Dogs & Cream Rambles

I got another couple pages done today, this time with this years photos from February...as you can see I'm behind again on this years photos. LOL

The first LO is of Yani and her puppies, and I just love how it turned out! Love the browns and those orange flowers in this kit. Browns work well for our farm photos I think...and yes I know I've said that before. *giggle* The 2nd LO is a photo of my DH kinda "sitting" on Annie (one of the kinder goats) although he wasn't putting his full weight on her. :)

Kit Credit: Kit Credit: Thanks for the memories by Mystique Designs.

Speaking of the dogs, we are considering getting rid of the two puppies we kept after all. I hate to, cause they are darling, but we have revised how we have the goats, with all the losses we had in the last year, along with the addition of the cows, so don't really need two sets of guard dogs, as the cows can probably take care of themselves...and besides Shadow gets out of our fences, so he might guard them too.

We were talking about it yesterday, and feel it's a little silly to have them now that the goats are all together. *sigh* Wish we would have decided that a month ago, when we were getting rid of the others, so we didn't get a little more attached to these. Lady especially is a sweetheart, and I'll be sad to see her go...but how many dogs do two people need....or maybe I should ask how many dogs do a small herd of goats need. For sure not 4 of them...3 is probably still to many, if we would decide we just can't get rid of Lady, but it's not quite as silly as four. LOL So Hobo is for sure probably going to find a new home, and I'm sure Lady will too, once I can wrap my mind around the idea, although I'd sure be happier if they would go to the same home together, but kinda doubt that will happen. *cry*

On a better note, we used the cream separator my Dad gave us for the first time yesterday. We aren't getting enough milk yet to really use it much, but when Daisy has her baby we are hoping the milk supply jumps, so maybe we will be able to use the separator every day (if we need the cream anyway). We just wanted to try it out, to make sure it worked good. If you look close at the photo above, you can see the difference in color between the cream and the milk. It's harder to see in the photo, but it was sure noticeable to us, as we were doing it. The cream is not pure white, but instead a nice creamy color...just beautiful! :) If you want to see DH actually cranking it, you can go see a photo on flicker here.

Because Mabel doesn't give us all that much milk, we have to put the milk in the fridge, and wait till we get several gallons to make it worth using the separator...which ties up all the room in the fridge. I'd much rather run it through the separator if we are going to, and make whatever cheese that day that I want...and give the animals the leftovers, than have it always sitting in the fridge, which is one reason I usually just skim the cream off by hand, so I don't have to have quite so much milk in there...but that makes it so it's to thin to whip usually if I happen to want some like that.

Course if I start getting to much milk, I am going to want a fridge that I can use just to age cheese in...a small one anyway, but I guess we will cross that bridge when we come to it. The chickens may get more milk than they know what to do with, if we get much...course that could save on buying grain too which is a good thing. LOL Good thing Dreaming is free...since I'm not sure if we will get THAT much milk, especially with a calf wanting some too. But it would be nice to have more than we can use, so the animals get it to. :)

Well I better run, have to hang some laundry out, so I can get more started...and have some things I hope to do this afternoon...hopefully. No rain here, well a few drops, but that's about it...seems like when we want it, we don't get it. LOL Oh well, it's really been beautiful here, if you can live with the wind that always seems to blow anyway, so that's a plus. Have a great rest of the week! :)