I Spy

Can you see what I see??


It is difficult to see.

This was taken at 5:30 this morning.


There are lots of reflections in the window from the spotlight I was using.


This is something that likes to eat my duck and chicken eggs.


It also eats up old mouse guts that the cats have left around.

It is black and white and stinky.

Have you guessed yet?

Maybe this will help.

Yup.  It's a skunk.  I watched him (or her) slink across the yard in the dark this morning.  It's probably living in our culvert again.  Ugg!  Sometimes country life just isn't pretty.  A couple years ago we had a family of skunks living there.  We think the mother ran off and got killed because one evening we came out and found some baby skunks playing and looking disoriented in our ditch. They were probably starving.  The kids wanted to keep them as pets.  Uh!  No Thanks!  They were cute little stinkers.

Now the gory part-- don't read if you have a queasy stomach.  Rich whacked them over the head with a shovel.  Then we buried them.  They sure stunk after getting whacked.  They would have most likely died of starvation or gotten killed anyway, and I'm not in the business of animal rescue-- especially skunks!

School and February

I never write on here because I think I need to post a picture, so that keeps me from doing anything .  I wanted this blog to be a chronicle of my learning to be a "farmer".  Not really a farmer, but to learn back to the land skills.  I have not been doing much of that for the last few years with having 2 babies since we moved to this place. But I know I want to keep this blog going, and inform my extended family and friends about the doings of our family.  So I'm writing again. 
Another function I planned for this blog would be to share what we are learning about in our homeschool. This year with homeschool I have been trying to (somewhat unsuccessfully) apply my MASTER PLAN of EDUCATION.  I have determined a way to incorporate my seven stewardships into a yearly schedule.  I have put Faith as something we do or study on a daily basis, then put the rest of the subjects onto a twice yearly rotating schedule.  For February we are in Liberty.  In March we move to Earth, then Science in April, Brotherhood in May, and Beauty in June.  We did Body in January.  The kids are required to keep a daily journal-- or do freewriting exercises-- each day.  And each month they must do a written report, a project and a presentation of what they have learned.  I am considering having them post a presentation on this blog.  We will see. 
So for Liberty in February, I chose to study primitive houses.  I am fascinated with cob building and adobe earth building.  The crunchy side of me gets into all that earthy stuff.  The kids and I watched this really cool video of an African Village building a house out of mud.  It is about 18 minutes long, but shows the unity that that these people have when it comes to the needs of the people.  I loved it.

Yesterday, since the weather has been soooo warm, I dug a small bucketful of earth- our soil has a rather high clay content- and added some cut up straw to it.  Then I kneaded it with water until it became a thick pasty mud. The kids and I prepared a small bit of ground by removing the sod, and we put some dry earth into a cone shape.  We then put the cob mixture on top of the cone of dirt, placing a rock on one side to leave an opening.  We made a very small igloo shaped structure like a cob oven.  I haven't been out to check on it yet, but when the cob dries we will pull the loose dirt out of the middle and it should leave a hollow inside.  I will post a picture if it works, but I am having my doubts because now it is starting to snow!!  Goodbye warm spring. 

Garden Fort

Hey! Wanna come play in my secret garden?

Cedric and Everett are loving it.

Here are some pictures of our deer fence we have been building around our garden. it looks a bit like a fort. We have it 3/4 finished, so I hope the deer don't hop over the weak side before we have a chance to finish it. Actually it hasn't been deer that have been the problem this spring. It has really been the chickens. They ate off all the leaves of my cabbages, dug up my squashes, and took dust baths in my carrot beds making carrots grow in the aisle instead of the beds! I can't wait until they can't get in anymore either.

Rich is such a Handy Man!

Here is Fort Woodruff. I decided I want to put a sign on the gateway that says "All the Earth's a Garden Sweet."

What's in a name?

The kids and I have been working on a name for our farm. I like to name things. I think it gives meaning to things and endears them to you. You tend to take care of something that is personalized more than nameless objects. When I go out hiking in the hills, I tend to name off all the plants that I do know, and it brings me a satisfaction to know what they are called. All the rest of the plants are just a blur of nothingness-- greenery in the background. Some things shouldn't have names like chickens you plan on eating, unless they are called Stew-pot or Sunday dinner. But we had a rooster we called Stew-pot, and it was still a name for him because when we ate him the kids asked if we were eating "Stew-pot" for dinner. I don't think I will give names to anymore of our eating animals.

So, we are trying to name our farm. A while back I wrote lists of words on our white board in the kitchen, and we tried combining them to make cool sounding names for the farm. We never came up with anything and eventually the list was erased. So today I put on our "To do" list that we would name our farm. Then had each person write what they thought the name should be. Here is our list:
Dad- "Home" (He doesn't think we need a name-- but how can you have acreage and NOT have a name for it?)

Mom- Sage Meadow Farm, or Sweet Woodruff Acres, or something else better!

Cora- Loving Acres (cute!)

Ian- Sagebrush Hill (But he doesn't claim this name because he doesn't want to participate either.)

Eleanor- Piney Creek (which sounds really cute, but we have no pines and no creek-- though I had a premonition that we would dig down and find a spring in our yard, so maybe if we planted some pines and dug for water we might fit the name? Wishful thinking)

Cedric- Green Orchard ( I thought that was really creative. His suggestion when I first mentioned that I wanted to name the place was "Weedy Field," which, indeed it is that at the present moment, but I explained that we need to think up a name of what we want it to be, so it will become something better than what it is.)

Everett- *Grunt** *Squeek**

There is our list of suggestions. None of them really jump out at me. The kids are off in fairy land, and don't care at the moment. This is almost like naming a baby. It is that hard to find the perfect name. I guess, like baby, the perfect name will come in time.

My first produce

I am trying out uploading an image to the blog. It was not as hard as I thought it would be.

So here is a picture of my first fruits of our little farm. It is a lemon. From looking at my farm picture you wouldn't think I could grow something so semi-tropical. I have been trying to get several houseplants to produce for me. I have a pomegranate, a lemon, an orange (which makes tiny fruit more like a kumquat, and sour as a lemon) and a fig. I may get a lime tree, but I think all I can get is a key lime.

Yet, growing citrus, even as houseplants, may be more trouble than they are worth. They take lots of fertilizer, and I have to bring them in when it is cold (for they spent the summer in our greenhouse) and they really don't like overwintering in my hot, dry house. Perhaps if we ever build a sun-room it will be a nice place to keep the fruit trees. One more bad thing about lemons is that this variety, which is a Meyer lemon, takes 9 months to ripen. On such a small tree with so few fruits we aren't going to get a really large or sustaining harvest.