Billy the Steer 'D' Day!

The kids were super excited to butcher the steer. Here they are all watching from the window. They have also been missing the beef we've have been doing without. Steer butchering = BEEF to them which I think is awesome! If you look thru the window you can see a hay bale and a black blob.. that's Billy the Steer moments before death. Papa walked behind the hay bale and stunned him between the eyes with a small cal rifle, that we borrowed :) Then he slit the jugular with my big kitchen knife. Quick and painless. 

This is the steers back. For a jersey holstein, angus he was VERY tall and consiterbly fatter then I thought he'd be. Grassfed beef.. very yellow, good for you fat! We skinned and gutted him before cutting him into about 6 pieces to take to a local meat shop. Normally we would hang and cut & wrap him ourselves but we have no place to hang him this late in the year without him freezing solid (which is not good for aging), and we've been super busy and not slowing down much, so we decided to have him done. We were going to cut him into quarters and lift them into the back the the T-all but he was BIG and we knew we could not lift them in. Even in 6 pieces we had a time getting some of the bigger ones in. He weighed in at 656lbs at the butcher shop! Just a warning. There is a kinda nasty picture of Papa coming up! I think it's funny because it has happened to him a few times and he has a way of getting FILTHY doing something that someone else doesn't even get dirty doing! He has a reputation at work for attracting dirt just by looking at it.

J REALLY wanted to help and he cut this foot off by himself with the meat saw. 

As Danno likes to say.. DON"T LICK YOUR LIPS!! 

Weekend Project. Day 12!

By the end of day 12 we had walls all around, doors and windows in, ceiling finished and were using the space!! Here is the top of the tall wall. It's bowing in a bit and we'll have to fix it before we plaster but for now it's fine! It got VERY cold here after this and neither of us want to freeze while we fix a crooked wall. 

The rest of the tall wall. That window and door go into the trailer. 

Papa lighting the very 1st fire! The stove will not be were it is forever. But with straw walls not being plastered just yet we wanted it in the middle of the room. There is about 5 feet all around the stove. We've been using it for a couple weeks now and have had no problems with it. The 1st night we checked it several times and let the new pipe stink up the outdoors until it was seasoned a bit. That white sink is the milk sink, the table is where the machine stuff is stored. The white hose is what we wash up with, it is always warm as Papa has connected it to the washer's hot and cold and mixed them together in the hose. Very nice! 

Here is the front of the room. Washer and dryer to the right. I use the wash hose to fill the washer and the drain is already working. It looks much more lived in now :) Those cupboards on the left side are no longer inside and there is the table from the living room there, which we set up to cut and wrap a pig. There is room for the electric meat saw and the table in the middle of the room! Very nice for butchering! There is also plastic on the outside which helps a lot with odd drafts. We did not get to stuff the holes completely as we were pressed for time. 

A Little Girl 4 Year Old Birthday!!

Just realized I'd forgotten to finish this one! E turned 4 in October! Here is her smiling self! She's getting so grown up! She loves to 'do' hair! She insisted she have 3 'ponies' for her party! 

Waiting for Papa to light the candles.E with her cake. J is in the blue shirt. R and L (yellow shirt) with the T trio behind the table. She picked Princesses, what ELSE! for her cups, plates, and napkins but wanted a rainbow cake! 

A very cool gift.. I'm not sure what it was but all the kids were INTO it! 

Beautiful Mrs. B holding little Baby J. 

It was a great party and we had a snack supper with the crew before cake. YUM!! The letters on the rainbow spell out her name! Then she wanted ducks for candles and a caterpillar, bird and flower. The whole thing is made with Smarties! :) 

Meatloaf!

Maggie calved on the 29th. She picked a beautiful day, only -10C and had him in a protected spot. Here is Papa and Maggie taking a good look. Papa got a straw bale and spread it around for them and rubbed him dry with it. His name is Meatloaf! Papa picked it and it suits him. I think we should call him Meatball until he's big enough to be Meatloaf :) He's super cute! I looked out the window at 8:25 and there was still steam rising off him! I missed the birth by just a few minutes! Maggie did well on her own and we've had no problems since! She was quite ready to give him to Papa. Barely mooo-d at him at all while Papa was checking him out. When Papa left it took her awhile to realize that she still had her calf! We gave them the day together and then took him away. He did nurse most of the day and still took to a bottle wonderfully!! He's a great little guy! Much smarter then Bullseye was! 

