Maggie & I vs. the Chickens.

We had some interesting things going on with our laying hens ever since we let them loose for fall. We normally let them all run loose for the few months of fall so they can clean up any stray cow piles that may have gotten missed. They do a great job with this. When we got Maggie she didn't like them but she's been getting used to them. There are a few older hens who liked to lay their eggs right under the tray in the milking stanchion where Maggie eats while we milk. A few days of exuberant hens crowing LOUDLY about their new eggs cured me of my snoozing habit while milking (a good thing really as Maggie still lifts her feet up when we milk) and got Maggie used to the noise of an excited hen. The next thing both Maggie and I had to get used to was the hens trying to 'steal' milk out of the 2nd bucket while I'm milking into the other bucket. With her foot habit we milk into one bucket and pour it into another bucket and then take both buckets inside to strain. The 1st few days were fun as I'd use my hand or the cow towel to chase the chickens off while keeping one hand securely on the bucket of milk in case Maggie takes offence. She did several times. By the way Papa does not have these chicken problems as they are all roosting while he milks the most he has to do is move a sleeping chicken out of the feeding area so he can put feed in!! By day 3 I was bringing a towel to cover the 2nd bucket and bringing out the strainer as well. So the strainer goes on the second bucket and the clean towel covers the whole mess. This works!! Papa laughs at me BUT IT WORKS!! The next chicken problem was that the little hens ( I could use a worse word!!!) would run around looking for the milk (not that they ever really got any!) UNDER Maggie!! Maggie got used to this before I did and I got to the point were I'd chase all the hens out of the milking area before I let Maggie in. It's very startling to see a brown fuzzy thing just flying by in the corner of your eye while your trying to milk the cow and have a snooze! I think I jumped every time! Thankfully the little 'hens' soon decided that mad humans are too be avoided, I got a few rather well with the tip of my toes, and now they leave me alone. So I thought the chicken problems were finished until the other morning when Maggie just WOULD NOT hold still!! I hollered at her and she bawled back at me? So I looked over and here she is trying to PUSH a pullet out of her feed box with her head!! That pullet hung on with it's feet and would NOT let go. Maggie was asking for help but by the time I got the bucket moved and got over there she's squished it up against the wall several times and finally one of her head swipes had knocked the pullet off the feed box. When the pullet was gone poor Maggie gave me this LOOK that said. "You see what I have to put up with??" I got the impression that it was not the 1st time she's have to defend her feed from a chicken. That same pullet tried 2 more times to eat Maggie's sweet mix before I picked it up and threw it over the fence. It landed with a loud squawk and ran off. A few days later we found a dead pullet by the chicken barn. I was sorry to see it dead at first but now I'm wondering if she didn't somehow hit it too hard or flatten it when she had it between her head and the wall. Either way we are both happy as there hasn't been a pullet in the feed box since!! Soon the hens will go into the new barn with a small pen off one end. Until then I'm on the lookout for those "hens!!"

　 Update; This morning we had another HEN problem. One of the hens was climbing up onto a 6 foot box, for tools and things, we have in the milking area. She jumped and fluttered, scrambled and scrabbled, and generally made a pain of her self until I 'motivated' her off!! Oh of the joys of laying hens. They also like to roost up on the board that we put up to keep Maggie out of the house, thru the window and so every night we hear a 'chicken fight' over the 'best' spot!! It's funny to listen too!! But it sure startles visitors :) Here is an old picture of the hens in the milking area. That pretty white rooster got 'done in' this summer. He was getting much to cocky!! On the bottom left of the picture you can see the door of the box that hen was climbing on this morning.

Papa's One Year Apprentice Review!

Papa came home the other day with a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his face. The smiles normal but the twinkle gave me a minutes pause. What was he up too?? He only glanced at me before siting down and putting his head down. So I saw the twinkle for 2 seconds then saw a 'unhappish' pose?? He does like to tease me. Then he started telling me about his one year review that day. It was about a week before his actually one year anniversary so we weren't expecting it yet. He told me that 'the bosses' had sat him down and told him that he needed to slow down and take a bit more time with projects to save on warranty. Which I think is kind of weird because the 1st few months it was all about how many hours it takes to do this and this is how many you actually get paid for, book price, and hurry up and get it done before you run out of paid time!! Then he told me, head still down, that they'd also like him to make sure and sweep his area after every job, which is something he'd never even thought of, because it's nicer to work in a clean shop and it's looks better to the people who come in!! And a LOT of people are in and out of that shop!! It's amazing how many people Papa sees in a day!! Then he said in that same poor me tone how they liked his work very much and, finally he looked up at me with that twinkle, HE'D GOTTEN A RAISE!!! Thank You LORD!!! We've been living on $18 an hour, $4 less then he was getting with his last job for a year and things were being to stack up!! We've been hoping and praying for a raise! And he got one!! And that wasn't all. Now that he'd looked up and teased me he told me how both his bosses really appreciate him and how he's doing a great job for them and making the business money!! Very good for a 1st year apprentice!! The boss that is the certified mechanic told Papa that he was going to be bored to tears at the 6 weeks of school. "Probably for all 4 years!" WOW!! That is high praise!! The funniest thing of all is that Papa was so pleased with his review and raise that he didn't even find out how much of a raise he got!! LOL. So we are waiting for his check to see!!

Trusses and more winter work.

