Second Post of the Day

 Last week was busy.  Seems we ran from here to there and back again.  

Here are a few pictures from last week:

This weekend is the Purim.  Last Sunday I taught my chidlers (you would have had to have read The Big Friendly Giant to catch that reference to calling children "chidlers") the story of Esther.  It was a fairly abbreviated lesson, as I only have 30 minutes for the entire class, and we have to get in greetings and prayer time and general organization, but we hit all the high parts.  

This week we are going to bake cookies.  The formal name for these are Hamantaschen.  That is the name the Jewish settlement in Germany gave to them.  And there is a whole history in itself with these cookies.  But in Israel they are called "Haman's Ears."  

Since we only have 30 minutes I baked these up, but kept a few of the dough rounds for the kids to fill and then bake.  They take about 15 minutes to bake. This should be fun! 

These are super good!  This recipe is just butter, sugar, flour, vanilla extract.  Super easy to mix up. 

On one of our walks to the west garden, the beef herd was out there.  Bella LOVES it when they are out there.  When I am finished walking I have to go get the leash to drag her away from them.  That is the bull there on the left.  I love how mellow he is.  He's a big dude, but not as huge and threatening as the Holstein bulls got.


He had to poke his nose over the fence to give me a sniff...


Then I gave him a head scratch.  If the fence weren't there, I would NOT have let him get so close.  He could give me a friendly little nudge and knock me down. 

 

Gary has been selling off the calves a few at a time.  Most of them have gone to people who raise either bulls or heifers to sell to breeders on down the line when they are mature.  Gary says we will just keep the main 18 animals that we have.  I think there are 17 cows and a bull, I've lost track.  I know he sold one "cow."  She never did breed at all.  If we were to keep the calves we'd either have to get a new bull, or keep them separate somehow so they didn't breed with their dad.  He says some people go ahead and let them breed with the dad, but that just doesn't sit right with us.  So we will keep the same fellow, and sell all of the calves. 

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