We've been quite busy over the last few weeks. We now have nine calves born this year. All are doing quite well. Last week we delivered four lowline cows and three calves to their new owner in the eastern part of the state. The fourth is not due to calve yet. They settled right in and got accustomed to their new surroundings.

Jim was home all last week for Easter. The weather was incredibly glorious all week right through Sunday night. We have got a lot of our preliminary plowing and fitting done already.

We picked up our steer and lamb from the butcher. We have had an initial meal of both and they are excellent. It is nice to be a localvore and have a freezer full of good meat.We went to the beef meeting last Friday and visited with our new friends. As usual, we came away with a good meal and lots of new knowledge.

Several of our summer neighbors have reappeared as well as the sparrows. We put up several blue bird houses on our fence posts but the swallows have moved in. We also have a fox den in the hedge near our equipment barn. There are a mother and two kits. They appear quite regularly. We have noticed that our rodent population around the barn is down.

All our calves are tagged and tattooed and named. We've been keeping the calves and mothers in the barn because it has been so muddy. Now that it has dried up, we are slowly moving them out to a holding pasture.

Tomorrow, we will be delivering two Belted Galloway bred cows to the western part of the state. It's supposed to be cooler which is good for transporting cattle.