I like the early morning chill.  Yesterday, it seemed the house never did properly warm up during the day, so this morning we started a small fire in the woodstove to bring the temp up in the morning.

Our latest excitement/stress is that we’ve got a fox problem.  He’s taken several of our chickens, including our favorite rooster over the last couple weeks.  I saw him run by the coop and around the garden this morning at 6 AM.  I’m working on some “solutions” and will post more here is there are any updates.

The garden is amazing, all of the things that failed last year (beans, corn, squash) are thriving.  It looks like the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant will produce amazing amounts, and even our potatoes are doing well.  We began harvesting greens for salads the last week of May and yesterday Mike mowed down the greens section as it was just too weedy.  But, for a good solid month and a half, we had daily salads.  We will start some lettuce and other green seeds and transplant them for a fall crop later this month.

The fruit trees and bushes are looking a little sad, not enough rain, so we are having to water.  We got just enough raspberries and blueberries this year to eat as we pick, hopefully in years to come we will get enough to preserve as well.

The cows are great, we moved their pasture and they seem to like being closer.  We will be having a sweet Belted Galloway bull come and stay with us for a month or so to breed our girls.  The two CVM rams and our goat are in the paddock behind the barn.  In September they will all go to the butcher for meat and pelts.  Our four ewes are great and the little ram lamb is getting big.  The pigs are flourishing with all of the garden leftovers and the rabbits will be bred soon.  Our goose hatched two eggs (one gosling died, it’s stomach wall had not fully closed).  The surviving gosling is so cute and follows it parents everywhere.  We did have a duck sitting on eggs, but something must have disturbed her nest, as the eggs are all gone.  One chicken hatched a few rouge chicks, and we rehabed a rooster that was attacked by the fox.  Our turkey poults are getting big and next week we will move them to an outside run.  We will also be getting a shipment of broiler chicks and roosters to raise for meat.  We will be trying a new technique with the meat chicks, raising them on the grass, so hopefully they will be less gross.  If this doesn’t work, then no more broiler chicks for us.

We have been having lots of gatherings at the farm.  The food is amazing and it is so nice to be able to share in the bounties of our harvest with friends and family.

Enjoy your summer and remember to eat as much local food as you can with the people you love the most!

The upshot: the program may cover 50-75% of the cost of the tunnel. It only covers 38 states, so make sure your state is in the list before getting your hopes up.

By the way, we’re not always saying government programs like this are advisable, but if you’re in the market for a grow tunnel and this program makes sense for you, it might be worth a shot.

The real take home: we think it’s cool that USDA has officially launched a study that is fundamentally about eating local.

Speaking of sheep, in mid-December we took our two girls back to their home farm to be bred.  I started “flushing” them two weeks prior.  This means that instead of just eating hay and grass, I gave them each daily grain rations with the hope of increasing their fertility.  Our girls were twins (to each other) so the odds of them each producing twins are high.  We have worked out a great arrangement with our good friend and breeder at Iris Creek Farm such that for every four lambs produced, she keeps one.  For the first few years, we are hoping to produce lamb for our table, some fiber for spinning, and lambskin rugs.  We won’t be looking to add to our flock for at least four more years.  Our friend, however, is looking to establish a breeding line, so having her pick of the top conforming lamb out of each set of four allows her more options for improving her stock.  It is a great arrangement for all; we have found that most times, people who farm are incredibly creative and agreeable in their solutions to new and different enterprises.

Today I am going to check out a spinning wheel.  Another farm neighbor of ours is looking to switch brands and she happens to have the very wheel that I want.  Hopefully it will work out for both of us.  Additionally, her husband raises the best pigs in the state.  The two pigs we had over the summer came from his stock and his boar was their father.  They were amazing, easy going, extremely meaty, perfect.  We will be getting at least two and maybe even four pigs this spring and want to make sure to get on the list early and talk merits of different breeds and crossings with him.  Again, we are finding such a wealth of information right in our own backyard.

The goats seem to be doing well.  We were having some more hoof problems with our girl Flora this fall, but we treated her again and now that the ground is totally frozen, she seems much better.  The cows are also well, the calves are getting very big.  We have made the decision to keep them for two years and breed their mothers this summer, so we may need to buy an interim cow to hold us over between what we have in our freezer and the next set.  Luckily, now we have a number of good sources and even if we bought straight from another farmer and took the cows right to the butcher, we trust we will be getting really good beef from animals that were treated in accordance with our standards.

