It finally happened...

We chose contentment, indeed happiness to just be here in our little house on our little piece of land in our little neighbourhood were we have lived for the past 6 or 7 years. We decided that since we were not really going to ever sell our home, that we would begin to "homestead" much more seriously right here in our little backyard. Rodrigo and I talked and planned for weeks and months, just how to best use what God had given us to work with here. We planned on how to make our large family feel most comfortable in the small confines of this house. We talked with the (oldest 3) children about these things too, we asked for their ideas and input about everything we were considering. We talked about what we needed to get rid of, sell, or giveaway. We discussed what we would need to build, buy, plant, or breed and raise to become as self-sufficient as possible.

We were positively sure that putting our house up for sale was totally pointless, because no one was really buying houses just now. Our house had a 6 month contract on it with the real estate company, and we had so many showings. For 5 months, at least once a week, sometimes as many as 3 times in a week, we would have to maniacally clean everything in the house, and make sure everything was totally spotless and leave. Everything was scrubbed, polished, dusted, and straightened to perfection or as near as I could humanly get it. And then a bunch of total strangers would go traipsing through our home, never to be heard from again. I hated it, but I knew that without all of those strangers snooping about my house, we would never get to sell it. But as the weeks wore on I felt more and more resentful at having to prepare my home for something that would never happen. Rodrigo encouraged me just to hang on and finish out our contract with the realtors, so I did... but I wasn't enjoying it a bit!

In the meantime we decided to go ahead and start really living here again. We began to implement our homesteading, self-sufficiency plan. We bought fruit trees, 7 of them, and planted a mini orchard, with room to add a few more trees next spring. We got meat rabbits and started breeding them to eat eventually. (At the moment we have 10 adult rabbits for breeding, several of whom are pregnant and one with 5 babies.)

We planted a bunch of veggies in the flower beds since all of our dedicated gardening spots had been reseeded with grass, to make our lawn more desirable to potential home-buyers. *rolling eyes* We made plans to greatly expand our gardening area next year!  And we decided to go ahead and get a couple of dairy goats!! 

Yes, I finally got my milk goats. We have been talking about it for ages, reading, researching, talking to people who had goats, and finally Rodrigo told me that he thought if I was ready to start milking them twice a day that I should go ahead and locate a few. No sense wasting our lives waiting for something that may never happen he said, better to live our lives that way we want right now while we are young enough to enjoy it, instead of waiting for "someday" only to realize that someday either came too late, or never came.  Thus Daisy and Larkspur were welcomed to our little homestead in the neighbourhood! (I'll post more about them soon! I love my goats!!) 


They lived in the backyard and slept in a little plastic "barn". Rodrigo was not happy with the "barn", and stated that the goats needed their own shed, purposefully built just for them. We spent a couple of weeks researching exactly what type of housing would be best suited to our needs as well as theirs. We wanted something large enough to house them, a place for milking, a few kids next spring, and even to house a small flock of laying hens that we wanted to get. (Remember, we got rid of our lovely chickens when we decided to put our house on the market? We thought having a flock of chickens in the backyard would scare off prospective buyers, Haha! We had tons of "prospective buyers" just no actual buyers!!) So materials were acquired and work was begun on the new goat shed. 

So basically everything we did, pretty much seemed purposefully designed to scare off any house hunters in the area. We still had showings, but in the 5 months that it has been on the market we didn't have one. single. offer. Not even a really low offer, nothing, zero, zip, nada! I didn't even care anymore, I kept asking Rodrigo if we could please just break our contract with the real estate company and get on with life. I was sick of having all of my books and pictures in storage. I was sick of paying (!!) to store books and furniture that we could be using. So a couple of weeks ago we had one last showing. A few days after that the realtor called Rodrigo. It was July 4th and we were picnicking with the kids at the lake. 

Rodrigo was out in the water with the children paddling them around in one of our inflatable kayaks. When I saw who was calling I didn't even answer the phone. I had no intention of cutting our fun short to run home and clean, for yet another showing! Rodrigo had the day off and we were celebrating! Later, after we were home that evening, I remembered the missed call. I told Rodrigo that he probably had a message from the realtor and that he might want to check it. No message, so Rodrigo called him up to find out when they wanted to show the house. I didn't really even like the guy, so I surely didn't want to talk to him! Ro got a funny look on his face when they started talking and went out to the porch to talk where it was quieter. He came inside in a few minutes and told me that we had an offer on the house!!! 

