"...and I will give you rest." Matthew 11:28: February 2016

Thursday, February 25, 2016

:)

Gram, Mom, Emmie, Sam, and I went out to eat at 'Coe Creek Cafe' in Elliot, Iowa. They have excellent food! I highly recommend them! Very big servings and the food tastes very good. I got a Club sandwich with fries.

The pigs ;)

Mister Bull drinks a lot of water!!

So here is our VERY messy basement, BEFORE

And here it is AFTER I organized and cleaned it.

Another messy room, BEFORE

BEFROE

AFTER

Emmie washed all the downstairs windows and washed the curtains

Cousins

From left to right, Emmie, Taylor Lowis, Brooke (please help me with the spelling, Aunt Shelly??) Lowis, and I

From left to right, Nate, Josh, me, and Emmie at our Persia, IA house, where I grew up.

Nate with his rooster

Cute little Josh :)

Ryan (12-30-99)

Cousins

Left to right, Savannah Lowis, Gabby (Lowis) Wagg, and Emmie

Mommy at 19 (taken on her and Daddy's honeymoon in Arizona)

Wheat Bread

All done! It got huge!

This was an interesting story...

"A Mr. Dalton, a baker, of Baston, in Lincolnshire, on Monday last, won a wager of 50l. by carrying, at different times, 500 sacks of flour, 20 yards, each of which weighed 20 stone. He performed it in the course of seven hours and twenty-five minutes, though the time allowed was twelve hours."

-taken from newspapers.com

Twenty stone weighs 280#. So he carried approximately 70 tons of flour and walked about five miles.

A sad story taken from newspapers.com

Aw...

Precious!

Waiting to be let back into the barn...

For size comparison. :)

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

A bull!

Talitha now has a boyfriend. He is a pure bred Angus that is HUGE!! Josh will be helping me with milking instead of Sam till he (the bull) and I get used to each other. Josh looks more intimidating than me. :) But he is actually a very calm bull. I'm just hoping he stays that way even while she is in heat. We shall see. The person I rented the him from has owned the him all his life, and I think he was also a bottle baby. So he is quite used to people, but not too friendly. :)

Talitha likes him, which is good. She follows him like a little puppy (which is what she looks like when she stands by him).

My milking machine in action...

Milking (it takes about six minutes)

All done!

Strain the milk

Now time for washing...

First just plain old water to rinse everything

Take off the blue clips (the hold the air and milk hose together)

Attach the vacuum hose to the pulsator.

After I've dumped the rinse water, run really hot soapy water though the machine.

An example of how I wipe everything down

I wipe the hoses, bucket, and lid with soap water (and bleach).

Dipping it up and down so that the water splashes around in the milk hose and the bucket.

I always dump the bleach water back into my little red tub and use it to bleach the milk filter, clothes pins, rag tub, and rags/sponge.

This is how I held up my phone to take the videos, I opened my leatherman, which is slightly spring loaded, and put my phone in-between the handles. Worked great!