The ducks and geese seem to be doing fine.  They keep a small section of the pond un-frozen with the help of Mike and Jackson who go out each day to break up their spot.  The chickens and roosters are finally down to their winter numbers.  We currently have 37 hens and 3 roosters and for the past few days have been getting 10-12 eggs/day which is pretty good considering the weather.  The rabbits have been moved to their indoor winter quarters inside the coop.  We think it has made a big difference and that they will be much warmer.  We need to check on the bees, but there is not much to be done for them at this point.  They have the perfect site where they receive maximum southern sun, they filled their hives with honey, and we luckily did not have any pests or parasites when we checked them this fall.  They are very low maintenance for the most part.

The garden is done and we have opened it up so the goats and sheep can forage.  We will till it again next spring, maybe after throwing the pigs on it for a month or so to get all the last bits of goodness out.  The fruit and nut trees and berry bushes are all dormant and we are fantasizing about the harvests they will provide for us in years to come.

One of the main reasons for the busyness (in addition to the time of year and the fact that we have a new baby coming this April) is that for the first time in over a year, we took a vacation.  Good friends of ours who are also looking to move out this way and take up the small family-farm life stayed at our farm for a week and took care of everything.  The two weeks before were spent making sure that everything was in place, nothing was broken, things were tidy, etc.  The week before our friends came to spend the afternoon and walk through the farm with us, learning about the animals, the house, the farm, etc.  One question they had was what to do if there was a really big snow.  Historically, the week around Christmas has been mild up here, we have not had a white Christmas but maybe once in the last ten years we have lived in CT.  We told them not to worry, told them where the shovels, salt, etc were and to hope for the best.  So, imagine our stress as we are driving out literally hours before the “blizzard of the century” hit CT, one of the biggest single event snow falls in our area of CT for the last half century.  At the time it hit CT, we were in Orlando walking around the Magic Kingdom trying to help our friends figure out plowing, seriously frozen water, you name it.  We have been in our house for over a year, but we did not get the big animals until the end of March, so technically, this is our first experience of over-wintering large animals.  We are still trying to figure things out ourselves and felt pretty awful that our friends were having to wing it.  BUT, having said that, our friends were AWESOME, even managing to shovel our entire 200ft driveway by hand in addition to shoveling out multiple paths to and from the animals.  Everyone was well taken care of, and our friends told us they actually had fun.  It is so difficult to leave a farm, but knowing that we had such amazing, caring, and hard working friends made it easier. The biggest irony is that by the time we were back, all of the snow had melted.  However, this winter is supposed to be pretty snowy and cold, so I am sure we will get our fair share.

Good luck to you as you prepare for the change in seasons, wherever that may be.

Sheep and Goats

They were all sheared and had their “mani-pedis”.  We got some very lovely fleece, despite the fact that a freak rain storm drenched the animals right before the sheaer got here.  Our female Angora goat Flora had been suffering from hoof rot for the last few months due to the extreme rain we had this summer.  Our shearer  gave us some advice on how to treat her and after a round of Penicillin (5 days IM injections), Koppertox (2 weeks daily hoof treatment), and Iver-On (2 treatments) she seems to be doing so well.  Within 24 hours of the antibiotic, she was on her feet and out of the barn with the rest of the herd for the first time in weeks.

Cows

Our Hereford steer “the boss” went to the butcher today.  Considering how many problems he has caused, getting him in his stall earlier this week, and then loaded in the trailer or a local farmer was so easy.  From the time the farmer pulled in our drive to the time we left the butcher, it took exactly one hour.  Can’t beat that!  ”Farmer John” is a local Hereford breeder, and our steer came from his stock, back a few generations.  He has lived in our town his whole life and raises beef cattle, hays, and cuts firewood.  He lives a few miles from us and we were given his name by the woman who manages the butcher.  She knows all the problems we have had with the boss, and she told us that no one can manage a cow like Farmer John.  She was absolutely right, he had him right on the trailer with no problems and right off again at the butcher.  We really appreciate meeting other farmers, especially those who have been here for generations.  We spent a while talking with John as there was a line for unloading at the butcher.  He raises cattle so well, he has so much concern for their well being, it was clear what a passion he has from talking to him.  He sells six-month old Hereford weanlings.  We are thinking about getting one or two from him to go with our Dexters and their calves, once the boss is back and we see what we get for meat we will decide.  Also, we decided not to breed our cows this year, too much on our plates, next year will be soon enough.

