I love the way the clouds and fog roll across the mountains up here...

 

I think it's so pretty and wispy. I have to say, though, as much as I love winter and would love one good snow (so the kids could use their new snow shoes and sleds!), I look forward to how green it is up here in spring/summer.  But every season has its own beauty...

For those of you who are interested in what we do during the day, here's just a tiny sampling... in between the math, reading, grammar, etc., we were doing a study on Ancient civilizations and this is an Egypt project we were working on.  the boys had so much fun constructing their desert scene that now they want to do it for Mali, Rome, Greece and China!  Me thinks they may get bored with doing these scenes for all of them, but we'll see....

Nothing warms the heart (for me) than seeing the boys into their work (cuz let's face it... it's not like that all the time!)  And I love walking into a room and finding them quietly reading a book (especially when I'm such a bookworm and LOVE to read), even when Rabbit is reading something wholesome like Little House on the Prairie books, and E is reading Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets!!!  Oh well.....

Rabbit lost his second tooth last night (it's been practically hanging out of his mouth for the past week!)  So he is 7 and this is only his second tooth loss.... I think his teeth are as stubborn as he is!  Is there a correlation here somewhere?! After all, he did end up hanging in there after I was induced and they STILL had to go in after him via c-section... I think I'm seeing a pattern?!

Sammy Poops curled up in front of the woodstove... he's been doing this alot lately.  I'm afraid my kitty may be getting a tad old at 14....

Anyhoo.....the chickens are averaging 18 eggs a day.  And we are now officially licensed to sell eggs...TADA!

Good luck in your recuperation, Big Pop!  We're praying for a speedy recovery....

Ya'll come back now, ya hear?!  Blessings...

Okay, maybe it's just me, but....

does anyone else think it's funny when your 7 or 9 year old gets calls from buddies, or they call their buddies?  It's like they're little people just talking on the phone.... it's so funny to me (and a little scary that they're growing up) Weird, huh?! (BTW, they're discussing a Wii game and trying to get advice!)

Oh, and E is puking now.... joy.

Okay, I gotta say, comfort to me is....

a fresh pot of homemade chicken-vegetable soup, a loaf of fresh homemade bread, all three of my boys at home, snow on the ground, and a stack of firewood all ready.  Aaaaah, this is the life!  Thank you, Lord.

The girls are sooo busy laying, we are averaging 16 eggs a day!  We've given some away and try to bake with them, but that's a lot of eggs... and it's not even close to spring (peak production time)!  Eric and I have an application in to get a permit and license to sell the eggs, which we will do out of my b-i-l's pharmacy, and at the market in town, come spring.  In the meantime, anyone want to buy some eggs?

It really is so cool to go out and collect eggs a couple of times a day.... between that and eating out of your own garden, you get a sense of how God originally created things to be... for us to be more self-sufficient than we all are this day and age.  It's SO satisfying being a little more self-sufficient and closer to nature.  I feel like we are starting to get our priorities straight up here, which is the reason we made this move to begin with.  We've got a long way to go, but we are on the right track, for our family.

I've been sewing (hand-stitching) aprons in my spare time, and that's a lot of fun.  I'm getting out the sewing machine today to see if I can become familiar with it... it was my great-grandmother's- the kind where it is in the table... an old Singer.  I feel like I'm channeling her a little when I sew, although I don't have her talent.  She, apparently, could sew!  But I do think about her quite a lot when I 'm sewing... she died at 92 (?) when I was in college, and she was a character.  I still have her Christmas ornament that I hang on the tree every year.. "Nannie, 1965"."

Rabbit was too embarrassed to show his face wearing an apron... go figure!

I'm also trying to wrap up a scarf I'm knitting (no pun intended!) and found a couple of other small knitting projects I want to try this winter... did I ever tell you that the first knitting project I EVER attempted was a grey sweater for Eric, who is not a slight man!?  It took me five years to complete (in between having two babies!) and is so baggy in one arm, he could stick a loaf of bread up there (although why he'd want to do that, I couldn't say) along with his arm.  But all in all, it really isn't TOO bad.  He CAN actually wear it, so I'm pleased.  But I've learned my lesson and now pick small projects...