WELL The trusses are DONE!! So far in the last 2 years Papa and I have made a total of 41 trusses!! Crazy people I know!! LOL. The 1st 36 were for the house and are up and covered and done! The last 5 are for our new cow/pig/chicken barn and are leaning up against the side of the house waiting for another weekend off so we can put them up. The longest part of this second truss building was getting everything in one place!! It seemed every time we set out to do it we didn't have enough time to get all the 'stuff' together to do it. FINALLY we managed to get it all together and banged out (with a rented nail gun. Very LOUD.) 5 more 2x4 trusses. We used 2x6's for the top 4 pieces of the house trusses but decided to just use 2x4's for the barn trusses. It's seriously amazing how much lighter these new ones are. Papa and I felt like we could carry them anywhere. The first few anyway. After all that gluing and bending over to put plywood pieces on and nailing our backs protested a little with the last few! The boys helped a lot. They brought us plywood pieces (that go over the joints of wood) and glue from inside and were generally helpful. When the girls were awake and the boys cold we sent them inside to tell the girls they could get up and J helped R get out of her crib and got her her treat and put her in her high chair with a bib on to eat it. It was a lolly pop from Grandma and after seeing how much of a help they were I let them all have theirs (normally treats are only for after naps and only if a "good" nap was had. But that day the boys didn't nap and helped instead). Papa and I finished the last 2 trusses alone and the kids watched our headlamps through the living room window. It was full on dark when we were done but that doesn't mean much as it is darker earlier every day. I think it was 7pm when I got inside.

We also got the last of the spruce trees in the 'orchard area' cut down. Papa has a couple of hours of cutting up to do before we can take a walk through it and see how many of the poplar trees we want down. We are trying to get it ready to plant in the spring and so far have a list of 8 trees that we want. 2 honey crisp apple trees, 2 Cherry's (I'm not sure which one), 2 hardy Mac apple trees and 2 plum trees. We are also hoping to get blueberries, but we don't know where to put them just yet.

We also got 2 more loads of firewood to the firewood area and only have 2 more to go. One load is already on the trailer waiting to be moved so it can be stacked and the other load will be pine from 2 of the dead bug kill pine in the back piece.

I went out to the pond to check on the pig fence the other day and found 3 large goldfish frozen in the ice of the pond. They had obviously spawned as there was also 16 silver fish of 3 different sizes also frozen in the ice. I hemmed and hawed over what to do with them and have decided to leave them and see what happens. Yesterday Papa and I went for a walk down there and there were at least 2 more goldfish frozen in but only a few of the fish on the edge of the pond were in the same place!! The others in the middle had moved!! It had snowed that morning so the silver fish were very hard to see. When Papa stepped into the pond we realized that it was deeper then we thought and I'm still hoping some survive!

We also butchered our 1st steer last weekend and he's now hanging in the covered area beside the house, where the floor is. He looked great, and is bigger then we thought which is wonderful!! We will hang him for about 14 days and cut and wrap him up on Papa's next long weekend. We'll probably do the moose then too as we've not gotten to it yet.

We also want to bring the bobcat home that weekend and get the trusses up on the bales for the barn. We have been getting lots of ideas and one was to put a layer of plastic on the trusses (greenhouse cheap plastic this year.) then put strapping on top of that and put another layer of plastic on top of the strapping giving it a better insulated value. We have to price this out yet but we're thinking about doing it. It would help the animals stay warmer but would make it a real pain to move the roof! We are also putting plastic over the top of the bales to keep the inside moisture from soaking them when it runs down the inside of the plastic. Thanks Dad!!

Chip is settling in nicely. He has stopped nipping the kids which is great as even the girls are starting to enjoy him now. The boys play with him for hours outside and they have a lot of fun. He is limping a little after a accident with a piece of wood. I was throwing poplar chunks of firewood on to the pickup bed trailer and he was on the other side (I didn't even know he was there!) and a piece of wood bounced out of the trailer and got him on his toes. They are not broken but very sore and he limps when he 1st gets up. Today is day 3 after he got hit and he only limped 1st thing this morning. Poor guy!!

We had a bit of fun too in the last little bit. I went through all my crafty stuff and found some neat stuff for the kids. L got to paint a neat little sun catcher and J has been enjoying pencil crayons and 'staying in the lines better.' Now that winter is almost on us we are finding more to do inside and getting into some stuff that was put aside this spring and also getting into some new stuff. We also helped surprise Mr. B of B&B and had a great birthday party for him with lots of young couples most of them family. We really are enjoying getting to know some of the new marrieds in the family. We seemed to be out most of the weekend and managed to bring home 5 of the 12 bales we need for winter for the cows, Bindy and Maggie.

The children's colds are pretty much gone. E still has a little bit of a runny nose. She is almost always the 1st one sick and the last to get better. Both Papa and I seem to be having a longer recovery time then the kids. But thankfully we only got one sickness. My sister was telling me that her kids have had 3 in the last few weeks!! Hopefully we can avoid any more!!

Sheep steaks and Lamb chops.

We've been eating really well lately. Ha. Like we don't always. Friday night B&B brought us supper!! Sheep steaks from their mountain sheep they got on their hunt this year, salad, baked potatoes, garlic bread and Papa threw some scallops and shrimp together and BBQ'd them. When B&B left this summer they told us that they would bring us back a feast and boy did they. They've been gone for almost 3 months and addition to the food we enjoyed being with them and catching up on our lives from the last 3 months. We saw pictures of their hunts and cabins and mountain views and they saw pictures of our trip. It was a fun and relaxing night! None of us Griggs had ever had sheep before and it was a great experience but it kind of wrecked us for anything else. Sheep MELTS in your mouth!! Seriously!! You chew once or twice and it is GONE!! It does have a bit of a liver type texture which the youngest 3 didn't like but the rest of us sure loved it. They left us the leftovers and we snacked on them for lunch several days. Papa even took some to work! It was what they called the 'hind' and they said it wasn't as good as the tenderloin which was buried deep in their freezer in a pile of other stuff all frozen together. We didn't care it was wonderful!! The meat was wonderful and the fellowship of missed friendship was WONDERFUL!!! They are gone again until the end of November and we miss them more then ever.

