Lamb heaven

Friday, 27 January, K7's ewe, Yogurt, gave birth to twins - a ewe and a ram.

This morning, Snow White had twin rams (on the right). Six lambs! Unfortunately, our 4th ewe, QT, is no where close to delivering anytime soon.

Meet Dan and KT

Great young couple. We are thrilled to have them join us on the Wanch for a while. Hope they build a cabin on the hill and stay forever.

Big boy PE class

Dan is an accomplished athlete in many sports, and when K6 saw his boxing gloves, he just had to issue a challenge. 

It lasted a few minutes...until Dan snapped K6's head back with a straight jab to the jaw. If I know K6, he is pretty tough and will be back soon for another "lesson". This pic is a little fuzzy because we extracted it from a video of the bout. Yes, the video is quite entertaining. Don't worry, no turtles were harmed in the making of this film.

Aquariums are awesome!

Dan and KT brought a 150 gallon aquarium with them, and we are all excited to get it filled and operating.

Great addition to the family room in the basement.

These two little map turtles are the first residents. Dan will catch a few black crappie, blue gill perch, and minnows from our pond to create a natural Ozark exhibit. Should be great for the boy's biology class.

Physical Education Class

A good friend of mine organized a weekly PE class for home school students. I signed up K7 and K8, and volunteered to help coach.

We meet on Thursdays at the local YMCA. The first few weeks will concentrate on basketball, so I am not much use. I welcome them, and get them stretched and loose.

They are learning basic fundamental ball handling skills and the rules of the game. We finished up the first day with a  friendly scrimmage.

Everyone had fun, and worked their brains and muscles. Looking forward to next week when we should add several more students.

Weekly Update

The Boy Scouts spent a Saturday cutting firewood and delivering it to cash paying customers as a fundraiser.  

Our second customer of the day.

Last Friday, 20 January 2012, K8's ewe, Booboo, became a first time Momma. She gave us twins - a ewe called "Jane", and a ram called "Gaz". The babies are an hour old in this photo. 

Friday night and Saturday the 20th and 21st was the local Boy Scout District's annual Klondike winter camp-out.

There was a contest between the dozen units to make a dessert - with the main ingredient being pumpkin! K7 made the batter for our "pumpkin" donuts. We didn't win the competition, but we enjoyed the tasty donuts rolled in powdered sugar. They were more like funnel cake, yummy!

We have begun weaning Darlin's calf which means the Mom and daughter are permanently separated, and we now milk Darlin twice a day - doubling our daily milk in the frig! As you can see, all the cats and dogs get a little treat.

Both heifers are halter trained daily - rain or shine. During their time in a halter with one end tied to a post in the loafing shed, they are  scratched, fed grain, and gentled by K7 and K8.

Our corral is surrounded on 3 sides by paddocks. The chickens and dairy cow live in the paddock on the right hand side.

K8 is holding one of his baby lambs. The 3 other mommas are due to deliver within the next month, so stand-by for more baby pictures.

We are excited to have our daughter KT and son-in-law Dan move to the farm this week! KT is running our home school for K7 and K8 two days a week, teaching them Spanish, and... 

...Chemistry and Biology. KT will be giving birth to her first child in this home in April. Dan will be finishing the basement apartment in the next month. Life is good.

Winter finally arrived...for a few days at least.

Oops! Those 2 white critters inside the hay storage area of the shed aren't supposed to be in there - somebody did not secure the gate properly. K8 bundled up in warm layers and went out to fix the problem. The snow melted after 2 days, and it was a balmy 64 F today.

Hitting the road for quick trip!

S announced last night that she needed to visit her parents this week before her schedule gets crazy again. Last Saturday she and K6 auditioned for a comedy play  that starts rehearsals next week and will run two months. 

She took K6 and K7 along on her trip.

K8 and I will stack some more firewood in the house as the temperature is supposed to drop into the teens tonight and be very cold for a few days. Milking the next few mornings will be exciting.

