Fridays.

Fridays are big days in the Griggs household in the summer/Fall time. Papa comes home on Fridays. The event we all count down to all week long. Papa has been in camp most of the summer now so we all know the drill. Mondays are hard. Everyone has to 'try' something. Tuesdays are better but also normally 'town' days so exhasting. Stuff starts getting done by Wedensday and we are back on track and well tuned. Thursday we seem to get tons done and have a great time doing it. Then comes Friday and we are super excited all day. Finishing weekday projects, making a big supper, getting ready to welcome him home. Saturday we spend together working as a family to get things ready for the next week. Firewood, Bindy's ration/hay, and this summer 5 weddings and a funeral. It's really no wonder we've gotten very little done on the house this summer. Sundays are a day off. We housechurch with 3 other families and potluck afterwards. Then we come home and nap; all 6 of us. Papa to get ready for a new week of working at 4am. We often have a family movie night/snack night Sunday as we are still full from potluck. Or we may go visiting. Then Monday comes and the count down starts again... Til Friday comes around again and the Griggs Family is whole once more. Soon it will be winter and then Papa will change jobs within his job and we will be together again.. even if it's only for a little while.

Sweet Words

Our daughter E is sick and we are had an early nap. The 3 oldest kids had a quick lunch and after I washed her I picked her up and held her for a minute. She looks at me very seriously and says "I". I'm blank. What? "I" she says again smiling. Then it hits me. Every day before bed I tell E to say "I" say "love" say "you". Waiting in between words so she can mimic me. I tell E "I" She looks at me and smiles. "Say I" she says again. "I" I say. "uve" says my almost 2 year old. "Love" says a very blessed Momma. "You" she finishes. "You" I say. Then she giggles and snuggles for a minute. Then it's off to bed. What a blessing children are.

Ice Cream

The kids and I made homemade ice cream tonight. A sweet dessert to use up the extra cream and give us all a treat. They all love it with chocolate and strawberry syrup. YUM. I always seem to get it a bit on the soft side so they finish it by drinking out of their bowls. E uses a straw and sucks the bowl dry. Now they are 'dancing' by turning in circles for as long as they can before they fall over. J is awesome at this and can do it for hours. Or at least I think he could if I let him. I do not. I get dizzy just watching him. He does not even walk funny after. E on the other hand goes around a few times and goes slower and slower until she's stopped. Then she either falls over giggling, stands still waiting for the world to right it's self, or walks sideways and staggers and giggles until she falls over. They have a blast. L does it a few times then gets bored and goes to find his trucks. Baby R of course loves to watch them from her spot on the floor. She sits there and laughs at them. I love it that my children can play together and enjoy eachothers company with out argueing or complaining. I wonder often if people who refuse to parent their children have moments like these or if their children are always as we see them. Hard to please. Always wanting more and more and more. Always taking but rarely giving. How sad for them if they do not. We are truly blessed to such wonderful children.

The Cow.

We love our cow. She is a Jersey/Holstein cross who looks like a short Holstein with a Jersey face. Her name is Bindy and she gives about 50lbs of milk per day... we think. LOL. Which is about 4.4 gallons if I remember correctly. Papa milked her out one morning and night and weighed the milk. I say we think because we have these two wonderful things called calves. The black one is Billy her calf from this spring and he's got those Holstein legs( you can barely see him in the picture. He's behind Bobby). The red one is Bobby a calf the neighbor gave us this spring. We think he was a twin as he found him in the field and all of his cows had a calf, but no one would take him. So he gave him to us. They are 11 days apart in age. And I like to say 11 inches in height but I've never actually measured. They only ever nurse like (with Billy close to Bindy) this as Bindy still does not like Bobby. She will let them both nurse while she's with them.. but again only like this.

