Shalali Infante and Pint-Size Farm, located in New Mexico, breeds miniature jerseys, Nigerian dwarf goats, and American Guinea Hogs shipping animals all over the U.S.

Last Tuesday morning, Carmy kidded with a very sweet little buckling (boy). He is a trouble maker, causing us to take too many breaks to hold and cuddle him. Carmy is coming along nicely in the milking department. She still needs me to hold her legs so she doesn’t kick or step in the bucket, but she does let down quite well.

Here is DS2 with little Pinto Bean (Pinto the Conquerer).

After milking, today was mostly spent in the kitchen.

I use a weed-eater to clear a path to run the electric fence when I move it every day to set up the new paddock for the cows.  This morning, again, the weed-eater died.  The cord broke off right where it comes out and I could not pull it out to put in a new one.  So, once again, the machete was my weed-eater.  ARGH!  We have tried several heads on the weed-eater and they all are very poor designs.  I guess I need a commercial head for it.  I’ll have to look into that.  A friend told me about using a cordless shrub-trimmer to cut a path for the fence.  I found one at Lowe’s, but I think it won’t be powerful enough.  I’ll try it in the morning, but I am dubious.  ARGH.

While I am messing with the fence, DS2 is cleaning the barnyard.  Even though we are doing the fence, we seem to take the same amount of time for morning chores.  There is much less mess with the cows out in the pasture and eating out in the pasture, so clean up is faster.

After milking Molly & Janie, bottling the milk, and cleaning up the milking detritus, I started cooking.  I got the bread rising for the rustic loaf I planned for my friends’ dinner.  While the bread was rising, I mixed up the muffin dough (added the rest of the ingredients to the soaked flour).  Once the muffins were in the oven, I got the bread in the oven.  As soon as the bread was in the oven, the muffins were ready to come out.  I mixed up the meatloaf with fresh herbs from my garden, salt, pepper, bread crumbs, carrots, celery, eggs, and cream.  I strained some chunky tomato sauce and covered the top of the loaf with that. After the bread came out of the oven, I sauted some yellow squash and zucchini (sliced thinly) in coconut oil with lemon thyme and parsley from the garden and garlic.  Somewhere in there I boiled the elbow macaroni and made a  white sauce with sauted garlic and cheese for the baked macaroni and cheese.  I mixed this with the cooked elbow macaroni and covered it with grated cheese and bread crumbs.  I put the sauted squash in a baking pan and topped with grated Parmesan.  After I cleaned the kitchen, I made the salad.  I loaded everything into the trunk and took it over to my friends’.

Their baby is so beautiful and sweet.  I got to hold her and snuggle her, and sniff her breath and her neck and her head, and most wonderful of all, I got to give her back to her mom when she started crying

I got home in time to milk late.  I got SHOCKED by the fence pretty badly.  I was not paying attention and leaned into the trunk line.  OUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

DH put the leftover lasagna in the oven and we ate dinner while watching a movie.

When the movie ended, I went out the move the chicken wagon and the chickens’ fence.  I got eaten up by mosquitoes.

Now it is time for bed.  Goodnight!

It has been so long since I posted. It’s been really busy. The highlights- Sally dried herself up about a month ago. About a month ago, I started training a friend’s cow, Molly, to milk, as she was a very skittish first time calver and pretty much tried to kill them when they milked her. She has been here with her calf and has been learning lots of good manners. With DS2’s help, she is turning into a great family milker. Janie was inseminated 2.5 weeks ago. We’ll know next Wednesday or so if she took. If not, I’m hoping to bring back the bull, but we will see.

The pasture is up and gorgeous! The cows are on it, being rotated daily. The goats are a little leery of the electric fence. The pigs are being let out during the day, after morning milking, but before afternoon milking as they have no manners while I’m milking- that whole liking milk so much and wanting to be in the bucket awaiting it’s arrival.

The portable chicken coop is done, and the chickens are 3-4 days behind the cows. It is working well. The only problem is it ended up being heavier than I thought and the front axle is bending. My dad and I are going to replace the front axle with a rear axle from an older Chevy Sprint. Hopefully very soon.

Today, I cleaned my desk off. It had 2 months’ worth of paper stacked up on it. I went through and shredded everything we didn’t need and filed everything we did need. I think there were about 10 pieces of filing and a whole garbage can of shredding.

My new goal is to keep the check book balanced daily. So, yes, I balanced the checkbook today! I’m also going to try to keep up with this journal more…so….hopefully you’ll see more posts here.

We had lasagna for dinner. I thawed some Marinara sauce I had made a month or so ago. I made homemade ricotta cheese from this afternoon’s milk and used purchased mozzarella, and the Tinkyada rice noodles. Very yummy with salad and garlic bread.

I started 2 batches of muffins for tomorrow and bread. A friend had a baby, and I’m taking a meal to them tomorrow. Meatloaf with beef and lamb, baked macaroni & cheese,  salad, sauted zucchini and yellow squash, and fresh bread along with blueberry muffins. We’ll be having leftover lasagna tomorrow.

Time for bed, goodnight.