Evil Fireants

It was a race between the fire ants and us, to see who could get to the potatoes first. In past years, the fire ants have always been victorious. But, THIS year we beat them to it! Erinn dug up all these potatoes for me and found a LOT of little tiny ones. Too bad we couldn't let them get big, but it's either tiny potatoes or NO potatoes.

We have 10 keets and 3 chicks in the kitchen.

I took kid pictures at 5am yesterday.

This is our youngest group of orphans. The kid at the back is blind with some kind of eye infection, but hopefully he will get his sight back soon. He does not drink from the bucket, but rather gets individual bottles.

#6, Hoppy, #24, BB

This is the next oldest group. "Little Miss Magic", Dot, Dash, Puff.

And these are the pirhanas!

Bomber, Coco, Torpedo, Clyde, Swirly, and Warrior.

5-25-08

Yesterday Erinn got to go on a 16 mile long trail ride from Doss to Harper. She had so much fun and came home tired and sunburned, despite a cap and sun-block.

This morning she got to ride her horse to church! A group of people rode from Harper to the Cowboy Church 2 miles east of town.

Thunder was really good both times. There were no problems with him being scared of traffic or anything. Thankfully there is not too much traffic on 783 and the speed limit is 55mph. Erinn and her friend Bailey rode their horses into the water and Bailey's horse tried to roll, got his foot caught in the bridle, broke the strap, and ran away! But, he got caught and no one was hurt, so that was all the excitement for the day.

Both of these pictures were taken at church this morning.

And Mooky DID wear a nice button up long sleeve shirt, but he took it off after church ASAP.

She is just using the bareback pad in this picture,

but she did ride with the saddle most of the time.

It is REALLY getting hot now. So, we are changing to our "summer schedule". After milking at 6am we do as many outside chores as possible, including gardening. Then the kids have some free time to play outside before it gets too hot. Usually they are ready to go in and start school before I am! There is SO much to do and I am trying to get a lot of extra stuff done in preparation for next week when we won't be home much.

Fancy kidded today at 3pm. Twin girls!

The TINY Boer kid was nosing around and managed to get in this picture too.

You can see that she is MUCH smaller than the newborns.

Last Friday we got 4 more orphans so we are now bottle feeding 13. Thankfully some of the older ones are weaned now, and some are down to 2 bottles a day so that helps a lot! One of these new babies in TINY. Probably just over a pound. She is strong and eating well though! I feed her a lot more often than the other kids because she can only drink an ounce at a time before her little tummy is full.

Here's the Tiny One next to a coffee can for comparison.