~Jordan & Caleb~

I thought you all might like to "see" an update on Jordan and Caleb and Little Girl Yuck!

Note: For those of you who are new to this blog, Jordan is my oldest sister, who is recently married to Caleb Yuck (pronounced like "Yuke") of Canada!

 

Jordan's pregnancy is going smoothly and we are all getting very excited as the due date approaches!  We can't wait to meet that precious little bundle of love!

 

Caleb and Jordan are thrilled with their newly married life together and are anticipating the arrival of their little blessing from God!  Don't they look so cute!

 

~LOVE~

 

Jordan also came across these pictures from Gram and Pop's trip to Canada this summer.  It looks like they had a lot of fun together!

 

Hope you all enjoyed that glimpse into Jordan and Caleb's life. 

Only a little bit longer until the wee one arrives!

Long Overdue Post

Hello Everyone,

Life has been full blown lately!  Sometimes we look at each other in amazement and say, "Can you believe it's already August?"!  It feels like the older I get, the faster time flys...

So, what's new, you might ask?

My grandparents are arriving home tomorrow after a whole month of vacationing.  They took two weeks to visit Jordan, Caleb, and the whole Yuck family in Canada.  Then they spent the next two weeks with their brothers and sisters in Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan.  We missed them sorely, and are so looking forward to them getting home, but we know that they had a wonderful time, and Jordan really enjoyed their visit!

Clancy, our big Goldendoodle puppy is currently enrolled in dog obedience classes.  The boys and I have been taking him once a week to his training and it has been quite interesting.  I personally think he is still the most obedient dog in the class, but I might be a little biased!  ; )

This past month we took one goat from each of the groups that come in to get milked, and we handmilked them, instead of machine-milking them, so that we could get a measurement of exactly how much each goat is giving in a whole day.  And did we ever find out some intersting information.  But let me back up a little.  We had 23 goats that we were milking, all Nubian except one, Cotton, who is a Saanen.  Now through the years we have bred our goats to produce a larger quantity of milk, and it has worked to a degree.  The majority of our girls are giving one-half gallon a day, which, when we first started our dairy, was a good amount (we thought).  BUT, towards the end of our handmilking this past month, we milked the Saanen and found out that she was giving a whole gallon a day with one ounce to spare!  We need more goats like her so that started our search.  We looked online, in market newsletters, in the goat membership directory, just about anyplace we could think to see if anyone was selling Saanen or Alpine (another high milk producing breed) goats that were nearby.  We ended up finding three Alpine doelings and one Alpine buckling, three Saanen doelings, and a two year old Alpine in milk!  We drove about 16 hours in three days to get these goats, but it was well worth it.  We are hoping to breed the different breeds together and get a higher producing goat than what we now have.  So,....all that to say that we have done an about face and are trying some new ideas!  Maybe to some of you this doesn't sound so exciting, but the prospect of being able to milk 12 goats that give the same amount of milk as our 23 is VERY exciting!  It just makes us realize that you never really stop learning.  While trying these new breeds as well, we will be dealing with different buttermilk levels, so we will be doing some experimenting with the three breeds to see which combination produces the most milk while maintaning a high butterfat count!  We shall see....

That brings us to breeding season.  We will start breeding our does next week, so we have spent the last two weeks planning out who to breed to who? and when? and who to keep milking through the winter? and who to try to keep the babies off of? and should we try keeping a young buck off of one of our does? and round and round the questions go.  We have learned that if we start thinking about the breeding schedule ahead of time, we usually make better decisions, because it gives us time to think about things and change some things that would work better.

Hmmmm...other happenings lately?

We turned one of our pens into a buck pen by reinforcing it with wood fencing; tried out a goat milk fudge recipe (yum!); we were interviewed by a college student writing a paper about goat dairies (she spent half a day with us, and helped with various projects around the dairy, ending the day with an interview); school started back today for Ethan and Noah; and we have enjoyed shopping for my expecting sister as well as for Baby Yuck!

Life has been very full and very good!  I love each and every moment I get to spend with my wonderful family and I am very thankful to the Lord for the life that He has given me.  I can say, along with the Psalmist,   "...my cup runs over." (Psalms 23:5b)

"I will bless  the LORD at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth."  (Psalm 34:1)

For now,

Kelsey



Gram and Pop's 50th Anniversary!

On July 1st, my grandparents on my mom's side celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary!

Poppy and his best man/brother Duane

Gram and her Maid of Honor/sister Julie

Gram and her little brother Derald

Gram and Uncle Derald

What a cute couple!