The next night we helped throw Mr. B and surprise Birthday Party and did we surprise him!! He didn't think it was for him!! He kept looking around to see who the party was for. There was TONS of great food there as well and something neither the kids or I had eaten before. Lamb chops done on the BBQ!!! WOW!!! I'm not sure if Papa had eaten them like that before but boy did we love them!! Taste great. Nothing like the lamb I remember... though I liked that too. Next year maybe we'll try a sheep again.... YUM!!!

Blessings among the Wipes... nose wipes that is.

It started with R and a runny nose and fever and ended up with each of the 6 of us being sick at some time in the next week. E had croup and was up half of a night but we cooled their room off at night and she hasn't had it since just a runny nose and fever. Papa got it really bad one day and spent most of the day in bed!! Thankfully he slept it off and went to work the next day. L and J have mostly just had a runny nose and a grumpy disposition. R never really got more then her runny nose and cranky attitude. E and Papa got the worse of it and I got it late and it wiped me out for, well I'm still getting over it. Over 24 hours now. I am feeling much better as long as I don't do much. Because we were all sick our weekend was completely canceled. We missed 3 dinners and my grandfathers 80th Birthday party. One of those dinners was Canadian Thanksgiving (being that we are a split country couple we celebrate both Canadian and American Thanksgiving) which really disappointing as I had made 6 pies for it. (we ate some and froze some).

BUT there are blessings in the time of storm!! My washing machine froze when it was so cold over the weekend (We had temps of 5F at night.) and has since thawed (Papa found a plug was unplug ed) so I can do mountains of laundry!

A friend dropped off another box of clothes for E and she is SET for clothes for a long time or until she sprouts up again. They fit PERFECTLY or just a little too big which is great! Also in the box where 7 pairs of shoes, including black dress shoes which E loves. In the last batch was snow jacket and pants that fit E perfectly!! I also found and washed and sorted and fit winter clothes for all the kids and AMAZINGLY I don't have to buy anything!! Boots, jackets, snow pants, hats, and gloves!! Some of this is hand me downs that I got last year and some was stuff we had!! J will probably need new boots before the end of winter but he can wear his last years ones for a bit.

My cousins who guide hunts up Farther North (B&B among them!) made it back safe and sound and we get to see them tomorrow night for supper!! They are treating us to a homemade supper right here in our own house!! Bringing Sheep steaks and everything!! Yumm!! Spoiling us!!! 2 of my male cousins were stranded up north for a day or so as the lake that the planes land on had turned to ice!!! I still don't know how they got back but they did and I'm thankful!! There was talk of a helicopter or just hoping and praying for warm weather!

B, of B&B, called me today and told me he had a 1/4 of a moose for me. He told me yesterday that he had a 'hunk of meat' for me which I thought was a roast or something so today when he called I didn't connect the two at all. I thought he and Papa had made some kind of deal to use our freezer until they could cut it up! After a few minutes of confusion we got it straight. The 1/4 of the moose was for us to keep!! B an his brother S dropped it off a bit later and put it whole into one of our freezers!! We are SO blessed!! When I told the kids, they napped during the call and visit, J was in AWE (Now we have fish, our neighbor gave him and Papa some the other day, MOOSE, chickens, pork!! WOW) and it made me remember how very blessed we are. We are planning on butchering Bobby, our red calf that was given to us as a baby, on Monday so we will leave the 1/4 frozen til we cut him up in roughly 2 weeks and do it all together. At least that is my plan Papa doesn't even know we have it!! Bobby looks great from what we've heard (Bobby and Billy are still out at Millers, but Billy being half dairy will not be finished til late spring. ) and we are looking forward to having our very own 1st finished steer in the freezer. Don't get me wrong we have raised lots of beef but never solely our own and the one that was we ended up butchering early just to keep it HOME!! LOL. What a time we had with him!! The dairy steer from H***!! And another we started and ending up selling as a yearling to move up North. So this little, I should really say BIG but I've seen him since this spring and he's still little in my mind. Papa says he's HUGE, guy is the 1st we've raised from a calf and butchered finished.

We have also been blessed by firewood. The wood that we cut up over the last two years and stacked here and there on the place is perfectly seasoned and burns wonderfully!! Last year a lot of it was still too wet and we had a TIME keeping the fire going!!

Another blessing is Maggie who is turning in to a GREAT cow and her milk is filling holes in our diet that we'd forgotten were even there. Milk, butter, yogurt, and cheese: Cheddar, cottage, ricotta, and mozzarella! Never mind butter milk (makes AWESOME biscuits) and whey (pigs and chickens love it.) I love it that going grocery shopping is an option not a necessity!! With the meat from the freezer, milk from the cow, fruit that I got or put up this summer, and a few baking necessities we have been pretty much living out of our house. Oh and the potatoes a couple of people gave us.

So we are warm, well fed, well dressed, Papa loves his job, I love mine and the children are growing and learning more and more every day. We have people who loves us and friends to share times with!! God is GOOD!! Blessed be the name of the LORD!!

