A Two Wheel Barrow Homestead

Yesterday in the city we picked up another wheel barrow. Our old wheel barrow is pretty much just a mixing and holding area for the cows sweet treat mix. Our cows are 100% grain free so we mix them up a special grain free treat for milking time. They love it. Here the old wheel barrow in its spot inside the woodshed. This wheel barrow has hauled uncounted numbers of loads of stucco, and it shows. It's got a bit of a wobble. It still works great, honest, it's just not quite reliable enough to haul heavy loads of stucco anymore..probably wasn't really last year either but Papa is good at making it work. It's been retired from stucco hauling and 'put out to pasture' as a cow candy machine. 

Here is the new stucco hauler, wood hauler and all around work horse.  J put it together this morning. Beautiful ain't she? 

So I guess in the world of the homesteaders...We are now a TWO wheel barrow operation 😉

Dusting

A whole new challenge in the house ;) 

J's 11th Birthday

Better late then never right? 

So hard to believe he's 11 already! He loved his apple tarts and whipped cream cake. 

Reading the invitation from Grandma. A night on his own at G&G's house! What an experience :) 

A funny card Papa made for him. :) Strangly similar to one Papa's folks gave Papa not too many years ago. Humor, strange or otherwise abnormal, does run in families :) 

His very own sling shot. He promptly made a bag for rocks and went out target practicing. 

A book from G&G. Hardy boys. His first one. He's also been deep in the Louis L'Amour box this winter. 

Happy Birthday J! J loves to read, shoot his new bow and sling shot, and help in the kitchen. He told me just the other day that now he can make all 3 meals in the day, and cookies, just about by himself!  (And only just about because he isn't sure of oven temps etc). He's very good with the littler kids, often reading to them or teaching them something. He's amazingly strong and does all my lifting jobs with Papa now. He's working on a origami book right now and has a collection of animals he's made from paper. He also loves to build paper air planes, metal swords and collect things. He also loves to wrestle, either with L on the trampoline or with Papa on the living room floor. His feet are a size bigger then mine and Papa's and he's got about 20lbs to go before he'll outweigh Papa! He loves social studies and science and could do without math (even though he's super good at it) and English :) he loves to make fires in the woodstove and plays some great piano :) He's already decided his next instrument with by a guitar! 

Thanks for being such a wonderful son :) We Love you lots! 

Can you tell there was a sale on?

Kid Pictures :)

Brothers

J (10), S (10 months), L (9) and J3 (3). 

Sisters

E (7), R (6), G (2).

Stair steps :) 

Double Digits. A Boy Birthday :)

10 years ago we welcomed our firstborn. He gave us hope in so many ways. He is SUCH a blessing in our lives. We thank God for him! 

He chose pork chops and pasta for his meal and we celebrated with G&G F. 

Apple Pie.

Opening gifts. Kinda deceiving really as you can't see what he got, but that was the point so he couldn't guess what was in the boxes. 

He was pretty excited about his very own Ipod though!! :) 

Happy Birthday J! 

We love you :) 

Eagles 2013

Just a few of the pictures of the eagles, that hang around during butchering time, that the kids took. 

Banana For S..

J took these pictures. He did a great job but I will have to let him know that next time I have baby spew on my shirt and he's taking pictures he should let me know.... 

ANYWAY!! I did manage to crop most of it out...

S's first bite.. 

Oh wait maybe I'll like it.... 

Nope.. Get that thing out of there!!!

Really?? You are going to persist in shoving food in?? 

I'm getting MADDER!!! AND I WANT THAT SPOON!!! 

And I did something I almost never do...

Thank you for the spoon!! 

He was very unhappy with me and the two bites of banana that he actually MAY have consumed.. But, like any baby, he did love to chew on the spoon....

We'll try again maybe today with cream of wheat and see how he likes that.. 

General Update. Nov. 2013

I went on the computer to the blog tonight to make sure I don't forget how to blog. It's been a bit crazy around here you see and I'm still trying to get my feet back under me and remember that there are other things to do besides school, butchering, and housework and parenting.. well when the kids are asleep anyway. SO here you go... general update of our life.. crazy as it is :)

We've had two birthdays, which reminds me I need to change my about me again. E turned 7, and I already blogged about that here. And G turned two and we had her party last week. I'll hopefully post that soon. Other than that fun we've pretty much been busy putting up the animal harvest of the year.

