Fencing Phase 2 or Deux (that's French)

So, we have finished Phase 1 which was fencing off the South property line, and are now starting on Phase 2.  Which consists of running the fence basically North to South across the property to split the upper area from the lower.  We will be installing two 8-9' gates as well as one small gate for the future cow shed.  I wanted to make sure the gates would not sag, so we went with the large 6" round posts and then put concrete around them instead of just compacted gravel.  I started the process by mowing everything down and then putting up a string line.  Then I spent a lot of time standing around and thinking.  

Here the kids are helping mix a bag of concrete to put in the gate post hole.  Everyone wanted a turn at mixing.  

Here you can see my hot pink string line, which the chickens seem to have a hard time stepping over and the gate posts.  This phase may go slower as we are now into the time of year when we should be pruning fruit trees.  So, that may take up some of our time as we have a bunch of overgrown ones.  I think the honey bees have helped to polinate the trees.  We had no idea we had a pear tree behind our house until last summer, and I think that is because it was not polinated well the first year we were here.  So, I spent part of a morning drastically pruning it.

Movie's

As you probably can tell we are working towards growing/raising more of our own food. We are doing this for a couple of reasons:

- Food prices seem to be always rising.

- We would like to know where our food or meat comes from, and how it was grown or raised.

- There are many health benefits from eating fresh in season vegetables, and grass fed, free range meat.

- We would like to be more self-sufficient and sustainable.

If you are looking for an eye-opening documentary, we highly recommend you watch Food, Inc. We rented it from the library at a time when it was in high demand, probably took us close to 2 months on the waiting list. I would not watch it with young children.

Another one we watched recently was King Corn, once again from the library. It is obviously a documentary on, you guessed it, CORN. It is kind of funny, but also very interesting to see the typical process in American grown corn, and what role the government subsidies play. Read your labels folks, corn is in everything! It is a big cornspiracy, C O R N spiracy.

Cinnamon Rolls with Pioneer Woman

I can not remember how we found out about Pioneer Woman, but some time ago I got her cookbook for my wife as a gift.  It is a gorgeous cookbook with lots of beautiful pictures depicting their life on a ranch, and yummy recipes.  So far our favorite recipe has got to be the Cinnamon Rolls, which you can also find on her website.  Jennie made some just before Christmas.

I was helping by reading the directions, here she is rolling out the dough.

Add a little butter.  Bear in mind, nothing that Pioneer Woman does is low fat, but then again if you are going to eat Cinnamon Rolls you should just go all out.

Ready to bake!

Adding the maple frosting.  We have found that the recipe makes a ton of frosting, so we have now cut it back some.  We then usually freeze them and save them for a special weekend treat.

TOT school for Lily Mae

While the other three are doing their school work, I try to keep Lily busy with things that will hold her interest for periods of at least 15 minutes. Here are some of her favorite things to do.

water play. She loves this one and it gives her a bath at the same time. (just kidding)

we emptied a cabinet for her in the kitchen and put some toys in it for her to play in while I am cooking but she also uses it for school time too. Here she is dropping things into an empty Parmesan cheese container.

She plays with her babies all the time.

She also gets crib time in the morning. She loves it. We put music on, put the day of the week box full of toys, and her blankets and she will spend 40-45 minutes in there while I do some school work with the kids that require some quietness in the house. Sometimes I do find her fast asleep though.

She is getting a lot busier and into more things but she also is becoming so fun to play with and interact. She loves books and will sit and look at those for a long time. And she is discovering play dough too. That is fun! She does keep us on our toes though and there are days where there is a lot of crying or correcting with her and we don't get a lot of schooling done. But in midst of it all she is our sweet precious toddler who LOVES animals and her brothers and sister. She cannot get enough of any of them. And we all are learning more about grace. Lots of life learning with a toddler. Oh and most days she doesn't get out of her pajamas. Oh well. 

Treadle Chicken Feeder

I was starting to tire of our constant battle with the rats in the chicken coop when I came across a post somewhere about a Treadle Chicken Feeder. I think what I initially read was that it could be used outside and keep the feed dry and also keep other birds from eating your chicken feed. I found a couple of places that sold sheetmetal ones, but they were pretty spendy. As I continued to search I found the follow post on the best website ever

http://www.backyardchickens.com/web/viewblog.php?id=56638-building-a-treadle-feeder

If you read much about chickens online then you probably have been to the backyard chickens website before, it is awesome. This gentleman was nice enough to share his plans and instructions so I went about building one on a Saturday. I was in a hurry so, I just used my finish nailer to shoot everything together (probably should have glued as well). It is really amazing how fast things go together that way, and if you don't care that much what it looks like. I did make my feeder taller to hold more feed, by maybe 4" or so. So, far I have been extremely pleased with it, and most of the chickens seem to have figured it out. The rat population has really decreased, not for a lack of trying. The lid that opens to the feed has been gnawed on around all the edges.

Here is a video of the ladies opening it. Sorry kind of a long video.

Ten things I love about Dave

WOW! Trying to limit it to ten things is going to be hard. So I will just start with the ones that come to mind first. The reason for only ten things is that I have been doing the 12 days of Christmas with him and every day since the 13th of Dec. he has gotten something from me. As an example he got 1 pair of new jeans for the 1st day, gloves for two hands on the 2nd day, a six pack of his favorite beer that he doesn't get often for the sixth day, a pack of 8 butterfingers on the 8th day and so on. It has been very fun and I love to see his excitement every morning and the disappointment when he gets the note that says he has to wait till later to get it. So sweetie, this is for you.

What I love about you:

1) the way that you lead us in prayer and God's Word every morning. What a perfect way to start the day, with God and my best friend.

2) the desire that you have to teach our Children of God and His ways

3) all the hard work that you do each day at work and then come home and work more here on the homestead

4) the desire to teach the kids how to live a self-sustainable life

5) to live a simple life

6) the encouragement that you give to me each day

7) the support you give for our homeschooling journey

8) the desire and encouragement to eating the foods that God created, not man's foods

9) the way that you let the kids help you on projects even if it doubles the time it takes you

10) the late nights of listening to me talk through things, home school ideas, curriculum's, projects I want to do, and so on.

Thanks sweetie.

I love you! xoxoxox

Misc. pictures

Every year one of the kids gets to help put the star on top of the tree. Last year Mia couldn't get it even with being on top of Dave's shoulder's. This year she finally was able to reach it.

Homemade Hot cocoa with Whip cream on top. A special treat after a long cold day of working outside.

Kids enjoying some hot cocoa.

Devotions and Coffee.

Ice crystals one COLD morning on our deck railing.