Blizzard

Yes that's right we had a Blizzard started on the 24 of December and ended today the 26 of December we have snow drifts that are taller then the dually pickup. It was a lot of fun trying to feed the animals yesterday in the blizzard! we did lose some animals due to the cold wind, it was 2 alpacas but they were rather old so I'm not to surprised we had struggled to keep their weight up since we got them. the lambing season is going well despite the ugly weather. We had the move the bum lambs from the house to the garage due to one lamb named Pig she was always the noisiest one out of them all if you make the slightest noise or walk or any movement at all she would start in crying and would not stop for hours. So hubby had enough of her belle-ring and moved them to the garage on Christmas night. Its funny though my Dad and son and I had to listen to them for a week and half and hubby had all he could handle after 3 days. So he finanally got their box made and they slept in the barn again on Sunday night. It is nice to have my living room back as a living room and not a makeshift nursery. I think I am a holding point in lambing until February when we will start back in which is fine for me now I have my hands full with these guys and tyring to finish the barn and get it ready for the rest of the lambs to come and also do all the daily house chores as well! Ha! Ha! and on top of this I came down with one of the many types of flue's that is floating around this winter. Boy I tell you I sure felt ugly the first day which was yesterday (Sunday) and today I just feel like a mac truck ran me over and decided it was not done with me so it shifted in to reverse and plowed over me again. It's such a wonderful feeling!!! (NOT!) Well I have to go do chores and make some tamales for New Year Eve Dinner.

Busy and Tired

Yup, that right I am a little tired I have started my lambing season already and I am not getting much sleep. I have 2 ewes each with a set of twins and had 10 bum lambs but I lost 4 two nights ago to the bitter cold even with 2 heat lamps and plenty of bedding down in the pen for them. I went out yesterday morning to feed them and that is when I found I had lost 4 of my babies. So I brought the rest into the house. I diapered them and fed them and placed them in the living room by the heater till they warmed up. So I have 6 wonderful little lambs running around the house now with their diapers on it is the cutes thing to see! especially when I tell them it is time to change they all run up to me and wait their turn and then I feed them all. My father started to laugh last night when I was going into the living with the bottles for the babies because all you could see was these little white butts following after me wanting to get fed. It was really quit comical to see. So I have all the bums in the house till hubby gets home so we can work on something in the barn to keep the babies more warm. So I of course I have to name them if they are going to be in the house! Isn't that how it works when you take a poor little animal in the house to take care of them they need a name. So as I sit here typing this out to let you know about my babies I have all 6 of them at my feet under the desk waiting to be fed. I think I missed my true calling in life! And that was to be someone who works with animals. I did not know I had this talent until last year when I had to do the whole lambing season by myself, because hubby got pulled out of state to drill wells. Boy I tell you this city girl was scared spit less last year when my ewes started lambing I thought I could not do it all alone but I stepped back and took a deep breath and waded through all the after birth and helping the ewes with the lambs and even learn some simple vet care thing to do if a lamb gets in trouble. I just wish I had more sheep than what I have so I can quit my job at the gas station and do this full time I do truly enjoy working with all my animals. I do seem to surprise my father on how well I do withe the sheep since I was born and raised in the city in California. Well the wee ones are calling for me so I should get them fed soon and also feed the humans as well!

Lambing Season Started!

Yes that is right it has started! I came home last Friday with a ewe and her twins and one bum-lamb. The twins are doing OK but the little one need some extra milk and the bum lamb we worked on but she did not make it. I am not worried because before long I am going to have some many lambs I won't know what to do with them all and I will probably run out of room in the barn. Which we were finishing up until the snow storm hit this week and put everything to a halt. We have a friend that we get our bum-lambs from and we found out that 3 weeks ago she had a heart attack and won't be able to care for any of the bum-lambs this year so we will have a lot of lambs this season.
I am still working on spinning and am trying my hand a needle felting purses and little bags I have not had any classes in it but am learning from trial and error. I think that is the best way to learn some time then you know what not to do next time you hope. I will work on trying to get some pictures of the bags I have completed on here but these days I am spread a little thin. If only I was actually thin as I am spread ha ha ha ! Mom , I really will try to get the pic's here for you to see OK! This is the first day I have had any time to do any work on the blog or websites in about a month. I have had just about enough time to check if I have any email for the business and that is it. Well I have a ton of things I have get done on my 4 days off this weekend so I better get cracking. I will blog at you later!

Busy! Busy! Busy!

