Update on the Lambies :) (by Emily)

The lambs will be 4 weeks old this Wednesday! Wow, the time has gone fast, and they have grown fast! Unfortunately the littlest one, the girl, didn't make it. But the three boys are getting huge, and good grief can they ever eat! :) The biggest one hit 17 1/2 pounds tonight, and the others are just about caught up to him. As for their names.... well, I had named them Prancer, Rudolph, and Dasher... but then someone (not me!) came up with the idea of Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh... and to be honest I'm not exactly in favor of the idea. Anyone out there wanna be named Frankincense!?!?!?! Anyways, that's just my opinion. Of course me and Dad, their caretakers, have our own "pet" names for them... Big Boy, Pretty Boy, and Floppy Ear. :) So obviously I'm sure those lambs don't have a clue what their names are! :)

This afternoon we had a Christmas Program for the elderly people at Dassel Lakeside Apartments with some friends, and we brought along Big Boy/Prancer/Gggggooolllldddd, complete with a red ribbon and silver bell. I was a little worried he might be upset or wild, but quite to the contrary he was calm and cute and sure seemed to enjoy all the spoiling attention... everyone just loved him. :)


Mary Christmas, the most recent lamb, born about a week ago, is also doing very well..... nursing well, frisky, and oh, so cute. And as for me???? ..... I'm "in my element", as Aunty would say.... lovin' every minute of it!!!! Me and Daddy go out morning and evening every day and have our "milk date" as I call it. I milk while he bottle feeds, then he feeds and waters while I finish bottle feeding. :) Life is good. :)

Mother and Daughter Christmas Tea

Here is a picture of the tea Emily and I hosted for some friends. We had a time of sharing, some food and tea, and then the girls went ice skating while the moms visited. It was a great day!

The Christmas Recital

After many hour of practice, the dreaded Christmas recital arrived, and not without much emotion on the home front!! The kids were so nervous and were trying to convince us, on the way to the recital, that they were coming down with the flu. :) Of course they all did great, as they always do!


Jonny had been working particularly hard on his song. He was having a lot of trouble with it, and Emily was spending lots of time helping him. He really wanted to give up, but he kept plugging away at it (with lots of incentives from Emily). :) I think his piano teacher was a little concerned, but when he finished his piece at the recital, his teacher turned around and looked at us and said (with a big smile), "He nailed it!" :)



Jonny went to bed tonight with a sigh and said, "Well, I guess all that hard work paid off!" , to which I replied, "Yep, you're learning how life works, Jonny!" :)


(the kids and their piano teacher)

Lamentations 3:17 says that "It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth." In other words, it is good for young men to learn to work hard! :)

Hunting with Grandpa

Here's a picture of Mike and the boys going pheasant hunting with Mike's Dad. They had beautiful weather for hunting! Ben is the only one that got a pheasant, but they were not able to find it......Jackson is a guard dog, not a hunting dog. :)

Us girls escaped to do some Christmas shopping while they tromped around in the slough. When we got back, we all enjoyed some white chili made with Housman Farm chicken, of course. And any time Grandpa is over, the kids cannot let him leave without either playing some games with him or listening to some of his hunting stories.......or both! :)

P.S. For those of you who are wondering where Brandon went......He is currently living on his own and working full time. That's why you don't see him in the pictures.

Lamb Pictures

Here are a couple lamb pictures. The one is of Em and Mike using the "lamb saver".

Skating with Friends

We have some friends that made a full-size hockey rink in their backyard. It's super nice! The kids and dads had a great time playing hockey together, while us moms twirled around on the sidelines. :) Here are a couple pictures of the time we had with our special friends, the Swensons.

Forest City Stockade Pioneer Christmas

Every December the Forest City Stockade puts on a pioneer Christmas. Each building houses a man or woman working a trade from that era. We saw the potter, the candle maker, the printer, the gunsmith, and the baker....just to name a few. It was such a pretty setting with the fresh snow on all the log buildings, and the horse-drawn sleighs were especially beautiful!

The kids enjoyed eating the gingerbread men from the bakery, but the horehound candy from the doctor left a little to be desired. They practiced dipping beeswax candles and learning how the printer sets his type. It was fun watching the potter working with the clay; he made it look so easy! We spent a lot of time in the church singing Christmas songs with the old-timers and playing the mandolin and the pump organ. It was a nice day! :)

Christmas Lambs! By, Emily ;)

The thing I LOVE about living on a farm is all the unexpected things that happen.... life is so exciting and never dull around here. We have a ewe named Nancy who was going to be butchered this fall, but was unusually.... large. Very large. Sometime last summer she got pregnant when she wasn't supposed to. We were expecting lambs, but didn't really have any idea when they would arrive. Nancy also has had mastitis, so her udder does not "work" any more. We bought milk and colostrum replacer and were all ready.