It had finally happened! Now, after we had decided that we would choose joy and contentment. We made up our minds to be truly grateful to God for all the wonderful blessings He had given us right here, and make the very most of those gifts. After we had invested so much more of ourselves (not to mention time and money!) into making this house of ours exactly what we wanted~ a functioning homestead. Someone wanted to buy it?!?! And so now we are in the midst of looking for a new place to call home, we had completely stopped house hunting for ourselves since we were sure we would have no reason to need another place! We close on this house on August 16th. So we are feeling a bit of pressure to hurry up and find somewhere to live! And to make things feel even more adventurous not only do we have a family of 7 people to worry about housing, we have 2 dogs, 2 goats (that must be milked twice a day!) and 15 rabbits to deal with now as well! 


What an adventure! 

Building an A Frame chicken "tractor" coop

My mom got her first chicks a few months ago. Initially, she kept them indoors in her basement in a brooder, but they were quickly out-growing that and trying out their newly feathered wings  by fluttering to the top of the brooder and exploring the basement unsupervised during the day. So the kids and I went over to her house and built her a little A Frame chicken tractor for her chicks to live in until they were able to get their permanent housing built at Mom's new house. (My parents recently bought a new home in the country and were remodeling it getting ready to move in, the chickens will have a large permanent coop at their new home.)

I designed this little chicken tractor to be very light weight so my mom could easily move it around her yard by herself. The chicks only spent their days outside. In the evening she brought them back into the basement brooder due to a large number of dogs and other predators roaming through her yard.  Plus the night time temperatures were still dipping quite low at the time, even though the days were plenty warm for the chicks to play outside. 

Since I forgot my circular saw at home, Logan cut all of the wood for the chicken tractor by hand. Claire found my mother's hammer which is covered with flower decals and asked "Is this for me?" She spent the next hour hammering every nail in sight! Some she actually started and nailed herself, others she just finished hammering in after they had been started for her.  She was quite absorbed in the whole process. We had a great time watching her. 

After the chicks had been installed in their new digs, Claire and my mom's dog spent a long time watching them explore their new surroundings.

The chicks were very happy to have a new safe place to play and eat bugs and fresh weeds and grass. The whole thing weighed less than 15 lbs, so it was quite easy for mom to move around her yard and lift to place chick feed and water under. 

Oh, Hello There!

I've started this blog post in my head a hundred times or more. I have so much I want to say, but I don't have any idea of where to start! It's been a while...
Ideas for possible topics of this post I tossed around in my head:

• I miss blogging. I miss composing my thoughts and sharing a little tiny slice of my family's life with the world at large. I miss posting pictures, so that a year or 12 from now we can come back and see them and remember just what was happening on a certain date in our lives. That was the plan for this blog in the first place.

{Claire helping Grandma plant things}

• I miss your comments. I really like hearing from you all. 

• Depression stinks! (possibly due to any or all of the following: post-baby hormones, winter, or maybe my brain just doesn't work correctly all of the time, to produce the right amount of happy hormones... stupid brain.Working on improving my diet, letting things go, and lots of sunshine are helping.)

{Out for exercise in the sunshine with Emmett}

• Grief stinks, too!

• Grief really stinks when it's not just you, but your 2 year old baby suffering over the loss of her (foster) sister!! (Little Miss H, our foster daughter, was moved from our home to go live with relatives out of state a little over a month ago. We all miss her and it has been very hard to deal with. But it has been especially hard for Claire. H came to live with us when both girls were about 18 months old. Claire doesn't remember a time before H was here. They did every. single. thing. together. They thought they were really sisters and we treated both of them as such. Then one day strangers came in to our home, sat in our living room and talked for a few hours and then took her sister away, never to be seen again. How do you explain that to a 2 year old? Claire spent most of February crying over any and everything. She stopped sleeping through the night, and never wanted to leave my side. Some days would be better than others, unless she caught sight of something that belonged to H still laying around somewhere then she would crumble into a tearful mess and cry and act out and be generally miserable the rest of the day. I still have no idea how to best help her. I know she is grieving, I know she doesn't understand. And I don't know what to do about it. I am trying to just follow her lead and deal with it day by day. She still talks about H constantly and asks about her. I try to explain as best as I can, and she tries to understand as best she can and somehow we'll get through this. But it's hard. 

• Our foster care system is good/horrible/necessary/evil/uncaring/difficult/works really well/doesn't help at all! All of those things, depending on what day you ask me.

• We are selling our house, well, we are trying to sell our house. Anyone out there want a well cared for, sweet little house in a nice country neighbourhood? 

• I've noticed that I always spell neighbour and neighbourhood like the rest of the world does and not like they do here in the USA. Google spell checker doesn't like it. I don't care! It is a nice quiet neighbourhood with friendly caring neighbours! Take that Google spell checker!

• I like it when Australians say chooks, instead of chickens. I still say chickens though. Actually I don't say much of either one right now, since we got rid of all of our chickens in January... trying to sell our house you know. I didn't think prospective buyers would appreciate the chickens in the yard. If they want them they are welcome bring their own!