Meatball the 3 year old steer we brought home, hung for two weeks and cut and wrapped and frozen. One simple sentence but a heck of a lot of meat and work since we did the entire thing ourselves. We sure are enjoying having beef again though :) OH and we bought a new meat grinder.. it's amazing!! Gobbles up the meat quick as a wink! Super quiet too.. Papa and I can chat while we work with this grinder.

6 pigs have hit the freezers, some for us, some for others. We have 4 more to do. There is a tote of sausage on the back porch waiting for Papa to smoke from our last butchering marathon. About 130 lbs of it. Pork pepperoni, summer and Mennonite sausage. Tastes great, we tried it all :) At one point we had a production line going. Papa cutting pork chops with the electric meat saw, J bringing them to the butcher table, L, E and R using canning rings to scrape the bone chips off and passing them to me to have the fat trimmed and do the final bagging. 10 chops to a bag. 12.5 bags. 3 pigs worth of chops. I don't see the point in packaging it in small packages.. I'm rarely going to get out just one bag. Normally I do two. Then we have leftovers :) I know.. we like to eat. We like to eat MEAT!!! lol. Papa's got bacon making in the back room and more frozen waiting to be sliced. Slicer is likely next on our to buy list as the place in town were we've always gotten it done can no longer slice it for us. Slicing bacon by hand is HARD WORK!! I don't mind work but 20 sides of bacon is a bit much to hand slice.

As we are butchering there is a lot of hides and innards and things in the lagoon.. which means we are seeing Eagles again. The kids have been taking pictures of them. So far there are only two but we are hoping we get the 8 or so we had last year later on in the season.

Term one of home schooling requirements 'to do' list was saved by a patch of cold weather.. kids couldn't spend much time outside so we actually almost finished the work for Term 1 before the deadline.. I don't feel to bad that we didn't. We only missed one assignment which is awesome work as we got 12 weeks of science and Social Studies work a mere month before the end of term. Some crazy changes to the curriculum in the school we go through. This term we are, hopefully, done with the changes and it will go smoother.

 R is reading and doing so wonderfully. She loves it and has been pecking away at her term 2 work for awhile now as she flew through her reading program. I'm really enjoying J's set up this year and he is too.. his system is a bit different now with his grade 4 teacher and we both like it.

S is doing really well. He's got cheeks :) Loves his jolly jumper. Tried banana's and HATED them. Sleeps long stretches at night, often is only up once around 5 or 6 am. And is in general a very happy smiley giggly little boy. He loves to laugh. If you laugh near him he bursts into giggles. Today I put him on his belly on the floor and he scooted.. later on I did it again and noticed he is bringing his knees up in order to move forward. Crawling is not far off. He has great hand eye coordination and rarely misses when he grabs things or shoves things in his mouth. I was going to wait until 6 months for solids but Papa's work has a Christmas Party that I want to attend so I will try him on cream of wheat soon. Just so I can go to the Party and Grandma will have something to feed him if she needs too. With the other boys I normally started solids at 4 months but S just isn't as hungry as L and J were. He's no where close to the constantly hungry J3 was at this age.. mind you he's only about 14 lbs and J3 was something like 20lbs at this age. S really is a Griggs :) J3 takes a bit more after my side of the family. I tried banana's just to see if he was really interested at all and he really was not. I'll likely wait another week now and try again. If nothing else I'll send it along and Grandma will have it if she needs it. The party will likely only last about 3 hours and we'll be near Grandma's house so I can go nurse him if I need too. And no I won't be leaving him a bottle.. I've not bottle fed the 1st six and I don't plan on starting with the 7th ;)

I realize I'm skipping around from family to farm but this next thing is both :) We got a couple more piglets to raise up on bottles. My uncle's pig had too many again and he brought two little female, gilts, piglets over Monday afternoon. We named them Sausage and Chops. The smaller one is Chops.. she's got attitude! They weighed in at 1.5 lbs and 3 lbs Monday when we got them. We are going to weigh them each week for a while and see how they grow. They are super cute. Sausage does seem to have a problem with her legs but it seems to be getting better as she gains strength. They were a week old when we got them, but very small. I put a glass square pan of milk in their tote tonight and I can hear them drinking it!! The pan is heavy enough they cannot get their little pig noses under it and tip it out!