I have been really busy for the last 5 weeks that I have not had much time to post any thing here! We have been trying ti clean the sheep pens and get them for winter and I had a down lamb dew to worms and been nursing her back to health. I am glad to report that she is doing much better and now we have a problem with her fleece slipping off her dew the her being so sick when we brought her to the barn. So I am kind of worried to let her out with all her other little lamb friends and she will get chilled and have a relapse or something!! We have had a horrible time with the weather around our part of the country do to snow and rain it has made a real mess of the sheep pens and they were stand in the terrible muck that would not dry. So I came home from work one day and started shoveling all this smelly muck out and hauling it by wheelbarrow full to the mud hole where we dump all the little marble all our animals make. Only this was not in marble form anymore do to the rain and snow. What a mess!!! When Juan came home from work he saw what I was doing and he took over. It took us about 2 and half weeks to finish the job because of the weather. I also had about 6 months of farm book work to catch up on as well and been trying to spin and work at the gas station do the cleaning and cooking here at home and check emails for the websites and help a friend buy some Holstein bull calves as well trying to help another friend out with her mother who is recovering from surgery. Oh I also forgot to tell you that I also have been helping my Dad try to get his trailer house in order for when we get all the utilities hooked up so he can go and live in his home which is on the farm about 100 feet from the main house. So you see I have been a little busy to say the least. And on top of this I am thinking of trying some needle felting in my spare time. I found out this week that Hobby Lobby carry the needles and today we are going to Kearney to pick them up. I know I don't have a lot of followers and I am not sure why I take the time to put this out there in cyberspace except for the fact that my Mom can go on my blog and see what is going on here at the farm. I wish I can get more people to to look at my websites and start to place orders and more of a following on this blog. But I am sad to say I don't know how to do this if some one has any ideas I will be willing to listen to them. Please post here on the blog or you can email me at our website just click the button that my sister made for me on this blog.

NEW STORE

I have a new store on http://www.YanezFarms.artfire.com. This is a direct link to my store and what I have for sale there right now. It is a work in progress and I am still working on adding more stuff to it in time be patient with me. It seem I sometimes get too many pokers in the fire and I have a hard time trying to keep up with everything. But I do try! If there is anything that you are looking for drop me a line and I will try to get it for you.

Change of subject: This Friday we are going to the Nebraska Sheep and Goat Producers convention in Wahoo and I am really looking forward to it to meet other sheep producers and see what kind of knew information that is out there for us sheep ranchers. I will let you know how it goes!

New Toy

Well I finally got my electric spinning wheel this week it a dream to spin on. I am still working on getting use to it but it is so much easier on my ankle. You see I broke my ankle this summer and I still have trouble with it now and again. And last month I tried to used my ashford and it was rather difficult to use cause my ankle does not have the movement it use to have so I could not spin and that really upset me! So my hubby said i could get this wheel I found on Ravelry, its a Roberta and it is used but it looks new!.I got it for a really good price! I go tit for half the price of a new one. I am so excited to start spinning again and use my new wheel.

Next week my husband and I will be going to the Nebraska Sheep and Goat Producers Convention in Wahoo. I am looking forward to this so I can get our name out there an let people know that we can clean their wool for them and they won't have to send it out of state to be cleaned. So today I am working on cleaning Lady Bug's wool and also making up some sort of flyer's to pass out. I hope this works out and gets us some leads on cleaning some wool! Please say a prayer for us that it works. Well I better get going I have a busy day ahead of me!

Lambing Season

Well I am starting to get ready for this winters lambing season . I spoke with a neighbor about getting their wood shavings. I am also going to start stocking up on diapers. Yes you read right diapers I use them on the little lambs that I have to take in and bottle feed. I know it sounds crazy but it really works. and I get this bond with the lamb and it makes it easier for handling when they are older, they are not afraid of you and you can work with them. The diapers save on your floor and you are not having to clean up all these little marbles all the time. I tried it this last winter when we were having temps below zero degrees in the early morning hours when I would have to go out and bottle feed them in the barn. So while my husband was away one time this last winter I had a lamb that her mother who didn't have enough milk to care for 2 lambs so I took Mazie in and tried the diaper thing and it worked! So I thought why not do it on all of the bottle lambs! I tell you it sure saved on my floors.I have proof of it in my Picasa photo gallery at the bottom of this blog take a look and see what you think? I am really proud of my bottle babies and they are all doing really great, they are with all the other sheep in my herd. I put them out with them when I see that they are holding thier own and start to gain weight.

Been Awhile

Its been awhile since I have had any time to write anything here the sale of our lambs went better than we had hoped. I have been busy cleaning wool so I can start spinning like crazy this fall. My husband has been gone just about every week. So come the weekend we spend catch-up on the chores that he has not been able to do in the week. On top of that I came down with the creeping crud that just does not want to leave. Also the make things even worse our pick-up broke down and will cost a very disgusting amount of money to fix it so off to the go ole' banker to talk money. which is not my favorite thing to do!!! Oh well it is taken care of for now, we got the money to fix it. You know that old saying when it rains it pores well I think we have had that this month. I certainly hope next month is going to be better than this one for the money aspect anyways. We also have been having problems with coyotes coming into the pasture at night and spooking the animals. So it has been a little tense here when it get dark. That is basically the whole enchilada here!

