the fire truck comes

Not in the way your probably thinking though. Thankfully.

We needed the under ground water drain cleaned out to make sure that all the water we use during wash up would actually go out where it should go. The best way we could be sure it was clean was to have the water truck come and dump pressurized water down it! So we did!
We also had the plumber out to set up the on demand hot water supply system. Our water temp is run on propane and needs to be 185 degrees. So ya, it's super hot. And yes when it hits your hand it is so hot its almost cold then it's instant pain. Gives a nice little burn on your hand. I've gotten one. So we try not to touch the water.

the truck arrives

getting everything ready

worked like a charm! there she blows!!! 

the plumber and my husband

family

The days and weeks went by super fast. There was always a flurry of activity around the farm. New excitement, and stress building as the day was coming closer that the milking herd was coming home.  There was never a day that went by that something wasn't going on.
Life in the big, yellow, farm house was great. We were still not moved in totally. Still needed pictures hung up and making it "home" was last on the list with getting the barn ready for the girls. But we were home, and very happy and content to be where God had planted us. Close to family and friends where we wanted to be. Our farm house was so much bigger then the trailer we had come from. It was a little strange to be in the house and not be so close together all the time. My kitchen is so big along with the pantry that I had no idea where to put my small amount of kitchen things. Not a bad problem to have. It was fun to figure out how to organizer it...ahahaha. I'm not an organizer by nature. It's something that I work at and thank goodness for Pinterest!! I had no idea how to make my kitchen work right for me. It was not a huge big deal, and I've figured it out. I love the big kitchen and was looking forward to having lots of family gatherings and such here.
I felt so blessed. I still do. I haven't forgotten where we came from and how we started. I pray I never do. We took the old number of our place and screwed it to the door frame out in our garage so that we would always have it there to remind us if we needed reminding.

see the number? 338

 The whole life journey we've had together has been lifeful. I don't think that's a word, but my life if full of life. We've had our share of ups and downs as any couple has, but we are stronger for it as a couple and a family. That being said we are very thankful for this big house. That is where family comes in. My husband has a big family with 4 other brothers. I joke with him and say they should have made a movie about you guys, 5 brides for 5 brothers! ahahha. Do you know the real movie of which I speak? It's a classic.
Anyways. His youngest brother, and his wife were selling their house, and looking to buy one closer to the family in our area. They actually had one picked out and were just waiting out all those annoying buying/selling a house details to be worked out. Well, as it turned out their house sold before they could close on the house they were looking at. And then the house they wanted fell through, they couldn't buy it. So as a family we all talked it over and decided that we would offer our house to them to come and stay. The girls have a large room and didn't mind staying together longer. So they could have the 4th bedroom. It even has it's own entrance to it, so that added privacy for them. We invited them to stay as long as they needed, and we were happy to have them. They accepted and moved in. They have one son and he stayed in our sons room. We set up a bed for him there. My sister in law and I get along famously so having her around was great!  She is not a farm girl, but I love her anyways, hehehe. Then she happily offered to do all the cooking so I could be more available to be in the barn! Boy what a gift that was! I knew everybody would be fed I didn't have to worry about getting a meal. Made my life easier for sure, and she's a great cook.
They moved in in October.
And as farm being new farmers and all these new farm things to figure out, their time living with us would be an added blessing.

the first load of grain

At the time we started getting our bulk grain delivered it was coming from Canada. This was our first load to come. We get a load once a month at this time as I type this post.
We usually have a revolving driveway of trucks and people stopping in. Folks seem interested in what we were/are doing and how we were reviving this old farm back to a dairy. Like I said in an older post no cows had been here in 40 years. The previous owners had horses in the stable and hayed the fields.
So on to the grain coming in. All these firsts were exciting.

Good thing we have a loop of a driveway. Makes it a lot easier for these big trucks that come and go. 

It was kinda cool watching all this happen and how it goes from the grain truck to the grain bin. My husband has climbed to the top of the bin before, and I told him I was only too happy to let him do that! I would watch from the ground.

