Substance

I have many thoughts full of depth and emotion that i will someday share... until then, thank you for hanging on and reading about my cow adventures of late. I know some of you are not that into farm adventures, but i just love the fact that i know where my food is coming from and how it was raised.

Mooving on...

Penelope didn't work out. She wasn't healing like we wanted her to so we felt like it was better to pass on an animal that probably had some serious long term issues. So we continued the search and Lord willing tomorrow we will be going to pick up a Jersey calf. His name is Ferdinand (named after the popular children's book The Story of Ferdinand )... he is 5 months old and he has been used as an animal ambassador to elementary school children to teach them about farm animals. He is super friendly, loves people and should make a good start out cow for our little farm. Joshua is SO excited to get a "cow". He keeps asking about it. The person that we are getting Ferdinand from is very excited that he will be going to a home with kids and also she loves our idea of starting a therapy farm for special needs families. Of course the economic side of us knows that Ferdinand will only be a pet for about the next year, then be replaced with a smaller cuter version and then he will provide us with many warm meals on cold nights. We'll see how that goes when his time is up... but for now he will be loved on by children and adults alike and enjoy grazing in a lush pasture. I know you are probably thinking "does the person you are getting Ferdinand from know that he will someday be beef in the freezer?" And to answer your question, yes she does. She is one of those people that believe in treating an animal humanly, but also realistic in the fact that animals have purposes and you can't keep a full sized cow as a lawn ornament.
Since we do not have a livestock trailer yet, we will be hauling him in our work van... or which we so lovingly have named "Ghetto Van". Believe me, it's surely a sight... if Ghetto Van is still working in the next couple of years we are going to let the kids do a spray paint camouflage job on it! :)

p.s. if you are not familiar with the story of Ferdinand the bull... check out this video.... It's a great story

Family size

I've been wanting to write a post on this for sometime. It seems to be such a sensitive subject that gets people VERY opinionated. I grew up in a family of 4 children... me, my older sister and brother are all my mother's biological children, and my little sister is adopted. I have friends who are only children and I also have friends who are a part of a family of 14 children. Now with my own children and having friends who have children I find i am encountered with it more often. I love large families. Yes, they have their pro's and con's.. just like anything does.. but the majority of large families i know are precious and well balanced. I personally always wanted 5 children... 3 boys and 2 girls. Circumstances have enabled my dream to be partly fulfilled, and for the time being it looks like we may only ever have 3 children. Though i don't like to say that I'm done... I am open to the idea of adoption and I know that the Lord could miraculously bless us with more biological children.. but at this time it's not something that we feel called to pursue. I get a lot of questions on if we are going to keep trying to have a girl. Which is funny... yes i was hoping that when we were pregnant with Elijah we would have a girl, but it didn't make me love him any less when we found out his gender... in fact i think it made me love him more and have to lean on Jesus even stronger because of the difficulties that we had with our first two boys. And let me tell you Elijah is a BLESSING and i would NEVER trade him, or any of my sons for a daughter. Anyway this is my point and my tangent... I think that we need to get past apologizing for the amount of children that we have or don't have. Be it only 1, or 14... I think the Lord allows some to have many children and others to only have a few and each family is not any better or less then the other. Let me share a verse on children...

Psalm 127:3
Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him.

a REWARD! Children are a reward! I know sometimes (at least for me) it may not feel like they are a reward... more like a punishment, but they are a REWARD. I think we have to change our perspective here as a culture... ESPECIALLY in the Christan community. There seems to be so much judging that goes on when someone chooses to have more then three children.. and heaven forbid they are any closer then a couple years apart because that's just CRAZY, or if they choose to stop at one. OH i am sooo tired of hearing that and dealing with it. I wish that we could have a dozen kids... i wish that i had health to handle more pregnancies and the patience and love for more children,I wish that Matt wanted more children, but for right now God gave me three.
So whether you have no kids, 2 kids, or you are going on your 19th, please remember this verse and DO NOT apologize for the amount of children that you have.. each and every life is precious .. even if they have no siblings or a dozen siblings! Psalm 127:3
Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him.

Penelope

So here's a little background for you. When we put our fences up Matt told me that we could get a cow next spring time. I had talked about getting a heifer and raising her and breeding her. There was much discussion and we decided that maybe the best way to go first would be to get a bull calf, band him , grow him up and then butcher him to see how it would go to have a cow and then we could pursue the heifer breeding route. Cows and one of my FAVORITE animals so anyway we could get one was fine with me.. i told Matt that i would treat the cow, even if we were going to butcher it, like a pet.
SO i put up an ad on craigslist looking for a Jersey bull calf. Someone e-mailed and said that they had a Swiss brown bull calf. After some back and forth she said she also had a Holstein heifer that was 3 months old that was recovering from an injury that she was trying to find a home for. Well i started to get pretty excited because my dream of owning a female cow and breeding her started to come true. Matt said "let's do it" and I've been a bit excited ever since. Her injury was that she was bitten by a dog and her leg got infected. She was taken to auction, but they were just going to butcher her so this lady that I've been talking to saved her and has been taking care of her. The calf has only been getting better, but she will still need extra attention for a little while to make sure that she continues to heal. We will be picking her up next Wednesday after our mini vacation up to birch bay. I'm SUPER excited and I can't wait!!!!
I've decided that i want to name her Penelope, I think that's a great name for a cow!
I feel like we are almost an offical small family farm :)

coming soon...

We went to visit the mini horses to see if they would be a good fit for our little farm. Long story short, i fell in love with them, but we just aren't going to be able to provide them with the proper care. They are older in age and have some health issues that wouldn't work well with our layout. I feel a bit sad because they were SO great with the kids and wonderful... but i know that it wouldn't be the best.
Anyway.. it's been a long day, and I need some sleep!

Therapy farm

I love animals. I've always loved animals, even through intense sneezing from loving on them. That has really transferred over to my kids. As we moved out into the country I noticed how with each animal we got, the kids world seemed to open up more.
A couple of weeks ago an idea sparked. Living on a small farm and being around animals has helped my children so much... why not share the gift? So after much prayer and research we are pursuing a ministry for special needs families. Very small scale, by appointment only and word of mouth.. families with special needs children, geared towards autistic, but not limited to, can come up to experience what it is like to be around "farm" animals. Small and not overwhelming where we don't mind at all if your child has a meltdown or sensory issues... in fact, those are our favorite kids :)
The name of my ministry- Chasing Ducks - a place for special needs families. I came up with it from watching how much joy it gives Daniel to chase the ducks...

So now we come to the horses. I put up a post on craigslist in the farm and garden section about my idea and if anybody had any advice, suggestions, and just anything they would like to share, or any animals they would like to donate or partner with me in anyway. I received a fair number of e-mail from people telling me that i should consider getting miniature horses as they make GREAT therapy animals and they are very non-threatening to small children. *note miniature horses and ponies are not the same thing So after doing research on them i fell in love and in my heart decided that my little special needs farm would have mini horses. A couple of days later i received an e-mail form a woman in a neighboring town. Her and her husband are getting along in years and just had to many animals to handle and had two mini horses that they were looking for a home for. SO... long story short, tomorrow we are going to meet Amy and Dolly and see if they would be a good match for us.. and if all goes well they will start living with us by the weekend!
Whew... it's late and there is lots to do tomorrow. I am going to attempt to get pictures when we visit tomorrow that are not blurry!
And i'll be sure to post more on my therapy farm ideas later :D