So right now we only milk when we want to or have too:) So take this week. Papa is in camp (gone Mon thru Fri) so the cow is my job. Heck everything is my job. Normally the deal is I milk mornings and Papa milks evenings. I milk while Papa's gone and he milks whenever he's home. Which is great because I almost never have to milk on weekends. But when he's gone all week.. without the calves... I milk morning and night. Thank God for calves. These days I milk mornings because I have more time. Then I kick her out with the calves for the day and go get her at night to teather her at the neighbors patch of grass for the night so that I can milk the next morning.

This morning was a morning for 1sts. I went to get the cow and she was NASTY. So I tied her up to give her a good going over with the hose.. and the hose was froze. Now it was only 0C when I got up but it must have been much colder then that earlier. Fall is here. So I ended up washing her by hand 'shudder'-a 1st for this year. I also had to feed hay for the 1st time this morning. Normally hay is reserved for when there is no grass in a given area and while waiting for the next patch to be ready. (this only happened a few times this year) Or when Bindy was dropping weight in a attemt to keep her weight up. But today there is no more grass anywhere. We might be able to graze a couple of areas one more time, but it's pretty much done for the year. We may have another 1st yet today if it doesn't warm up I may have to make a daytime fire. I did have the oven on for a hour this morning so it's passible in here. With heaters in both bedrooms we keep nice and warm at night.

While getting hay I noticed that Patches, our momma cat, moved her kittens into the bales. Probably for warmth. Which is good because it is farther away from the house where the 2 male cats (Joey and Samson) roam.

Fall is here and it's time to start getting the critters, humans included, ready for winter. Burrr.. I think I may have to light that fire yet.
Gotta go, the Grigglets are up.

Fall Season!!

Well we are right in the middle of fall 'putting up'. We made a trip down south recently and came back with over 1,000 lbs of fruit/vegs. About 3/4 went to family and friends who had made orders and the rest is mine. SO I've been busy canning, drying and doing all the cleaning up that goes with it. So far I've put up 29 quarts of peaches, 1 gallon of dried peaches, 26 quarts of pears, 42 jars of salsa (about 1/3 are quarts) and 10 jars of peach pit jelly. Before we got this I had done raspberry jam, strawberry jam, cherry jam, and cherries. Oh and soup. I still have to finish the pears and peaches (drying the rest), beets, soup, potatoes, apples (sause), peas (shell and Freeze) cabbage and zucinni. Onions and green tomatoes as well. Then of course there is firewood (we are hoping to get it all off our place again this year) and hay hauling and getting the critters ready for winter. Most days I feel like a squirel trying to store enough to keep us fed for the winter.

Yesterday we had a surprise!! I went to the shed to get a tarp to cover the pig feed and I walked in on our cat feeding 2 kittens. They are really cute. About 5 weeks old (we have wondered) and wild. Though they got tamer even as we watched them. One looks just like it's mother (black and white) and the other is orange and white and black. VERY CUTE. Me and J (our oldest Grigglet) went and stood really still until the kittens came out to play. He wants to name the orange/b/w one "Hunter' or "Huntress" As he thinks it will be a great hunter. We are going to start feeding them catfood and milk and see if we can tame them a bit.

Well so now we are Blogers. :)

The Griggs family is made up of a Papa, Momma and 4 little Griggers. Ages 4, 3, almost 2 and 6 months. We have 2 boys and 2 girls who we love dearly and keep us laughing/learning/working and loving. We are born again believers in Jesus Christ and try and live the way Christ wants us to live in our home, work and social lives. We live on 5 acres in the country and raise chickens for meat and eggs, turkeys, pigs, and have our very own cow with two calves. We are Joel Salatin style grass farmers and are trying to make our small acreage be 100% productive. Our cow is completly grassfed and we love it that way. We are hardworkers and try and do what ever we can to grow and produce our own food on our own place. We are also building a strawbale house around the trailer we now live in. With the idea to finish 1/2 the house and move into it then pull the trailer out and finish the house. Right now our goal is to get the roof on. Hopefully before winter. We live in the North and so winters are long and summers short. Papa Griggs is a truck driver/cat operator and Momma Griggs is a stay at home mom. Or A domestic engineer:)