Tuesday, 10 Jan 2012

Brought "Syrup" home from the butcher shop - 40 one pound bags of stew meat, and 78 one pound packages of hamburger. A total of 118 lbs. of beef for $117.35 processing costs, so I paid about $1.00 a pound. 

We received a large truck-load of red cedar chips as part of our garden make-over, but I decided to move it to a different project.

K7 used a pitch fork and many wheel barrow loads...

...moving it from there...

...across the front yard...

...to the new designated area...

...and dumped it in "The Park". I want to prevent this area from being over run with weeds as well as kill off the ticks that inhabit the weeds (ticks that get on our dogs all summer). I had the 2nd truck load of cedar chips piled just out of view of this photo. K8 and I were shoveling it out over the area while K7 moved the first pile. It smells great! My goal is to get a 3rd load today and finish covering the entire area - the only thing you will see are trees, the top of rocks and red cedar mulch. Cedar chips drive away not only fleas and ticks, but also poisonous copperhead snakes. We put a layer of cedar chips under our front porch and filled the dog beds with it. I need to put some under our firewood storage in the backyard which is a good hiding place for snakes. Next step will be to plant flowers and flowering bushes to beautify our Park.

Flame-on!

We have been clearing brush lately and then trying to burn various piles, but most of it is still too green. Which means K7 added an extra ingredient... 

...by splashing a little diesel fuel on the pile.

The bigger piles are beyond the pasture fence, along the stream bank we have been clearing. K7 added paper trash as well as diesel.

His magic worked to a degree, but we will wait longer to burn the rest of our brush.

Random Shots from past week:

K2 packed his gear and headed back to law school. It was great having him home. He is a wonderful role model for his younger brothers and always gets lots of projects done on the farm. Good thing the school has week-long breaks in February and March, so he'll be back soon.

K8 cleaning up the back side of the pond.

Our church youth group had a blast last week solving group leadership challenges. Here's K8 using one method of escaping from the "Spider's Web".

Our fairly new clothes washing machine stopped functioning - with a large pile of dirty laundry waiting to be washed - disaster! It's under warranty, but the regular method required waiting a week for a technician to come out to the farm. Solved the problem by taking the machine 45 miles to them. The problem turned out to be minor, got it temporarily fixed and back home in operation on same day. They had to order parts which they will bring out next week and install. Moral of the story is don't let the dirty laundry pile up! Yeah, right...

College Football Bowl Game Central

There weren't that many games I was interested in, we don't have TV, and the weather was too good to pass up the opportunity to go outside and work, so I only followed 2 games by listening to them broadcast by radio via the internet. That's life out in rural America. "Watch Parties" aren't the same with dogs instead of real human football fans.

K2 and I stayed up late on Friday night, 30 December, and Monday night, 2 January, to listen to the OU vs Iowa game, then the OSU vs Stanford game. Both teams from Oklahoma won and we went to bed happy. 

Watch this unbelievable bike ride across Scotland

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=Cj6ho1-G6tw&vq=medium

No, I did not ride the bike or make the film. Not in your wildest dreams. I have an old and painful separated-shoulder injury from my one and only attempt at doing easy jumps on a bike long ago. Thanks to our buddy Marian at Five Ponds Farm for sharing the video.

Busy Week

I am still aggressively pursuing lots and lots of wood chip mulch so I can start a "Back to Eden" type garden this spring. I called the electric company and got on their list of places to dump their tree trimmings. I got some from other places in town, and...

...I rented a wood mulching machine last Saturday, and K2 and the boys worked hard!

One day I got the truck stuck in the mud and had to call K2 to come rescue me with the tractor and chains.

He pulled me right out in a flash.

Had to drag the truck about 65 feet. It is great having big sons and tractors around.

K2 also finished trimming the master shower since I had not done it. He loves using his drills and saws.

We also put our first cow in the freezer. She was much too big for us to process the way we do sheep, so we hired Mike the professional "on-farm butcher" to come do it.

This cow had a crippled leg and back, and had never put on much weight, so we are only getting hamburger and stew meat.

After long busy days, K2 and the dogs were very tired late at night. What a great New Year's vacation!