Chip the newest addition...

to our already crazy house. We went for a drive last weekend and pickup up our new puppy. He's 7 weeks old now and so far is a pretty good dog. He's about as heavy as R and we can just about see him grow. We are crate training him and he's doing really well. He spends the night in the crate and we've only had to get up once a night to take him out. He did bark, howl and whine a lot the 1st night but the second night Papa stood beside the crate with a chunk of newspaper and hit the outside of the crate with it and said NO when he was loud. He got the hint really fast and the next night he slept from 11 pm to 7 am!! Chip seems to be super smart and already knows his name and NO and how to sit. We are working on come but because we couldn't find a collar small enough, that wasn't too small, we have to wait for real come training til he grows into it a bit. Right now his collar just comes off. Today, with the sun shining, Chip has decided he's a outside dog. I think it's just too warm in here for him. Besides that he nips at the kids and gets in trouble while he's inside. He did chase our chickens a few times before he got 'nailed' by the hot fence and I've not seen him do it since. He's really good about potty training which is really nice. Chip and Maggie get along great. Papa said there was a dog at the dairy and she seems to like Chip which is nice. I have a feeling Bindy will not be so kind. Speaking of Bindy. We went out to the field the other day and saw her. I actually spotted her from quite a way away and when Papa went out to take a good look at her she got up and put her head up and buggered off.. luckily towards the other cows and the Travelall so I got some pictures of her. All in all she seems to be in good condition but shocked us at the size of her udder!! One quarter is HUGE and we think a calf (or cow?) has been nursing off her! It looks terrible but she should dry up (again) when we bring her home. She sure looks different without a halter on!!

Anyway Chip seems to be a great dog so far. His full sister is a great dog and will pull sleds, chase sticks, ski-jore, and just about anything else. So we are hoping Chip will be a great mix of the black lab Papa grew up with and the huskies we had for years. So far he's much smarter then the huskies (though I swear those two used to gang up on me.) and has much better fur then the lab!!

Waffles.

If you ask any of our 4 children who makes the best waffles they will say PAPA. Then J will tell me, "but yours are Ok too Mom!!" Thanks a lot! But really I don't mind. Honestly it's great that he makes great waffles because it means that every other weekend or there abouts I get to go online or sit and read a book or sleep late or SOMETHING that I enjoy doing well the 5 of them make waffles. And I finally have Papa trained enough that he actually stacks his dishes in the sink and only uses about half the dishes he used to before I started complaining about having to wash every dish in the house when ever he made anything. Boy he could sure stack up the dishes. Anyway Papa makes all whole wheat waffles that are as light as air!! They are awesome. He whips the egg whites til they stand up on end, not very long with our eggs and blends them in the batter before scooping it into the waffle maker. In this picture they are all in awe over the whipped up egg whites in the purple bowl.

Fall Busy Days are Here!!

The beginning of a sunset. I wanted a start and a finish picture but my camera ran out of juice. In the barn picture you can see a bit of the end. The only time of the year that we see great sunsets is fall. The angle of the sun is wrong the rest of the year.
The kids playing in the back of the Travelall while Papa runs back and forth with bales and manure. They had a great time.

It's been a bit crazy around here the last few days. Papa got off early on Saturday and we boogied over to the 'city' to attend a hockey game. My BIL Dan invited us and had tickets waiting for a BOX when we got there. The company that owns the box likes my BIL a lot and the whole night was free!! He just had to find 16 people who wanted to watch a hockey game!! And he did!! It was a family affair and we all had a great time. We ate pizza, popcorn, wings, Fry's, and onion rings while sipping drinks and watching the hockey game. It was AWESOME. That is the WAY to watch hockey. I hate sitting that long so in the box I could stand and move around. The box was actually a large room with a sink, island, mini fridge, counter and a small love seat on one side of the room and HUGE sliding windows on the rink side. In front of the windows were plush chairs on a balcony about 3/4 of the way around the room. There was plenty of room for the 16 of us. Including the 6 of us Griggs, there were 4 T's, 3 M's, 2 F's, 1 W and 4 C. Which makes 20!! But anyone under 2 was free! So we had 4 kids under 2. And yeah we were actually able to watch the game!! In that mix there was 10 kids 12 and under!! The next day was Sunday and as we recently found out that we will only be having home Church once a month, we've started our own little family church on those days that we don't home church. This once a month idea was very disappointing for us and we are hoping and praying that it's not the beginning of the end for our little church. We have done our family church a little bit this summer which includes, but not limited too, singing, Bible stories about the songs we sing, and praying together as a family. We cut it short this week as R was SO tired from being up so late the night before! We are also planning on listening to a set of parenting tapes that someone gave us a LONG time ago and we listened to them at the time but haven't heard them since we actually had kids. Funny how that works.

After a quick lunch every one had a sleep...except me. So I was awake and online when a neighbor of ours came over to ask if Papa could come and help them with some firewood and a chain saw that refused to work. So when Papa got up he gave her a call and we all headed over to help. 90 minutes later the kids had a pile of new friends, the firewood was cut and stacked and we headed to town. Papa and the kids in the Travelall and I in the car. Papa took the kids to fuel up the Travelall and pick up the bobcat and I grabbed some quick groceries and headed out to the T's to pick up a surplus of potatoes they had for us. SWEET!! That night we relaxed in front of James Harriot eating Mac and Cheese with hot dogs.. the kids love it. Then we all headed to bed early. Papa and I watched an episode of JAG which topped off a great day. Monday was going to be a BIG day!!

