Macadamia nuts, Blue eggs, and Raising Goats

Macadamia Nuts: 

It's Harvest time!  

 We've been spending hours each week harvesting our macadamia nuts.

We are truly loving every second. 

We look for nuts that have fallen, or nuts that are on the tree but have cracked. 

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And then we put them into this husking machine.

After this step, they go into the drying rack for three weeks before they are ready to crack and eat.

We found a company to buy our macadamia nuts!  

In a few weeks we will take our first trip to the buyers location and see how it all works. 

We have about 25 trees and hundreds of nuts in each tree. 

We've been busy and it's also been SO much fun!

Blue Eggs:

Our Ameraucana (or maybe Easter Egger??) is finally laying eggs after a year.

We almost gave up on her.

There was much excitement when we found the pretty blue/green egg in that nesting box.

Raising Goats: 

The goat shelter is finished and the babies continue to grow, healthy and strong.

We have really enjoyed bottle feeding these goats and have grown to like them very much 

The Best

I love being Mommy to these three.

It's the absolute best.

Goat Milk

We are bottle feeding these sweetness baby goats and have been given the biggest blessing by a fellow goat owner...

Goat MILK!!

And all the milk we will need to bottle feed them for the entire 8 weeks.  

Every Monday, Bethany gives us about 3 gallons of milk that she has from her own goats at home. 

When she got babies, someone did the same for her and she promised to pay it forward.  

We are so thankful!

So are the girls...

January Bike Rides

An activity we've been enjoying so much as a family these days...

 Bike riding at the park.

Now Daddy and Mommy need to get some!  

Baby Goats

We added  two goat babies to our family over the weekend.

(Luna)

(Paisley)

They are ADORABLE, and so much fun!

Most importantly, we know that the lessons learned and the experiences gained through raising animals with stay with them for a lifetime.

We pray this opportunity will be another memory that binds our hearts to this place of belonging...home...and to one another.  

We are bottle feeding these tiny tiny cuties and working hard on building their pen.

Kiddos are in love!  

We look forward to watching them grow.

So fun!

6 Months

It's been 6 months since we moved to our new space here in SD county.

We are so thankful we did.

Most importantly, it has gotten us closer to Daddy and allowed him to be with us more and his car, less. 

While we are ready to slow down on projects, we are also enjoying making this house our home!

It's fun to look back and see the progress that's been made in the past 6 months.

It's pretty amazing considering James has pretty much done it all single handedly.

Lots of help from Papa. I try too of course, when I can :-)

The first thing we did was have the land cleared of major overgrowth.

We wouldn't have been able to see the fruit trees or the little cabin if we hadn't had this done.

Next, a fresh coast of light paint to brighten the living spaces.

We kept the old (and really crummy) cabinets but added some new hardware, replaced tile with butcher block counter tops and added a farmhouse sink.We also added a dishwasher and garbage disposal because, HELLO!  

Tile was also replaced.

And the old slider was replaced with these french doors.  

James built a fireplace for the living room

Sod and swingset in the front.

Garden and gate

While all of this fixing up is fun and rewarding, we mostly want this house to glorify God.

I pray that this will be a place where our hearts draw closer to one another and to Christ.  

Riley's Farm and Baby Goats

Riley's farm is definitely one of my favorite places.

This was only our second time visiting but our first time attending for educational purposes.  

It was wonderful!

 The kids particpated in different stations representing colonial life.  

We enjoyed every second.

And on the way home we took a little detour to visit a goat farm.

We've been carefully considering adding goats to our humble homesteaad here. 

I love the babies!  

Hopefully goats are in our near future! 

What a beautiful day filled with animals, fresh air, and friends.