To The Sale Barn

We are taking all our spring ram lambs to the sale barn tomorrow. To start getting ready for the Fall and Winter feeding. I hope we do well! Last month they did all right. I hope the price per pound is up and not down. This time of the year it usually is up and we do pretty fair. We have learned from past experiences not to transport them more than 60 miles away to sell them. Because what profit you do make gets eaten up in the cost of fuel, the buyers don't know you and are shy to buy from you. So we now go to a sale barn close to home where the people know us and want our lambs. We are keeping all the spring ewes for breeding and to increase our herd. I still have this years sheared wool for sale and have some pictures of it on our website. We also have some beautifully colored Llama fiber as well as our Alpaca fiber for sale too. I did not get pic's of all the Llama fiber but I can tell you some of the colors. Here is the list of colors

Llama Fiber Colors:
white with tan and brown fleece
white with a rose fleece
tans with a rose fleece
gray with white and brown fleece
white with brown fleece
dark brown fleece
black fleece
black with brown tips fleece
black with gray fleece

These are all unclean fleeces with some VM (vegetable matter) in them. I am selling it unclean or I can clean it for you. The unclean price is a $1.00 per pound or if I clean it is $6.00 per pound. These all are very pretty fleeces and have a nice staple length to them all. I did spin some, it is the dark gray that I have pictured on our website. It really spins up beautifully by itself or you can combine it with other fibers, which would be nice too!

Bithday Thanks

Yes, yesterday was my b-day and I want to thank my sister for the really great post she put on her blog. I really liked it a lot and think it is super! I had a wonderful day it started at 4:30 in the morning when my husband woke me up and wished me Happy Birthday. I did have to go to work that day but it was okay. when I got to work my co-worker Jackie and our boss Irene blew up balloons and taped them all around my register and wrote on one Happy Birthday and faced it out so the customers could see it. So all the local people saw it and wished me Happy Birthday and some that were just passing threw wished me a good day as well. It was a lot of fun yesterday. When I got home my Dad had bought stuff for my special dinner and my husband and son got me flowers from all of them in the house it was really cool. So I want to say Thanks to all that stop by here and wished me Happy Birthday it really was a great day for me! I had lots of fun and will remember it always.

Pictures Finally

Well it has taken just about all bloody day to do it but I did finally got those lovely pictures on my website and I am just plain tuckered out. But I think they came out OK. Truthfully at this point I really don't care! But they are done!!! Oh you will have to use my button to my website to see them. Because I was having trouble trying to hyper-link them. So they are there anyways.

Fiber Pictures

I have spent a lot of time working on the pictures I need for the website on the fiber I sell. I first was having problems with the program and then the download. I had spent about a day and a half trying to get it to work. Well I think I finally got it figured out but we shall see. I had a call from a friend of mine today. She was telling me about a craft fair that is coming up this weekend in North Loup and I told her I wanted to do it with her. But I forgot that this is my weekend to work at my other job, the gas station. Bummer!! I was really looking forward to doing this show to get my fiber out there and my yarn too. It is probably for the best this way it gives me more time to do more spinning. I have to spin like a mad woman to get a lot of yarn done. But I think it will be worth it in the long run. I am going to post the picture on here as well as on the website for all of you to see what I have to sell.

Milking Bessy

Well it has been a week now since Bessy has been using the new milk bucket and she is such a happy cow now! She is so happy that it does not take for ever to milk her anymore and so is our son is happy too. He still thinks it is the greatest thing to have that milker now. He has a much better frame of mind about having to milk Bessy. Don't get me wrong he liked it, it's just when you are over 6 feet tall and having to squat for 20 to 40 minutes to milk a cow it gets kind of hard on your legs and back. And since I had broke my ankle this summer I still can't squat like I should. So when my husband gets called away on business it is left to our son to do it. It can be rather difficult at times but not anymore. That milker is a lifesaver for us all here at the farm. We are happy farmers now!!

Well It has been a couple of days since I have written anything. So here it is. My husband came home Wednesday from being out of town since Monday morning and we have been busy trying to play catchup on the chores around here. We also, this morning, had to go to Broken Bow and help the owner of Broken Bow Pack with moving some pressure tanks around. Also we picked up some of the pork meat that we sent there to be processed. When we got home and put the meat in the freezer we decided to try some of the sausage for lunch and OH MY GOODNESS is it good. It is some of the best I have ever had!!! When we were talking to Gary he was telling us that he has not been in business that long, only 5 years and he is just building it up. So those of you that live near Broken Bow and need any live stock slaughtered send to Broken Bow Pack .They do a really nice job and they are willing to work with you on how you want your meat.

