Our very first...

...farm machine! This summer a friend of Ramont's gave him an old Hesston haybine, asking only that he could use it sometime if Ramont got it running. Well, after much fixing and head-scratching, it runs!

A few weeks ago Ramont cut the little alfalfa fields and it seemed to work well.

Baling the hay was another story, thanks to lots of rain in August.

But quite exciting, nevertheless.

I recently realized that we have very few (no?) pictures of Ramont milking the cow, namely because I used to never be awake then. Now that Jonathan gets on the bus a bit before 7:00am, we drink mate and eat breakfast before Ramont does chores.

He milks Gracie with a milk machine (our very first machine, I think!) that he himself cobbled together from parts from all the old dairy farms in our areas.

And so Anna heads directly to the barn after seeing Jonathan off each morning (she will definitely be our early morning worker).

Gracie's been giving about two gallons of milk each morning, which is just about right for selling and our own consumption - though not enough to make extras like cheese.