October 24: The site recently celebrated our first birthday. TexCat has added new members and links to member sites on page 2. Welcoming Paso DeFe to the membership as well as TopLine Nubians & Boers and Bobbi Chukran, The Cottage Gardener.

We've only had the horses 3 + months, and already I feel like they've been here 'forever'. Duenna is hugely pregnant, due in February but doubtful she'll hold out that long. She's a purebred bay Arabian and bred to a (loud) Pinto, baby should be colorful. Rafica is Straight Egyptian and will go back to the owner in the Spring to be bred. We're also seriously looking at a Paso Fino mare, and just hoping we'll be able to get the one we're discussing. Photos of her will follow if so. Look for the horse section in 'Other Critters' soon. I've taken some work down, Catoico Oberhasli no longer has pages on my site, so any links to that will be broken until I can get them swiped.

AUGUST 3?? CAN IT REALLY BE AUGUST? YES! And I'm so far behind on the site, I may as well just start the whole year over again. (NOT ON YOUR LIFE!!!) We have new events ongoing and I'm so excited I almost don't want to talk about it for fear of jinxing the projects. HORSES!! HORSES ARE COMING!!! I confess that every few years I get the idiotic urge to have a horse and end up with an auction scrub I can't do anything with. Last time I got out, I sold gear and horse and vowed 'never again'.. Well, never seems to only last about 4 years around me!

Soon, I'll have a new section up in OTHER CRITTERS about the horse project. Keep an eye out for the new events as they unfold. I'll have a link up also to Classique Arabians, where you too can get your own straight Egyptian Arabian.

I'm reading the May 18 blurb and I could slap me! 'cool Pacific Northwest', ha!! Turned into a typical Texas summer, everything scorched and blasted by August. Grasshoppers are the only things that don't seem to suffer in this heat. The haygrazer came up fitfully due to the wet early growing season, seeded out early, and now is standing out there pitifully awaiting baling or plowing under. Whichever I get rigged first.

May 18: Every time I look in on our poor site, I see things I want to completely redo. Added a Texas web ring to the very first index page today. Waiting on the go-ahead to initialize it. We've been working like mad around the property, cleared an old 32 acre hay meadow and put in haygrazer for goat hay. Poor John HAND BROADCAST every inch of it, and we did 100 pounds to the acre.. we really felt 'close to the soil' those days. Working away from the farm has taken most of our time. I keep promising myself (and the site) I'll scan a bunch of photos and set them up so everyone can see our gorgeous babies and not so picture perfect gardens this season. We have weather more like the Pacific Northwest than Texas, as it's been rainy & overcast. Birthed 14 baby goats, hatched out 33 chicks, (the older group now doing practice crowing). At some point it'll settle down, hopefully. Have some hysterical tales about the neighbor's cows and as soon as I can get them written, will appear in 'bovinus afterus', or other Critters pages.

March 14: Could it really have been 6+ weeks that I haven't 'touched' the site? Well, go see what's new. TEXAS CATALYST!! This is a group for Texans to talk Texas. In it's infancy, but we expect it to grow by leaps and bounds as soon as the word is out. We've been moon-sign gardening and are about to embark on a dairy production venture that will allow us to sell cheese-quality milk to an area producer. Exciting stuff for ye old farmhands! Stumbled onto Biodynamic farming, and a whole new world has opened up. The method of FlowForm water fountains absolutely took my breath away. I have some brochures ready to install on this site as soon as I get the go-ahead from the owner of the forms. I've been busy asking stupid questions and learning about putting more of 'self' into self-sufficiency. Baby chicks hatched out Mar 1, and we have some photos ready to put up on that.

Finally, the beginning of an Oberhasli Sales List! Go to Stats N Facts to see our pregnant gals and their beaux. Pre-kidding prices very reasonable! Also, 3 pages of lovely goats from Catoico Oberhasli sales listing for 1999. Don't miss this one if you've ever entertained the thought of owning a superior dairy doe.

I keep adding photographs, but the newest ones are just too wonderful to keep to ourselves.

Meet Silver Star, only hours old! This is so adorable, I just had to share the picture. Go to Other Critters for the links and full information.

And, looks like a cria nursery with all the adorable babies. This is one of my all-time favorites, Yellow Wood Rio K.

Major llama secret: when they grow up, they're just as appealing!

January 8, 1999: Important addition: Is in the Service Dog section, a Missing Pudge, who is a service dog for hearing-impaired Rhonda. Also, a great story about the Queen of England and Sieger, a guide dog.

SCADS more photos, 'About Us' photo page 2 and a page 3 in the 'Gallery'. Random shots throughout the site as well, another one of a great buck Pan's Pride Medicine Bow on the 'Boys in the Back Room', one of what comfrey is supposed to look like in it's infancy, and a bread & cheese board on the cheese pages.

Here's a sample: (GCH *M Roadrunner Z Althea, one of our foundation does, photo at age 11.) Althea is 'just a grade doe', but she's been sensational in improving our milker bloodlines (and still going strong in 1999, too!)

Folk have wondered what we look like. My hair is a little shorter, John's is a little grayer (he says 'thanks to me'). We're both a little rounder, but this is who we be.

Our site was online the first week in October, 1998. Since then it has grown in fits and starts. I finally swiped all the old 'What's New' info. After all, a new year should bring new fits and starts. I'm learning that a web site is much like writing a novel. The characters and bit players seem to take on a life of their own. The things you think to add aren't always the pages that get posted.

(Fiona hard at work answering her e-mail.)

Glad to have you visit. Hope you'll come back soon to see us grow!

John Zitkus and Martha Wells

Flylo Farms