This picture reminds me of a nativity! Papa, Maggie and Billy the Steer all looking intently at the new calf. The pigs were nearby and the kittens and Chip all came out to take a look too. Bindy came over and sniffed him briefly then promptly took over the nice clean straw and lay down in it! The day Meatloaf was born started SERIOUS count down for DEAD day for Bindy! That black bucket that you can see by Billy the Steer fooled me a couple of times. When laying on it's side, at a glance, you too could think it was a new calf! 

Meatloaf went to live with the laying hens in the greenhouse for the winter. He is SUPER friendly and J and L enjoy playing with him! He loves being pet and follows you around everywhere! Yesterday he found a way out of the greenhouse and explored his pen. Very cute to see him running and jumping and having a great time in snow that goes almost half way up his legs!! And, bonus, he stayed in!! :) 

A Morning of Eagles!

See him? This Golden eagle showed up this morning. That gap in the trees is our lagoon. We just butchered a beef and the hide, skin and insides went into the lagoon. This morning there was at least 4 bald eagles and this one BIG golden!! 

Zoomed him in some!! 

Later in the afternoon the boys were outside and spotted him in a tree right above the tramp! It would have made a great picture but my camera found that moment to be out of battery juice! By the time I remembered I had other new batteries and didn't have to wait for the rechargeable's it was too late. He'd flown off. Both J and L were very excited to see him so close. We've lots of butchering to do yet so I'm sure we'll see him close again! There was also a TON of ravens/crows and a few magpies out there this morning. Papa said that some dog like creature was out there as well as he saw tracks and drag marks. They better leave my chickens alone! 

Weekend Project. Day 11!

Day 11 was a ceiling day! We actually only worked about a half day on the house. The temps were suppose to drop to the -20C range and we spent the other half of the day getting the cows, pigs, chickens: water, housing and feed ready for the cold weather! This included a quick trip to town and some fence building. We also got the addition water hose in shape so it wouldn't freeze!!  

Oh and this was the day I took all those nasty stickers off the panels!! Managed to get a system going that worked well but MAN did I have a headache afterwards!! Paint thinner is NOT my friend!! :) 

Weekend Project. Day 10!

Day 10 was a Sunday. 

We've not had home church in quite some time and this Sunday we had ourselves a little home church. We have been home churching with 2 or 3 other couples but have sort of disbanded at the moment.  Papa played his guitar for the 1st time since Baby J was born.. did I mention we've been busy! We sang some songs and listened to a short 30 minute sermon Papa found online about The Holiness of Jesus. I don't remember who it was by but it was very good and even the kids learned something. Here they are singing in their PJ's. on the trunk in the living room. (One of the nice things about doing our own church at home is that we can do it in our PJ's :) Another is we can sing as many songs as we want. LOL. I remember the first time J was at a 'conventional church' after we'd been home churching for awhile.. he wanted to sing more songs (and he had a few picked out!) and couldn't understand that he couldn't just ask them to sing his songs! He was only about 2.5. 

Doing the actions for My God is SO Big! R is NOT happy.. she can't keep up with the songs actions at all so her and I did them together. The totes in the back ground are part of a never ending search for more space. These were filled with books, and out grown kids clothes,  that eventually made it outside on the big floor for storage. I put about 18 of these totes out recently! 

 Being a Sunday we didn't do too much on the addition but we did clean up the area and move a bunch of stuff out for ease of working and got a look at what it would look like done.

Papa did get all the insulation in and the plastic up that afternoon while I was out stocking the larder with easy to prepare foods. My mom did bring us a couple of meals while we were building which was awesome!! 

Weekend Project. Day 9!

