Be Ye Separate

Another busy week

Blessings!

   Our week has been such a busy one I was figuring I wouldn't be able to write until next week but the Lord has afforded me a little time tonight before bed:)

   We baked our weeks bread and then had a very large amount of unexpected visitors during the week that we've had to do a second day of breadmaking! It's not usual for us to have this happen but we find the time and do what needs to be done:)

   Our ducklings have been coming out into the yard during the days now. They still have a lot of their down so we haven't moved them from the brooder yet. We hope they will be ready by the end of next week.

   We WERE, however, able to move the 4 new chicks out with the hens. There is one banty that has sort of taken a shining to them and she seems content to have them snuggle with her:) And they seem to like her too:)

   We got rid of our Golden Laced Sebright rooster today. He is fullgrown and only 8 inches tall, from foot to comb! The lady that took him has 4 little banty hens and she really wanted a rooster and since he wasn't really fitting in very well here we gave him to her:) Now all I have to do is find a home for one more rooster. That will leave me with just one which is all I wanted in the first place:)

   We built another pen and shelter and brought home our new buck! We are so excited to have him:) He's quite the handsome fellow. He has never had an electric fence before so he spent his first day pouting in his new shelter. Poor thing. He's much better now and has a good healthy respect for that fencing:) His name is Mannifred. We call him Manny. He is the sweetest Nubian buck I've ever had the pleasure of owning:) The does have all noticed him now and we think that breeding this fall will come very easy:)

   As I shared last time, one of our little Nigerian Dwarf does had an abcess on her udder so we isolated her out immediately. The next day, after doing hot compresses on it, the abcess had burst (icky). I phoned the vet to let him know that I needed her tested immediately for CL. We scheduled an appointment for the next day but he phoned back and asked us to bring her right down.

    Our farm is CAE/CL free and we want to keep it that way. We got her from a local breeder just last week and he has always done prevention and testing every year. We phoned him to let him know that she had the lump in her udder when we picked her up and now it had presented itself as an abcess. We wanted him to be aware because if this IS CL and it came from his place then he might stand to lose quite a bit of his herd. We will know the results on Monday (we hope). They also offered to pay for all the vet bills on her. We compromised with them and they will pay for the testing and we will pay for the visit and surgery they did to remove it:) We didn't want them to have to pay for any of it but they insisted.

   The vet had to sedate her so when he was done lancing it and placing a drain tube in, we loaded her up in the car and took her home. Silly thing was limp as a dishrag when we got her home:) I was amazed how heavy a limp Nigerian can be:P Anyway, we made her comfortable and within a few hours she was back on her feet.

   She no longer has a fever and the shunt is no longer draining and it doesn't smell anymore:) She is on Penicilin shots twice a day (she really doesn't like those) poor thing. She's been quite the trooper and this afternoon she was jumping around like her old self again:) Depending on the results of the testing, we will either finally get her back into her own pen or have to cull her. We have been praying that we don't have to cull her. She's such a sweet thing but we can't take the chance of infecting any of the other animals.

   We finally got the garden tilled today:) Now all we need to do is pick up some mushroom compost and get that tilled under then start planting:) All we need now is the fencing for the garden to keep the elk/deer out:)

   This afternoon, my dear friend came over and she asked me to go with her to choose some fencing for her new goats. Since all the choring was done, my girls offered to keep her little ones and she and I went to town:) It was nice to be able to just have a little quiet time to share our thoughts and doin's:) We picked up the fencing and some feed and on our way home we saw a "market" going on in the store parking lot. We stopped and I bought a few flowering plants for our front beds:) They were very inexpensive and I was able to even get a couple Grossi lavenders:) Those will be so pretty and very wonderfully smelling once they mature:)

   While we were gone the children had all gone down to our lower pasture and set up a camp:) They want to pull out all the A-frame tents from our Civil War Reenactment equipment and set those up, they made a fire pit, dressed up for the part (hoopskirts and all:P)

   Our Sarah isn't well this evening though. She is sporting a sore throat and has a slight temp. So she was put to bed early and we took her evening chores on. We are praying it's nothing more than just an allergy thing.

   Our family are members of our local Dairy Goat Association and yesterday and today they had a yard sale. I had been unable to volunteer our time on some of their past fundraising projects due to schedule conflicts so we offered them our yard:) We have about half an acre out front so we cleaned it up and had plenty of parking to boot. I was still able to do the things we needed to get done around here while some of the ladies ran it.

   We cooked up chicken on the BBQ, we had macaroni salad and  root salad. Each of the ladies brought a dessert so we had quite the noon feast:)

   While the sale was going on I spent some time doing some of the tilling, did some choring out in back with the goats and fencing, helped for an hour or so in the yard sale and of course had noon meal with everyone:) The weather was so beautiful and it was so wonderful to be able to do things without having to worry about sudden downpours, hail or cold:) Unfortunately, I am a very fair skinned redhead...I look like a fresh cooked lobster! I burned so badly across my face (I had forgotten to wear my bonnet) that it's blistered in a couple tiny places. It made me so very thankful that I dress the way I do:) The ONLY place I got sunburned was on my hands and lower arms and face:) God was so good:)

   I am feeling a bit of a fever tonight. Not sure if it's just from sun fever or if I have caught what our Sarah has:P We'll see by morning I imagine:)

   Well, our Sabbath preparations have been readied for tomorrow and it's quite late so I must be to my bed. Have a very blessed Sabbath and may God bless thee real good:)

God be with thee!

Sister Lori