Umm.. house.. nothing to report.. still there, nothings happening on it.. too BUSY BUSY BUSY putting in the meat harvest :)

Kittens.. seems like Daisy's kittens didn't make it. Never did see them but she's not skinny like she was last time, actually she's in superb shape, which makes me think they didn't survive. She must have abandoned them. Which is sad but there is nothing we can do about it so I'm not letting it get to me. Fluffs kittens are older and fine.. each one has been door trained. Some took longer than others. The little brown female got past J a couple of times but we did eventually teach her not to rush inside the minute a door opens. I won't have them in the house.. there are enough of us in here as it is :) 7 kids, 2 adults and 2 little pigs. Not bad for a two bedroom trailer with a addition!! Anyway now with her 3 kittens we have Daisy, Midnight, Fluff and the kittens are Caramel, Mischief and the so far unnamed orange male. Our last orange male has disappeared and we've not seen him in months. A good reason to keep a breeding female around.. cats don't seem to last long up in the north woods with the coyotes and wolves and eagles.

Papa is back to evening shifts. Noon to midnight, Wednesday thru Saturday. Which means I get less sleep then I would if he was on a normal shift but that's ok :) I like to see him at the end of the day and S often isn't in bed for the night until 11 anyway. I am taking my vitamins :) Dr. Nicole :)

Anyway. As always we are busy busy busy with family, farm, work and harvest. Some things get put off for later while we deal with more seasonal things.. for example I normally potty train right after their second birthday.. which G had almost 2 weeks ago now.. and no I'm not potty training her... I'm not going to either until later when butchering is done. It's not fair for any of us to do it now so we won't. It won't hurt her or me none to wait.

So things to look forward to on the farm is the end of pig butchering which should be not this weekend but next weekend. Isabel's calf which is due around the 23rd of December.. She's been AI'd to a Brown Swiss so we are hoping for a heifer. She sure is cranky these days and chasing Milton and Patch around a lot. Patch is still a scrawny little runt of a steer and both Papa and I have wondered if we did ourselves any favors when we got him from the dairy. We actually had him tied under a roof the 1st time it snowed as he was not looking good at all. He recovered well and is in with the cows now. He does have a nose for trouble and got out several times before we realized he could open our man gate by the milking area. Now the gate is bungied shut and he tries and tries but can't wiggle through anymore.

Oh right, the woodshed.. Pretty much done.. we got 6 inches of snow when Papa had two more piece of tin, one on each side, and the ridge cap to put on so neither of those are done but the snows pretty much off the roof now so he might get to that soon. We are loving the extra space and the wood dry and right by the house!!!

Our phone had a problem with our electric fence one morning when we had a dump of fresh snow so it's no longer working and we are phone less. We are looking into a cell phone to replace the home phone and hope to get that all figured out this weekend, but in the mean time are communicating mainly through Imessage and FB.


I have to say though that I LOVE MY LIFE. I'm not complaining as I write this. I'm explaining. I'm not whining. I'm winning my battles that are near to my heart. I'm taking a stand for what I believe to be right and doing it. If I wanted to whine I could tell you that I've been out of my yard 3 times, besides church, in the last 6 weeks and I miss the contact, however small, with the outside world. Another good reason to take my vitamins :) But I don't want to whine. That is not why I blog.