Bees

Our bees had done so well building their hive that we put on a honey super hoping to take advantage of the fall goldenrod crop.  It is not expected to get honey your first year, but we figured we would try since they had stored a sufficient amount to last through winter.  We used a queen excluder so as not to have larvae in our honey.  It might as well be called a honey excluder, I puller the frames off today and the bees had not even touched them.  Good learning experience, next spring when we are trying to get a honey crop for real, we will use the method of hive body rotation to keep the queen out of the honey for us, the excluders are officially sand sifters for the kids!

Rabbits

The new litters are getting big.  They will be ready to butcher before Thanksgiving and then we will let the mommas rest over the winter.  We may get another trio next spring, that way we can cross breed another generation without worrying about inbreeding.

Poultry

All of the ducks, geese, chickens, and turkeys are great.  In the next week, we will be deciding who makes the cut and who gets the ax.

Pigs

They are so big.  They will go to the butcher at the end of this month.  It will be nice to have them in the freezer and not have pigs over the winter.  We will start again next spring, not yet sure how many we want to raise, at least two, maybe as many as four depending on demand.

Garden

The crops we planted in August are coming in really well.  We just pressure canned 18 pints of green beans and will likely get another round that size before the frost.  We are enjoying lots of greens and root veggies.  We harvested our last row of potatoes and got some huge tubbers, 1-2 lbs apiece.  Our squash and corn were almost complete failures, the ragweed really got ahead of us.  Next year we will be doing a lot more mulching.  We have almost finished our grow tunnel, it will be really nice to have a place to start seeds in the spring and also start some crops very early in the season.

Kitchen

We have been preserving like mad, applesauce, pear sauce, peach sauce, corn, etc.  We have one last major canning project (rabbit stock) and then the canning equipment goes away until next year.  I keep thinking how amazing it will be to have such a store of food over the winter, food that we grew or that we picked form local farms.

Kids

We officially started homeschooling our oldest this month.  It is going well, our life on the farm offers endless opportunities for learning.  Our youngest really benefits from having her older brother around all the time.  And, with a third baby on the way (due in April) it is nice having both kids around.  They are such amazing help and are (mostly) such tremendous fun to be around.

Enjoy Harvest Time where you are!

Out of 26 pipes, only 4 didn’t go in pretty much right away.  Three of the remaining four could be set using a shovel to move smaller rocks out of the way.  One pipe could only be set after we used the tractor’s bucket to dig out a rather large rock.

The hoops are spaced 4-feet apart for a total length of 48 feet.  The polytunnel is 14-feet wide and 10-feet tall at the peak.

We hope to have it covered and enclosed before the really cold weather sets in.  Our aim is to grow some late greens this year and get a jump on spring in 2010.

BBQ Spare Ribs with Collard Green Slaw and Buttermilk Cornbread

I took the ribs and cut them into 3-4 rib pieces.  I put them in the slow cooker along with a pint of our homemade ketchup (which was really more like bbq sauce than ketchup) and a half pint of homemade hot pepper jelly.  It cooked on low for about 8 hours, then I strained the sauce, boiled it down with some vinegar and sugar, glazed the ribs and then stuck them under the broiler for about three minutes.  Yum, yum, yum!  I subbed fresh collard greens for cabbage in the slaw and we had the yummiest meal ever.

Homemade BTKs and Cukes and Onions

We made a loaf of our absolute favorite Artisan Bread, fried up some bacon from our pigs, sliced up two perfect tomatoes from the garden, and instead of lettuce, MIke sauteed some kale briefly in the bacon fat and we ate that on the sandwich.  It is hard to imagine anything more delicious, all grown here.  We ate some cukes and onions (sliced cukes with vidalia onions in a 1:1:1/2 solution of water, white vinegar, and sugar) with it.

