This is Svenya.  

She does not have a pedigree and came to us as a "Black Jersey"  but I'm going to say she's a Canadienne.  She fits the description of the breed and often the term "Black Jersey" is used for Canadiennes or a cross breed between a Jersey and a Canadienne.

She is small, dark and friendly.  (and much more slobbery than a horse)   She is due to freshen in August.  She has tiny teats but hopefully they will get bigger so that I can milk her.

She arrived yesterday in a trailer pulled by a big truck.  (Maxx was impressed!)  One of Bry's fellow teachers in Heuvelton picked her up at a recent auction and knew that we were wanting a cow.

We were afraid that we would not be able to get a cow for a long time - finances have just been too tight and a heifer ready to freshen is an expensive prospect - usually in the $1,200 -1,800 range.  We thought we might buy a little heifer calf this year but then we would have been waiting over a year for milk because they have to grow up and have a calf before they start milking. 

But by some happy coincidence, Svenya still has her horns so she was a bargain!   (I like the horns - we'll just have to be careful of her moods and pay attention to what she is doing with her head.   That's a good idea even with hornless livestock!)   So far, Svenya feels like another one of those Gifts that we have been given as we try to put this big, crazy plan together.  Things will look bleak - impossible even - and then some unexpected opportunity will present itself and voila!  Another bit of the puzzle falls into place.

Maxx photographed the arrival

 Right now she is bunking in the same building as the pigs.  They seem to like each other.  She would like to be OUTSIDE, though.  When we leave her alone in there, she kicks the wall to say  "Hello?!?   Cow does not wish to be incarcerated!   Cow wants grass in meadow, water in brook, please!"

The horses make way for Svenya.  They seem to like her, too.

This weekend.  We don't want her wandering all through the woods and the meadow just yet as she is new.  We'll make a secure area for her close to the big barn in the next couple of afternoons and then she can go outside during the daytime.  We all know that sun and green grass makes good milk.

I think this makes us real farmers now - or at least real hobby farmers.  Molly has a horse, there are 2 pigs and a cow in a barn and there are 2 feral kittens in the big barn.

There's a lot of work to do.  There is a LOT of junk - dangerous junk - lying around from former owners that we need to clean out of the pig pen, big barn and general environs.  We need to build a milking pen for Svenya - there is an old row of broken stantions in the big barn but I'm sure those will be inappropriate - too open and lose - and we need to prepare a good place for her & her calf to winter in.  The pig barn is too open and drafty - great for pigs in summer but not so good for animals in 20 below weather!

And there's still a lot to do in the house this summer.  Maybe it's good that we are too broke to take a big month-long cross country adventure? 

Sigh.

Or - What do Molly Bryn and her Uncle Al have in common?









It was such a beautiful evening.  Warm, sunny, slight breeze, no recent poop soup applications on surrounding fields.





Ziggy met the pigs for the first time and was Thrilled that such creatures exist and reside in his barn.  (Does he know instinctively how yummy they will be this fall?)

I said "Let's go for a walk!"

Molly said "Let me ride Spinner in the meadow.  We can put him on a lead rope.  He will be fine even though we don't have any tack for him yet."






And he was.

So happy to be spending time with The Girl and the Woman and The Man in the meadow.  The Boy stayed further away and he was O.K. with that.

All the horses were happy and calm.  We walked to the back of the meadow where they usually don't go and they discovered that the grass and clover back there were very good.

There was a lot of happy snorting and snuffling as they ate - "Check out this great grass!"   "Yes this is very good."  " Let's come back tomorrow!"





And then we turned around.

Stupid, stupid me.

Ziggy was being a pain on his leash and the horses were being so good that Bry and I traded.  He took the dog.  I took the horse.

Why it is good to have former Boy Scouts/ a WFR & a Fireman in the neighborhood

 Right about that time, the horses got very excited     
"Let's go back to the barn!"  
"There might be carrots!"
"Let's RUN!"
"YAY!!!"



I have to say that it was a pretty good dismount at 15 or 20 mph.  And she didn't land on her head or smash into any rocks or get trampled or anything.  Just broke her ankle.  Really well.   It needs a pin.