All the girls came up to see what was going on. I guess they could smell the grain and were wanting to get in on the action!!

new life

As we are busily working to get the big herd of cows home, still having pressure to get our cows on the milk truck, all the work to be done, the days getting shorter, the work getting heavier, the need of hay, ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.
We have new life. It takes a moment or several to see and observe the miracle of life. I love watching! It's been 40 years since cows have been on the property and 40 years since a new birth on the farm as well. We were so excited! Plus they were Jersey calves being born. We were hopeful for heifers. We had spent a lot of money on getting these girls artificially inseminated. We had not wanted a bull where we were and AI was what we used. Not always the cheap route to take either.

 BIRTH PICTURES BELOW!

So on a beautiful, sunny, warm day in  August Daffodil had a healthy bull.We all watched as she gave life and took care of it. It's simply amazing.

The other girls come over to see whats going on.We didn't keep him for long. A few days and he was gone to another farm.

Then on another beautiful, sunny, warm, day in September Goldie had her first calf, a bull. It was actually on a Sunday afternoon. She worked hard to have him too. She is by far our most gentle cow. Real sweet. And she stayed sweet.

 This calf was up and sucking so fast after being born! I've never seen one so fast! Goldie was such a great mama too. She showed him off and didn't show any aggression towards us. Only the cats, when they came too close. We kept him for a few days and he as gone too, another farm.

So even in the midst of business we still got to watch calves being born. Happy, healthy, mamas and calves. We were thankful for.
Enjoy the day y'all!

firewood

We live in Maine. Nuf said. Hardy har har.

 We get snow, ice and cold. Yup. Seems like we just got out of it and finally have some buds on the trees and finally mowing our lawns! Why am I posting pictures of winter!? Well I'm almost a year behind posting and telling you about our crazy life on a farm!
 Life has a way of flying by. I was told once that the days are slow and the years are fast. Looking back I can see that. It's always stuck with me, that line. I look at my kids and think wow, how fast they have grown up and become teenagers. Young adults. Too fast. But it happens. I'm so proud of my kids, and who they have become.  But before I cry I'll change the subject. No just kidding, I'm not a crier. But my kids...they are my heartbeat. This farm ya. My life. I love it. I love the work, the births, the cows, the idle times, oh wait, not much for idle times, but none the less I love it all. Even the struggles, and we know our share of them.

Sunsets. Yup. I still have them. Christmas Eve!

This one is one our oldest daughter took. I just love it. She is getting quite an eye for picture taking. I encourage her in this too. She really enjoys it.

But this picture here is fire wood! YAY!

 We got lots of fire wood last year for the house. We now have a big house, and wood fire places. So fire wood it is! 
I love a fire going when the wind is blowing and the snow is coming down. And this past winter we got plenty of cold, and snow. It was the coldest winter we've had in Maine since 1976 I think is the year. No I'm not kidding either. I wouldn't kid about something like the cold. I'm not a fan. I tend to run cold anyways. Ridiculously cold. FOREVER. Ya, I did a little complaining towards the end. I'm human and I was sick of the cold.
But even in this terrible winter we were better of this year then the previous and I'm thankful for that. Our cows were warm, and dry under one roof.

And just for giggles...

Belle loves the snow! She is so happy to leap and jump and try to get the snow and catch it in her mouth! So funny to watch. She'll even back at it while she chases it!
Have a good one y'all!

we buy a pipe line

 As much as we love our cows, we were not going to be milking 20+ cows by hand!

We needed a pipe line. Those things are expensive, but then again so is starting a dairy farm. But how we got this gem is great.
My husband grew up in this town. He knows all the dairy farmers, and most everyone who lives in town. But I guess when your family has lived in town for 8 generations, you get to be known. Anyways...
We ran into a fellow local dairy farmer, and he was asking how things were going. He knew we had just bought a farm, and were working to get it up and running. They talked for... a while. You know how it is. LOL. In the conversation Matthew said we were looking for a pipe line. Well the farmer looked at him and said his dad had one in his old dairy barn that was fully intact, and wanted to get rid of it! Whoa! OK! The dairy cows had been sold off a long time ago, and the owners just kept young stalk at the barn now.
Matthew contacted the owners and asked about the pipe line. He said come look at it, and see what you think. Now this is really cool. It's a glass pipe line! Really cool to watch the milk slug through during milking!  We needed to measure the pipe line and our barn to see if it would fit. There is more to this pipe line stuff then I knew. Never had used one before. Well as it goes, the pipe line would fit in our barn perfectly! The dairy barns are about the same size. So we paid for it, and a week or so later my husband and his brother went and took it out of the barn and brought it home! On a trailer no less. Wrapped in blankets and strapped down and ever so carefully it made it's way across town. Yup. This pipe line was just a few miles up the road from our farm! Pretty cool eh?
Well I think so.