One interesting thing about my grandparents is the fact that my grandfather never proposed to my grandmother!  Here is their story, in my grandmother's words, written in her wedding memories book:

"I wish I could give you a romantic answer or story, but from the beginning, Darrell and I just took it for granted that we would be married someday.  He didn't propose on a moolight sail or on a country road, as they do in some of the movies I've seen.  One day, he turned to me casually and remarked, as if he were talking about the weather, "I think July first would be fine." I nodded, fine because that's when our vacation started.  That's how it was, and frankly, I wouldn't have had it any other way."

In a day and age when marriage vows are taken so lightly and staying together through thick and thin is almost non-existent, we are so thankful for our grandparents and for the relationship that the Lord has blessed them with!  They are a Godly example of what marriage can and should be like.  They are still very much in love and truly enjoy just being in each other's presence.  They are best friends!

Ephesians 5:22-33

 "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.  Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.  Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;  That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,  That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.  So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.  For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church:  For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.  For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.  This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.  Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband."

We put together a little slide show of pictures.

Ethan's Lego creation "Happy 50th"!

We ended the day with a good old water balloon toss and a game of Euchre (a card game that is everyone's favorite)!

We love you Gram and Pop and thank the Lord for you both!  May the Lord give you many more wonderful years together!

Whew! What a week!

Okay, so a lot has been going on lately! It all started with preparation for the Herb Faire. The Herb Faire is a festival that we sell at twice a year. They have vendors there selling antiques, baked goods, plants, arts and crafts, etc. So we go and sell our soaps, breads, cheese, lotions, lip balms, and other stuff. It usually takes a couple weeks to get ready to go with the last day being the "crunch" day. It was no different this year.


The fair was this past Saturday, so on Thursday we were busy getting our preparations ready and making cheese. Everything seemed to revolve around cheese this last week: make the cheese at 10:00, scoop cheese at 3:00, ball up cheese at 7:00 and so on and so forth. Friday rolled around and it found us again preparing for the Herb Faire, but also working on putting the dry wall up for the dairy ceiling! (Yes, I'm a little behind in my steps for the dairy! We finished siding it and staining it. Poppy put in the electric, and we have now been working on getting the dry wall up. We have also been informed that we will now have to put in a septic system, but that's a long story.)


So on Friday we were down to the "crunch". Half of us were working on the dairy while the other half were working on getting ready for the fair. The dry wall was coming along nicely, and Jordan and I had just gone to get subs for everyone when all of a sudden Poppy cut his hand open. He was cutting the dry wall with a pair of box/carpet cutters. He was holding the cutters in his right hand while he punched out the seam that he had just cut, but when he punched it out, the dry wall started to slip and as he tried to grab it the box cutters came down slicing his palm a good inch and a half. Dad drove him down to his house to change and by then Jordan and I were home with lunch. So he stayed and ate and then Gram took him to Doctor's Care. (Since Jordan and I were gone when the whole thing happened, I really didn't believe them when they told us. You have to understand that Poppy NEVER gets hurt. This just happened to be the ONLY time that he didn't set down the cutters when he punched out the seam. So I asked to see the cut while we were eating (mistake!) and he showed me. It was deep. I have never seen a cut that deep in person! There is no way I could have eaten before going to the doctor, but he did!)


He ended up having to get 4 double stitches (really more like 8). They said that it just missed the tendon. You could see the tendon through the cut, but praise the Lord, it didn't get sliced. His golf had to be postponed for the week, but that is minor compared to what could have happened!

Then on Friday night, Poppy's brother and sister-in-law from Wisconsin came down. We had a nice time visiting with them over the weekend and were thankful for the time that we shared with them.

Saturday arrived! The big day! Everything went well. The weather was just beautiful, not too hot, not too cold and everything worked out just right!

(Jordan's pillowcase dresses)

After the fair we were looking forward to a nice relaxing Sunday. It was not to be so! For the past week, we have had a friend's bee hive at our house waiting to take it to another friend to get some bees for them. Well, on Sunday we looked out our back window at the barn and saw a huge swarm of bugs. Some type of bug. Upon closer inspection it turned out to be a swarm of bees! And they were all going right into that bee hive! There must have been two thousand of them swarming around. After about 30 minutes they were all in the hive settling down. Right away we started calling people asking what we were supposed to do. The friend who owned the hive came down and picked it up. What an interesting evening!

So that pretty much covers what we've been doing! What an interesting week!!!