Baby is coming...

Feeling compelled to write this evening after finding a cool blog by a fellow Orthodox homeschool mama and mother-of-seven. Lovely blog she has.

I have snapped just a few photos recently and wanted to share.

Here's my fridge. I know it's a little barren, but LOOK at how much is homegrown or homeade!!! I'm just really proud of myself. Even the lemonade is organic...hehe.

This building is my midwives birth center. I literally could have my baby in a barn...but we're going to have it at home like the last 3. :) I just love this old Colony barn, it's such a beautiful birth center too.

My precious girls the other night with their papa at Home Depot. Trying to find the playground section. Our 14-yr-old playground died, it's time to replace her. I love how colorful my girls are.

Me!

Our sweet mama kitty had another batch of kittens. Kittens are soooooo fun for the kids (and adults too). Their big sister cat I think wants to eat them, we'll try to keep them safe. That's their mama in the background, she's such a good mama.

Our neighbor's Scottish Highland cow had a cute little calf! It's so fun to be next door to them. The white one is supposed to calf soon too. This was taken around 10:30 in the evening next to our driveway, they were visiting us. Love Alaska summers.

Pooped after church on Sunday, so the kittens insisted that I sit down with some coffee and let them nap on me. My sister came over to keep us company for a bit. Rainy afternoons can be so refreshing.

I snapped some of the garden the other day, but haven't uploaded them yet. It's looking lovely and tucked in under a nice layer of mulch.

I doubt I'll blog again 'till after I have this baby. This month is packed. My little brother flew up for his friend's wedding, so tomorrow we get to see him and sister for a little bbq. This will be our first family gathering since my parents moved to Hawaii, that will be strange for them not to be there.  Our two older kids fly to Seattle to attend St. Mary's camp in two days and visit friends in Ellensburg and hopefully squeeze a short trip to the monastery at Goldendale, they will be gone for 10 days. I have to call in for jury duty this whole month. My 20th high school class reunion is literally on my due date. The "fish guy" should call us on Thursday with our fish (salmon) order of the year, so we'll be gutting/cleaning them late into the night. Three of the kids have swimming lessons for the next two weeks, so that means driving to town every day. While daughter is gone I have to get the 10 & 12 year olds to milk the goats, not a fun task. While son is gone I have to get the 10 & 12 year olds to care for the chickens, walk the neighbor's dog and get the neighbor boy to do his church lawn mowing job for him. Our LaMancha goat is due with her baby a week before I am. I still have not "nested" either, so I really need to go through the old baby stuff and pitch half of it and keep just some. I bought 4 flowering trees that I still need to plant, teens are leaving... so I may hire the neighbor boy to help me. Farmers are cutting hay in Palmer, so I have to get hopefully 40-50 bales to last us 'till next summer, since there was a hay shortage last year, I have to get on this quickly before it's gone. I still have to run my business, always very busy during the summer. Thank goodness school is mostly over and what we are still doing is minimal and always excused if we went to town that day or if there was just the need to play instead. Those are just the things I'm remembering about.

I know we can do this, it'll just be crazy busy...Alaska doesn't allow one to sit still during the summer. However, I do plan on doing a lot of sitting, snuggling, resting during August. I'm looking forward to the down time.

Baby is coming. 

Early Summer

Well, it may be another scorcher this year. The unusual thing is that May in 2013 we had snow and that darn snow did a lot of damage to trees...not good!

This whole winter has been ultra mild, hardly any snow, and a very early spring. We even had thaw and perennials start growing back in January. Crazy!!! So spring is basically over now and summer is coming along nicely. The birch tree allergies that I normally have in June have almost gone away now and June is still more than a week away. I'm thrilled.

I just wanted to post a few pics. I know I have not written much. I still have been very tired during this pregnancy. 2 more months to go!

Today my front porch got a makeover.

Teenager eye selfie. She hates that word. Selfie. She's almost 16 *gasp*!!!

Springtime tulips I got me for mothers day.

Sweet Sus enjoying the drive out to the goat farm. That day the new babies were getting de-horned.

Mama swallow guarding her nest at 11pm the other night.

Papa and son fixing our door at 11pm the other night. Love that man.