 This is the set up in the old dairy barn, not ours.

 Again, the old dairy barn and pipe line. But this barn looks a lot like ours!
We had one huge part of the puzzle to begin.
We still had a ways to go, but we were happy where we were at. Things were looking good!

fences

Boy let me tell you what. This was to be done before we could do much of anything with the fields. We had miles and miles of fence to be taken down and fence posts and those stupid fiber glass poles to be taken down. This was a family project. And no joke it took us 3 days to do this huge task. I only got a couple pictures because we were so busy right after we moved in.

What a mess. Wire everywhere, and buried in the grass that had grown over it. Deer that had gone through the fence and took it down.
We were glad to do it though. It gave us the opportunity to walk the land and see the old fence lines that have been over grown with neglect and it gave us some ideas on how to bring back the fields and reclaim them!
Well that and we couldn't do anything with the fields until this was done. What a night mare to get this stuff tangled up in the tractor and equipment! Yikes!

Here is all the poles we found and took down. The land had been used for horse pasture, that is where all this came from.
And...

Two five gallon buckets of wire holders.
I wish I had gotten a picture of the wire and the rope wire stuff. We threw all that. But have saved the poles and snaps. They are all stored for use or a quick repair or what have you for the well very near future now as I write this. Or not. Not sure. We have some planning to figure out for pasture. We have yet to get that planned out.

moved in 1

Well the cows had water and our 12 at our home were now moved into their new home. Now we can move into our home. It was a busy couple of day. We only moved 3.9 miles to our new home, but moving 6 people takes some trips. We didn't think we had that much stuff, and we weeded out a lot as we moved it out. Ahh! feels good to throw stuff.
 I'm not a super sentimental person, and can throw a lot out. I have one thing I tend to hang on to. Pictures. Here is a little tit bit about me, the author of the blog. I love to scrap book. I just really love to go through our family history of 32879285789 pictures and put them in a neatly organized photo album. Then when I'm old I can look through them and remember our lives. They are short and fleeting. Especially with kids. Oh man do the days drag on when they are little, and you think you'll be changing diapers forever. FOREVER! But nope. A blink of the eye and it's gone. Now my kiddos are older and well, I'm so blessed. But time is not on my side. I don't have a lot of down time to spend hours, ya, hours working on albums. But someday, when I'm older....... hardy har har!! No, in all reality I know I will make many more albums to come. Rabbit trail over.
Back to moving in. We did it, with a little extra help, but it wasn't that bad. I don't ever wanna move again. I love my home. The farm. Our life. I still drive up the road to home and can't quite believe that it's ours. In all the times and years we drove by it, it never entered my mind it would be ours.

Lest you forget my love of sunsets. Oh how I was wanting to have a sunset view. Well God heard my prayer and granted yet another yes for me. I can see the sun setting in the big ole Maine west!  I can be in the dairy barn or on the veranda and watch the sun sinking low in the sky.

till the cows come home

40 years have passed since there has been a cow in this old dairy barn. We brought life back to it!

Our original 12 are home. Happy. Eating. Drinking. Pooping.
The man who hauled the cows over snapped a photo and sent it to the man that grew up on this farm and showed him the cows in the barn. He almost cried he was so happy to see cows back in the barn again.

the work begins

Before we could move into our new home, we needed to have water in the barn. No cows had been in the barn for 40 years. So it was a job to get it done, but all in all not too bad. Took some time though.
 I think the slow transition to moving in was good for all of us. We were at the farm everyday cleaning, and working, and eating meals. But at night we went home. We got used to being in a new place without  moving in right away. The kids started bringing over their stuff and putting it in their rooms! That was exciting for them too.
We tried to get the old water lines to work, but quickly found out they they were too far gone and rusted so we went with pex instead. So much easier and quicker and way easier to fix should something break. And my husband is quite handy in the whole carpentry aspect of building. So we did it together.

