Another thing about farming...

...you need versatility.  What ever you  invest money in needs to be multipurpose.  This van has turned out to be a great multipurpose vehicle, it can handle a lot of tasks. It has a big engine, stiffer suspension and it's higher which is great for the water crossings.  It's almost like a great wife who can do all kinds of things (Tonya: "Really?  I'm like a van?  You're sleeping on the couch tonight.")

There are also some luxuries that don't seem like luxuries until you experience them.  There is nothing like getting out of bed (or off the couch) in the morning and having a cold glass of extremely creamy whole raw milk.  I'm not kidding. The girl in the back is a Jersey and has been proving awsome milk. The goat in the front is a Nubian and also provides very nutritious milk but it is not as creamy.  (Did you know that raw milk can actually hinder or suppress bacterial contamination unlike pasteurized milk because of an enzyme it contains? http://spiritfoods.net/health-benefits-of-raw-milk/)

It is now clear to me that Liberty is from around here.  On the way back from church we saw deer right on a spot where the sun was breaking thru the trees (looked like a scene from some Disney movie), and Liberty said "Oooh, deeer" and then after a pause she said "if we had a gun we could just shoot 'em."

We've made some upgrades to the back-woods water attraction. It's longer (I got another advertising tarp from a friend I've made out here) and Blaise added the trampoline to the beginning of the ride. Water is dumped out of a tub on the top of the trampoline and helps propel you down the hill.

We had another bee swarm.  So far we've captured four swarms and I need to get additional parts for hives soon.  Here we're checking on the progress of a new hive.  We check to see if/when they need expansion bodies and if they've been infected with parasites and add/maintain some passive devices to kill the parasites. Unfortunately there isn't enough honey yet to harvest from any hive.

But if we ate flies, there would be plenty to harvest. These guys can't wait to get in the house and bug Tonya.  We're still paying for not having a good fly mitigation technique months ago (arranging rabbit poop so the chickens can scratch thru it and eat the larve).