We have been blessed with new life on the farm again. We discovered baby kittens in the hay loft and my new milk cow finally gave birth to her new calf this last week. The timing couldn’t have been better on the cow’s part. It was later than we had expected, so we got to enjoy some day trips to Timberlake with our church family, and Cory and I got to have a date night to pick up our new baby piglets that we will use for breeding. We always seem to find farm equipment and animals that are at least 2 ½ hours away from us! I guess it’s a good excuse for a date night! While it has taken a week to get my milking time back to normal after some unexpected problems, all is well again as of today! Now we have baby kittens, pigs, a calf, baby chickens on the way, an abundance of milk, and it’s not even spring. Praise the Lord!

I’m especially excited about the kittens because their grandma was known for killing and piling up rats on a daily basis. Sadly, the owners told us that she was killed by rat poison a few years back. This story, and a report given to me by my son when we first moved here, convinced Cory and I that we would never use poison on our farm. I will admit that Cory bought some when we first moved here, because I saw my first rat, and I had never seen a rat before in my life. I was in a state of panic!! Caleb explained that poison wasn’t a good solution for many reasons that he listed, and I had no doubt about trusting his wisdom after hearing his report. I am definitely going to see if he could write a blog post sometime on this issue. His report was eye opening to say the least. He also offered to hunt rats, and we pay him $1 per rat. Doesn’t sound like much, but you would be surprised how fast that adds up! We quickly got rid of the poison and haven’t looked back.

To help with our rat problem, cut down on expenses, and reduce toxins in our animals and farm we decided to quit feeding our animals processed pet food more than a year ago and started giving them food from our farm. We noticed that our animals are definitely more energetic and healthier, and go after mice and rats better than before, even though they are still well fed. The mom of these kittens is by far our best hunter. The father is rather lazy and likes to lounge around most of the time waiting for someone to pet him. None of us can ever remember a time that we saw any animal in his mouth. Hopefully these adorable kittens will take after their mother! As we have cleaned up the junk, got our grain more sealed up, got our pets’ food right, and encouraged our in son his hunting passion we have seen a great reduction in the rat population. At least I haven’t seen one and that’s the important thing! Do you have any babies at this time? We love to hear from you!