YIKES, I can't believe it.  Nine long years ago, our precious little girl came into our lives...a true gift from the Lord.  We had been waiting for a blessing after having lost our only son.  She was so beautiful, so perfect, so sweet.  And today, she is still beautiful, still sweet...not so perfect.    She is a fantastic big sister, always taking care of the little ones.  She has a servant's heart, always ready to help when needed.  She is a good girl and we love her so much!

Sorry, no pictures today.  We've been on the go a lot lately.  We've been working up at Pawpaw's farm.  We usually bring home a host of critters...mainly ticks.  We forget how spoiled we are here with the chickens constantly scanning the yard and fields, gobbling up those pesky critters!  I suppose I can deal with poop on the carport if that means we don't have to worry about Rocky Mountain Spotted Tick Fever!!! 

We have had a few more baby chicks hatch.  The little mother the girls call "Chocolate" has hatched out 2 chicks.  They look like an Americana and a Silver Laced Wyandote.  How funny that in a few more weeks they'll be bigger than their mama!!    This is exactly what I wanted for our chickens.  I don't want to have to buy any more chickens.  I am excited because there is another hen that's gone broody and I don't know how many eggs she's sitting on but my guess is that it's a lot!  She should have them hatched in about 3 weeks.  I guess we'll see!  We noticed today that one of the chicks got eaten yesterday, most likely by the hawk.  We found feathers and intestines on the front field...pretty nasty I realize, but that's farm life. 

Another interesting thing we're doing here on our farm with our dairy cows...Head Farmer has been doing lots of research on how we can make our farm more "organic" and he found some interesting facts.  He discovered, through research, that when you feed grain to cattle the level of CLA's drops incredibly.  What are CLA's you ask?  Well it is Conjugated Linoleic Acid and this is what Wikipedia says about it:  "Conjugated linoleic acids (CLA) are a family of at least 13 isomers of linoleic acid found especially in the meat and dairy products derived from ruminants. As the name implies, the double bonds of CLAs are conjugated."  Check out this website here and read about CLA's.  http://www.eatwild.com/cla.html

Ok, last but not least...I've been working with Chickie #2 for the past week on teaching reading.  We are using the book:  Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.  She's doing so great.  She just read her first story today.  Want to know what she read?  see me eat.  We're so proud!!!   

Now we are getting ready to go to a Farmer's Association to get supplies to work our...BEES!!!!  Yes, can you believe it??!!  We have our own bees now!!  Oh, what will we be doing next!!??  Gotta go for now!  Take care!!!

The Milkmaid