 I blog for my kids. Like a scrapbook. Which reminds me G has been saying some pretty funny stuff lately! I want to remember how Papa and I make pancakes the morning of the first snow, we kick the kids outside and make them pancakes while they play in the snow and then when breakfast is ready they come in and we eat hot pancakes and drink hot chocolate and talk about the wonderful world God made for us. (And yes I know that's a long long crazy sentence but that's me :) Say it really fast and a bit breathless :) )  I also blog for you.. the reader who actually made it to the end of this book. The Aunt Linda's. The family far away and nearby. The Momys Ladies.The random person who found our crazy life by accident and enjoys reading these rambling posts. The old friend. The large family curious person who wonders how we make it work. The odd person we have that random chance encounter with at the store. So thanks for reading and HEY I know your out there so leave me a comment or two and prove it :)  


Well I feel like I've written a book after my recent silence. I hope you enjoyed it. I will try very hard to sit down at the computer more often and keep you lovely people updated.. and post pictures.

Good Night and GOD BLESS!!!!

Kids on The Roof.

J, L and E had a blast climbing all over the woodshed when Papa had the strapping up. 

The view is great from up there. 

Painting With Grandma!!

 Grandma offered to come and teach the kids how to oil paint.. Bob Ross style!! 

Here she is in what she calls 'my bossy pose' lol. She was explaining the first step! 

Here are the paintings after several steps. 

I love how each one is different! 

Several steps later... 

And 5 hours later they were DONE!! 

Well the kids paintings were done,

 Grandma got so busy helping she missed a few steps in hers!

What a great fun activity with a wonderful Grandma!! 

Boys... Need Tools...

Papa decided it was time for these two to start helping out around the place :) 

(Anyone who knows us know these two boys are already a BIG help on this homestead!! )

But he had a bunch of nails that needed pulling out of some 2x4's and he knew these two would be up to the job (they love working with tools anytime!!) and they were! But first they needed the right tools for the job!! 

Riding!!! Thank You T Family!!

We met a friend of ours in town a while ago and he invited us over to visit with his family. 

While we were there he gave the kids this little motorbike. It had a mechanical problem but Papa put it right and off they go!! 

J's typical look while driving.. He loves it.. honest!! 

Papa giving rides! 

L SO very excited to be riding by himself!! 

The Griggs Family would like to say a GREAT BIG THANK YOU TO 

M & S, M, L, J, D, R and E!!! 

THANK YOU!!! 

A couple weeks later another family stopped in and brought their two motorized kid toys for the kids to try out for a couple hours

 :)
E loved that she could ride this one by herself!! 

Riding along enjoying the day!

Thanks to the G family for the fun visit!! 

Firewood...And a Place to Keep It.

Papa and I finally decided on a good place for a woodshed so we decided to build it before we changed our minds. :) 

We used a post pounder to pound in 10 posts for the foundation. Here is E running the post pounder..J and L had a turn too. 

After the posts were levelled and squared we made a 2x4 beam to hold the trusses. We made these trusses years ago, in fact they were the same ones we used for our straw bale barn here.

Trusses waiting for spacing. Foggy morning. This is right off the back door and the milking parlour..we are also planning a cow candy mixing area, tool storage, and a small critter pen under the roof.  Critter pen for calves.

Here it is as it stands today. This whole project started last Monday and we are hoping to get the tar paper, and the rest of the strapping on it today and start filling it. The tin will need to be ordered in so we'll put it up later. We are expecting snow this week so we want to have it ready before then. 

Walls and floor will be pallets. Calf pen will be at the front on the other side of this picture right next to the milking area. I'll post a picture when it's got wood in it. 

Kids rolling wood that needs to be split away from smaller stuff. We bought 5 cords from the mobile work crew this year and its nice stuff! The wood to be split line up went all the way around the trampoline in this picture when we were done! So I've been splitting wood too. 

We have had beautiful weather this October so far. It's been amazing and we've have been spending lots of time outside.

I want to say HI to Aunt Linda and Granny Sarah and THANK YOU for the very neat baby gift and letter Granny Sarah! Thank you for being such a wonderful sweet person! May God bless you both! I think it would be wonderful fun to make cookies with you and I know that your grandchildren are very blessed!

I do plan on blogging more but I'm finding myself quite stretched lately so I'm very sorry to say posts will likely be sparse for a bit longer. I will try to post E's birthday pictures soon though.. :) May God Bless you and keep you. May the sun shine on you and your coffee never run out :)