My daughter Miranda, my son Tommy and great nephew Le'on

This little boy was born this week. He is number 11 of my great nephews. With five older sisters in my family I was bound to become an aunt at an early age. I think I became an aunt at around 5yrs old. One of my nieces ended up being more of a sister to me then me being her aunt.
She calls me Auntie Samanthie most the others Aunt Sam.

I have to this date. 13 nieces, 7 nephews, 19 great nieces, 11 great nephews and one great, great nephew, this is not counting my own two kids which are the youngest of the nephews & nieces in my family. Funny but my kids are growing up with the great nieces and nephews.

Yes my family is very large. When we have thanksgiving at my house my whole living room is full of them, I have to move the sofa’s and everything out of my house just to fit everyone. One of my dreams is to have a large enough living room to fit even more.

Most of my family is here but I still have a few left behind in California where I was born but NOT raised. I have one niece in Virginia along with some great nieces and nephews. My family is so large once long ago as my husband and I drove out of Texas to go see his family in Washington state he commented on how large my family is and if we were in trouble with a flat tire someone from my family could help us no matter where we were, I just laughed.

About an hour later we pulled into a truck stop out in the middle of no where and a huge truck honked at us as we drove in, it happened to be one of my Uncles. I come from a long line of truckers and military family. My husband just looked at me and laughed. I had to agree then, that yes I do have a large family.

This is not even counting my own uncles, aunts, cousins and my husband’s side of the family, with his family we add on more nieces and nephews to our already large clan.

One of my dear friends said once your family is like a big Mexican soap Opera you should write a book about them. I just laugh, yah we have a lot of drama with a big family but with this large of a family what do you expect? The Brady bunch? Even they fought.

I asked my daughter once if she wouldn’t mind having Christmas instead in the mountains of Idaho or Washington for once, her reply was, “And miss being with all my cousins on this day are you kidding?”Guess that answers on how much we love our family.

Water storage and Pears

Yes those are big water jugs 350 gal to be exact. We have been watching them on craigslist and hubby finally found a good deal on them and grabbed two of them.

One of them we are going to use for emergency water storage and the other I think hubby wants to do some kind of aquaponics set up.

The jars in the picture are our bounty from our trees this year. We got two baskets full of pears. They are not very sweet so hubby put a bit of sweetness in them but not a whole lot. It took a long time to ripen them.

Last year we only got one basket full from both small trees; hopefully next year we will get double the amount. Not much going on in the farm, trying to get ready for our vacation and take care of things for my dad before we leave. Chickens are still laying a lot even with this heat here in Texas. I am thinking it’s because I have them close to the orchard this year.

Well that’s about it for the update. Have a great upcoming Sept!

Shearing time

So we emailed someone on the craigslist that said they sheared. We were really excited because we havent been able to find anyone since we got Remulus. We tried to do it ourselfs but it was really hard, and we just didnt have the equipment to do it properly.

The person emailed us said they would be here in two weeks, it would cost $15 to shear and $20 to travel to our area...we were more then willing to pay. The day comes for the person to show up and it ends up being a very tall teenage girl around 13-14yrs old lol, in tow is her lil brother who helps her and her mom and grandma..must be a family thing :)

Anyways she tries once then second time she manages to get the Ram down. After that she starts to shear, and boy does she do a good job. It was great. Remuls looked like a new Ram!

We gave her a $5 tip for doing an awesome job, she told us previous stories of shearing, and how she learned via 4-H on how to shear her own animals.

I was thinking what a great job for her, for the summer and part time work. Most the people that shear around here only do large herds or they are too old now to shear anymore. Its a great business to get into with not only the sheep but the alpacas, and lamas too that belong to hobby farms.

Her mom told me she can clear up to $500 a day! on shearing. Yup I see her college education being paid b4 she even gets out of highschool.

Awesome day. Remulus I know feels soooo much better.

Below b4 Remuls got sheared:



Below after Remuls got sheared:

This was funny its my neighbors house, looks like the cow was delivering mail. Cow express?

Well we had some really high winds through here recently over 70'miles. We fared pretty good. We were on our way from picking up bricks from someone I got thru the craigs list. Its a good thing we had all that weight in the truck it kept the truck steady.

Check out my garden blog later I will have pictures of the bricks and what we will be doing with it. Our neighbor across the street lost her electricty that night. It was around 2am when i saw the CPS trucks around to fix it, by morning she had it back. I cant say the same for people in SA..it took longer for them I wonder why?

Sheep have been eating the fallen leaves like crazy. At least they are not hungry! We recently took 15 sheep to the butcher. We told them to ground it all up, would be easier to sell this way. Next time I am thinking of them doing chops and ground meat. We should be taking another load in by fall or winter..Need to do it b4 hunting season hits.

This is going to help our field a lot having 15 sheep less in our field so the grass can grow. We want to have eventually have only two rams and 20 sheep. We have been working on our garden a lot, we have to do it early in the morning or late at night cuz the heat has been brutal. I think I am going to lose my tomatoes if I dont find some kind of shade for them soon.