Grilled veggie pasta with Wheat Bread and Peach and Ginger Chutney

Every other day I must bring it 5-10 lbs of food.  Our tomatoes are going crazy.  What I like to do is halve them, scoop out the seeds and pop them under the broiler.  I also do peppers this way about once a week.  I grilled up squash, eggplant, and onions.  I love having these things just sitting in the fridge, I use them in pasta, eggs, salsa.  If I get too much, I freeze some for later.  For lunch, we tossed together the veggies, roughly blended them with a stick blender and then tossed that with pasta.  We also tried the light wheat bread from Artisan Bread and we ate it with cream cheese and the peach and ginger chutney we made a few weeks ago.  We almost ate the entire loaf.

In addition, Jackson and I dug up our second row of potatoes, a combo of fingerlings, red boiling potatoes, and a russet type.  We got about 6o lbs of spuds.  We took the small ones and pressure canned them, this was an easy way to store potatoes that would otherwise not store well and this winter we can eat them out of the jar, or through them in with soups, casseroles, etc.  We also took about 12 lbs of the russets and shredded them in the food processor, blanched them, then formed them into patties and put them in the freezer.  Now we have ready-to-go hash browns.  We boiled a bunch more of the potatoes (all of the ones that had dings or bruises and wouldn’t keep) and have about 30lbs of fresh potatoes in the cupboard to eat over the next month or two.  We still have one row of potatoes in the garden, these are our Kennebecs which we will cure and hopefully store in the basement to eat all winter long.  We expect, based on the yields of the other two rows that we will likely get 60-80lbs.

We also canned three pints of cucumber sandwich slices and made a pint of crystalized ginger and about four quarts or ginger syrup to add to club soda for homemade ginger ale.

Tonight we went out and picked tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, collards, kohlrabi, beans, and rutabagas.

We also butchered five of our rabbits.  In the next day or two we will be making bunny burgers, rabbit kebabs, and stewed rabbit.  We will be trying to see what we like best as neither of us has eaten rabbit before.  I am tanning their hides (waste not, want not) and making lucky rabbits feet for Jackson.  We have eleven more rabbits to process, and will likely do that over the course of this week.  The woman we bought them from taught us how to dispatch  them in the most humane way possible with a small air pistol.  I am very happy to say that their deaths were instantaneous and they did not appear to suffer at all.  They were also very easy to skin and gut, MUCH easier and faster than chicken.  From a 4 1/2 pound live rabbit, we got 2 lbs of dressed meat plus the hide.  Not a bad return.  We will keep you posted on how we like the meat and may even post a tutorial.

Happy eating!

Mike and Jackson were so fast putting up the fence that we were able to go to one of our favorite places, Belltown Orchard in Glastonbury, CT.  It is picture perfect, and they have great fruit.  We picked 20 pounds of blueberries and picked up about 80 pounds of plums, peaches, nectarines, and apples for about $40 at their farmstand.  They sell “seconds” at an insane price and since we plan to use them for jamming, saucing, we don’t mid a few blemishes.  Here is what we have done with that 100 pounds of fruit so far:

• A double batch of blueberry muffins
• Eight pints of blueberry jam
• Three sheets of blueberry fruit leather plus two pints of blueberry concentrate for drinks
• Fourteen pints of plum jam
• One sheet of plum fruit leather plus one pint of plum concentrate
• Five quarts of peach sauce
• Seven quarts of canned peaches
• Five pints of peach jam
• Seven half pints of peach and ginger chutney
• Frozen peach pops for the kids
• Two sheets of peach leather
• Plus all of the fresh fruit we can eat

We still have all of the nectarines (@15 lbs), six pounds of apples, a few pounds of plums, and a bowl full of blueberries.  I think we will make jam and fruit leather with the nectarines and make a nice chutney with the apples and plums plus some veg from our garden.

To make fruit leather, we place prepared fruit (peeled, chopped, etc) in a but with a half cup of water.  We bring it to a boil, then shut off the heat and cover it for half an hour or so until the fruit is soft.  Then we strain it, reserving the juice for making drinks with, blend the fruit and dry it.  We have a dehydrator and usually set it to 120F for 12-16 hours.  Then we roll it in parchment paper, and store it in bags or jars for eating another time.

In addition to the farm fresh eating, we have been on what I call our “state fair” kick.  It gives me a great change to try out my newest kitchen purpose, a six quart Lodge Dutch oven, red, of course.  This weekend we made fried dough and zeppolis (which are so easy to make and are a super yummy treat for breakfast for the kids). Tonight we are making homemade corn dogs.  Yum!

