Sometimes this kid is so cute it hurts! (if I do say so myself)
Saturday, January 28, 2017
Friday, January 27, 2017
Thursday, January 26, 2017
Splashing away the grumps
Elliot woke up this morning a cranky dude. Tried letting him splash around in his ducky tub to restart our day.
Seems to have worked!
Monday, January 23, 2017
Sleep, barn doors, and my Gwenny
We are pooped. The holidays and the packing have taken their toll. I treasure getting to cuddle up with my little guy every night and snuggle and nurse our way to sleep.
Meanwhile, up in North Carolina Anthony is hard at work getting the farm ready for all of us. He and his father built and painted these amazing doors to close off a safe room for the sheep and goats to overnight. I can't wait to see them in person.
We lost my babygirl Gwen last year on Christmas Eve. I realized this year that through the magic of things like timehop and facebook memories, I'll get to relive her swift and horrible demise in pictures every holiday season.
That's why I was so happy to wake up this morning to this picture of my girl in her prime during her visit to a physical therapist for her knee. She was a an ornery and hard-headed goat who was so smart and funny and sweet in her own way. I still miss her every day.
Friday, January 20, 2017
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.
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.
Thursday, December 22, 2016
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!
Wednesday, December 21, 2016
Santa
Today, mom and I carved out a small chunk of our crazy schedule to go get Elliot's first Santa picture. Because I'm a bit of a crazy person, I opted to sit in the picture with him instead of letting Santa with his touching every kid with every god knows what kind of disease gloves hold my baby. Look, I'm all for germs and early exposure and working that immune system, but not with my 4 month old and not right now. We don't even have a good pediatrician picked out in Greensboro yet.
Anywho, here's our Santa pic. We tried to get a smile out of the little guy, but did not succeed. His smiles are frequent and easy but fleeting so by the time the photographer got back to her camera, El was back to his default face. Oh well, he's still his adorable self.
The day was a bit of a kerfuffle. Everything that could...I don't want to say go wrong exactly, but everything we tried to do ended up being more complicated than usual. El managed to fountain my mother with pee THREE times during one diaper change, the last of which called for a costume change on his part. While we were out, he pooped twice. We arrived to the Santa place while they were out to lunch, and mom didn't inform me until halfway through the day that she had an engagement that evening. So by the time we got half of our to do list done, we had to run home. I nursed a very hungry Elliot then ran out and did chores in about 10 minutes flat. Afterward while mom and her husband did their thing, Elliot, Rialey and I finished our errands for the day.
My poor baby. By the time we were finally heading home for the last time, he had had it and started crying in the car. I pulled over twice to try and soothe him to no avail. I even tried driving (carefully down back roads) while dangling my cell above his head playing an app that has shiny balls rattling around. Nothing helped, but I did get pretty good at fishing out a dropped pacifier and shoving it back into his mouth blind and backwards though.
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