Catch-up Time!

Where did March go??

Where was I??

I can't belive it's April already! I probably can't believe because we've still has snow off and on.  Which is not allowed in my book after the first day of spring. 

My daffodils are blooming, but probably wondering why.  Our lilac bush is also getting little buds forming. My forsythia bush is thinking about blooming completely, but it's not as bright yellow as I would like. My grandma always said that you would get 3 snows after the full bloom of the forsythia bush. If there is any truth to that, then we are due for one more snow. 

March also means "tax crunch time" for us. So, I spent most of my days off from work at the kitchen table with the tax books, check books and calculator spread in front of me.  Glad to have all that turned into our accountant and it's his turn to make heads or tails of it all! 

We've also been super busy with babies! Baby calves are bouncing around all over the place.  We're up to 20 babies.  We keep all of our little heifers, and they will someday be part of our milking herd.  The bull calves go to the local stock sale. 

We'll also have new neighbors this week!  We have the house next door, Al's mom and dad lived their before their retirment move to Kentucky. It's in the process of being fixed up and cleaned up for a family from Florida.  They are friends with our Pastor and his family, and they will be moving in on Tuesday evening.

Over the winter, we've had to make a tough decision. In order to keep ourselves healthy and protect the farm from total dispersal, we've decided that it would be best to no longer make cheese. We've found that it was just way too much to try to balance so much. It has been only my husband and I. And along with making cheese once a week, doing 2 farm markets, milking 50-60 cows each day, haymaking, hauling manure, events, making deliveries, etc. It was just more than we could handle at the time. 

We have plenty of cheese in our walk-in cooler, and have recently put it on sale. We had a lot of fun meeting new people as we were out and about selling cheese and I'm going to miss quite a bit that went with the process. But, we're going to focus our attention on our girls, and making sure that we take care of the farm end, which is where Buckeye Grove Farm started in the first place back in the mid-1800's.

I've run across a few recipes recently, and I'm going to get them posted soon!

Hope everyone is having a wonderful spring so far, and hopefully your weather is warmer and dryer than ours!  :o)