Spring...

I can't believe it's spring already. It hasn't felt much like spring here in Michigan. It was snowing only a day ago. It is certainly been a trying couple of months. From illness in humans to illnesses in animals, we have been having a hard time at the Keenan residence. We had a very big tragedy at our small farm. Vernors, one of the Nubian goats that we received as a wedding present, has died. It was a very long horrible weekend as she withered away and we couldn't help her. We are also having various problems with Pepsi and Bell. Pepsi has a lame foot and Bell got some sort of respiratory infection and cough.

We were lucky to be able to borrow Opal, an Alpine goat, from our great friend Mandy. Opal had just had a kid when Vernors died and Mandy offered her to us for the milk. What a blessing. Opal and her kid (I named him Ned, an Alpine LaMancha cross) have been a real mood upswing to a very dismal end of winter and beginning of spring. Opal is very sweet on the milk stand and producing well. Even though Pepsi and Opal do not exactly love each other, everyone seems to be getting along. We have in the process of all this found the need to make big changes in some of our practices and hopefully they will lead to a more successful summer.

The kitchen finishing has been moving slowly as well. We found a great contractor to do our cement counter tops. www.decorativeconcretemichigan.com We are looking forward to getting him over to measure everything up and get it started! We could have had him begin much earlier, but we had a tough time deciding on a sink. We finally bought one last weekend and hopefully we can get Jeff out next week to get our counter top started! Mike and Dad have made great strides this week as well. They added 3 can lights for additional lighting in front of the pantry, above the stove and above the back cabinet. Mike also got one of the under-counter lights installed last night. It's so amazing to be able to see what you're cooking! Hopefully we can get the counter and trim done soon...

We had a great weekend with some of the Dodd family a couple of weeks ago and a quick visit from Doug and Christy. More on these in the next post. We are really looking forward to a fun weekend with Mom Keenan. She may be coming up for a visit today!

I have taken pictures of the kitchen and the goats. I will post them soon.