Oh also an update on the milking bucket. My husband and son got to use it Thursday morning. I tell you that is is a breeze now to milk Bessy and she likes it too. Because it does not take so long to milk her now. So we have happy milkers and a happy cow!!!

The Sucessful Cheese

Here are some of the cheese I have made todate.

Super Busy

Well I have been so busy the last 5 days! I don't know if Im coming or going. It all started Last Friday when I got a call from my husband and told me he was leaving Litchfield and heading to the shop, and if I and the rest of our family was ready to meet him at the shop in Broken Bow. Because we had to get more pots to make this dish called Barbacoa. which is a whole lamb cooked on one pot. This is a dish that is only fixed on special occasions like wedding, baby showers, etc. . So we got that pots and the rest of the ingerdients to fix two lambs for a friend for her sisters baby shower on Sunday afternoon. Mind you it was my weekend to work at the other job, and we had these two lambs to fix for Sunday. Saturday night my husband ended up staying up all night to fix the lamb. And I had to work on Sunday. So I didn't get a chance to see the end result and when our friends came to pick it up and they asked my husband if I could make some mozzeralla cheese for them and of course he said sure she can. Mind you I have never made it before! but not a problem and my husband asked our friends how many pounds they wanted? They said the wanted 3 pounds and they wanted for Friday and of course my husband said no problem that she would have ready on that day. On top of every thing else we also had to take one of our bulls and 4 hogs to the 2 different pack and process places. One is in Litchfield and we left there the bull and 3 hogs and the other hog to Broken Bow Pack. Mind you this is on top of all our daily chores and me having to work outside the house this weekend.We also had to take a lamb to B.B. pack as well yesterday.

Well I did make some mozzeralla cheese for the first time today and it was a great success out of 1 gallon of milk I yield about 12 to 14 ounces of cheese. So I have just finished making the second batch and am in the process in making the 3rd batch as I write this. I am really excited about making the cheese and I have fun making it too!!!

We also got our new milking bucket today and our son was so happy to see it today beaucse he wont have to milk by hand anymore. He told me he felt like it as christmas when we got the box this morning. I tell you it was the most beautiful thing we have seen and knowing that the guys wont have to milk by hand any more sounds good too!!

Acknowlegement due

Yesterday I did a big mistake in regards to tink-n-frog. It was not inteneded to be the way it was interperted. I didn't know if she wanted to be refered to as my sister or not! I am truely sorry for not refering to her as my sister. Yes she is my younger more knowledgeable sister . When it comes to computers. I am still learning. I have only been on the computers for 2 years so this stuff is still very unknown to me. I am proud of my sister and all she can do on these crazy machines. I only hope she can truely for give me for not calling her my sister. I think she did a beautiful job on my blog page and I truely appreciate what she did and the late hours she was up .

New at Blogging

Well I'm new at this blog thing . I'm not sure how this all works. But I'm willing to try it. As you may have figured out my husband and I have a small farm in Nebraska it has been a life long dream of ours. We don't have much acreage but we make up for it in ideas. We are trying something new. We started a website about our farm and what we raise and can offer people out there in the world. My husband and I both work out side the farm and when we get home we do our daily chores. We have a 16 yr old son and he helps out a ton in the summer and when his Dad gets called away on business. Our goal with the website is to drum up enough business so I can stay at the farm and do most of the work there, instead of going to my other job. As I say, it is new and if anyone would like to check it out we really would like to hear from you. You can fill out the contact page on the website or leave a comment on this blog. We are still working out the kinks in it so please be patient with us.

A change in subject in regards to the cheese making I mailed my first cheese today! I hope Tink-n-Frog you like it? I am so excited about it and I also got a call about making carnitas today as well. For those of you who don't know what carnitas are it is fried pork. It is usually the whole pig that is fried. It is really good but very very rich. Well off to go do chores!!!

Making Cheese

Well today I have a day off from my job. I work outside the home as well as on the farm. This last weekend we had some people show up at our farm and bought one of our fat lambs for eating. Then my husband told them that I make Que so Fresco (fresh cheese). And they placed an order for 2 - 4 inch wheels. So today I made cheese from the milk from our cow, Bessy. She is really cute and she loves to give you kisses with her really big tongue. My husband and our 16 year old son milk her twice a day and we yield about 4 gallons a day from her. It is too much for us to drink so my father and I thought we could make cheese with the milk that we or the bucket calves don't use. Dad bought a starter cheese making kit. Then my husband got excited about the idea and he showed me how to make the fresh cheese. So now I am working on my technique on making a better cheese. Well it is about time for us to milk Bessy and finish the rest of the chores for the day, get dinner and then maybe have time to watch a little TV.

This is the first post for the Yanez Farms blog.