Yesterday morning I went out to milk and as I walked to the pen to get Milly, I heard this low "mmmmm" like the Mama sheep make when they're "talking" to their babies. I thought "maybe she had her babies" , but I figured she probably didn't because I thought that EVERY morning. :) Well I walked up to the pen, hoping against hope that maybe, just maybe she had popped. Looking over the gate, I saw Nancy, looking a little thin, standing facing away from me. I peered around her and saw a LAMB, standing up, looking for breakfast!!!!!!! I couldn't believe it!!!! I was SO surprised!!! I opened the gate and ran into the pen. I felt like screaming for joy, but instead I looked for more lambs. :) Over in the other corner was one.... it looked really dead. I picked it up. It was SO weird what happened! It's head moved a little, but the rest of it's body stayed in the same position!!!I It was FROZEN, literally!!!! I've never seen a frozen lamb... it was really scary. But it was alive. I ran out of the barn and looked around in the yard. There was another lamb lying by the door, looking a little more alive, but not much. I scooped it up too. Then I looked around the rest of the yard. Nothing else. I ran to the gate and yelled for Dad as loud as I could, but he was in the house still and didn't hear me. So I ran into the milk room and put them both on a towel next to the heater. Then I opened the door and yelled for Dad again. This time he heard me and I said "she had her lambs!!! But their really cold!!!" Then I got the other lamb, who was walking around and doing fine, and put it in a pen with Nancy. Then Dad came finally and had a big heater, so we warmed them up.

The one that was really dead-looking, her legs were literally frozen. They were cold and stiff and wouldn't bend or anything. It was SO weird. I held her legs in my hands to try and thaw them, and we were drying them off with the hair dryer, and eventually her legs could move. So about a 1/2 an hour later Dad went out to feed the sheep while we were still busy warming them up. He came back in a couple minutes.... HOLDING A LAMB!!!!! I couldn't believe it. He and I and BOTH searched the yard, in fact I had searched it twice!!! When he was feeding the sheep, Dad heard this little "maa". He thought it was one of the big lambs, but then when he was leaving he heard it again. He looked around, and then he saw it... it was stuck in between the water tank and the fence!!! I'm so glad we found it before it froze!!! It was still wet, and starting to get little icicles on it's wool. But it was doing really well... a 8 pound little boy. So three boys and one girl.... the little girl is 5 pounds, then the boys are 7, 8, and 10 pounds! Also, I must add that this is the first time we have had four live lambs born from one ewe.

None of them would eat from the bottle when we first tried to feed them, so for the first time in Housman Farm History, we used a scary device called a "lamb saver". It is basically a plastic cup with a long rubber tube that has holes in the end attached to it. Dad told me that we were going to have to use it, and showed me how to hold the lamb. As he began to slide the tube down the lamb's throat, I asked, "Is this dangerous?", to which he replied, "Not if you know what you're doing." So I asked him if he knew what he was doing and he said, "No!" :( The danger is if you slide the tube into the lungs instead of the belly, and when you pour the milk in it will drowned the lamb. But it went well, and we now have done the procedure several times with success. :)

We are keeping them in the milk room, in a little sectioned-off pen in the corner. There's a heater in there, so it's nice and toasty. :) I'm having a blast bottle feeding them! Me and Daddy have been getting up in the night to feed them, which is SO fun. Now we just have to think of some nice "Christmasy" names for them. :) I bought some little jingle bells to put on them too. :)

So thus concludes the latest adventure on the farm. :) I'm just LOVING my new job as a mama. :) They're just the sweetest little things ever. :) I'm SO blessed to live on a farm. :) Yahooo! :)

The Christmas Tree

Every year we go to the tree farm and the boys cut down the Christmas tree. This year we got our tree early - the end of November. Here are a few pictures of the event.

(The boys cutting down the tree.)




(Visiting the Reindeer at the tree farm.)



(Dad helping decorate the tree.)

Vacationing and other fun stuff!

Having the farm "closed" for the winter has not only allowed more time for school work (which isn't very exciting), but also more time for vacationing and other fun things. So here are a few pictures of what we have been up to lately.

(Swimming at Breezy Point)

(Out for lunch in Pequot Lakes)

(Playing soccer at Breezy Point)

(Christmas shopping in Pequot Lakes)

(Climbing the fire tower in Pequot Lakes)

(Horse-drawn wagon ride through Nisswa followed by a winter fireworks show!)