• The idea of selling our home is really kind of stressful! First we have 3/4 of our stuff packed away to make this small house look open and roomy. (It's 1400 square feet and there are 7 of us living in it!) Plus I have to keep it much cleaner than I am used to, so that it can be ready on a moments notice to show to buyers... not easy with this many people home all day long!  The pictures I took for the real estate listing make it look pretty nice I think, looking at them I thought that I would want to buy this house. Only we want a place with more land and hopefully a larger house! But also it is really hard to contemplate leaving here. This is the first home we've ever owned, and it has been "home" for the past 6 years. Claire and Emmett where born here. We've made a lot of really good memories here. But we all feel like the time has come for a change. 

• Our trampoline decided to go wandering due to a huge wind/thunder storm that came through the area a couple of weeks ago. It wanted to see how it would look perched in a neighbour's tree 2 houses (and over 2 fences) away from our house. It didn't look so great up there, so we got it down and brought it back over both of those fences back to our backyard where it belongs. Oh and we staked it down so it wouldn't go wandering without permission anymore. The neighbour agreed with us that his tree was a strange place to keep our trampoline after all. 

• I've been a bit of a creative slump.

• I'm coming out of my creative slump! Lots of WIP's and ideas percolating. Even a few finished things to share here soon!

• There has been some of this going on... Still not very reliably though, just when the mood strikes her ;-)

• And lots of this... 

{Emmett is almost 6 months old already!}

{Check out those beautiful chubby arms, and face! He is so very squeezable and cuddly!} 

So that is a brief summary of what has been happening around here for the past few months... Well, maybe not so brief in retrospect, but when you consider that I haven't posted here in about 2 months... A lot can happen in that time! I can't wait to start posting again now. I have tons of things to share! 

Cluck, Cluck, Cluck

This morning I went out to check on the chickens and this is what I found!

It all started last week when the boys and I were outside clearing brush and gathering wood scraps etc. for a bonfire. We tore down a small pile of scraps and threw them into the wheelbarrow and what did we find underneath but one of our large laying hens setting on 18(!) eggs. Yikes! One of the eggs was cracked pretty badly when we moved the wood, and inside we found a nearly mature chick. The rest of the eggs survived but the mama hen ran off when we moved the scraps and joined the all the others that looked just like her! Now what?! We had a pile of exposed eggs in the center of the chicken yard, and no way to tell who mama was, plus it was getting ready to storm and we couldn't put the wood scraps back in a way that would be adequate to protect her and the eggs from the elements. We waited for a while hoping to see which hen came back to care for the eggs, but none did, and the sky was getting blacker and blacker and the thunder had started up in earnest.

We carefully gathered the eggs up and put them in Matthew's shirt, and he carried them into the chicken coop. We put the eggs in one of the nest boxes and grabbed a little bitty banty hen. (Side note: about 2 weeks ago we let one of our little banty hens go broody. She was setting on her 5 little eggs faithfully and we were looking forward to watching the mama hen with her chicks in another week. Her identical twin also wanted in on the action and sat in the empty nest box next to her sister every day even though I didn't leave any eggs under her, she still sat as if she had a bunch of eggs there.) So we placed the egg-less banty hen on top of all 17 large eggs and she was thrilled! She settled right down clucking and cooing to her new brood, gathering them carefully closer with her beak. She was so little she could barely cover them all.

We have no idea when these eggs began to be incubated, thus no way of knowing if they will all hatch at the same time. (For those of you who don't already know, chickens will usually lay one egg a day without trying to incubate them until they feel like they have laid enough to raise a good size family, then they will stop laying and begin sitting on them so that all of the eggs will hatch on the same day. That is called going broody. Usually 21 days after beginning incubation the eggs will all hatch within a few hours of each other. But if you have more than one hen (we have several!) they often lay eggs in each other's nests, so we have no way of knowing if these eggs are from one hen, or several hens, possibly laid long after the incubation process was begun on the initial batch of eggs.

When I snapped this picture this afternoon there where already 5 chicks hatched. And when I went out to check on them after dark there where 9 totally hatched and several more just starting to crack their eggs. I can't wait to see how many we have in the morning! Once she gets off the nest with the chicks that have hatched, I am thinking I might stick any remaining eggs under the other banty that still has a week left to incubate her eggs and see if we get any more little ones that way. I hate to just leave the fertilized eggs to be abandoned after being incubated for who knows how long.

The boys where thrilled with the surprise chicks! And now I finally know why I have been getting fewer eggs for the past couple of weeks. I thought it was the heat making them less inclined to lay, but instead they apparently had raising families on their little chicken brains!

Eureka!

Look what Ethan found today...

Four tiny eggs! Our little chickens that we got this spring have been growing and growing and today 4 of them finally decided to lay their first eggs. Ethan was so excited when he found them! See how tiny they are compared to one of our older hen's eggs...

Nothing beats the taste of a "homegrown" egg!