Announcement - a new Resident on the Farm

Well, here she is, the newest resident on the Family Farm.
This is one addition we've been contemplating for a long time.
We found a good deal on Craigslist and finally decided it was time.
So we proudly introduce Buttercup, the Jersey dairy cow. This was her name before, and we decided to keep it.
I wish I had a camera to see all of your reactions right now! I told Bruce that we're trying to make ourselves as "peculiar" as possible. What percentage of the US population works on "bleeding edge" technology as a software engineer and milks a cow twice a day? And then blogs about it??

Ever since our friends and neighbors got a milk cow almost two years ago, we have helped them milk their cow once a week. This has given us an idea of what it would be like. We have thought about getting our own ever since then, and we finally did it. It's a great investment because we will not only have the milk, but are able to breed her and raise steers that can be sold for profit, besides raising a steer for ourselves for meat. Our ancestors were not far off when they described their dairy cow as one of their most valuable possessions!

We're pretty excited about Buttercup. She is pregnant and due on Feb. 14th. If she has a heifer (a female calf), we'll be able to raise her and sell her back to a dairy for twice what we paid for Buttercup. If it's a steer (a male calf), well, he's not so lucky. We'll name him Hamburguesa II, raise him and eat him. If you're vegetarian and reading this post - sorry!

Because she's pregnant, we won't start milking Buttercup until about four months after she's calved. Luckily though, we have a deal with our friends that they'll milk their cow for half the year and share the milk with us, and then we'll milk Buttercup for half a year and share with them.

Another important reason we wanted this cow was to have meaningful work for the children, as Elder Maxwell encouraged us to do. They'll be the ones trading off doing the milking.

Also, what better food storage could you have?

But mostly we are excited to have some good milk!!

Welcome to the Farm, Buttercup.