Fauna

• The chickens are doing well, laying eggs and getting big.  I have finally butchered the last of our meat chickens.  I ended up processing thirty of them, each weighing btwn 4-6 pounds.  I pieced all of them, some were frozen, others turned into jerky or chicken sausage.  I was able to make a bunch of stock using the pressure canner and have about 20 quarts in the basement shelves ready for use in winter stews.
• Our chicks that hatched last month are doing well, they especially love to hang out in the pigs area and eat any bits of slop they can find.  We have 10 home grown chicks, and another broody hen sitting on eggs.  It is amazing noting the difference between chicks raised by a chicken and chicks form the hatchery.  They are so much smarter and hardier, we hope to never have to order chicks again.
• We ended up butchering our turkeys, one went missing (we suspect our resident fox), and some friends needed a few of their turkeys done as well.  We made delicious turkey jerky and ground turkey for burgers, plus stock.  Of the twelve turkey eggs that one of our chicken hens was sitting on, three hatched, but they all died within a few days.  They were kept in a separate area in the coop with just their momma, so we don’t know what happened.  Turkeys are very fragile, especially as young chicks, and very hard to raise.  We still have four broad-breasted bronze turkeys we are raising for Thanksgiving.  Maybe we will try again next year with breeding turkeys, or maybe we will just buy poults from the hatchery or other local farmers.
• Our ducks and geese are doing well, those that are left.  We have had a fox problem and for some reason, the geese seem to be particularly vulnerable.  We have four adult geese, two toulouse, one emden, one white Chinese.  We think we will likely keep one male and one female and butcher the other two.  Not yet sure how to sex geese, but I guess we will learn.  A number of our ducks are close to butchering size, and then we will make some choices about which to keep through the winter as breeding stock and which to sell or butcher.
• Our rabbit litters are now eight weeks old.  We have started separating and weaning them from their mom, taking a few away each day.  We have 17 and plan to give one away to our neighbors.  The rest we will butcher once they reach 12 weeks old and then we will have bunny burgers and try our hands and tanning their pelts.  We are willing to try anything once, this could be a total failure, but we won’t know until we try.  So far, raising the rabbits for meat has been the easiest of all the livestock.  They are no trouble, eat all of the thinnings from the garden, and are very easy to care for.  We will probably re-breed again at the end of this week once all of the kits (the name for baby rabbits) have been weaned and have one more litter from both female rabbits before the cold weather sets in.
• The pigs are getting big, they love their spot in the woods, they have a nice mud hole and are eating all our leftovers.  We have not had any breakouts, which is such a huge relief.  They will stay with us until the end of October and then go to the butcher.  We don’t think we will keep pigs this winter, trying to keep our work light and our costs down.  They have to use so much of their feed to keep warm in the winter, it does not make as much sense economically as during the summer.
• The sheep and goats are so lovely.  We all enjoy watching them graze on the grass.  Their fleece are getting so long, we have set a shearing date of mid-Sep.  The black lamb will likely go to the butcher this fall, or maybe early next spring, after he is sheared once more.  Our female goat has been favoring her back feet, so we treated her for a hoof fungus.  We have had the wettest, coldest summer in almost 100 years here in CT and the constant wetness is not conducive to having dry hooves.
• So that leaves us with the cows.  They have been complete and utter pains in the *ss lately.  A few weeks ago, Mike, Jackson, and Mike’s parents (who were visiting from NC) were heading out to visit his sister in NYC when Jackson spotted the steer in the front yard.  Mike managed to get him back in, but not before he took the tops off of several of my fruit trees.  I was out for the day with Charlotte and cut my plans short to go buy enough electric fence to cover out entire perimeter.  The next day Mike and his parents installed it, no easy task at all, but not before getting a 6:30am call from our neighbor saying the cows were all in her back yard.  I was honestly ready to call and take them all to the butcher that very day.  They have learned to respect the fence, but now the problem has been that they have been breaking into the garden.  There can be NO mistakes in fencing when it comes to cows, they are like the velociraptors from the Jurassic Park movie, testing each spot until they find a weakness and then pushing through.  Up until this point, we had been letting the cows free range through the whole property so they could get all their own food and water.  We are now in the process of making a fencing solution using the electric fence that will keep them confined to the back part of the property where we won’t have these issues anymore.  The steer goes to the butcher on 10/4, but we still have the two dexters and their calves to keep in line.

