I know, I know!

It has been ridiculously long since I last posted, and obviously a lot has been happening, including Christmas.... so I will just upload some pics and add some comments.  Everyone is great... the kids are excited to have Christmas break, and we have been taking care of all the animals, trying to keep them warm.  It's snowing again today... it never accumulates much, just 1-2 inches of either snow or sleet.  Just enough to keep us up on the hill, getting cabin fever!  We pray all of you are doing well, and had a blessed Christmas...

We are down to 22 chickens (lost one a few months ago) but they are doing great and still laying

Sam's 15 and lovin' life!

No, we haven't resorted to kidnapping!  These are actually our newest members of the farm being transported...

...being released...

Ta-da!  Aren't they cute?!  We actually have 4, although only 1 is ours... the other three are for friends... we are raising them all for breakfast and dinner!  Yum, yum!

They are Hampshire x Big Black, and let me tell you...they are FUNNY!  They are like dogs!  We've had them about two months now, so they are MUCH bigger than this now.  They will go to slaughter around 250 lbs.  They did escape about 3 weeks ago, and we panicked, thinking they'd be gone.  That's what everyone told us to expect if they got loose.  But as soon as I pulled into our driveway, they were all standing there, grunting and excited, looking for food!  So I got a bucket of mash and they followed me right up the path and into their pen, like a Pied Piper! Big goofballs.... but VERY entertaining.  And unlike what you hear about pigs, they are actually clean and don't like being messy.  They only wallow around in a mud puddle when it's hot, to cool off, because they don't have any sweat glands.  But their poo IS quite stinky... it's just as smelly as human poo, but they do find just one area to be their loo!  We love them, although we know they will be pork loin and bacon come spring.

He-lllloooooooo!  Actually, Molly, the big girl, is off visiting someone else's farm for a few weeks, being "courted!"  We are praying she comes back happy, satisfied and pregnant (it's her first time, poor baby!)  So hopefully, in about 9 months, we will be in the milk again!   The little guys miss her, she's a force to be reckoned with... she also thinks she's a dog... she literally runs around, prancing and bucking and doing goofy things.   We still need to de-horn her cuz according to a farmer friend of ours, "horns have no place on a farm!"

We get A LOT of wind up here, as you can see by our leaning icicle... we wear a lot of A&D and Vaseline on our faces during the winter!

This was the last snow... we have a real barn for them to go into now.... it's actually for milking Molly when the time comes, but it works great as shelter from the wind and sleet for them all.

There's our "smouse" in the woods.... now we just really need a mudroom!

Here's a flashback to Halloween... ours are Harry Potter and the black-hat detective, the other two are their cousins, who they LOVE to spend time with...

Here they are enjoying a nice afternoon outside...

inside drawing or doing school...

But their main love is still Legos!

Lots of baking...

and school projects.

We are plugging right along, and we all love it up here on the "hill."  We miss seeing our family and friends, but we are happy with this lifestyle we've chosen.  Eric has started a handyman business and sells firewood.  I do the occasional drawing, when requested (I wish there were more!).   On another blog featuring a couple who similarly uprooted and drastically changed their lifestyle, she says, "people either pity us or envy us."  It's not always easy, but it's always rewarding, and it's brought us closer to God, and to each other.  And for us, that's what's most important.   Happy New Year to you all... with love.

Finally "finished!!!"

Well, finally move-in-able!  We still have work to do.  We moved in about 10 days ago and are LOVING it! It's so great to be in our own "smouse"... so cozy and sheltered.  Still haven't figured out where I'm going to put my hanging clothes, much less all the bulky winter clothes to come, but, one day at a time!

A few good watermelons....

A bounty of apples ready for canning applesauce...

We have had the BEST tomatoes this year

Blue corn silk

I love the look of sunflowers... so happy!

Meet our newest ATG member, Molly.  We got her (Jersey heifer, 16 mo. old) off a Mennonite farmer,  Ezra.  He has Molly's momma.  Molly will be bred this fall, hopefully calve 9 months later, and then we'll be back in the milking business!  

School's in... we are still doing Classical Conversations this fall, with me teaching the 3rd graders, and using CLE's (Christian Light Education) curriculum at home, so we'll see how that goes.  We spend from 8:10-12:30 or 1:00 doing our curriculum and then have our quiet hour of reading and then playtime for the boys.

We'll keep you posted!  Thanks for staying tuned!

A few pics of what's happenin'

House photos, so far... and can I just say:  Drywall stinks!!!  It's so tedious!

Rabbit's 8th birthday!:

SpiderMan, SpiderMan....

Happy Birthday, Rabbit!!  We love you!!

Busy, busy, busy.....

It has been a whirlwind of activity around here this summer.  Once school was finished we really got into the house.  We are at this point under roof, soffit up, plumbing and electricity rough in completed, ceiling drywalled, and 1/3 walls drywalled.   We are so close!

We did have a stall in work due to the storm that hit hard.  It was a MESS.  By God's grace alone, most trees fell between houses or on outbuildings, but hardly any on actual homes.  As I'm sure you heard in the news, West Virginia was a mess.  We had no power for 13 days due to a power line down in the front yard across the driveway, and the next transformer is 2 miles through the woods down to Hamilton Ridge.  We also had no water, which was the hardest.  Without electricity, we couldn't get water from the well, so we had to boil it on the grill or go into town to fill up jugs/buckets of water.

We all did fine through it all- we have had "pioneer weekends" up here before and didn't mind not having power.  We did our laundry out of tubs and clothesline, and cooked on the grill.  We had rain barrels of water for the livestock, and garden. We even had little E's 10th birthday and baked a cake on the grill, which came out great.  We used solar powered light that you would use to light your pathways at night, and we did use our generator to power on and off through the day to keep the fridge going (although we still did lose some food).

Our life in pics since I last wrote:

    

      Eric and Rabbit shelling peas

E's grilled birthday cake (10th! Hard to believe!)

 

laundry day!

cavalry's coming!

The storm twisted this outbuilding 4-5 inches off the foundation- actually, that's what happened to alot of the trees.... they were twisted around and left hanging, or else completely uprooted.  We had an impassable driveway due to 8 downed oaks across just in one spot

Hard to see, but it's a black bear at the top of the driveway

Monkey see and Monkey Do-  finally weaned off the bottle!