As it turns out, no one guessed right! Blackberry just lambed this morning with one black ewe lamb. And is she ever cute!
After observing for 1/2 an hour with nothing more progressing than seeing two little hooves, we stepped in to help. But all the help Blackberry needed was having the lamb’s legs straightened out and she managed the rest just fine.
Mother and daughter seem to have bonded well.
Now what should we call her?
Lambing season is just around the corner. Our friendly, people-oriented Blackberry is due first – perhaps as early as next week!
How many lambs do you think she’ll have? And will they be ram lambs, ewes lambs, or a combination? 
Tell us what you think in the comments below!
The 1st of January saw some of Michael’s siblings joining us in Quebec! It was great to spend time with them!
Our annual gingerbread house decorating party usually takes place in December, but various things postponed it this year. And since “the more the merrier,” we decided to do the gingerbread house decorating while Michael and his siblings were here. It was a wonderful evening. The young and not-so-young alike enjoy the fun! Even Josiah pitched in… well not really. I’ll let the pictures tell the story.
And there were games, cuddles, fellowship, and stories as well.
What a wonderful time!
The Christmas season is usually a busy one in the Frazer home. Though we had less concerts lined up than often, this year was no different on the busyness scale.
The first concert as well as a chalk art presentation was at the Wales Home on the 1st of December.
And, as always, we had our Christmas Eve concert at the Grace Village.
Christmas preparations crowded the kitchen. The oven worked overtime!
And in the middle of all the preparations, Josiah made his appearance. Of course everyone wanted to get acquainted!
As can be seen from the photos, Michael joined us for the Christmas season, much to my delight! He was able to meet my grandparents as well as join in the Christmas festivities.
Christmas Day is always a special family time of exchanging gifts, playing games, and reading books. At at the end of the day, we finish with our candlelight Christmas dinner during which we recite together the account of Christ’s birth as recorded in Luke 2.
All this time, of course, “normal life” continued… milking the cow, separating the cream, making butter and cheese, preparing meals, along with a few additional farm-related activities like rabbit butchering and stall cleaning.
milking the cow
separating
butter making
cleaning up after cheese making
making pancakes
the butchering team
packaging meat
Trying out the new pitchfork!
I hope all you blog readers had a wonderful Christmas, remembering why Christ came to earth!
I always find it amazing how hard it is to find time to do the things which one enjoys. My schedule, sadly, seems always to be packed with things that I must do (though many of those things I certainly enjoy), leaving precious little time for those enjoyable things which cannot be justified as necessity.
One of those things is skating. If I had time, now, I suppose I would build a skating rink out back, and if I had time, why I suppose I should be one of the best skaters you ever knew. But I don’t have time, and consequently, the last time I recall having skated was shortly after the beginning of the Old New Year, and I far more closely resemble the Proverbs 24:16 man than I do the world’s best skater.
But, thankfully, Christmas vacation has rolled around once again, and just as we did last year, we attended an event for New Year’s which started out with skating and a hockey game.
Following an animated tournament (nothing on the level of the Montreal Canadiens or the Pittsburgh Penguins), we spent some time skating around fellowshipping, playing tag, and even making a suspender train!
Then only two days later, we went out skating again, this time close to home with some of the Staddons, who were visiting for a couple days. It was a beautiful day, and although it was a public skating path we went to, it was not extremely crowded. The time afforded many more opportunities for wonderful fellowship with dear friends.
Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend. – Proverbs 27:17
Complications at the end of pregnancy caused Josiah Robert Alan Frazer not to wait for his due date to arrive. He was born the evening of December 12th and is doing really well. Erica also is recovering well, for which we praise the Lord!
Josiah Robert Alan Frazer – 6 lbs 10 oz
Congratulations David and Erica! May God give you His wisdom, grace, and strength as you bring up your son and daughters in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
Anyone looking for a cute, friendly Christmas gift for someone?
Rabbits make wonderful little pets: they are soft, cute, friendly, quiet, inexpensive, and don’t require a lot of care!
Evelyn and I did some product/pet photography this afternoon. Often photographing rabbits can be a real challenge, especially for Evelyn doing the posing.
But this time we actually got an amazing number of great photos.
Part of the reason for this was that Evelyn had an assistant to get the rabbits to sit up and put their ears forward.
Somehow the cat always manages to get in there!
And now the rabbits are hoping to hop to new homes! Any buyers?
In the past few years, Elizabeth and I have been learning how to trim horses’ hooves. I felt like I was starting to really get the hang of it, when a friend asked us to do a new horse that she had acquired. Of course, I willingly said, yes, we would do it, but when we picked out the horse’s feet, we were in for a surprise. I have done several corrective setup trims in the past, but I had never seen hoofs like these before. The bars were so grossly overgrown, that the horse’s hoof was no longer being supported by the wall (which is how it should be), but the horse’s weight was being held up by its bars and putting a tremendous pressure on the sole.
I took an educated guess that all that bar was going to have to go, but having only a few times done a dramatic setup trim similar to this, I was a bit nervous to proceed without consulting a professional. So Elizabeth sent an email to a friend of ours who is does lots of hooves, and she graciously offered to come by and help us out. My gut feeling was indeed right and the horse seems to like his new “foot-do”.
As I was thinking over this situation, I thought about how we can have “over-grown hoofs” in our lives as well. If we don’t take care of the little problems right away, they will get bigger and bigger until they are ginormous. Then when God “trims” us it takes a lot of work to get us back to where we should be.
With all the snow that we have been getting, it has been starting to feel like Christmas! William has been busy decorating the house to give it a festive air and Christmas cookies have been being baked giving the air a festive smell.
May this season be a constant reminder of the reason our Lord came to Earth.
“And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.” Mt 1:21
This past month, our family attended the 4th FEW conference of the year (if the QEW conference counts as one). On our way down to the conference, we stopped in West Virginia to pick up Michael. And for those of you who have been asking, yes, there is a real ring now.
The FEW conference was an encouraging time of listening to challenging messages and of fellowshipping with other like-minded believers.
“Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.” Psalm 133:1