Fall days tend to be just about as full as they can be, with still more that has to be left undone at the end of each day. The garden bounty has to be processed, milking is in full swing, last-minute warm-weather projects need to be finished, and daylight is shorter than ever, with winter is looming right over the horizon!

We wrapped up kidding in October, but I still have to carefully monitor babies, and, while I did manage to hit most deadlines associated with the goats and their many needs this time of the year, I went a wee little bit late on the bucklings’ time with their mama’s. Oops.

Usually I am SUPER safe and wean the bucklings to a bottle at 7 weeks. They *should* actually be separated by 8 weeks. But it ended up being exactly 10 weeks for one set of bucklings. The other set was separated by 8 weeks, 4 days. I was feeling the pressure, but it should be fine, since the baby girls are all way too young to be an issue (no same-age sisters!), AND the mama’s are way to big for them to be a problem with yet. Whew.

This actually happened at the end of LAST week, but since this is my first wrap-up, and they’re SO cute, I decided to include it, since if I didn’t the cutest little face wouldn’t be shared. 🙂

The most EXCITING thing that happened all week is:

WE GOT OUR FIRST EGG! Well, our first egg from the young ducks! This is particularly exciting, since our 2-year old ducks decided not to lay this winter.

We’ve been getting one egg a day for 4 days now.

In other “duck” news, I had the idea of asking the local pumpkin patch if they ever had any left-over pumpkins at the end of the season, and, boy, do they EVER! They gave us 2 separate loads of pumpkins! Praise the Lord!!

Now, my idea was to give these pumpkins to the ducks. They LOVE squash, especially soft, squishy, inedible squash.

The only problem here is there are so many still-beautiful pumpkins that the frugal side of me is screaming, “USE THEM! Use them all. DON’T waste them on the ducks.”

So, I’ve been busy having thought arguments with myself, weighing time commitments versus calories earned, researching pumpkin preservation methods, etc. I finally settled on the fact that whatever I have time to use (for human consumption) before they rot will be a nice bonus, and since I DIDN’T EVEN PLAN ON HAVING THESE, I need to go easy on myself and not feel guilty about chucking the rottie-dotties over the fence to the ducks!

It sure is a nice end-of-season bonus though!!!

In the middle of the week, I suddenly got sick, and lost almost a whole day to it! Not nice. The next day I survived with Tylenol, and then the third day was mostly just left with a runny nose. And busy life resumed. 🙂

Sunday was the start of daylight savings time, so it is now getting dark insanely early. There are still things to do though! Like the night I needed to make dinner, and to make the dinner I had wanted to make (to utilize the already-made bone broth which was aging all-too-fast in the fridge!), I needed potatoes.

Well, I’d already used up all but just a couple of store-bought potatoes, and my GOAL has been to never buy potatoes again. So out to the potato bed I went, armed with flashlight, lantern, and tools. The potato garden is a ways from the house, down a dark path the runs along the edge of the woods. At the very moment I was thinking to myself, “I used to be afraid of the dark, but now I’m a crazy-determined homesteading woman,” something rustled nearby in the dark to my left. (Gulp!)

Apparently, only the crazy-determined part was true, because I did dig the potatoes.

But dinner was worth it!

I made shepherd’s pie, with mostly “homestead” ingredients. We were gifted a deer from a hunter friend, so I used venison for the meat, tallow for the gravy, the last zucchini for half the veggies, and my freshly-dug potatoes (mashed with our own goat milk!) for the top. All I had to add that was store-bought was the butter, onions, carrots, and salt. Much, much less than half by volume, which felt like a HUGE success.

If the taste had anything to do with it, a success it was. Everyone raved about it! (And it was also a meal I could eat too, even with my histamine intolerance!)

To round out the week, I was able to finish processing the tallow from the deer. We always try to utilize every part of the deer possible, but this was my first time intentionally going for as much tallow as I could render out. 🙂 I ended up with 2 beautiful blocks of it, which will supply many needs this winter. (Did I mention it makes AWESOME gravy!!!)

We also collected our last batch of leaves from the neighbor, and found a way to store them securely right by the duck house for free, natural, very healthy duck bedding. Fun times.

And finally, I completed one batch of yogurt, and 5 batches of farmer’s cheese, with the goat milk! Yum, yum!

Now that the week is closing out, we’re panicking about the craft show coming up, IN SEVEN DAYS, which we are not ready for. I sense a lot of frenzied crocheting coming up, very soon — just as soon as I can clear enough things from my plate to get there! (Or maybe I’ll just utilize the fall-back plan of taking more already-made woodworking items and less crochet. 🙂 )

If you’ve made it this far, I’m impressed. (Or you’re my mom! Hi, mom!)

Hopefully every week won’t be THIS full. I tried to keep it concise, but I also wanted to touch on at least the big things! (And believe me, I left a LOT of things out!)

See you next week! God bless!