A Barley's Journey

A grain of barley is eaten by a bird. The barley goes through the esophagus into the crop, which softens and stores the food until it can be digested. The food then goes into the stomach, where it mixes with juices. The barley then passes into the gizzard where it is ground up with small stones the bird ate to help digest. Out of the gizzard and into the one intestine the bits of barley travel, and inside of the intestine the nutrients are taken from the food and is given to the blood vessels running along the sides. It's job now done, the food is passed out through the vent as solid waste.

This paper was written today for my 13-yr-olds Science/English lesson. I was impressed by how I expected the barley to grow and be produced for humans but instead I was brought into a story about birds digestion. I was pleased. It was funny because early today we discussed her love of birds and my lack of caring for the creatures. This captured my interest in a very fun way. Also there was no spelling errors...she gets that from her grandmother and her father. :)

What did you think?

Kids and dogs

My oldest daughter turned 13 this May. This is my child that has begged me for animals her whole life and this year is no different. She wants a puppy so she can breed it and sell the puppies.

I am not an animal lover. Not at all. I used to like cats, but not anymore. When I started having children I lost any interest I had for animals. HOWEVER as you know, we have many animals. This is mostly the fault of Martha Stewart and my daughter. Martha Stewart because when I watched her show years back she had the most beautiful eggs and I coveted them. I wanted THOSE chickens so I could get THOSE eggs. My neighbor knew about chickens so we jumped in. Turns out having chickens is fun and my husband took to them much more than I did. I love the eggs, he likes the hens.

When my daughter was eight she begged me for a horse (again) we have 2 acers but no fence or barn. Horses are very impractical in Alaska, however, as a homeschooling family we want to encourage our kids passions not discourage them. We got her into horse lessons. Unfortunately she was a natural...which sucks 'cause that means we can't easily quit. So we go during the summer. Last year she won the first competition she was in...beginners luck? At this point in time we are not equipped for horses and perhaps never will be, but we like the idea of her being distracted with animals through her teenage years. I don't think that will be a problem...our younger girls on the other hand, well that's a different story.

Another animal she begged for were goats. I didn't want to milk a goat, who was I kidding. I'm a lazy NOT farm girl. But goats make a whole lot more sense than horses do. I began collecting chain link dog kennel panels after our friend gave us theirs and another friend gave us theirs. I realized they would be great for goats (who are terrible at getting through fences). When I discovered last year that goats don't need the kind of heavy duty shelter that chickens do up here in the winter, I realized it was time to jump on board. No time like the present...if I don't do this now I may never. So we took the plunge, 2 Nubian does in milk producing 2 gallons a day. A whirlwind of a learning curve, what to do with THAT much milk?! Learn to make everything out of it and find what you like best.

This June one doe is maybe pregnant, harder to get her knocked up than the other. The other had 3 bucklings. The nice thing is that bucklings need more milk than doelings, so the doe will produce more that year, but the bad part is they suck it all and you don't have it to drink. We get about 1/2 gallon a day from the other doe now for ourselves, which is barely enough...we have to ration it. I'd wanted a LaMancha doe last year but the breeder I chose didn't have any. This year she had more LaMancha kids available. I don't have enough milk at the moment with the doe feeding kids and I also don't want my children getting attached to the bucklings we're raising to sell as bucks or to butcher this fall for meat...I decided that after my daughter did an amazing job this year doing 95% of the milking that I'd buy her a goat instead of a puppy.

It was a good call (so far) she was not disappointed, she's totally in love, she picked out the one that was born the day we were at the breeder's visiting, she and I will split any profits from sales of kids and the doeling will provide our family milk for years to come. Daughter named her Elka and though LaMancha's aren't nearly as cute as Nubians (no ears!) with her docile personality, she will definitely grow on us.

I'm finding the goats are growing on me in general. I dare say I could end up being a goat lover. Don't tell anyone.

It's raining, lets blog

Today is raining, so I'll finally post these pics I took last week. It's been so sunny and nice (awesome) but it's good to have a down day...as long as it's just one day. I'm making borscht for my deprived family, the ham bone is slowly cooking and our house feels cozy.

