Where are my manners?

I realized I’ve not made introductions.  We have quite a few players here on this little farm.

I’m Carrie Anne.  There’s a little about me here.  Random fact:  I can do a mean dolphin sound which is not at all handy here on the farm.  (The dachshund, Wendell, seen here is an occasional visitor to this farm and is the dog baby of some friends of ours.

My husband is Guido (pronounced Gee-tow).  He’s a German born photographer who became the luckiest man ever when he married me.  (Hey.  It is MY blog…lol.)  He has two daughters, 15 and 12, who are not pictured.  (I don’t have their mama’s permission to feature them here, so I won’t until I do.)  He kindly took most of the photos for this post.

Our daughter’s name is Sylvie.  At the time I’m writing this she is almost 18 months old.  She’s a firecracker who loves animals, singing, dancing, and berries straight from our garden.

We have two cows, Daisy and Sunshine.  Daisy (blond) is a Jersey/Brahman mix, and Sunshine (brown) is a Jersey/Hereford mix (thus the horns that weren’t disbudded.)  We raise both our cows to breed for beef cows which we sell and keep.  Daisy is a wonderful cow with a gentle and sweet nature.

Sunshine is unpredictable and testy.  She once charged me when I was wearing Sylvie, a huge mistake that is yet to be forgiven.  She’s been very lucky that we’ve never had a female calf born on this farm the entire time I’ve lived here.  You get where I’m going.

Chez Poulet:  We have 14 chickens, some have names and some don’t.  All of them are here for egg production, and none of them will ever be eaten by one of us.  (Can you tell I love my chickens?)  Here are a few of the key players in the flock:

Big Mama:  The Leader and Alpha.  Don’t mess with Big Mama.

One of our two Ameraucana, Clucky or Plucky.  This breed lays blue eggs.

Matilda, my chicken.  She was the first baby chick I raised by hand.

Petunia is our Holland Lop bunny who was a rescue from Craigslist.  When I first answered the ad, I thought she was an Easter present who had outgrown her welcome.  (Don’t do this by the way, just don’t.)  It turns out that she was bought to breed, but she can’t get pregnant and dislikes all other bunnies.  Lucky for us she’s amazingly sweet and very calm when handled.

Mooney is our mouser and outdoor farm cat.  He’s both the sweetest and most annoying cat I’ve ever met.  He follows us around everywhere outside and loves to lay/dig in newly planted garden beds.  His unbelievable tolerance of Sylvie and the games she plays with him have endeared me to him forever.  (We also have two indoor cats, Elsie and Maya, who were not cooperative with being photographed.  You know how INDOOR cats can be.)

The Goats:  Millie and Callisto.  These two are the most recent additions to our farm.  Millie, who’s original name was Reindeer, is in milk.  She and I spend a lot of quality time together.  She’s a bit impatient with being milked, and I’m still a bit of a slow milker.  Tough combo, but we’re working on it.

Callisto is the baby.  She’s approximately 5 months old.  She isn’t Millie’s baby, but she follows her everywhere.  She’s Sylvie’s farm best friend whether she likes it or not.  We plan to breed her in November to have new babies in March.

Also not pictured are our unwanted guests:  the squirrel who keeps getting into everything and the many raccoons who are eating all our asian pears at night.  The raccoon issue is an entire blog post on its own.

So, that’s us.  One big, happy, furry, feathered family.