Was fun to work together on something we waited so long for.
We only needed to get water on one side of the barn to get our 12 home. So we did. Then we could work on the rest of the barn.

Then the day came. Just like that! LOL. Not really but sounds good. The cows were coming home! We were really excited too. A local dairy farmer said he would haul our cows home for us!!
And the day came for the girls to move over to the new farm!!

Here they are on the truck on their way to their forever new home!
All 12 of em. Took 2 trips to get them too. 

this is us

Never despise the days of meager beginnings.

june

Rachel was fine.
 Life seemed to be moving forward again. We decided not to plant a garden. Our neighbor asked how the farm hunting was going. We told him we found a place and were waiting to here from the owners.

Then life got real interesting for my husband one afternoon. He received 2 text messages, and 2 phone calls. A friend. A brother. A neighbor. His father.
 There was a new farm for sale. In the town we live in. 3.9 miles from where we were currently living. Just on the market that day. His dad saw the sign go up on the lawn.
Matthew called me. He asked if I wanted to go look at it. I knew right where it was. Such a beautiful place. I said yes. Whenever. He called me back about 10 minutes later. We were going to see it that Friday. OK. I thought. I decided not to look at it online. I told myself it wasn't going to happen. The barn would make it a no. Don't get excited. It's not going to happen. Besides we were still interested in the county property, maybe a little. But not really so much. Things were on hold with that property, due to some estimates on building a dairy barn. And we really didn't feel like that was were we were supposed to be. Non of us wanted to go.
Friday morning came. We went to see it. We pull in the long driveway. It's a yellow house. Just so happens to be my favorite color.  It's a colonial style house. My favorite. We walk in the barn first. I didn't want to see the house. My jaw almost hits the ground. The barn is clean. It still has the stanchions in it, and water bowls that are rusted. The cement work is great. A few cracks in it, but the best I had seen in all the barns we'd looked at. 1959 in marbles by the milk room. That was the year the barn was built. Matthew knows the boy, now grown man, who put them there, and he lives down the road from the farm.There was nothing but an old saw in the milk room. My eyes looked all over. Dare I hope? My interest increased, and I looked to Matthew. He looked as surprised as I did.We didn't speak to one another.
We walk into the house. Oh the house is a beautifully restored country farm house. We open the door and enter a mud room. Oh a mud room! It's heated too. Barn boots outside I think. I step into the house. A huge kitchen. A long counter top with granite. The cupboards are the ugliest shade of yellow I've ever seen. A big table. A big stove with 6 burners! Whoa! I could cook a lot on that bad boy! Then I see the pantry. It's as big as my kitchen back home. The living room is a beautiful shade of pale butter yellow. I love it. The office is a deep blue with wood trim. The stairs are open and we walk up. The house gets better and better. The master bed room is pale yellow with a tinted blue curved ceiling. We kept looking. Four bedrooms and two baths. I felt like I should pinch myself. Don't get too excited. Don't bond with it. you ladies know. We like to bond with things! :)The house turned out to be better then we thought possible. And the dairy barn.
We walk up to the horse stable and look that all over. A big, beautiful riding arena! Big beautiful stalls, nice big tack room, grain room, a kitchenette. Oh man. This was right up my ally. Horses. Dare I even think I'm not dreaming?
After we look the whole place over we chat with the Realtor. He said go home, pray, think, talk and let me know what you think.  We leave.
We talk. Pray.
It's everything and way more then we ever dared hope for. And the timing. The timing was all God.
 We go see the farm again the following Monday. We decide to make an offer. We did so on Wednesday night.
They had until Friday to answer.
Matthew called me Friday afternoon and said our offer was accepted. I immediately burst into tears. Happy tears.  The stress and pressures of looking were over. We were finally buying a farm. A dream farm. No more searching. No more wondering where we were going. We were staying close to family, friends and church. Moving 3.9 miles from where we were. The relief flooded my whole being. Two years of looking washed away and it felt so good.

not what we expected

Life has a way of throwing you a curve ball now and then. Or maybe it's a roller coaster ride. The whole beautiful thing we call life. Not knowing, but planning what you want. Working for what you want.  Praying for what you want. Thinking your going one way, but suddenly life takes you down a different road. A longer road. And we had just had a huge curve ball thrown our way.
Thankfully Simon was fine with keeping our cows for a few more months while we were continuing our search for a farm. We worked out a deal with him for keeping the cows. For that we were  thankful. We hated the thought of having to sell them only a day or so after we bought them, thinking we would surely be buying a place soon...