What's your favorite thing to do on a rainy day in the summer?

pansies and Livingston daisies planted here...hope they get bigger!

zucchini & 2 sunflowers...the warmest part of our yard

columbine getting ready to bloom

2 new raspberry beds, one yellow one thorn less red

never ending fence redo

our yellow house that used to be green

our old laying hens

planted garden

new chickens for this year, our "teenagers"

first try at turnips, how do you eat turnips?

new top needed for our picnic table, old rotted one removed

there is nothing better than a snuggly baby goat

my prized peony, love this thing

husband's honey bees hard at work

Broody Hen

Have you ever seen a broody hen who hatches out her own chicks and then cares for them? Well this is my first year to see such a thing (another farm had some) and so I had to have one. I found a hen available and I found some of the Easter Egger chicks that I wanted to get some pretty colored eggs from and went farm hopping.

First I picked up the hen who is a Cochin x Silkie, the lady I got her from calls her a "Frobbit". She's white and very silky smooth. She didn't like being pulled off of her clutch, but into the box she went and on we drove to the other farm.

The woman at the other farm had all sorts of animals: sheep, bunnies, geese, ducks, chickens and quail. Lots of chicks, and 3 incubators full of eggs. She picked out 5 hopefully girl chicks (she even showed me how to tell by their tail feathers if they're girls or boys). She suggested putting them into the same box with the Frobbit, as she has at least 4 Frobbits that I saw all with their own following of chicks. Sure enough she settled right down and was a gracious mama to the new chicks.

When we got home we put them into our large dog kennel so the cat couldn't get at the chicks and the mama and babies could bond. They are so quiet compared to the chicks in the brooder box under the heat lamp. I forget they are there then I freak out and go check on them and they're all just quietly sitting there looking around. SO CUTE!!!

kids named her Dutchess and her 5 chicks

Chicks, bees, baby goats and Pascha

It's amazing.

You look at things you take for granted and you don't notice them until you start farming.

Like "kicking the bucket" we realized where that got the name REAL QUICK! When that goat (or cow) kicks over that bucket of milk you worked so hard to get, you want to slit it's throat and stick it in the freezer.

This article was not what I expected when I typed "Easter Lamb" into google. But this man is Greek Orthodox and describes how his Paschal Lamb is so much a part of him. Lambs (and goats) are born in the spring and at one year old they are at their biggest that you want to let them get before they begin to get tough. Thus giving us the Easter Lamb or an Easter Kid.

The hatching eggs went into the incubator last night. There are 45 total the children are excited as is my husband (me too I suppose). I am looking forward to having some special Black Copper Maran chicks as my own in 20 days from now. It seems the perfect thing to do during Lent, hatch out chicks for the spring.

My husband ordered his bees last week. They will be here in April and we will set up our first hive. Just one this year. My husband will be in an apprenticeship with a friend and he's letting us borrow the hive for the first year to see how we like it.

Our larger Nubian goat is due on April 15th. The girls go into heat in the fall and then you can try to time them to kid when it's best for you. They have to be dried up 2 months before kidding, so Lent seemed a good time to have little to no milk. I think we'll dry up the other one too since she will kid in June but I really wanted my daughter to have a good period of time off so that she would not have to milk 2x per day. I'd like her to be antsy to start when one of them kids and that should happen with a good break. We have thought about raising a male kid up for next year's Pascha feast. We shall see.

It's amazing how our food cycle actually used to revolve around what food was being produced at that time of year. I've already seen that with the garden but it's so much more apparent when you add animals to the mix. It's sad more people don't get to experience that. I'm glad our family is just beginning to learn it.

Hay day!

(Picture from Wolverine Farms in Palmer)

Today was another beautiful hay day. I only know what this term means after having to purchase hay for our 2 dear goats. The farmers out here didn't get any (or much) hay on the first cutting this year because of the stupid rain that ailed us for many more than 32 days. I think it was dry for that day right before that and rained about 15 days before that too...so when July 1st rolled around (time to start cutting) most farmers had missed or would miss the window and their hay got drenched, maybe they cut it but it never had a chance to dry out... Everyone looses out on that deal, the farmers growing it especially.

Driving into Palmer yesterday I was beside myself to see the sun out, 75 degrees, and fresh hay in the many fields laying out in the sun. "Dear God, Please don't let it rain today" and yesterday there was no thunder storm like we've been having every other day this week.

That reminds me, I should go check Craigslist for hay.