K8 turns 12

Last Thursday was K8's 12th Birthday. K7 baked him a chocolate devil's food cake and Mom made her wonderful frosting.

When our children turn 12 and every Birthday thereafter, we have a tradition where Mom and Dad take him or her out for a special meal. K8 asked for a steak dinner, so we took him to the only steak restaurant in town, which happens to be quite good! In accordance with another family tradition, Mom told him his birthing story. It made him smile!

He ate so much at the restaurant, that he didn't have any room left in his belly for cake. He settled for licking the frosting off of the candles, and we waited until dark to dig into the cake and ice cream.

Little Red Barn

I envisioned this barn being red three years ago when I purchased this farm. It is now happening! S and I are very happy with the change. K6, not so much.

All three boys were going to paint it, but K6 managed to earn the opportunity to do it solo. Latter in the day, I suggested he wear his shirt to protect against sunburn, but what do parents know...

For some people, experience may be the best teacher. The show must go on, so, in spite of sore back and some whining, he will be out there again tomorrow painting away (hopefully in a shirt). New generation meets old school generation - no coddling, no excuses, no law suits, just git 'er done.

Good 1st day of cow milking

Good beginning. As we had hoped, Darlin stood still while eating sweet grain and let K7 milk her.

Mom and I went out to help because we weren't 100% sure Darlin would cooperate since it was the first time for her to be milked.

The only negatives today were (1) Darlin whipping her tail across her back at the flies causing K7 to duck out of way or get whacked; and (2) Darlin moved her feet a few times and got dirt in bucket. Mom jumped in to help speed the milking and after dumping bucket twice, they managed to get a quart of sweet tasting milk. Mom pasteurized it on the stove top just in case of dirt in bucket. Over all, not a bad first day.

The 3 adult ewes (on the right hand side) were certainly interested in the proceedings. The ugly but functional goat shack they are in will be replaced by a 45' X 12'  metal-roofed loafing shed sometime in the next month. It will be big enough to house the cows, sheep, tractor, and stacked hay from rain and ice.

We took a vote, and the goats lost.

We have owned 3 Alpine does for a year, and they have given birth to 3 babies - 2 does and 1 buckling. We enjoyed them for the most part, except for the boys complaining about having to take care of and milk them. Based on the facts (1) No one was drinking goat's milk any more; (2) our refrigerator was over flowing with bottles of goat's milk; (3) the boys had to be forced to milk the goats; (4) the goats are eating more grass in the pasture than weeds; and (5) the goats are also eating grain I give our pregnant and lactating cows, I came to the conclusion that we needed to eliminate dairy goats from our farm in order to concentrate on Dexter cattle and St Croix sheep as our main livestock.  

We sold the 3 adult does and traded the 2 young doelings to our neighbor Sarah who has several Alpine dairy goats. She loves goat milk and just recently began training and showing goats at local fairs. Our remaining 2 bucklings will go into the freezer later this fall when the weather is cold enough to butcher and hang them in the barn without fear of flies. We will also be butchering a cow and 2 rams the same day, probably in late October or early November.

As of this week, we will be getting fresh raw cow's milk from Darlin. We separated her from her calf this evening, and K7 will milk her each morning, and then put her back in pasture with her calf. After calf is weaned in 4 months, K7 will milk Darlin twice a day, at which time we should get 2 gallons a day. The boys and I are cow milk drinkers and are very happy. K7 is the full time milker because I gave him part ownership of Darlin. I am sure he will figure out a way to make money from this deal!

New Roof(s)

We got hammered by a powerful hail storm back in the spring. I called our insurance folks to report damage to our cars, and then mentioned our roof just to document it in case we ever had leakage in the future. I returned from England in June to find a check for a large sum of money awaiting me. June and July were very busy and too hectic, so we finally started repairs in August. K5 didn't move her car before going off with Mom that morning, so we covered it and began work. 

We had rain in the forecast most days, but were lucky to be delayed only one day.

The insurance appraiser also inspected the barn roof and said it had to be replaced as well, so we changed its color to red. The boys will be painting the exterior walls red as soon as we get a long enough dry spell...

 

...because it started raining the afternoon we finished! It was a good test and I'm happy to report "all is well" - no leaks in house or barn. 

Our ewes don't have a roof, but make do with getting out of the rain by standing under a big tree.

The rams aren't so lucky. No roof or tree. The two of them just stand there and take it like a man.

Work vs nap

The two recent storms left a lot of debris and broken tree limbs in our front yard and paddock #6, so we needed to work.

Little Cork and Big Red are always curious about our doings in their pasture, so they came over to check it out.

These branches are mostly from walnut trees. When we piled them on top of the logs, Red decided they tasted good and started eating...

...then we started adding big sycamore branches to the pile and Red became unhappy. He plowed through the middle of the pile to get down to the walnut leaves, and must have liked the scratching effect so much on his hide that he did it a few more times just for fun. We had to chase him away so we could finish our job. By the end of the afternoon, I was huffing, puffing and getting a little sun burned, so decided it was time for a nap... 

