As you can tell from the picture, we have babies once again!  Oh, I don’t think there is anything cuter than nubian  babies.  They are so precious.  We got one doeling (finally!) that we named Sadie, whom we are planning to keep, and a little buckling that we named Buckaroo, that we’ll be selling as soon as he’s weaned.  

Jessie never showed any of the signs of imminent labor.  We knew she was close because of her due date, and were watching her closely, but she surprised us with babies eight days early.  We fed her and checked her in the morning, and she looked and felt the same as she had for several weeks.  Then after lunch, I heard some odd noises, and when I went out to investigate, there were babies!  She had already dried them off and everything, so I checked them out and helped them nurse a little,  just to make sure they got the all-important colostrum.  Then I left them to bond with their mama and explore their new world ~ I think that was the hardest part!

Now that Jessie has freshened (had her babies), we have a good supply of milk once again.  Hooray!  Frosty has been giving us a small amount of milk, but we still had to buy milk to supplement.  Well, no more!  We’re getting a little over a gallon a day from the two of them combined, and when we can wean the kids, we should get even more.  Just in case that’s not enough though, we bought another doe that we’ll be bringing home in a few weeks.  She freshened a few weeks ago, but isn’t ready to leave her babies yet, so when we get her, we’ll have even more milk!  Yogurt, and cheese, and butter, oh my!

A few days before Jessie’s babies arrived we processed our meat-chickens.  We all pitched in and processed ten chickens in less than two hours!  I was so proud of the kids (and myself!).  

 We’re also hoping, in the next week or two, to add turkeys to our little farm.  We’re planning to get a few day-old poults to raise for Thanksgiving.  :)   Apparently, the hardest thing about turkeys, is that they make such sweet pets, that it’s really hard when it comes time to process them!

So that pretty much brings us up to date, except for one little thing.....   Yesterday I was getting ready to run out to do a quick errand, and I opened my front door, and there was a bear on my front porch!  It wasn’t a huge bear, like the one we had before, but it got my heart going, nonetheless! Thankfully, as soon as I opened the door, it started meandering away- not as quickly as I would like, but it did go away, and it didn’t seem interested at all in our animals.  Whew.  But we’ll be keeping a closer eye on things for a while.  I guess that’s the price you pay when you live in the woods.  ;)

Happy Summer!!!!