Monday we got up early, chored, and ate a quick breaky of waffles before we put the cranky small child to bed (R, still over tired.) and headed out to build our barn. Barn you say. What barn? You have a barn? Well we do now!! LOL. Papa and I ordered 20 of, what turned out to be 3 x 5 x 8 feet long straw bales. So on Monday we looked for the PERFECT spot for our new barn, found it :), cut down 2 spruce trees that were in the way, cleaned them up and burnt the branches and FINALLY Papa took the bobcat and started bringing bales over. He also had to clean up Bindy's winter area from last year and the year before so he grabbed 2 bales, brought them to the barn area, unloaded them and pushed them into spot, then headed to the roofed area and forked up a load of manure and took it down the drive way to the pile there by the peat moss I got this spring. The bales and the peat moss were about 300 feet apart about 100 feet from the road. Then Papa did it all over again and again and again all day long!! In reality it only took him about 4 hours to build the barn and mostly empty the manure from under the roof!! Not so shabby! He also pulled out a couple of stumps! The whole time he was building the barn the kids played in the back open area of the Travelall. They love playing in there!! After the barn was built I took them over to inspect it. They found all 3 doors really fast and J just had to see if he could throw his stick over the bales (we did them with the 5 foot side up so the walls are about 10 feet tall) J almost got it over, it was a light stick, but I had to go rescue it!! When Papa was finished with the building ( it really worked great!!) he moved some more manure until it got to the point where he needed the bucket. While he was doing that the kids were watching Scamper and I was cutting the boys hair. Boy did they need a hair cut. After I finished L says to J. "Hey you don't look like J anymore!!" So J shoots back. "Hey, you don't look like L anymore either!!' Normally after hair cuts we give them a quick rinse off shower just to get the hair off. Well I went to adjust the shower head and the whole thing popped off in my hand!! So much for showers!!

The last bale going into place.

Building the barn. The tiny crack you see in the end there in between the bales will be the chicken door. There is one on the right side as well for the pigs. The cow door will be in the front.

I just remembered something I was going to put on here. The other day J was supposed to go put his laundry away but there was some stuff on his clothes. He had to move the stuff so he could put his clothes away. I was busy with something and when I went into his room he tells me. "Mom, you know I had SUCH a easy time putting my clothes away!" I must have looked BLANK because he added. "And I'm using Sarcasm!! There was STUFF on my clothes and I had to put everything down and move it and then I could put my clothes away." Sassy boy!!! But I was impressed. He knew what sarcasm was and he used it correctly!!

Monday night we FEASTED on BBQ chicken with awesome crunchy skin, pasta in a cream sauce and garden peas. The fact that it was 9pm just made it all that much better!! We ate an entire chicken. 3/4 of the pasta and over half the peas. (there was about 3.5 or 4 cups of peas and a entire bag of pasta.) Crazy!! Then we put the kids to bed and relaxed in front of JAG again before heading to bed.

Tuesday was my little sisters 27th birthday and my sister, mom and SIL all met at her house to wish her a happy birthday. We were a bit late as we got a phone call from Papa's work asking us to bring the bobcat in for a bit so they could change out their compressor and it took longer then we thought to drop it off and drive!! I brought bacon and cheese muffins to Ria's and with 11 kids 5 and under (she babysits 2 kids) and 5 adults they went super fast. Mom brought some great chocolate biscuit type cookies which I'm GOING to get for my next chocolate fix. Ohhh GOOD!!! While we were at Ria's Papa went back to town and went shopping. Parts for the shower? Check!! Duct Tape?? Check!! 3 fuzzy costumes for dress up for the kids?? Check!! Money for the straw bales delivered?? Check!! He was back to pick us up early and had time to talk to D about his cows for a bit before we headed out. We headed to town and I ran in and got a few more groceries. We don't like bringing the kids into the stores with all the gross halloween stuff everywhere so we avoid taking them in. While the kids were goofing off in the bedroom, they were supposed to be sleeping!!, Papa and I emptied the cows roofed area of manure and spread sawdust over it. Papa also mixed manure and peat moss and filled my raised beds!! He moved the burn barrel (which we no longer use!) and did everything we could think of that we needed to do with the bobcat before reloading it and calling it DONE!! Sometime in that all I went inside for something found the kids all playing and NO one had napped at all. So I paddled them all and put them back to bed!! Little punks!! They were all asleep in 10 minutes and I headed back out to go for a walkabout with Papa. We got the mail and checked the pigs and walked over part of our lease. Making plans and having a good walk. The kids slept til 6:30 when I woke them up for supper!! Tuesday night we had mini wheat's and Cheerios's for supper!! Yum. We don't always buy cereal so it was a real treat! That night we called the people with the puppy and agreed to pick him up Saturday morning. The countdown begins!! I spent a chunk of time Tuesday night looking at the verities of fruit trees online that we can order this fall for planting next spring.

Wednesday Papa went back to work and I got up early to milk the cow. Someone was whispering in the kids room so I stuck my head in and told them it wasn't time to get up yet and to go back to sleep! That was at 8ish and when I came back inside from chores I did devo's, had a shower (Papa got it fixed Tuesday night.) and made my list and before I quite knew it... it was 10am and here comes E still wiping her eyes half asleep!! They all had a GOOD sleep. R was the last one up at 10:15. The boys and I chatted about the list as there was several child things to do, and made a goal and got too it. Breakfast happened in there somewhere and the day was started. The boys cleaned up the outside toys (snow could happen at any moment.), helped pick up so I could vacuum, showered, helped with the laundry all before lunch! Their made their goal and got to watch The Black Stallion (or if your E the black Scallion!) and eat popcorn and apples for lunch. In the afternoon I emptied 5 gallon jars of milk and made cheese. We NEEDED the jars. There was 13 gallons of milk in the outside fridge and 1 inside. I left the freshest 5 and used up 8 total gallons!! 6 to make cottage cheese (One batch was going to be Cheddar but I got it too warm just by having beside the cottage cheese batch. Heat transfer! Next time I have to move them farther apart. I could have waited for it too cool but I didn't want to be still making cheese at midnight.) So instead I made 3 batches of ricotta out of the cottage cheese whey. It worked well and I got a lot of ricotta. Now I need to make lasagna!! Because I was making cheese I also made butter and finally got a nice batch of butter out of Maggie. The butter has been really soft and melty like margarine which we think is because she was on grain. She is now only getting about 2 cups (4 total) of grain at each milking and we can tell! (Just a add on here.. Maggie is now completely off grain and we have noticed a cream increase just in the last few days.)