Trying to slowly clean up the house, I just havent been motivated but I really need to do it soon, company will be coming over in July so need to really do this, I have been concentrating more outside.

Well thats about the only update now. Need to update my garden blog.

Sam

Spring is coming

Picture: No thats not a buffalo but he does look like one our ram :) We actually will have someone to shear him this June. My chickens are in the back ground


Finally everything is getting greener at our house, the problem with us getting rain is we are getting a late start on our garden. I am hoping it dosent get too hot but its suppose to be in the 90's all this week...sigh.

We got mostly all are garden in just need to plant some more seeds. We need to call the butcher to take in about 15-20 sheep to get them off the grass so the younger ones will have some for a bit til its time to take them to the butcher too. We are trying to downsize our herd to give our fields a break.

Tom has promised to build me a chicken mobile for the garden it has been a long time dream to raise smaller breeds of chickens just for the heck of it. We plan to keep it near the garden to help out with the bug problem this year since we don't spray this would be a perfect idea. Next pay day I have to start collecting pint jars because hopefully when our garden starts to come in we will be doing a lot of canning.

Today I was thinking about my goat barrels. I really miss her. She was such a difficult goat I always had to tie down her back legs when milking her but once they were tied she was quiet and let me milk her. Once Miranda goes to college I might consider getting another one.

I really need to sell more eggs, or even give some away but havent had the time, there is so much to do I am surprised I am even writing this right now. I guess I just needed the mental break. My sons graduation for cubscouts is coming up this Monday so trying to prepare for that too. Summer is coming around the corner really fast. We will probably get a summer pass at the local pool but I heard thru the grapevine some of my family will be getting a summer pass at Seaworld so we might do that now that my son is older and can swim.

My daughter informed me the other day she found lil pecans forming on the trees. Yah us hopefully it will be another good year for pecans. We wont see them falling till Oct I think. We are debating on getting turkeys or not this year. I know my husband wants to raise them but we wont have anyone to watch them while we are away for a bit on vacation. So we really need to think about it.

Thats it for the update for now...really need to get busy doing other stuff.

Sam

Spring stocking up

Well with the start of spring here in South Texas we have been busy trying to fill our freezer & shelfs with goodies. My husband got a great deal with our local butcher someone who shot a pig & deer wanted to combine it in sausage meat but never picked up so after 30days he had to sell it & he just asked to cover the cost of his butchering. Y'all might want to try that with yours too, especiallly 30 days after deer season.

We also got a great deal on a cow $2.75 lb for a half of cow. We went in with a few other familys that got the 1/4 deals. I wish we could have gotten the whole. We also filled up our freezer with three lambs that we just grounded the meat up.



I had bought these garlic in bulk at our down town farmers market, well actually my veggie co-op I am in did that so I put them in olive oil this way it will last plus I can use the yummy olive oil later on in my cooking a long with the garlic.


Our Veggie co-op is doing really well. Each week we pitch in $15 she combines it with other familys and we get our share of goodies. She tries to buy stuff we use every day like pototoes, onions, lettuce..etc..

I put in half of my garden bed its been too wet to do anymore. Twenty one tomotoe plants planted a long with onions in between & marigolds to help keep bugs away. On the other side we put in fresh compost from our sheep I put in two cherry tomatoes and have more to go I am thinking lettuce. We also have another completly empty bed filled with rich compost that I need to fill but I need to plan what I want to plant. I guess I better hurry :)

Our fruit orchard is doing really well, the apples, pears, & plums look like we will have a few to harvest this year. Last yr the apples all fell off :( but we did get pears but we picked them too soon in fear of a huge hail storm coming. I also have black berries growing again this year. Last year I got two hehe..hopefully this yr I will get a bit more but still its growing slowler then I thought it would.

I look forward to posting more on here on how things R going in our neck of the woods this coming spring.

Samantha

Daisy

After much thought and discussion my family and I decided to get ourselfs another dog. We decided on the basset hound breed. My husband has always wanted a basset hound and my son just wanted a hound dog so it worked out. I just wanted a nice family dog that wouldnt growl or bite us and keep watch over my family I think we found her in Daisy.

She is sweet and very smart I think its going to work out as her being our family dog. I have heard nothing but good from people that have basset hounds. My chickens have been laying again. At least 40-50 eggs a day even the old hens are laying. I found me another milk host that I can leave the eggs with her. Some of my old customers are with her. I am happy to see some of my old customers come back to me.

Awhile back I was desperate for eggs since my chickens had stopped laying for a few months so I went to a local farm to get some from a guy who claims to have "Free range" well...I think free range means running around the chicken coop but with no grass around the egg has no taste and it was light color not what I was used too.

It was still better then store bought. I still have about half doz left and I have been using it for only cooking. We have been happily eating a lot of omelets. There is hardly any grass out in the field so we need to cull some lambs as many as we can. We have over 23 baby lambs right now we need to make room for too.

Garden is still to wet to work in, we got our truck stuck in it the other day thinking it was dry enough sigh..We need to at least work on our raised beds.

Sorry for jumping around here..I just dont got a lot of time right now