Strawberry Jam and Honey

We've been out of my homemade strawberry jam for a while now, and I've missed it! I planned on pulling some strawberries out of the freezer and getting more made, but somehow kept forgetting, when I did have time to do it. Finally yesterday I remembered to pull them out, so today I got it made! YUM!!!! We are finally back in strawberry Jam!!!!

I do love the homemade stuff the best. It's at least made with cane sugar, instead of corn syrup. One of these days I need to try no sugar or low sugar pectin though, cause the amount of sugar in this with regular pectin is just WAY to much!! (although...it sure is yummy! LOL) *sigh* Now I can't get fresh homemade biscuits out of my mind...LOVE them with strawberry Jam on them! LOL

Least I finally got that done.  The stuff I bought at the amish store just wasn't the same...I think the lady who made it for them watered it down, so the flavor wasn't as good, so I was kinda disappointed in it.  Guess if you are making it to sell you don't care about having a strong fruit flavor...but I sure wouldn't buy that kind again, so she is only hurting herself.  That store did have other "brands" so I could have tried a different one...but would rather make my own.  :-))

In other news...


...sadly this falls in the BAD news department...

Honey died last night.  She is in the photo above, in the blue halter, sniffing her new baby that she had last month.  DH thinks she slipped on the ice and fell, causing internal injuries ..but we don't know for sure.  Yesterday she was walking slow and limping, and this morning she was dead.  Of all of them we have, I'm thankful it was her and not one of the others...but sure hate that we had to loose any of them.

Honey was our oldest cow, and we were actually planning on selling her, but not for another year or two.  She was our biggest cow, cause she had a little Holstein in her, and we wanted to get rid of most of that and have the little bit smaller Jersey/Guernsey cows.

The bad part about it is...we haven't been getting lots of milk, with the two calves on the three mom's...(well...to my way of thinking anyway, although more than we will now!) and even though Daisy will accept Honey's calf, I have no idea how much longer she will have milk.  IF she is actually pregnant again, (we don't know yet...had her in with our young bull last month, and she hasn't come back into heat yet that WE have seen...so maybe?!) she may dry herself up before long, if she does like she did last time she got pregnant so...we could have a problem.    We are trying to decide if we should look for another cow or just wait.  So much for starting to have more butter...guess we may be buying it again after all, if we don't come up with another cow.

What to do....what to do, I just don't know.  :(

Anyway, Praise be to YAH for Daisy!  She will hopefully give us a breather, even if she does end up drying herself up...least she may keep the calf going, till we can figure out what to do.   I really don't want to have to bottle feed him, if we don't have to...but will keep an eye on him.  :-))  Gotta LOVE having a nurse cow!  :-))

All in all...it could be worse, but man I hate loosing animals, and cows are so much worse to loose than goats were.  Guess it's the price you pay to live on a farm...least if it's a REAL one.  And I do LOVE living on a farm.  :-))