Tune in Later for a story about why Molly will never be a Drug Addict.

One of the first questions the ER nurse asked was "Have you ever had surgery?"

...

The bad news:

It is cold.  Very cold.  The windows are not finished being framed in yet so all the warmth from the house pours out from around the windows on one side of the house, being replaced by cold pouring in from the opposite side of the house.  Most of the doors have big gaps where cold air screams through, too.

So basically, we're cold.  Very cold.

The shower pipes froze last night.

By turning off the pump in order to address the frozen pipes issue, we have discovered that the steady trickle of water coming into the basement is not ground water seeping in but rather is water being pulled up the pipe by the pump and spilling out through a crack in said pipe somewhere between the house and the well.  Luckily for us this discovery was made After the ground was frozen and there is 2 feet of snow on top of it.  Good Times.

The good news:

Bryan was NOT killed by a stupid driver who pulled out right in front of him this morning on his way to work.  (That pretty much trumps all that other bad news up there.  I'm unbelievably thankful for that.)

The upstairs bathroom now looks like these photos and actually is a little bit warmish.  Bry is actively working on getting the shower installed upstairs ASAP.  The downstairs shower is no longer a viable option because, obviously, it freezes too easily.

There is now a drier in the upstairs bathroom.  (Thank you, Neighbors Tabors!)







P.S.  Sorry that these photos are a bit sea-sick.  The lighting is really weird up there and I was being quick with the camera.










. . . .

Yay!  We have a Roof!  That only leaks a little!


Not bad for a rainstorm with over 1 inch of water per hour for over 5 hours through the night.  Apparently, the only leaks are in places where the screws with their little rubber washers weren't tight enough or where there was a formerly used screw hole that was too big or hadn't been filled in yet.  (We're experimenting with recycled tin for our roof.  We hope it's going to work out well.)





Better yet - we had river front property this morning.



Complete with Class 3 Rapids on the Little Brook.

How exciting.














This is a photo of underneath our new roof.  See where that air compressor is?  Right there is where my new great big bathtub is going to go. 


!!!Yay!!!!















. . . . . . 

Last weekend, the men from our church had a massive service project over at Burnet hollow.  Over 20 kind hearted handymen showed up to help build and re-build the Beorningstead and Jonathan's new house.  Early in the course of the work atthe Beorningstead, it was discovered that there is NO insulation in the walls at all.


Um.  .  .  .


Everyone said that the house has always been warm and there are three layers of siding on the front of the house and there is a huge amount of airspace between the inner walls and the outer walls but. . .   I like to be warm.  I hate being cold. We need to re-wire the whole house.  A few moments of furrowed eyebrows and painful deliberating and we decided to just gut the downstairs.


Ouch.  We didn't figure insulation and wall board for every room downstairs into our calculations.  BUT come wintertime, I really won't mind if I have to build the fire 4 or 5 times a ay instead of 6 or 8.  That will be O.K. with me. It might even make up for the ouch in the budget a bit plus the wiring will go a lot faster this way.

I'm right, Right?



In our ripping and tearing we have discovered an interesting thing about Amish construction.  We know that they are supposed to live very simply, no extra frills - nothing fancy, you know.    This means that they don't use screws.  Everything is held together with nails.  They also don't really believe in installing hooks for hanging things from.  Instead, they simply pound nails in wherever they might need to hang anything.  Lots of nails.  The bigger the nail, the better.  yesterday, i pulled out a lot of nails at shoulder, head and hip height because we were all getting tired of leaning up against a wall and getting impaled or getting gouged in the pants while carrying an akward piece of tubing.  I pulled at least 40 nails out of various places in the house.  There's still one massive nail - I mean railroad spike- pounded in high up on the wall in my studio.  I'm afraid if I pull it out, the whole back side of the house will come down.

I left these in, too.  This shelf unit is in my new studio, which was Barbara's kitchen.  I might be keeping this shelf - it is at a good height and will be a great place to hang measuring cups, spoons and funnels - which is what she used it for, too.

Molly took some awesome photos of the hayloft yesterday, too.  iif she gets her other work done, I'll help her put up her first post this evening so you all can see.