We were tired and feeling a little down to be honest. Who wouldn't?  We were still looking in the same areas. Nothing was changing, except our frustration. My frustration. I was wanting to go anywhere. I started looking way out of the box we had put ourselves in. Matthew still wasn't there. Yet. He would look at them, but too far away.
Now don't think harshly of him. This town was his home for almost all his life. His family lives here. His grandfather helped start the fire department that he volunteered at. He helped start the rescue. Our kids were the 9th generation in this town. He is the Scout Master of the scout troop that our son is part of. I kept all that in my mind, but still looked all over. I don't have that connection that he does. I love my family, his family, my friends and church, I even came to love this little town. But I wanted a farm more then I wanted to stay in the same townish area.
I was restless. The kids were restless. Matthew was restless. Nothing seemed to be working out in the land of buying a farm.
 Matthew and I would go for walks down the quiet road in the evening. We tried so hard to talk of something besides buying a farm. But both our minds were consumed with it. Sometimes we would walk in silence for a long time.  I was feeling a huge tug on my heart about leaving the plot of land we had lived on for 18 years. Yup. 18 years we rented the same place. So many memories. The buildings are ours, but not the land. We tried to buy the land, but the owner didn't want to sell. But as always on our walks we would end up talking about moving. Going over and over the places for sale and counting each one out after talking about all the pros and cons.   If you know me at all or have followed my blog you know how much I love the sunset. I love to watch the sky change and turn into all shades of colors as God tucks the sun in the west behind the mountains and the color fades and changes and gets darker. It's probably my favorite time of day in the summer. The view was spectacular.  I would always tell Matthew that where ever we moved we had to have a sunset. He would always tell me "God has a place for us, and it will be more and better then anything we ever expected. It's just not for sale yet. But I know it's coming and it's going to happen just like that." And as he would say that last part he would snap his fingers, and then he would lace his fingers back into mine and we would walk.
With winter approaching and 12 head of cattle to house we were wondering where we would put 2 of them. We had no idea. The Matthew sold something on Craigslist and when the guy came to pick the item up they started chatting about farming. The man being a farmer also. When Matthew laughing said we had 2 cattle we weren't sure where we would house for the winter the man offered his cattle trailer for them. We gladly took him up on it and that is where 2 cows spent the winter, with daily access to the outside! Things have a way of working out.
After more months of looking and nothing looking like we were going to buy and another Oct 1 coming faster then we would have liked, and knowing another winter was coming...

a new start

Hey.
 It's been a long time. Too long actually. But life has a way of happening at a fast rate of speed!
So here I sit with so much to say, so let me back up a small bit and fill you in. Grab a cup o joe and maybe some chocolate chip cookies. I'll wait. Maybe I'll get some myself....

Let me back up a little, and fill in some blanks I have left out over the years.
We have been building our farm since 2010 when we bought our first cow, Maggie.  Over the years we grew from that one cow to 12, (we raised some, bought some, and were given one).
We had wanted a place of our own for a while...and so begins the story of where we are now...

