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!!