Blocks of Straw!!

Papa and I have a new project. A new straw project that is. We've decided, we think :), to keep a cow in milk all year long which means we have to have 2 cows and so we are building a cow/pig barn. We need a pig barn too for the girls over the winter so this is duel purpose. We want a easy building project that will not take years to build, something fairly cheap that is movable. And Straw was the answer! A grain guru up here sells the big 4 by 4 by 8 straw bales for between 30 and 50 dollars each. We got 20 and we're going to build a 24 by 28 (outside measurements) barn that is 2 bales high. The pigs will have their own short door and the cows will have a 4 foot doorway (about). The inside walls will be 8 feet tall by 20 by 16 feet and will have a wall (electric, bale or board) to keep the pigs on their side and the cows on their side. We thought about putting them all together but have heard horror stories of pigs eating cows teats and we really don't want that to happen. This will also be a great farrowing area. We are planning on making 5 more trusses and finishing the whole thing off with a couple of white hay tarps or greenhouse plastic (the really good stuff). We are going to use the same truss design as we already have for the house and so the inside will be really quite roomy. Papa's going to put it all together with the bobcat from work which makes this next machine look like RAMBO!! ANYWAY. Papa called me this morning and said "The bales will be there in a couple of hours. Don't worry they are going to unload them for us.' Whew!! I was a bit worried about the unloading. But sure as shooting I just finished putting my bread in the oven and I hear a beep beeepp beeeep like a bobcat backing up. And sure enough that's what it was. They have the COOLEST bobcat!! I talked to the guys, one was a friend of Papa's, then went and got a tarp out and the camera, and when I got back he had 11 bales unloaded. He took 3 at a time!! It was SO fast. I talked for a bit and then he was done unloading.They had parked on the road and unloaded in the area we still call the 'new driveway' even though it's not a driveway. The bobcat was going back to 'home' I found out because it had a radiator plug up, which is also why the guy was unloading SO fast and on the last load of bales it started to steam and they put the bobcat back on it's trailer (it lifted up the back of the dually pickup when they drove it up!!) and I tarped the bales. I yelled 'Thanks' and they were gone!! I took a picture of the stacked bales covered in the tarp and walked slowly back inside to find that my bread still had 7 minutes left to bake!! Out of 30 minutes. WOW fast!! Lets hope this whole project will keep up!!

Canning Blessings

Here are some random pictures of our canning year. We canned peaches, cherries, pork N beans, tomato sauce, apple sauce, beans, several kinds of jam (raspberry, Saskatoon, peach pit, peach) and 6 3/4 eleven quart recipes of salsa of various heats. I used every jar we had and then sent Papa out to find more and he came back with 10 doz from my grandpa!! And I used them up too. I have about 10 that we have emptied in the last little bit and that's the only usable canning jars I have left. I still had pears, and pickles from last year or the year before so I didn't do any this year. We also dried cherries, peaches, apples and hot peppers. And froze blueberries, raspberries. Some of the blueberries I'll make into jam this winter sometime and maybe syrup. The frozen raspberries are great with chocolate cake. I put a sour cream container of raspberries in a cake pan, put my cake mixture on top and bake. You have to bake it a bit longer then normal but it makes a great dessert. We put fresh cream or whipped cream on it!! This is a recipe I got from my aunt and we love it. The jars from Great Grandpa.

Under half the tomatoes and peppers we got out of the greenhouse. We made a batch of salsa with JUST our own pepper (green and hot) and tomatoes.

The kids making Raspberry Jam. The boys picked the berries, mashed them, mixed them with sugar and pectin and put them in the containers and put them in the freezer. E watched but didn't want to do the work of picking.

J and L's labed freezer jam!! Mummm muumm GOOD!!

E pulling stems off cherries.

The boys pulling stems off cherries. They de-stemed 2 boxes of cherries for me. ( I did 2 boxes myself.) It worked perfectly as they kept me in cherries til we were all done!!

Update.. Family Life.

Well I haven't done this in a while so I thought it was time. Papa is still working from 8 to 7ish Monday through Saturday week one and Wednesday through Saturday week two. We really enjoy having 3 days off in a row and are trying to make the best of them. We are trying to get ready for the 6 or more months of winter we have here. Lately he's been putting the finishing touches on the area between the house and the road in what we are calling our Orchard area. He worked several nights with the chain saw until it got to dark to see (about 45 minutes now if he gets home at 7ish) then burnt branches and crap wood in the dark. All the wood that was down is now cleaned up and the area is cleared with the exceptions of the few poplar trees we left and the firewood he just cut up. My job now is to load the firewood onto the pickup bed trailer and haul it closer to the house (where we cleared this spring we have a new 'firewood spot'.) where we'll be able to plow right past it which will make winter firewood a lot easier. I have so far done 3.5 loads and have 5 or 6 to do! We've decided against the "wall of wood" that we did last year as it was hard to get the wood past the drip line of the roof and this year the roof is so much bigger that it'll bury any wood there. He also recently fixed our hot water heater which thankfully was only a element and a easy fix! Our wood stove pipe decided to rust out on us and that is also in the works. The last few days we've had chiller weather and have been heating the house with electric heaters and the oven. Oh and piling on sweaters and slippers. Tonight he should be able to finally put it all back together. He's had some fun trying to get parts that work and is actually getting one made special! What a mess!!

We had our 1st frost of the fall on Sept 27th almost a full month later then normal. It was great and gave us time to get a lot more tomatoes and for the pumpkins to grow bigger. The biggest one was about 15lbs!! What a lot of work for such a small reward but the kids loved 'their' pumpkins and are looking forward to making pies. I think we got 8 good sized ones and a handful little tiny ones that I left out in the garden and will feed to the pigs with the rest of it.

