What's Happening!

So a lot has happened since last I posted here.

Anthony and I welcomed our newest family member into the world on August 15th. Little Anthony Elliot was 8lbs 5oz and ?? in long. I had to be induced due to high blood pressure, but otherwise went natural. Labor was fast and furious. I walked and walked and walked around my hospital room until it was time to get into the tub and push. Elliot came out perfect and healthy into the warm water and his dad's waiting arms. I had a few health issues afterward, but all is well now. We are both doing just great!

The other big news is we moved! Anthony was offered a really great job up in Greensboro, NC just before Elliot was born. The bad news was that they needed him to start very quickly which meant leaving baby and me when El was only 3 weeks old. Anthony found us a wonderful farm less than 15 minutes from his work and busted his butt to get it ready to move me, the baby, and a select group of our animals.

On my end, I sold off a lot of livestock and tried to pack up the house and farm. My mother moved onto the farm and helped with animal and baby care. Of the goats, Eve and Turnip got sent to a wonderful lady to join Rutabaga (now Mayberry) and get spoiled rotten. I sold off all but the very best of our flock leaving us with a very nice looking group. We ended up moving with 9 sheep, 9 goats, and a motley group of turkeys, chickens, ducks, geese, and quail. My dad helped us purchase a gorgeous livestock trailer to get everyone moved.

Anthony with the invaluable help of my step-dad packed a giant u-haul truck full to the brim with our belongings and used it to pull the stock trailer up to our new place. All the animals did well with the move, though Fred, our barn cat, was more than a little pissed at being moved with the livestock (safe in a crate, of course). We are all now settled in our new home awaiting kids and lambs and trying to convince the chickens to stop flying out of their pen at night.

The farm itself will be shifting from a business to more of a homestead. A place for us to raise our own food and focus a bit more on our own family. There may be some products in the future, but both Anthony and I agree that egg sales are for the birds!

So what is the future of this blog? We'll be keeping the name HighTail Farms because we feel like it is who we are, not where we are. Ideally I'd like to turn this into a 365 project. That's a picture a day, everyday. I did it for years, but we'll see if it is something I can keep up with now that we have a farm and a small human to contend with.

That means there will also be a bit of a shift in the content. Expect a lot of pictures of the ins and outs of our daily life, less direct focus on the farm, and of course lots of pictures and videos of baby Elliot because I'm a new mom and I think he's really stinkin cute. I'm warning everyone now so you can get out while the gettin's good!

I'll be moving a handful of posts over here in the next few days (weeks?) because I was originally thinking I would start a whole new blog for the 365.  I hope everyone will stay tuned. Life with baby and farm certainly hasn't been boring so far. I look forward to chronicling our future here with all of you.

Farm Call

Today we had the vet out for a farm call. He did a quick inspection of the sheep and goats and wrote us a health certificate so that the animals would be legal to cross state lines. All the animals got ID tags with our Scrapies ID so at least that much is ready to go!

Leeloo banana

I have this silly habit of sticking produce stickers on the dogs' foreheads and then declaring them a Mexican tomato or a California kiwi for the day. Well, this morning my mother decided this big old "organic" sticker should not go to waste so she turned Leeloo into an organic banana. Leeloo was not amused.

In other news, we are working towards getting all the sheep and goats legal to cross state lines for the big move. We got an official scrapies ID number and ordered ear tags for everyone. The vet is coming out later this week to fill out the necessary paperwork. Many of the goats are LaManchas who don't even have ears to tag so we'll be putting the tags on their newly cleaned collars instead.

I've also included this bonus pic of the Elliot monster just because. 

My life in boxes

I hate packing. I hate packing for trips, and I especially hate packing to move.

I have a love-hate relationship with my stuff. There is too much of it, and I hate getting rid of it. I think a lot of people feel this way, but it's really brought to the forefront when you have to literally lay hands on everything single thing you own and somehow make it fit into a 15 foot truck.

On top of having to pack up everything, I am also trying to hold down a farm and raise an infant with just my mother for help (and a big help she is, don't get me wrong). This is a crazy time in my life. Thank goodness I don't have to hold down a real job at the same time. As it is, I feel like I am chipping away at a granite mountain with a butter knife here.

The baby needs almost constant care. I hate that I have to feel guilty spending any extra time interacting with my baby boy beyond feeding and diaper changes. If I had my druthers, I'd spend every second of the day gazing into his beautiful little face and striving to make him give me his rare and precious giggles. Stealing away even a few hours to put things in boxes some days feels like an complete impossibility.

If all goes according to plan, in 10 days it will all be over. We'll be stuffing all this stuff into moving truck number 3 and saying goodbye to our farm here in Louisiana. When we get there, I'm not doing a damn thing beyond the essentials for at least a week!