The last few weeks have been fairly busy down at the Open Arms farm. We have been searching for a new cow for quite some time. One of our two milk cows got too old and so it became ground beef. However, searching for a new cow is not as easy as it seems. It involved searching at quite a few farms, negotiating, and finally when we found the right cow, we had to find a way to transport it to our village. I was looking forward to spending some quality time with "Bessie Mae" in the back end of a pick up truck, but as it turned out we had plenty of help to get the cow to the village and she behaved very nicely as we drove the 35 kilometers from one farm to our village.
"Bessie Mae" as we'll 
call her for now (some people who donated the money will actually name
her) is a very large Friesian cow who will probably give about 25 to 30 liters of milk every day after her new calf is born in about a week from now. With the addition of this cow we will have plenty of milk for the village, the office and the babies in town, and even a fair amount left over to sell.
call her for now (some people who donated the money will actually name
her) is a very large Friesian cow who will probably give about 25 to 30 liters of milk every day after her new calf is born in about a week from now. With the addition of this cow we will have plenty of milk for the village, the office and the babies in town, and even a fair amount left over to sell.We have also been into chickens quite a bit lately...literally. Of course we have had our layer chickens laying about 90 eggs per day, and while the village and the office eats almost half of these, that still leaves a lot of eggs to sell every week...and Matt has been the designated egg man, finding restaurants and small stores who want to buy the eggs. 
However, the chicken project that has really occupied Matt's time the past week has been the broiler chicken project. 61 chickens were ready to be slaughtered this week, and Matt had to get his hands dirty, cutting, plucking, cleaning, bagging, weighing, and marking each chicken. At the end of the big harvest day, Matt didn't "feel like chicken tonight" but he sured smelled like it. Cheryl wouldn't even let him enter the bedroom until he first took a shower.
If that weren't enough to deal with this week, Matt also had the opportunity to help slaughter 
a ram for a big feast at the vill
age as the children prepared for Guardian's Day, a quarterly celebration where the children get the opportunity to interact
with aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends who get to spend the day with the children. While the ram had to be manhandled quite a bit since he wasn't eager to become that days meal, Matt somehow managed to avoid too much of the prep work for the ram as he prepared for the Guardian's Day ceremony.
a ram for a big feast at the vill
age as the children prepared for Guardian's Day, a quarterly celebration where the children get the opportunity to interact
with aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends who get to spend the day with the children. While the ram had to be manhandled quite a bit since he wasn't eager to become that days meal, Matt somehow managed to avoid too much of the prep work for the ram as he prepared for the Guardian's Day ceremony.We probably had close to 100 people attend the Guardian's Day ceremony as Open Arms staff, children, and nearly 50 relatives and friends of the children joined together to share a meal (which of course included mutton). It was a great celebration, but Matt will probably be avoiding mutton and chicken for awhile.
I did not realize that you two keep a blog! I am going to have fun reading back though these to get a better sense of what your daily lives are like! Thanks for putting the link on Facebook! Lovely cow, by the way!
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