The boys have been busy with everything as little boys like to be!! J recently told us he was going to marry Girl T who says NO WAY!! So we've had a couple of talks about marriage. After one of these talks L told me that he was going to marry E!! I explained to him that he couldn't marry his sister so then he wanted to marry R. More explaining. Oh well then he'd marry ME!! More explaining. Then he'll marry Mackenzie! More explaining about marrying someone your not related to, like sisters, mom's and cousins. By this point he was getting a be tired of this whole marriage mess. FINE says he... I'll marry Brianna!! Ok I told him you can marry Brianna. He looked so relived that I laughed and laughed!! We then had a talk about sometimes you marry people that you won't even meet until your an adult and that you don't need to decide now. J and T are funny though. She says she's not going to marry him she's going to marry another little friend of hers and he sticks with it. He's going to marry T!! When she told him that she wouldn't marry him he calmly told her, in almost my exact words, the speech I'd given L and him about not knowing who you were going to marry until you were an adult. They play "family together" and 'getting married" But with NO KISSING!! A rule T's mom had to reinforce several times!! Papa told the kids a long time ago about how our bodies are Gods and how we need to keep our bodies for God's use and for our future mates. And J has completely adopted this for himself and sticks to it. It is really neat to see. I've also heard him give the T girl this talk but she must have liked kissing him (cheek) because it took her mom to tell her several times before she stopped. BTW they play with in sight of us almost always so we know exactly what's going on!! They are very cute together and miss each other when they are apart. When the T family was gone T girl missed J so much she cried!! Sweet to see them but we are not planting celery. LOL. (The Amish supposedly plant celery when they are expecting to have a wedding. )

E is sprouting like crazy and out grew all her pants again. She's still light but now is tall. Crazy!! Amazingly R also grew and is now wearing E's dresses!! They just stretched!! I cut both the girls hair and now they both have bangs which is super cute on them. Thanks to Girl T E also has a new 'play dress' that she loves. Actually it started with my sister Ria. And she doesn't even know it. We went over to her house about 3 weeks ago and as we were leaving we borrowed Beauty and the Beast from her. It went over well. Really well. They LOVE it. All of them. E practically swoons when Belle walks down the stairs with her 'BEAUTIFUL' dress on!! E HAD to wear her yellow dress after that. Actually I think it's safe to say she's been wearing dresses almost as often as pants lately. And it's not me. She asks for them and often gets MAD if she can't have one. Even little R MUST wear a dress.. and loves it. R always picks the same one. A red topped Christmas type dress with roses on the waist and a black skirt. E floats between her yellow one and anything else that catches her eye at the moment. The boys love it too and pretend to be Beast while he's fighting Gaston and they all sing the songs til we all a bit crazy!! J and L also love to do 'funny parts' which is them parroting the parts they really like back and forth. They have about 1/2 the movie memorized!! Anyway I promised them a movie night (for once not Beauty and the Beast) and they are waiting for me to be done!! I have some pictures of the girls in their dresses with 'pretties' in their hair and one of girl T and J and I'll try and put them up later!!

Chip!

Well it all started with a old school friend who visited us a bit this summer. Sonya and David came over a couple of times for supper and a farm tour. She even tried to come help butcher chickens but ended up coming the next day to help clean up instead as we were too fast and got them all done in 1 day while we had wisely left 2 open. The couple was only here for the summer as they both are in school. She worked with the school's lawn/clean up services and he worked as a firefighter. We really enjoyed getting to know them a bit this summer. Anyway after we returned from our trip we had them over one last time to say goodbye as they were going back to school (about 9 hours from here.) So they arrive and Sonya is super excited. SUPER!! And not about school so much as her parents black lab just had 2 puppies. A male and a female. This was Sunday and they'd been born on Wednesday. OH we just HAD to take the kids to go see, they would be the PERFECT dog for you!! She really does speak in capitals :) So we gave him a week or 2 to grow and called them up one Sunday afternoon. No he wasn't taken and yes we could go see him. So we piled in the Travelall and headed out. They live about 20 minutes from us so we had a nice little drive and since I'd only been there once a very long time ago and Papa not at all, we looked for a bit but found the place. The puppies were about 2.5 weeks old and SUPER CUTE!!! The female had already been spoken for that same morning which was fine with us as we really wanted a male dog. The kids pet and talked to the older dogs, throwing sticks and playing with them and all around having a great time. E, who is quite scared of dogs even relaxed enough to pet the puppy and said several times in a very surprised voice. "I DO like dogs!! I DO." J and L quickly got bored with the puppies, at that age they really don't DO much, and went to play with the big dogs. They had a female with the same parentage that was 18 months old. Nice dog with nice fur instead of the thin lab hair. His dogs stay outside unless it is VERY cold. She was a nice size as well. The mother is a black lab and the father is a St. Bernard. So size was a issue. We didn't want a dog that would be too big but she was perfect size! And from the sounds of it the other pups these two dogs had together were about the same size. The man also told us that so far none of them drooled.. which was my worry. YUCK!! After about 20 minutes both Papa and I knew this was the dog for us. So we chatted with the them a bit and Papa asked how much they wanted for the puppy. The man stared at him for a minute and said. You can HAVE him!! For Free!!! WAHOO. We thanked him and told him that we would take him!! After saying good bye we headed out and took a fun Sunday drive. Up the mountain! As we drove along we talked about the responsibility a puppy is with the kids and names for the puppy. L wanted to name him 'puppywupy' 'cause he's a puppy Momma! Then when we told him he'd grow up into a dog it was 'doggywoggy'. J didn't really know and neither did E. But a name had been sneaking around in my head, very much like Maggie's did later, and I said. Chip! Papa looked at me and said Yes. Chip it is. And for some reason it fits him. Or it did. Hopefully it still will when we pick him up in 2 weeks.