...but somebody else beat me to it!

Black clouds of Mordor

We were just finishing supper last Sunday when the sky began to rapidly grow dark. The entire family trooped out onto the back deck to witness the onslaught of this sudden storm.

K6 and K8 

The wind was blowing up to 60 miles per hour according to weatherman. This giant sycamore tree out back gave off two distinct "cracks". We stood breathless expecting it to crash over into the pasture. The storm came out of the northwest and was blowing toward the southeast which is toward the sunny sky on the left of photo.

Amazingly it didn't, which means we will have to cut it down, or let the next big blow take it down.

The rain started to fall. Our goats don't like getting wet, so they were already in their shelter. The sheep usually stay out in the rain, but this time they were heading for shelter. Darlin and her calf weren't far behind either.

K6 and K2 before being driven away from the west side of porch because the rain started blowing horizontally in on them. All in all, a pretty exciting end to an otherwise peaceful and restful Sabbath day. We certainly needed the rain on our fields and in the pond. 

Ducks

I have been fairly busy lately and the photos for new blog postings started to pile up, so I hope you aren't overwhelmed by me posting several entries tonight. We really love our 4 ducklings. After a few weeks of walking around the yard and the edge of the pond, they finally started going into the water. 

Now they spend most of their time in the water.

The guy on the left is the guy, the male duck, or drake. The three girls on the right will not develop the pretty green head and white neck band that the drake will eventually have. You can see the green color starting to grow from his bill back over his face and although you can't see it, he has a white spot starting on his throat.

We love to hear them quacking away during the day. It sounds like they are laughing, which is a pleasant noise. I throw fish food out for my blue gill perch and black crappie, and the ducks come cruising over to eat their share.

Bees

Prior to getting lots of rain during the past week, things were getting pretty dry around here, so dry, I was worried about the bees not finding any flowers since all our vegetation was turning brown. As you can see, I started putting out a jar of sugar water, which they emptied daily.

K7 (here) and K8 took turns retrieving the jar, then taking out a newly mixed batch.  Notice how low the water level got in the pond during the dry spell.

After the first rain, I decided to open the box and check on the hive. The first step is to gently lift the top and put a few puffs of smoke inside to calm the bees.

Then pry the cover off, which is stuck tight by accumulated sticky wax.

A little more smoke and...

...I removed the entire top box because the bees had eaten all of their stored honey due to the lack of nectar flow during the long dry spell. This picture shows lots of bees sitting on a metal grill, which is a queen excluder - regular worker bees can fit through the bars coming up from the brood boxes below to store honey in the upper box. The queen is too large to fit through the bars, hence she can not lay any eggs in among the honey combs. The bottom two boxes are for her to lay eggs in honey combs. I put a brand new box back on top with 10 clean, new frames on which the worker bees can build new comb and fill with honey before the winter.

This is one of the frames I took out of the old top box. The bees had eaten all the stored honey, but had recently begun to re-fill with new honey. Yummy, it was so sweet and tasty!

His reward for taking out and bringing back the sugar water jars. No complaints from the work crew. 

R.I.P.

R.I.P., or rest in peace, to my faithful old Canon digital camera. Look at the "wear marks" on the front left - the top edge, bottom edge and over the brand name. A lot of miles on this wonderful electronic gadget. Not sure what caused it to go kaput, but it might go back to 2009 on my last NJROTC trip to San Diego. I spent all one Friday standing in chest-high water taking pictures of 40 kids surfing. It got a little wet toward end of the day after I was surprised by some big waves. It stopped working then, but after drying out for a few hours it came back to life. No such luck this time. 

British newsman hits the nail on head about society's ills

Granted, he is writing about Britain and their horrible wave of mass rioting by the great unwashed, but we have many of the same problems in America which are caused by the same reasons he outlines. You can read his article here:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2024284/UK-riots-2011-Liberal-dogma-spawned-generation-brutalised-youths.html

Boy Scouts help with Joplin clean-up

Our regional Boy Scout Council orchestrated a clean-up service project to help the city of Joplin two months after their devastating tornado. Our Troop was assigned to the public school's transportation department.  

We took 4 adults and 15 scouts. Our assignment was to help wash and clean school buses inside and out in preparation for school starting soon.

I am glad they had fun serving in spite of the 105 degree F temperature. Mighty hot. 

On our way home, we wanted to show the boys some of the destruction they had only previously heard about. A lot of the debris from the tornado has been cleaned up or bull-dozed into piles awaiting removal. The two buildings you are looking at are the high school to the left, and the Votech Center to the right. 

Front of high school. There were more Boy Scouts working here on clean-up. I was told it might take 3 years to build a new one. In the mean time, 9th and 10th grades will move into the old Joplin high school, built in 1918, and the 11th and 12th grades will move into a giant "box" store which has had walls installed to partition it into classes.

...more of the high school...

...the high school field house...

The neighborhood immediately behind the high school. Nothing left except for one battered tree and a few severely damaged houses. Count your many Blessings from Heavenly Father, and say prayers for the good folks of Joplin.