Jam-a-thon

Bethany worked with me diligently for over 6 hours taking the stems off the 11 gallons of strawberries, stirring hot jam, and cleaning up the mess. She is a good worker with a great attitude!

Rebecca was in the midst of the work for most of the time it took. Here she is stirring three batches of fruit pectin. It had to be stirred constantly, and she did a fantastic job!


Samuel and Josiah were my strawberry loaders and stirrers of freezer jam. They had a wonderful time helping!




In all, we put up 36 quarts: 20 quarts of freezer jam and 16 quarts of cooked jam! Now we are looking forward to blackberry and peach season, too!
Here are the "fruits" of our efforts. (Several quarts were already in the refrigerator.)

Happy 4th Bday, Josiah!

Josiah turned 4 on the 22nd. He is such a blessing to our family. He's full of personality and quite the little man.

He loves his birthday presents, especially the giant metal Tonka dump truck and the smaller John Deere truck and trailer. (Don't you just love our wrapping paper? It's what we always use!)

Cute little goat barn framing crew

Bruce and the children have built a cute little replica of our big horse barn. It has been said that the younger ones put quite a few extra dings and unnecessary nails in this barn, but they had a great time working with Dad and our goats love it! I'll have to get a picture of the finished product on here sometime.

Puppy, anyone?

Update: A lady called the on Wednesday, we met her with the pups, and she took both! By the way, I was amazed that both pups had doubled their size in the two weeks they were with us! They had appetites like horses!



We have dogs dumped on our road about once a month, and sometimes it's litters of puppies. Our latest find is these two cuties. We've been trying to find someone to take them, but we've found no takers. I suppose we'll have to call Animal Control soon.