Maggie Update!!

We've had Maggie for 2 weeks now and she is doing well. All things considering. LOL. She spent 2 days in our milking parlor settling in and was so very UN COW like that we were shocked. We called her our 'machine milker' as she has very little COW about her. She walked on dirt like it was a rolling ship deck. She wanted IN TO the house so badly that she broke a cracked window into the living room. She tried to crawl right into the house!! We ended up making a fence across the bottom under the window so that she could not come inside but could still look in. I had a frustrating afternoon the day she broke the window and ended up calling Papa at work just to see what I could do with HER!!! I took everything out of the pen that she could possibly stand on at first ( she had no respect for things like our other cows and walked on the pallets that were on top of the grain bag of sweet stuff) and when that didn't work (she is VERY tall) I made a 2x4 fence to keep her out which lasted less then an hour!! I ended up getting her in the stanchion and putting a halter on her. She likes people up close if she has no choice and she didn't fight the halter at all. Shook her head once and that was that. She did not like the halter pieces jangling as I walked up to her with the halter and tried to KICK me. That is that only time we've seen her kick! When I finally got up her her (holding the jangling pieces still) she turned her head away from me for quite a long time. Finally I got the halter around her neck and pulled her towards me. Then Maggie did something I've NEVER seen a cow do. I think it was because she was SO lonely those first few days. She turned her head into my arms and snuggled with me!! She closed her eyes and just hugged me. It was strange! She finally opened her eyes and I put the halter on and after that she settled down a lot. By that time Papa was due home in an hour so I left her in the stanchion and he milked as soon as he got home.

We did have a interesting few days as she was VERY used to a strict routine and we didn't know what it was!! All they told us was hay in the evening and silage in the morning. She was very much not used to eating while being milked. But after milking she BAWLED and BAWLED. We've since figured out that they gave her grain after milking and now that she's getting grain while milking she's happy. The leg lifting has slowed down to between 3 and 10 times a milking instead of constantly. She stands very nicely even when her food is gone.

The 1st time she went up a hill she crow hopped up it!! She's likely never seen a hill before! She doesn't know what ice in her water is and doesn't break it with her nose like Bindy does. She didn't like our grain free sweet feed Papa mixes up and so she's on a mixture of half grain and half ours in an attempt to get her used to it. She won't eat the grass in the mornings when it's got a frost on it so we are feeding hay already. She is very lonely and loves to watch the house. We are bringing Bindy home in about 2 or 3 weeks which will be nice for both of them.

She still is not halter trained or electric wire trained and so far has only jumped the eclectic netting fence once!! We did buy a cow chain to attach to her halter so training can be done now. We've instinctively grabbed her halter a few times and she panics so it will be stressful for her and so we've been letting her get used to everything first. Papa has this weekend off again and we might do it then. The 1st few days were challenging for Papa and I as we had a heck of a time getting her to put her head in the stanchion. But now that we are giving her the grain mixture she goes in and eats and we can walk up and close it on her head. Before there was a rope on the head gate and we'd wait til she was in and pull the rope (from a long ways away) and hope we got her. She's also learning that she likes to be scratched but is still head shy.

As you can see in the pictures she is VERY skinny and we are still trying to fatten her up. You can count every back bone and ribs and her hips stick out like wings on a airplane!! Her feet were pink and sore, cracked and bleeding when we got her (Papa says from walking thru 6 inches of cow poop all the time) and have since healed nicely. She walks better now and has even ran a few steps. She still does not chase chickens but will push them off the fence with her nose!! And mostly tolerates them being around her and under her and every where. Maggie learned her name VERY fast and comes when called. She loves to be around people just not too close which is nice.

They shaved her bag but thankfully the hair is growing back quickly. She is very thin and doesn't have much for hair cover so we are trying to keep her warmer then we normally would. We are building a new cow barn soon and there will be the 2 milk cows and a 2 year old steer here this winter so we are hoping they'll help keep her warm. If all else fails we might end up making or buying her a blanket. Like a horse blanket just to keep her warm!!

Another strange thing that we have had to get used to with Maggie is how very tall she is and how we milk her. With Bindy we got our bucket, sat on a 6 inch stool, dug a hole under her bag with a foot, stretched our legs out and milked normally with our hands hitting the top of the bucket. Just because Bindy is so short. With Maggie we sit on a 5 gallon bucket (and I've been tempted to double the buckets up and make it a bit taller!!), put the bucket on a 3 gallon bucket and AIM to hit the bucket!! Our hands don't hit the bucket at all unless she picks up a foot :) and our knees are at a nice angle to the ground. Papa actually holds the bucket between his knees and milks that way without the 3 gallon bucket but I'm too short and I can't do it.

All and all we really like Maggie and are enjoying having milk around the place again. We've made ice cream, butter, 4 batches of cheese, and some other milk treats that we've not had in ages like cream gravy, biscuits, moos (pronounced mouse; a German cooked thick milk that we eat with fruit), and cream sauce to go on pasta!! I find it amazing how much our diet changes with just that one addition of MILK!! The 1st days milk went to the pigs because it had brown cream. YUCK!! We think it was a mixture of what they were feeding her and her habit of picking her foot up that caused it to be brown.We had even double strained it. Which is actually 4 times as we strain it 2 times normally. But every jar full is a bit more sweeter and the cream has tripled since that 1st day. She's still giving just over 4 gallons a day which is plenty!! We've truly been blessed!! God is good!!