Anyway, the boys are really great, although Rabbit just got over a little stomach bug where he was up every half hour puking, poor thing.  He was exhausted yesterday but got a good night sleep last night and feels MUCH better today (so good he could keep down an iced cupcake- that was his test! Although he pretty much just licked the icing off the top and drank a cup of milk.  I figure, if he can handle that, he's okay!) But I asked E if he missed Richmond, and he said no, he really loves it here... so that was great to hear.  He and his daddy are off riding the four-wheeler... you can't even see their faces, what with all the face masks and hats.... Rabbit's in here recuperating, watching Scooby Doo while I'm baking the bread.

So it's a great day.... hope everyone else's is great as well! Blessings....

Follow up...

Okay, we tried... but we just couldn't bring ourselves to eat Helmut!  Rabbit wouldn't even try, E took one bite, I had a couple of nuggets, as did Eric, but when Eric looked at the leg and thigh on his plate, he just couldn't do it.  I think it's because it was so fresh in our minds (it had just happened that morning), and his death wasn't exactly planned... I think if we had processed him earlier and had frozen him, it would have felt more like pulling regular chicken out of the freezer and we would have been okay!  Oh well, so much for being pioneer people...we aren't that hardy, apparently!

Now the girls have been laying up a storm, which is really exciting.  And they seem to be getting along fine without Helmut jumping on them with his happy feet every few minutes!  They even seem to be enjoying the snow we recently had.  And Eric and I have decided on getting 3 feeder pigs this spring, so we're excited to try that little adventure.. we'll keep everyone informed!

In Memorium....

Helmut (June 2011-December 2011)

Dec.  28, 2011

Happy New Year, everyone!  Things are great here, very cold.  We’ve had a dusting of snow a couple of times, and lots of wind, but it’s been beautiful.  Christmas was wonderful… very low-key.  Dad and D visited for a couple hours (way too short!  We miss them already!)  and Eric’s mom spent a few nights with us, which was great.  Mom’s coming to visit soon, so we’re anxiously awaiting that…. The boys had a great Christmas… it’s the first one ever celebrated at the farm and we can’t wait to spend it next year at our new house!  We ate lots of food, opened lots of wonderful gifts, celebrated Jesus’ birthday, and enjoyed great fellowship.  We hope everyone had as great a Christmas with their loved ones….

The boys waiting to come down and check out the Christmas booty....

Speaking of the new house, we haven’t been able to do much this year, between weather, waiting for permits and other obstacles, but we plan on putting in the foundation come early spring.  Once that goes in, it should roll along pretty quickly.  We’ve got our site ready, road in and wells dug.  We’ve got our 24 chickens (originally 27, as you may remember, but we’ve lost two to predators (hawks?) and our latest loss is our rooster, Helmut… more on that in a minute), and we plan on either 2-3 pigs, or mom/calf for beef (we’ve decided we’re not ready for 2 milkings a day yet!) in the spring.  Haven’t decided which yet…or maybe both?!  We will have the fence up and the pasture ready, so we’ll see!

About Helmut (formerly Helga until he started cock-a-doodle-doing a few times!)…. Sad, really.  We were just getting used to his silly antics, like his “happy feet” dance he would do every time he got ready to do his business with one of the girls (wink, wink), or his strutting around, thinking he’s something and crowing at us all the time (it’s NOT true that they crow just in the morning, BTW… it’s all day, showing off his male-ness!)  But we noticed that he was limping a couple days ago, and I mentioned it to Eric, but we really didn’t think much of it… well, Eric found him dead in the coop this cold winter morning (exactly 6 months to the day of when we got him). His foot and bottom part of his leg was cut and very swollen, and getting stiff.  We figure he just ended up going into shock and died…. his body was still fairly warm so it must have happened early this morning.  So we ended up performing our first butchering of our chickens this morning, much unexpectedly.  It wasn’t as gross as I thought it was going to be…at least it wasn’t smelly.  So I got through my first chicken preparation!  The worst part was hearing the bones snap and such, but after Eric cut the meat out, I cleaned and prepared it, and we will be having chicken for dinner. 

Helmut as dinner (along with some fresh eggs from the girls)

The boys were sad, but not crying like I thought they might (although they did get a little teary-eyed… it might have helped that Helmut was not the Rabbit’s (7) best friend after Helmut pecked him hard the other day and scared him!), and although Rabbit doesn’t want to eat him, E’s (9) willing to give it a go!  Life on a farm… hard lessons to learn!  So hence the 24 chicken count instead of the original 27.  We just recently enclosed them in the large garden area to hopefully protect them from other predators…we’ll see.