Sunday, October 28, 2012

36 week belly & Fall goings on

I'm not really one for belly pictures. But we went to a wedding last weekend so I had Ryan take one since I was moderately dolled up. 
I'm definitely getting to the point where I would be perfectly happy to be done. I have about 3 weeks to go, we will see if he waits that long to come out or not.

In so many ways, this is my favorite time of year. The chickens and turkeys have all been processed, and Ryan's not feeding hay yet. So I actually see a little more of him than normal. We only had 25 turkeys manage to finish out the season from the original 160 (sigh), but they did come in a nice range of sizes from 8 to 21 lbs. The other turkey producers we know had trouble too, we think it was because all the eggs were laid in very warm weather and all of us had developmental problems in the turkeys. I keep telling people it's just like the reason that pregnant women aren't supposed to get into a hot tub! I would prefer this scenario, however, because most of them died early so we didn't pay to feed them and then we didn't pay to process them either. It's preferable to last year when they were so small because we fed and paid to process those right up until the end but then they were all only 8 lbs.

The cows are calving, so we have two new calves on the farm. We have a very hands-off approach to calving, so Ryan just makes sure to check them a little more frequently than usual. It's colder out, but generally we have good mothers and so far so good. 
The little girl in this picture has one white hoof, which is pretty cute. We also have a black-brown bull calf without a belt (the white stripe that is a mark of a belted galloway). We were told the belt breeds true, but we now have two instances where it hasn't. 

Being fall, I brought home a pumpkin for the munchkin and Ryan to carve, which she found to be great fun.
He came up with a good solution to the whole toddler-and-knives-for-pumpkin-carving issue by drawing her three different faces on paper and letting her pick what she wanted the pumpkin to look like. 

I have some maternity sweaters with big cowl necks that I wear a lot (I have three and they are long enough to cover the bump). Our little one has discovered that she can play peek-a-boo with me with these sweaters, no other equipment required. So if I pick her up with one of these sweaters on, she immediately follows a predictable sequence of events. 
Peek a boo!