Well as it turns out we had to get the ceiling up before we could finish off the walls. So day 9 was spent insulating the ceiling and tacking up these 4 by 4 sheets of underlay we found at Home Depot. They are marked on the other side for installing lino but the underside is beautiful wood. I just asked Papa what kind and he doesn't know. The only problem was that because the side we wanted to use was the BOTTOM (unseen side) of the side everyone else uses they had placed 2 stickers on opposite corners on each piece! One in each of our national languages. What a pain! We did hit on a system that worked to remove the stickers and once we figured it out they came off very nicely without much time lost. Here is Papa placing a 4x4 sheet on the ceiling. Papa made a jig to cut the panels which made life a lot easier. I had to help hold a panel 3 or 4 times but other then that he did it all himself. He also tied a 2x4 to the back side of the step ladder and used it to hold the top of the panel in place while he fitted and nailed up the other side. Very neat! 

Papa also got that last back window in. So here is what I worked on that day! The bales in that end wall. They are sitting in the corner there under the window but very hard to see. All made to fit and ready to be put in after the ceiling was finished. I also got 6 bales for the last row of bales on the long trailer side wall up on the trailer roof so they could just be fitted in. I also did some laundry but the rest of the day is a bit of a blur. I remember we were BUSY all day but don't remember what else we did :( Sorry. Oh RIGHT I just remembered I took that wall on the left side of the door down and Papa made sure it the wood beside the door was not causing the door to shut hard. It still shuts hard but that board isn't causing it. Then I rebuilt the wall. I also took down the bales on top of the window and door next to the trailer and Papa added another board on top of the door jig so the bales would sit even. He also screwed the window box to the trailer as we had some trouble with it moving! 

Before we went to bed that night we had ONE FINISHED WALL!!!! Beautiful isn't it! Papa finished it while I sat on a lawn chair and watched! I was very tired and a tiny bit cranky.. I look on my blog and I see, as do you Day 9. But what I, or you, don't see is the days in between the days. Yes it's day 9 of working on the addition.. but it's been since Sept 9 that we've been working on this addition. Almost every day Papa has had off since Sept 9th has been, in some way, working on this addition!! That's 3 months!! Not 9 days! 9 days sounds fast. 3 months is SLOW!!! Anyway it was late and seeing a finished wall lifted BOTH our spirits and all of a sudden it felt like maybe we'd have an addition after all!! 

A view of the part of the ceiling that got finished that night!

That night we had Pizza and Root beer floats for supper.. sort of a celebration for the, at that point, almost finished wall.. 

Snow... and a Beautiful Sunset!

J on the Tramp with his 1st snowball of the year! We went through all the kids winter clothes that afternoon and the older boys need boots and J needs snow pants but the girls are good for the year. So J and L are in rubber boots, but it's still pretty warm so they were not cold. 

The kids play area. They are all standing in front of the sand box which has been covered for the winter. Love the light in these pictures! The sunset must have been amazing that night! Too bad we can't really see the sunset from our place! 

I told the kids to line up biggest to smallest and didn't notice that Chip had really wanted to be in the picture as well.. so I took one with him in it too. From a very young age he would sit when ever he was confused and he still does it. 

"I'm behaving, honest I am..PLEASE can I be in the picture too... " 

Weekend Project. Day 8

Pipe for the wood stove is in!! It was a bit tricky to get in as it snowed and rained and snowed and rained.. and froze at night. So the tin was a sheet of ice! Then Papa had a great idea and on his first day off (of 5 in a row!) he sprayed the roof off with our outside sink hose.. Warm water! Melted the ice off the tin and that evening it had dried off enough to put the pipe in. It's an 8 inch insulated pipe through the roof. Looking forward to having a 8 inch pipe all the way up. With the old setup we had a 6 inch neck in the middle because of the hole in the roof. This will be MUCH better! BTW thank you to R and C from Josh's work who let us borrow the step ladder for the weekend! Got to get us one of them!! No more standing on a bucket! :) 

The outside wall. The windows are 4 by 3 and look super nice!! The wall is almost finished in this photo.. just need to stuff some cracks and fill in the top above the windows. See the chicken?? She's been roosting up there for the last few days. Papa and I need to take a pair of scissors and go clip some wings so they have to stay in their winter quarters. Right now, even with the fence hot, they just jump out. 

This is what took up a good chunk of Day 8. We went to town and got parts and pieces and picked up 50 more straw bales. We also picked up my yearly bulk food order! :) 

Door windows got put in and BOY DO THEY LOOK NICE!! This is the back door. The window opens for venting front to back. 

This is the front door! Love it!!