Animal updates

  The biggest news is that we got a new cat from the animal shelter.  I've been going there for the last two months to see if anybody found our missing kitten, Liza.  I finally came to the realization that we probably aren't going to see her again so we decided to get another.  They had a beautiful seal point short haired kitten that was already spayed so we took the leap.

*E* loves her to death.  She plays just as much as Liza but isn't nearly as scratchy.  I think we're going to name her Holly since she joined our family at Christmas time.

She's got some pretty cool colors on her and is very affectionate.  I just hope that she's a good mouser for the homestead!

  Bonnie's training (and mine) is coming along well.  I drove her all last week in full harness and even took her out of the arena and around the stable grounds both days this weekend.

  I think she remembers her Amish training because she's sure making me look good.  I can get her harnessed up in about five minutes now and she hasn't been freaked out by the tug chains dragging on the ground behind her.  I need to make up some chain extensions so I can hitch up the single tree when it gets here.

I'm dying to hitch her up to the little harrow/drag that the stable uses to groom the arena.

  DW and I tried our hands at cheese making again last night.  Meijers had milk on sale so we bought a couple extra gallons.  Our original intention was to make soft farmer cheese but DW decided to take another shot at mozzerella.  We used whole milk that wasn't labeled as "ultra-pasteurized" but I suspect it was more pasteurized than they let on.  We used some expensive hoytey-toytey milk from Whole Foods last time so we figured we'd see what would happen with regular old grocery store milk.  The mozzerella flopped bad.  Ironically enough, it came out like a nice soft farmer cheese and is very tasty.  She also discovered that you can reheat the left over whey to just boiling and make ricotta.  It worked like a dream and we ended up with almost a pound and that means LASAGNA on Thursday...Yum.