bent over the bed trying to get on top of the contractions while nurses fluttered in and out asking me to 'sign this' and 'please change into this' and 'move so they could get the monitor around my belly to make sure I was in labor.'

At this point I couldn't even speak, so I was very grateful that my mom was there. She had someone filling the tub to prepare for the water birth while having the other nurse get on the floor with me if she really needed to strap that monitor on.

I think we were only in the hospital 30-45 minutes when my baby was born. Only 1 hour and 50 minutes from the moment my water broke at home.

I cradled the babe for several minutes in the still, dimly lit room. Everything was finally quiet and calm.

My midwife, who had left another mother in labor to attend to my fast delivery, finally broke the silence and asked, "well, what do we have?"

I loosened my grasp enough to look and then announced, "She's a girl!" 

And that's my boy telling me what a good job I did.

four is FOUR!

Four years ago today, my first daughter was born.

Bronwen Ebril Elise

Her name means pure heart born in April consecrated to God

My darling girl, you are such a joy- a light in my life - and I am so grateful for you!

You are so excited to be four.

You were really good at being three . . . I can't wait to see what four is like.

But don't grow up too quickly, please.

Resurrection Day

"And at last, the enemy to be destroyed is death.

Then when our dying bodies have been transformed into bodies that will never die, this scripture will be fulfilled: 'Death is swallowed up in victory.' [Is. 25:8]

O Death, where is your victory?

O Grave where is your sting?

For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin it's power.

But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ."

~I Corinthians 15: 26, 54-57

First Communion

Something extraordinary happened this week at the Passover Seder. 

It suddenly stuck me as we sat there that this celebration of Christ's last supper, his Passover Seder, His first communion would be Noah's first communion as well. 

It made it so meaningful, so real for our boy.

We didn't mean to make it a big deal. We just had not yet encouraged him to partake when the rest of the congregation did, wanting to make sure he understood the specialness of his actions.

Oh dear one, if you've never been to a Messianic Passover Seder, I encourage you to make it part of your Holy week next year. I think you will most likely never see Easter, or take communion in the same way again.

Photography courtesy of Christine

Passover

“In honor of the Lord your God, celebrate the Passover each year in the early spring, in the month of Abib, for that was the month in which the Lord your God brought you out of Egypt by night.

Your Passover sacrifice may be from either the flock or the herd, and it must be sacrificed to the Lord your God at the designated place of worship—the place he chooses for his name to be honored. 

 Eat it with bread made without yeast. For seven days the bread you eat must be made without yeast, as when you escaped from Egypt in such a hurry. Eat this bread—the bread of suffering—so that as long as you live you will remember the day you departed from Egypt." 

~Deuteronomy 16:1-3

" Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed for us."

"So let us celebrate the festival, not with the old bread of wickedness and evil, but with the new bread of sincerity and truth."

~ I Corinthians 5:7b,8

Passover begins tonight at sundown.

Sprout

It occurred to me that I still have not written anything about something else that is sprouting around here. That would be me and the newest member of our family, "Sprout", due to arrive in early August.

We delayed in making the news known until we could make sure that our children, well Bronwen, was ready to handle this knowledge. (Until recently she was still checking into the possibility of sending Annabelle back from whence she came.)

Happily, Bronwen was very excited and actually wants a brother!

And that is why I've added the new ticker at the top of this page.

Spring birthdays

This year my girls will celebrate their birthdays with one party. 

The little pixies are in for a treat!

edit: Saturday morning, Bronwen had a friend over for a pixie tea party. These fairy tutus were very simple to make and each girl wore one. The girls collected treasures from the back yard in a little pouch and then came in for a little manicure. They were allowed to take their tea in the front room where food is usually verboten. 

Saturday evening the family came over to celebrate both girls, Annabelle turned two last week and Bronwen will be four in two weeks.

The kids enjoyed another treasure hunt in the back yard before coming in for dinner.

It was a really sweet day. Thank you my dear family for making my girls feel so special.

(I borrowed these pictures from Christine because I still cannot download my own pictures.)

Two

Dear little Annabelle turned two today. 

It's difficult for me to believe that two years have passed since you joined our little family darling girl.

You are such a joy to love and I'm so glad that God sent you to us!

Ahh, Spring!

Because of the new front porch being poured last summer, I was unsure if any of my bulbs survived. The men were digging and tramping all over my spring flower beds. 

But wonder of wonders, I have many survivors and the tulips actually beat the daffodils and the crocus in pushing their tips through the soil. Refusing to be bested, the crocus gave an extra push and bloomed first and in the back a daffodil had the last laugh, blooming before the hyacinths.

What joy Spring!

Renewal and Remembrance

Spring is here and with that great expectation of renewed life, my thoughts turn toward an inner renewal of my heart and mind. I've enjoyed reading from and talking with others about what they are doing to prepare themselves for this season of remembering our Savior's sacrifice. 

As this year begins we've made some additions to our spiritual growth. We are observing the Sabbath and Celebrating the Feasts. It is something I hope will become a permanent part of our worship and our spiritual journey while waiting for our eternal home. Our Sabbath is still on Sunday for now but will begin Saturday night with Shabbat meal. I know that purposefully observing a day of rest will be a blessing for my family.

It was to celebrate the Feast of Passover that Jesus entered Jerusalem, on the back of a borrowed donkey, praised as the King of the Jews. He willingly did this knowing that by the end of the week these same people would hand him over to be crucified as their worst criminal. But this was the very reason He came!

He was the sacrifice for us so that we might spend eternity with Him. He had to die to rise again, conquering death, to give us eternity.

"O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"  I Corinthians 15:55

His Passover Seder (the last supper) was a beautiful and literal taste of his prophesied death.

For the last few years we have attended a Passover Seder as part of our observance of Easter. And so this year I am looking forward to celebrating Passover more fully as it takes the place of Easter and we celebrate The Lamb.

Following a new plan

There is such peace and sweetness in the center of His will. Even when well made plans change on the last minute. To anyone on the outside looking in, this might be a good reason for anger, great frustration or fear.  But to one who has also experienced His leading, and obeyed, we share a mutual understanding of the peace that envelopes. 

With just two weeks before ground breaking, our plans to build a new home crumbled. Throughout the whole process, we had been broken before the Lord and had asked that he stop our plans if this is not what He wanted for us.  So when the news came it did not bring the stress and upset. We were very grateful that we were stopped from making a mistake.

So now we look for a new home and He has opened so many doors! In the last week we have seen over a dozen houses of the forty our realtor found for us. This weekend we have at least seven more to visit. It has been a whirl of business as we are also showing our home to prospective tenants who will need to occupy by June.  

Suddenly the slow movements of before have picked up the pace and there is a little more urgency. But we continue to rely on His leading and we will follow.