Are You My Mother?
Healthy crop of lambs enjoying the evening air.
We are almost finished with the lambing season. As of this morning we have 79 live lambs. There would have been 5 more lambs but we lost them, two born dead, three failure to thrive. All in all we are super happy with the 2015 season. Thanks be to God!
Isabella Angel is an exceptional mother 🙂
There were four lambs that were pulled during difficult labor. Four sets of triplets were born of which four were taken from the ewes to bottle feed. The kids are feeding nine bottle lambs, two of which were given to us from a neighbor. They know we have a milk cow to cover the babies. There a couple more ewes that will be coming in within the next couple of weeks.
Happy lambs playing in the evening.
Ewes and lambs being moved to their second grazing paddock.
I’ll never get tired of the spring time and the new life that comes along with it. It’s hard to believe that I am a transplanted “city” girl after all these 30 years. I love it here, on the land, with my family. Life may not be easy but it’s certainly not dull nor boring. It’s good, by golly!!
(81 lambs are born now as I never got this posted!)
CALLENS HONEY FARM 
so amazingly awesome to raise your family the way I was raised also. I think we raised everything but goats, that you are raising, and no bees either, but many more cows to milk, and land to farm also! never a dull moment, right. and never bored, and really did not know what I was missing(if I was at all), what the town kids were doing in the summer! I remember kids going corn tasseling and thought I was missing out on something. maybe not, not sure what that even consists of, but I sure knew how to do a garden and every vegetable possible, everything with apples, asparagus, chokecherries, jams and jellies, sweet corn, tomatoes, feeding working men lunch, dinner, lunch, supper, and milking the cows, picking rocks, and weeds in the fields, but never learned to plant, plow, or anything other than drive a tractor for awhile during rock picking time!! Learned to fish in the river, dodge sheep droppings and goose and duck droppings also, dress chickens, ducks, geese, fancy hens, husk sweet corn, can and freeze, bale hay, and oh so much more. summer was totally filled with work, yet, loved it!! Abundance of meat, and veggies always, and eggs, etc. What a life the free farm, organice gave us!! after we were married, I remember going to the farm and feeling the peace and tranquility, like you were on vacation, and then going back to home in town was like the fast paced world, and each year gets faster paced! oh how I miss the good life!! and I always had time to sew all my own clothes, had every new style that came out each year! Felt so proud of those accomplishments and 4-H projects!! 4-H was our time to be with civilization it seemed. Outings, meetings, the fair, etc. otherwise the summer was spent with relatives, or going on picnics with friends or neighbors, and coming back home early to milk the cows. that is something I do not miss. the fact that my folks never had free time to go on a weekend vacation with us, and I think they missed that too, esp.when we started taking our whole family on vacations. they always had to milk early, head out to wherever, enjoy a picnic, or West Bend, Iowa, or wherever, and then rush back home to milk. when we got married I think our honelymoon was the first we stayed in a hotel. Had no idea of prices, or to book ahead. I remember the cheap places we stayed in. would not today!! and after a few years, going to a hotel, and seeing people actually bringing in their own coolers of beverages, and crockpots of food was so unheard of to me. did not know you could do that. Oh how dumb we were. but at least both Fran and I were raised the same, and with the same values, and we learned together. we are now almost 47 years married, still learning, still enjoying, still working, still happy, and still have the same values and hope we have instilled them in our children, which I feel we did. We are ready to retire, and enjoy what God has given us! Fran will never be able to stop doing some phone work, or farming(if he can handle the computer tractors of today), but I will keep busy with avon, Schwans, and volunteer for hospice, and a few other committees I am on, and fran will conintue his volunteer work with the church and the legion and become more involved. First grandchild graduated this year, so even if we do not feel older, we know we are!! got 2 boys to hopefully get married yet, or enjoy their life the way it is, whatever God has in store for them. So happy to have grown up in a world that you are living and bringing your children up in, and the values of the land and fruits God gave us all!! it is the life!!! peaceful and full of love. syl