Four Winds Ranch: " Life on the Farm "

[jodief100]

I have a question for all the "Farm Girls" out there! How do you guys keep your houses clean?????!!!!

Cause, it doesn't seem to matter how fast I work in the day, I just don't have the energy in the evening to get any house work done! :/

My day starts out : Making breakfast, making lunch for hubby and older kids for school. After they are out the door, me and the small kids are out the door to haul grain/hay, feed the sheep/cows, slop pigs/dig out pig pens, feed rabbits/clean out cages, feed chickens/clean coop, and pack water (unfortunatly we don't have waterers so I have to pack all the water for everything by hand, which I wont even get started on!) Feed t/water the horses, llamas, and donkeys. By then we have to come in to make little kids their lunch and send them for their naps. While they are napping I go outside to get done some stuff that is just plain faster without kids in toe, like chopping and hauling the wood for the day (we heat with wood), doing some much needed paper work. Once the naps are over, we traipse back out the door to work on vaccinations/worming/trimming hooves/tagging/branding/docking tails/sorting, which ever needs done, or fixing/building fence. During the fall, haying season, basically no house work gets done! Summer and spring there is the garden work
Hopefully, I remembered to put somethin into the slow cooker for supper! Once everyone is fed supper, kids are bathed and in bed, I no longer have the energy to clean!!!

So how are most peoples houses clean all the time???? :/
When I find out company is coming I always am in a mad dash to try to pick/clean some of the easy to see mess, but wish I could stay on top of it!!!

Mine is never clean. My goal is don't trip on stuff on the floor, vacuum often enough that we don't have hair all over our clothes.

X2. it is never clean. The goal is to keep the pet hair out of the food.

 

[Four Winds Ranch]

Lol! That is good to know!!! Thanks! Suddenly my house feels a little less messy and more lived in, now that I know others are in the same boat!
It is horn fileing for me today!! My daughter has a 4-H Show on Saturday and her steer can`t have horns any longer than 2 inches ! :/ I find it kind of an annoying rule, but I suppose it is in place for the kids saftey! Next year, we are picking a steer with no horns!!!

 

[promiseacres]

you do what you can when you can! especially with toddlers! my DH will probably never think it's good enough but it is what it is!

 

[Four Winds Ranch]

Strange things are happening here on the farm!!!!! :/
The sheep that are lambing this month of April are all purbred Tunis! Laming is going awesome!!!! I have 2 Purebred Tunis rams, my old guy, and a 2yr. old fella I just bought last fall. The new boy "Dodger" is garenteed purebred Tunis, but doesn't have papers. We are getting lots of lambs, and everything is healthy!! Everyone who has ever owned a Tunis ram or ewe, knows that Tunis lambs are born dark red with a white spot on their heads.
Well, this is the strange part!!!! :/ Approximatly half of my Tunis lambs are (HEAVEN FORBID) WHITE, and each of them have a black dot somewhere on their bodys!!!!!!
I am comfused!! Either I have been horribly ripped of on my 'supposidly' purebred ram, or there is somehow some crazy gene in there somewhere!!!
Here are a couple of examples!!!

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[Canadiannee]

I don't know ANYTHING about tunis sheep (or sheep breeds in general)... lol, but my golly, don't you just love genetics!?! (a genetic sleuth) Very cute, kinda weird, but on the bright side... if this new boy always throws a black spot in his offspring, you'll always know who Daddy is right?!?!

So glad to hear you're having a wonderful April lambing! Was wondering how you were doing this past week!

 

[promiseacres]

Odd! Bet something not Tunis is coming out Imo but I am not overly familiar with them.... hope it doesn't ruin your lamb crop

 

[PendergrassRanch]

What color are they suppose to be?

Considering the clean house thing...we have an abundance of boot scrapers, mats for scraping and I have a strict "no work boots" in the house. The dogs are another story. They aren't dirty dogs but hair is an issue with one dog. We just vacuum a lot.

 

[Four Winds Ranch]

Along with all the new babies, plowing, and spring clean up (YES, this is the first week without snow on the ground finally!!! ), we seem to have a farm mystery!!!!

It all started about a week ago! I went outside to do my evening chores. I finished giving the lambs a bottle at the barn, and walked back to the house to move a hen into her brooding box and collect the last of the eggs for the day. It was dusk, and I was setting up the brooding box, bent over it making the nest nice and soft for the brooding eggs. As I stand up and take a step back, I bump into something....., I spin around really fast and find one of the posts for the chicken pen broke off laying on the ground. I get goosebumps as I begin to wonder how a 4 inch fence post got snapped off, in the chicken pen and 20 feet from the back off my house none the less!!!!! I give one of the remaining, standing posts a kick thinging maybe they are rotten, but NO! It doesn't even budge, solit, still froze into the ground!! It must be something pretty big to snap something that size off!! All the cows are quite adistance from the house, the horses are securely penned up.........??? I couldn't find any tracks at all anywhere near, and there were no missing chickens?????? Oh well, I guess it will be chicken fence fixing time as soon as the ground thaws!
Then, 2 days ago, around dusk, I went to go grab the last of the days eggs and lo and behold, another post is broke off!!!!!!! It was fine at noon! No tracks, no missing chickens!
Last evening, again, the main gate post is snapped!!!! This is really creeping me out!!!! It appears something or someone BIG is coming (not sure what for) in broad daylight and snapping off fence posts right behind my house!!!!

I will keep everyone updated to when this mystery is solved!!

 

[ragdollcatlady]

Scarey!

Could it be a person?

 

[Four Winds Ranch]

Yikes!!! For me, the thought of a person is even scareier and an animal (well, minis a cougar, them things give me the heeby geebys)! I would think a person wouldn't be doing it cause we live quite remote. They would have to walk quite aways to be able to get here without us hearing them! But, ya never know about some people!!!

So far the biggest lamb of the year was born around noon today! She is a single birth and weighed in at 18.2 lbs! The ewe did it basically herself, exept I had to reach in and hook a knee! She is the same ewe who had the 17 lb'er last year and a 19 lb'er the year before, so I guess she is getting the "big" lamb thing down pat!!!! Before today, the leading lamb of the year was 14.4lbs, and his twin was 12.8!!! Big twins!!!!