Fire Cider and Numerous Other Things

I think this is one of those things that everyone knows about and I'm a bit behind the times.  I'd never heard of Fire Cider until a friend mentioned it in an email as if I should already know about it.

I looked it up, got a recipe and made a batch yesterday.  I found a recipe at http://mountainroseblog.com/fire-cider/ .

This is supposed to boost your immune system.  It has to set for a month before I can use it, but I'm thinking it might also work for our livestock.  I currently buy a natural immune booster for them.

Since I was on a healthy kick, I started more wheatgrass.

This is a sprouter that I bought over 20 years ago and used it for the first time a couple of months ago.  The wheatgrass tastes great and it's good for us and our cats and our chickens.

I might as well throw everything into this post.  My honey just asked if I'd blogged about his new toy.  So here's a picture.

You can't see it, but there's a grapple hook on the loader and we can haul two large round bales at a time.  Best thing?  The cab is enclosed with a HEATER!!!

Last, but not least, we had a surprise last week...

Praise God, the weather has been warm.  This guy is from a cow we bought last spring and I guess she was exposed to the bull a bit earlier than we thought.  I named the calf Surprise.  He's healthy and jumping around like he should.

Time for a late breakfast.  This is turning into a lazy relaxing day.

Calving Time

We finally got our snow.  There's about a foot of it on the ground, which is a good thing, we needed the moisture.

It's also calving time on the farm.  Our cows calve outside but not usually in this much snow. We have a couple of new heifers-first time calvers- that I'm a bit concerned about.  One girl is very 'petite' and she's ready to drop any day now.

So it's up and outside early every morning to check and then in three or four hour intervals until 10 or 11 at night.  I dread crawling from my warm bed, throwing some boots and a coat on and going outside.  My honey and I take turns, but I'm thinking I'm pretty lazy.  Once outside it's actually pretty nice.  The cattle are so big and pregnant that they let you scratch them under their chins and rub their ears, it's easier than trying to move away from you. :)

Our only milk cow should calve sometime in the next two weeks.  Fresh milk again!  Our daughter is getting a couple of pigs to raise on the milk.  We go through a lot of bacon and this might be a way to save a bit of money while eating "healthy bacon"?  Is there such a thing?

I think I'll call it a day a bit early. 
Good night.