Happy New Year!

Monday, January 1, 2024
Hello friends,
              Happy New Year!  We made it!  There were days this past year that I wondered.  I don’t have all the new calendars replaced; guess I’ll have to see what they have at the bank.  The Julian date is 001 if you want to know what the “secret” code for one of the numbers on the corner of the cheese label means.  Yesterday was day 365.  Here we go again.
              It’s been a year of trials and triumphs.  Obviously, Bill has been through an ordeal and neither of us wants to take our health for granted.  We’ve been waiting for the insurance company and the hospital to give us a number that we have to pay and discovered that it may be lower than we were bracing for.  Good news.  I am doing end of year accounting and having 6 extra cows in the herd to produce more milk to sell has brought in more income.  We have had to feed extra cows, but I think it was worth it.  There were three heifers born this year (Aspen, Darcy, and Sweetheart) even though there were also 8 bull calves.  By the way, we still have a bull calf for sale that has already been fed a month’s worth of milk.  We had severe drought this year, but it did finally rain, and we have enough hay purchased to feed everyone.  The garden produced a lot of some vegetables, and not so many others.  There is always next year in the garden, and I need to start looking in the seed catalog….