We wrote up a business plan that is 32 pages long and took 2 months to write, and got the finances in order. Then we went about getting a milk contract with Organic Valley. Getting a milk contract was easy.  We thought we could be milking by Oct. 1, of 2015, easy.
We had no idea how hard it was going to be finding a farm...
So the looking began, and as I would find some places I would email the them to my husband for him to look at. We wanted to stay in the area we were living in due to family, friends and church. If you've ever looked to move you know how time consuming it can be. Am I right or was it just me? Maybe it was due to the amount of land we needed to actually farm or the location, or the timing. Farm land is hard to come by where we live.
We kept our circle of towns rather small. The amount of land high and the price had to be right. I will say I looked at everything in every price range. There were some beautiful places that were for sale. I would giggle and show my husband a beautiful farm and say "Don't look at the price, just look at the front door." Do you know that commercial? It was a Zillow one. That was always fun. Until it wasn't fun anymore. I looked and looked. We drove by some places. We kept looking. Farm after farm. It was not to be. Every place we looked at was a hard no. Why?
Well mostly due to the barns, or lack of one. Barns roofs falling in, cement work is ruined due to the hard Maine winters,with no cows in them, settling of walls with no cement, the types of barns where the manure is under the cows in the "basement", which hasn't been allowed per Maine law since the 50's. Or the barn was so bad off and not what we needed was we would have to bulldoze it under and rebuild. Yikes! Our Realtor was great. She would send us some farms  and we would look them over and go see the ones we thought were something we could make work.
We wrote letters to some farms that were no longer being farmed and asked if they were interested in renting or selling us their farm with all our contact information. We got one letter back saying they were not interested at the time, but wished us well in our pursuit of looking. We thought that was nice.
Well, Oct 1, 2015 came and went. No farm. But we still had our contract. And Organic Valley would prove to be something really good to us and for us.
In the mean time we kept on living our daily lives, farming, home school, cooking, cleaning, working, you know the usual. Still looking. Still praying.
Then it hit us one day, why not send another email to the man who lived in the next town over. He had a beautiful farm, and he had said that he wasn't interested in selling, but he was getting older and tired. So why not? So we did. He emailed us back and wanted to meet us! Oh can you even?! We thought! This was late winter 2016.
We piled the kiddos in the van and went to meet him, and see the farm. We talked, and he showed us the barn and the land and the house. We got on well. Things were looking good. We met his nephew who he farmed with. He liked us too. We liked them all. He even said he'd be willing to make the house bigger and update it to better suit our family of 6! We never asked, or said anything about the size of the house. Living in small spaces is what we were used to. This was all happening so fast. We left later that day with our heads spinning and so joyful. He was going to work up a contract/lease agreement for 3 years with the  reassessment at the end of that time about the possibility of buying the farm. We had the potential of milking cows by the end of May!
Of course we had to call our families and tell them the good news!
Then to top it all off we got a call from a local farmer friend who had found some local certified organic cows that would be calving in late spring. All the certified cows we were looking for were way out towards Michigan. Things were falling into place.
Matthew went with Simon to see the cows the next day. The man who had them wanted them gone and was selling them the following day if we didn't buy them first. We bought 10. Not the beautiful Jerseys that we wanted (yes we love the Jersey breed), but Holstein/Jersey cross, and Belted Galloway Cross. But none the less certified organic and going to be milking! Simon told us we could keep the cows at his farm for a while if the organic papers were a little long in coming before we could get them to their new home. If you don't know organics here is a little FYI, you can't move a certified organic cow to land that is not certified or they loose their certification. The land was certifiable, but it takes a little while for all the paper work to go through the offices. Make sense?
We called Organic Valley and told them the good news, and were working on a start pick up date with them. They were waiting for the call.
Well the weekend came to sign the rental papers! We excitedly piled into the van again, and went with the papers we needed them to sign. This was it! We got to the house and the man had us sit at the kitchen table, and had the kids watching a movie in the next room, his nephew was there as well. He had no papers. We looked at him waiting. He sat down and looked at us and looked down at his hands that were clasped together on the table. I remember my heart was pounding in my ears, and my hands were clasped together in my lap as I was looking at him. I was sitting next to Matthew. I looked at his wife and his nephew, and at him again. He looked at us and said something like...
"I don't know how to tell you other then to just say it." He paused. "I'm sorry, but I just can't rent you the farm. There are family members who are not wanting to share this land, and who want to keep it. And I already promised my nephew that he has first rights to it, and he's not wanting to rent or sell."
My heart sank. I was shocked. Matthew was shocked. He cleared his throat and shook his hands and said something like
"OK. I understand, and can appreciate your honesty. Thank you." Somehow all walked out of the house and piled back into the van.
The kids had no idea what had happened as he told them. Some cried. I felt numb. And confused. And totally disappointed. Then Matthew and I looked at each other and he smiled at me and said
"Well there. Good. It's not where God wants us. I'm disappointed, but I'm ok with this. He has something better in mind."
My world felt so much better hearing him say that to me. I think the kids did too because soon they were chatting about something as we were driving down the road to tell Simon what happened because 10 of our cows were headed to his house.