Steve: dairy herd manager, Lancaster DHIA president, software support, father, husband, speaker/teacher, avid reader, and oh yes, web page designer. Other than that, not much happening.

Brenda should be busy enough with five children and a farmer/husband to keep after, but manages to take responsibility for the calf raising on the farm, and do several milking a week, as well as teach Sunday School, and serve as head cook in the church kitchen. In the "spare" moments, she does Pampered Chef home demonstrations.

Laura, as of June 20, 2003 is now Laura Fahnestock with her marrigage to her new husband Dave. She is busy learning how to be a wife, which includes frequent stops with, and phone calls to her mother for advice. Assuming that Dave wants a happy wife, she also spends time with her sisters. She continues her studies at Millersville University, majoring in English and Spanish, with an eye to teaching English as a second language. 

 Andi is a 2001 graduate of Manheim Central. She is still trying to decide "What she wants to be when she gets big". After spending the summer of 2002 touring with the New Life Drama company, she brought several of her friends into the growing circle of our family. With friends (both male and female) and activities filling her timel, she is anything but bored.

Reba We never did get Reba to change her name to Hershey, but Peter had better luck. She changed her name to Hoffman in June of 2004, when she married Peter Hoffman and moved to Kutztown. Reba came into our life like this: when we sent Laura to Mexico for a year, Norberto and Lisa Cortes responded by sending Rebecca along back. She has been with us since January 2001, and has thoroughly become one of the family. After graduating from Manheim Central in 2002, she worked at Weis Markets, Kreiders Restaurant, and much to her surprise, milking cows for me. I have never seen a young lady with God's fingerprints in more places in her life. One of the times was to bring Peter Hoffman into her life. She has become truly one of the family, and it is hard to imagine the family without her.

Kate is a senior at Manheim Central, which is REALLY scary. She is using her senior year to study Pastry Arts (desserts) in Vo-Tech, which has obvious benefits to her family. In a long family tradition, she did her best to kill me in her maiden voyage in a car. (But that is another strory.) She is the chief reason that I may discover the house packed with kids that seem to randomly show up at any time of the day or night. She has not really settled on a boy. She hates to play favorites, she likes them all! She is hoping to be involved in drama again as senior. She reluctantly milks for me, only because the pay is decent. It would not take too much of a job offer to turn her into a FORMER milkerwoman.

Kurt was supposed to be "Emily" until we learned that people DO have boys after the first three are girls. Kurt has become "Mr. Money", having put in a lot of hours milking at a pretty decent wage, and little to spend it on. It will not be long before that changes, since he is now in the youth group, and has his eye on cars, and is longing for the driver's license. It has been so much fun to watch him grow from "boy" into "young man". He loves drawing, computer games, reading, and friends. He has become an important part of my farm crew, with a regular milking schedule that he performs well, with a minimum of complaining.

Tristan is "Class of 2012" Tristan can be found on the computer, reading, playing games, or harassing his brother and sisters. He also does a good job helping around the farm. (For a price.) He is probably the one who enjoys school the least of all the kids. It is a long time until graduation!

Kids seem to attract kids, and our house has become a home to some of them.

Lisa Fetcher has actually been in our family longer than Reba, coming from Philadelphia as an intern learning about the farm while Laura was in Mexico. She has been in and out of our house, serving as State FFA Reporter, and then an internship on a belted Galloway farm in Maine. She finally moved into our home for good in the spring of 2003. Our greatest joy was her accepting Christ and joining our church, our greatest time of  fear was a life threatening motorcycle accident in September 2003.

Sherenne Delostritto moved into our house in early January 2004. She is originally from California, where her family is still living. I have been accused of taking in kids to have captive labor, and trained Sherenne to milk shortly after she came. Our lives changed in July when she had a baby, and now David Tyler is also a part of our family. Someone has said that he will probably never learn to walk, because someone is always carrying him.

Then there is Mary. Mary DuShene is one of Andi's former drama team members. She lives in Indiana, where she lives alone, adding up a couple small jobs to make up a full time job. Her circumstances have left her basically without family. We are keeping in regular communication, and have threatened to go out and get her once we have room.