I Know ...

... It has been forever since I last posted. I've been extremely busy. Also quite distracted. Hopefully I will do better and start posting on a more regular basis. (Who knows if there will be anyone around to read this, considering how long it has been since my last post.)

To get you up-to-date ... the layers are doing well. Generally. We had some significant problems a couple of months ago where they started eating their own eggs. I think that is probably not happening anymore. We got some ceramic eggs from eggcartons.com which look like real eggs but yield no results when pecked. 'Sir William' and I have quite the time taking care of them and gathering eggs. We have plenty for us, plus he has several customers (a couple of folks where I work, and a family at church).

This year's first batch of meat birds is near completion. 'Processing' date is scheduled for this Wednesday. We got 52 chicks. One was D-O-A, plus we lost 2 in the brooder hut. Then in the pasture pen, one managed to escape and disappeared. (We called him CB, for 'Crooked Beak.' The top and bottom halves of the beak were not aligned and he had a hard time eating. He was less than half the size of the other birds when they went to pasture, but he was by far the most spunky. I expect he became a meal for some predator, but he probably had a better chance of outside survival than any of the rest, judging by his spunkiness.) We've also lost one more. I'm enough of a novice that I can't say why it died, but I know it could scarcely move the last week or so. We tried to keep it right next to some water, and its own feed, but it did not survive. That leaves 47.

I'm also supposed to be getting a cow/calf pair in the next week or two. The cow is part Holstein, but does not appear to be giving enough milk to be a milk cow. So we will just be using them for beef. The price was right, and I need something to help harvest the grass in the pasture.

That's the farm news. The bigger news includes ...

My oldest son, Jon, got married last night. He and Amy announced their engagement back in the middle of January (during the memorable ice storm we endured). He is going into nursing (and has been working for about 9 months at the home health care company for which I work). Amy is studying nutrition and dietetics at Missouri State University where she will be a junior this fall. Now, here is something interesting about the wedding. Amy had always wanted to be married on a rainy or snowy day. Well, before, during, and after the wedding, it poured rain. The small town where the wedding happened experienced more rain than some folks (who had lived there for twenty years) had ever seen. She got her rainy day! Another interesting thing about this is that Amy is the sister of my daughter's husband, Mark. Keeping it all in the family.

And speaking of Bethany's husband, he graduated a couple of weeks ago from Southwest Baptist University (my alma mater, BTW) with a 4.0 and a double major in chemistry and chemistry education. He will be teaching at SBU this fall as a lab instructor while Bethany finishes her final year of college. He won 2 top chemistry awards, plus was the recipient of the "Life Beautiful" award at SBU. This is the most prestigious award granted to a graduate of SBU; they give it to one male, and one female, in each graduating class. We are extremely proud of him.

That's all for this post. Hopefully the next one will come sooner than this one did. :)