Flora

• The grass seed we put down earlier this spring is doing well in this incredibly wet weather.  We have not needed to water, in fact in many parts of our property we have had standing water.  One week we got 12 inches of rain.  This is highly unusual for CT.
• The fruit trees and berry bushes seem to be doing well.  We have been picking a few raspberries and a TON of beetles off the trees.  The kids and I go around and check them all with our bottle of water to put the bugs in and then bring a special treat to the chickens.
• The garden is doing okay.  This week we have been doing what we call “extreme home garden makeover”.  The garden needed MAJOR weeding, staking, pruning, etc.  We have all been going out for two hours each night this week and getting it back into shape.  Our efforts appear to be paying off.  What we need more than anything is sunshine.  We have what I call and really great “Irish garden”.  We have tons of lettuce, greens, turnips, peas, and potatoes.  Anything that likes cool, damp weather is thriving, but our ” Native American” crops (corn, beans, squash) and our “Mediterranian graden” (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant) are not doing so well.  We have really been enjoying have so much of our home grown food to eat, we are really loving Chinese cabbage and kale lately.
• There was a slight break in the rain in the last two weeks and we were able to help our friends who have a farm around the corner from ours put up hay.  We took 200 bales home for ourselves, enough to get us through the winter.  They cut a total of about 1300 bales, enough for themselves and to sell to neighbors and friends like us.  They hope to do a second cut (the grass has a higher protein content in its second and third cuts) and we may take 20 or so bales from that as well, especially if we have pregnant cows and sheep (the next project).  Haying is such an amazing process, equal parts art and science and if you ever have the chance to be involved in it, I highly recommend you take the chance.  You may be sore the next morning, but there is nothing that compares to the sense of community you feel when working on such an endeavor with neighbors.

I think that sums it up for us for the last month.  We have been busy, enjoying time with friends and family, planting, eating, and taking care of our animals.  It is hard to imagine that we have been here less than a year, it feels like forever.

The last two weeks have been busy, our other cow had her calf, this time it went much more smoothly, he slid right out (movie).  I have started trying to milk her (we call her the sweet one) and acclimate the other one (the bossy one) to my proximity.  Both calves are bulls and both are doing extremely well.  We feel very happy to be on the other side of our heifers giving birth and have two healthy cows that are nursing their healthy calves well.

Our rabbits also gave birth, the same day as the cow two weeks ago.  One rabbit had nine babies, the other one had eight.  These babies are destined for the freezer, and I will try my hand at tanning their pelts.  Rabbits are an excellent source of lean protein and very economical to raise.  The breed we have is called Silver Fox and they are and endangered form of livestock.  It may seem counter-intuitive, but having more people eat them actually would increase their numbers as it increases demand.  We will see how it all goes, if we don’t like rabbit, we will go back to having three pet rabbits who eat our garden waste and we cuddle every day.

Our turkeys have started laying eggs again, I have pulled one dozen eggs and plan to put them under one of our broody hens.  We will let the turkeys set on the rest and hope to get poults this time.

The sheep and goats are doing well, getting nice thick fleece on the lush grass.  The pigs are getting big and we have been thoroughly enjoying our hams and bacons and the rest of our meat.  

The bees are busy collecting nectar from all the wildflowers in the pasture.  Jamie’s been practicing her hive arts (movie).

We also butchered five ducks this past week.  They were a little smaller than I would have liked, so I will let the rest go a bit longer.  We made pan-seared ducks breasts, duck stock, and white-wine braised whole ducks.  I skinned them as plucking the feathers was an arduous task.  We took the meat from the braised ducks and made a duck salad with homemade mayo and a little of our bacon.  It was outstanding.  The rest of the meat will get frozen and probably tossed with pasta or made into duck soup.  Their meat tastes amazing, almost like beef.

We finished planting the garden, fenced it, and put in a proper gate.  Hopefully this will keep the animals out, the cows snuck in last week and ate almost  all of our strawberry plants.

We have been very busy with everything around here.  It feels nice to slowly begin the transition from the big, one-time only tasks like fencing and acquiring the livestock to the daily maintenance of our property and animals.  Jackson and Charlotte are amazing helpers and we feel so happy to be able to provide this life for them.