New Baby Soon

So I have 3 days left till my due date. I cant wait for this baby to enter the world. I have been trying to take it easy but I feel like I have so much I should be doing. Guess I need to find a happy medium until the big day.

Too Long

It has been way too long since I have posted anything on this site. I don't know why as I really do enjoy doing this. So now to get caught up a little (or a lot) So much has happened these many months.

I am about 3 weeks away from having baby #5. This pregnancy has gone so fast!! I am anxious to find out what it is and so is the rest of our family. The girls are hoping for a baby boy to finally join the family. We shall see. I have been feeling pretty good as far as energy, but now I have begun having ligament and back pain. I was having really bad leg cramps during the night but I am now making sure I taking calcium befor bed and that has helped out a lot. So I will have to keep up to date with this excitement.

We also moved recently. We are no longer caretakers of a nature preserve. It is a big relief for the entire family, we seem to spend much more family time together and my hubby seems so much more relaxed as he can do things on his own time. We are living in a farm house with huge barns on 3 acres. Lots of potential for the future. We thought we would miss the nature preserve but I honestly do not!!

I have been working really hard lately on planning out my girls school curriculum already. I want to be more prepared with the new baby on the way so we can have a productive school year despite the distractions that I know will occur with a baby in the house. I am looking forward to what I have planned so far.

Well that is all for now in my limited time.

Butchering Freedom Rangers

WARNING! If you are squeamish about seeing animals being butchered then please skip this post.

So the day finally came when our Freedom Ranger Chickens were big enough to be butchered. I will take you through most of the process in this post.

This is one of 3 cages loaded with our chickens.

My husband said "We picked them up in a little box and it takes a trailer to take them to be butchered."

Why are the looking at me like that?

They really were not hard to butcher for they did not have the personality of my laying hens and roosters. If you raise chickens you understand what I mean by personality when it comes to a chicken.

This is the killing cones. You put the chickens in head first and slit their necks letting them bleed out till dead. I did not photograph this part of the process because, well this was the hardest part for me to watch.

This is the scalding tank. It is made from a water heater and runs on propane. I forgot to take a picture of all the gauges on the back. Anyway it heats the water to 149 degrees.


Then we dunk the chickens in two at a time until their feathers pull out easily.

This is the inside of the chicken plucker. This was so amazing to me how fast it pulled the feathers from the chickens.

The chickens were put in and with the plucker running and as it spun some water was sprayed in and wa-lah, featherless chickens.

The chickens were then taken to the butchering table. I did not photograph the step by step process at this stage. Maybe that can be an idea for a future post.

Oh that was a good size rooster.

My husband is the one facing the camera.

After the guys butchered them they gave them a good rinse and then I took them and packaged then in plastic wrap and freezer bags.

In the end, on this day, we put 33 chickens in our freezer.

Thank you to Rick for letting us use all of your great butchering equipment. Thank you to Shad for all of your help. Thanks to my hubby for putting up with these not so bright chickens, I know we will appreciate it the winter when we have roasted chicken or chicken noodle soup. By the way the term homemade chicken noodle soup will have way more meaning for us now.

On the road to better health

It came to my attention that I had not posted an update to by Heart Issue post. The cardiologist could not find anything wrong which was a blessing. The great thing is the past 1 1/2 weeks I have had no chest pain at all. I believe this is an answer to many people praying for me. The pastor from my church even sat in the waiting room during most of my cardiology appointment. When my husband finally went and told him things were going good and he could go home he said "God is tired of listening to me anyway" I told him the following Sunday that he prayed so hard they even undiagnosed my Mitral Valve Prolapse, which I had been told I had about 15 years ago. Not often you go to an appointment and get an undiagnosis!!

I still have occasional dizzy spells and headaches which they think is due to being anemic. I purchased several supplements from Beeyoutiful and they seem to really be helping. My symptoms are bothering me less often and I have more energy than I have had in a very long time. It is nice to feel I can better keep up with my husband, house, and kids! I am not good at remembering to take my supplements so I put them in my window sill above the kitchen sink and I take some when I wash the breakfast dishes and some when I do the supper dishes. This has helped me be more regular in taking them.

So here's to good health!

Musical Instruments

Bill and I made a very, very large musical purchase this past weekend. It included about 50 instruments. Some of them are pictured here and there are even more that are not. I am now in the process of finding out more about each instrument and the values of them.

My new Mandolins

This one is a Wynn, I know that Mr. Wynn just recently passed away in August.

Bills new Banjo

There is everything I think you need to build Violins

And here are the 33 violins that were included!!

So now I cant wait to learn to play the Mandolin which I have been wanting to do for a while now and Bill has been wanting to play the Banjo. We will soon be jammin together!!

If you have any knowledge or advice about Violins please let me know. I will eventually be selling most of them.

So in a few days I will go and visit the Cardiologist. I am nervous and am praying that it is a very minor thing. I have been trying to pinpoint if anything in my life is setting this off but I cant come up with anything. So I will just patiently wait for the test to be done and see what they have to say. Thanks to all who have been praying for me and my family. A lot has been going on the past week and a few people have really stepped forward in prayer and help and it has made a huge difference.

GETTING TO THE HEART OF THE MATTER

What is the matter with me? Well according to the Dr. possibly my heart. A few month ago I began having mild chest pain, dizziness, and frequent headaches. I finally went to the Dr. last week and was sent to have lab tests done. I assumed I was anemic and I was right.

But that is not all. I guess the chest pain cannot really be connected to the anemia problem. So I now have a appointment scheduled with a cardiologist next week. Back when I was 19 or 20 I had some heart problems and was diagnosed with mitral valve prolapse. I cut way back on my caffeine intake and eventually I rarely had any more trouble with it. This chest problem does not feel the same. At times it gets a little scary. Of coarse the Dr. told me that if the pain increases between now and my appointment to go to the ER. It is a little frightening. Enough so that I had a review talk with my 10 year old about using 911, better safe than sorry.

To treat the anemia problem I have ordered products from my one of my favorite companies. http://www.beeyoutiful.com/ Check out all the great products they have to offer. We used their immunity pack during flu season last year and had a definite decrease in illness.

Well I will update you as things go.