Homesteading with children

• Sunday, July 5, 2009 - Inspiration and Creation.

Posted By Valkyrie

"Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self."---Erich Fromm

I'm working on a rolling needle holder for my knitting needles. I chose the one from the blog Alexandra Knits
it has multiple pocks for different sized needles, double points and circulars. It's versatile and the design is simple.

However, it's been YEARS since I've done any serious sewing. I recently purchased a new Brother sewing machine. It's divine! I've fiddled with it, played with all the stitches it can do, learned how to use the automatic threading feature and loaded a few bobbins. It's so smooth and easy to use compared to my 60 year old Kenmore. Don't get me wrong, I love my in cabinet Kenmore, but it's a chugger. I may take it in for an overhaul yet.

I also dragged out my Baby-Lock serger, cleaned it up and oiled it. I had to look through the user manual for a refresher. Wow, I also found the original receipt from 1987, when my parents bought it for my 25th birthday.

Pulling out my supplies that have been nestled in the antique tiger oak buffet, that has kept everything safe and secure all these year and through 3 moves, my mind drifted to those days and nights slouched over my machines piecing together projects. I was never good at sewing, mostly due to my impatient desire for the finished project. That has always been my downfall. Impatience. The willingness to allow mistakes to remain if it meant being that much closer to finished.

The years have mellowed me, I guess. Yesterday I actually, not only ripped out a seam I had just completed, but re-cut 2 pieces when I noticed how crooked they had turned out. Working with silky acetate material can be a challenge when cutting. I had chosen this project to improve my rotary cutting wheel skills which wasn't the wisest choice of material.

Another thing I was able to do that I was not able to accomplish 20 years ago, when my back got sore and I felt myself getting frustrated, I quietly and resolutely put everything away, cleaned up my working area and walked away to do something else. Never before would I have done that, I would have just charged through the project, crooked lines be darned. It was a new feeling, a good feeling. I wasn't angry, like I would have been so many years ago, I wasn't frustrated, sweating and hurting. I simply thought to myself, "well, I think I've worked on this long enough, I want this to turn out nice, so I think I'll go do something else for a while."

I enjoyed my dinner and when I thought about going back to the project, I waved the thought away with, "Nah, I need a break, I'll pick it back up tomorrow." Which I will likely do after this post.

There's a glow inside me now. It's not just knowing that my youth wasn't such a waste as I've thought over the last 10 years. It's learning that being older comes with wisdom that I didn't have then. It's feeling the warmth of creativity and inspiration, this time without the harried frustration.

I've learned something else over the last week. I'm happiest and most content when I'm being creative. I spend a lot of my time working, taking care of our homestead and, of all things, playing "World of Warcraft". I enjoy all those things. But when knitting, spinning, sewing, beading and other crafty creative things, that's when I bask in a glowing sense of self.

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• Saturday, July 4, 2009 - The Original Comb-over

Posted By Daisyblend in Critterville

This is Elizabeth, one of our 3 year old Blue Andulusian hens.

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• Saturday, July 4, 2009 - Auction Day

Posted By Marie

Saturday! Auction Day in the neighborhood. We will see how everything goes. There are a lot of neat things down on Elmers hay pasture. Everything from smokehouses and gazebos to wringer eashers and wood cook stoves. Mark drove our tractor down last night. The little ponies and carts are selling today too. I hope the buyers with money come :)

My in-laws arrives last night to stay the weekend. My father in law hopes to get a bunch of chickens today at the auction. I think they are selling about 300 young hens. He set up shop in our front yard yesterday and made a picnic table out there. It is made out of the extra rough cut lumber Mark has accumulated, a mixture of maple, oak and poplar. The table weighs a literal ton and I think we will need a group of amish guys to move it over to it's final spot under a maple tree. Until then, it can stay where it is.

I worked a lot on staking our 70 tomatoe plants the other night. My hands are such a mess now, between the scratches from the raspberry brambles, and stained fingers from the berries and stained hands from working in the tomatoes.... definitely not a hand model moment here.

Good weather today, thank you Lord. I think I need one more cup of coffee before I go out to face the cows. I'm trying to dry up Mrs Calloway ecause she should be due in a couple months (if I calculated right) and I'd like to give her a little rest. I just milk her out about half way each time until her milk supply goes down to the point where I don't milk at all. She has had a good long cycle this time, nearly two years. Not bad for an old girl.

Well, I'm off to get coffee in me. Have a great one!

I love roosters.

So far they have taken 3 truckloads out. They found better than expected trees here, so maybe we will be getting some extra money for them. We shall see.

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• 2009-Jul-3 - Cute Children and pets pictures

Posted By m j in Home

My Mom sends me some cute e-mails. I love these one and had to share with you all.

Who is walking who?

I look like you or is it you look like me?

Ah, can I keep him? (the dog is asking):

Um mom, why am I wearing clothes and his is not??

Look Mom at what I learned :

Just one little bite that's all:

Are you sure they taste like chicken??

Are you sure they are in here???

That's all for now, Blessings,Mj

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• Friday, July 3, 2009 - 7-2-09 Up-date

Posted By m j

Kristi was board earlier today and decided to play wii. She played monopoly with Hope! Hope is our soon to be 10 year old golden medical alert service dog. We train the dog to all kinds of stuff some funny and silly but this is too much!

Titus is doing great in his service dog training. We took him out for the first time to go shopping and he was wonderful. If we stopped and looked or spoke to someone he would lay down with out being told to. I thought it was odd, so I kept testing him. I would walk and stop not look at him he would just lay down . That is amazing for a six month old puppy to do on his first outing in stores. I wonder if Kristi is going to teach Titus to play monopoly??

We start training them as soon as they are born. Also having good parents helps too. It took me two years to find his parents, to find the lines I was looking for. Now we need one more female golden. We might get one from Alex's breeder.

Blessings, Mj

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• Thursday, July 2, 2009 - They Had to Go

Posted By Valkyrie

Normally when I raise something here it stays for good. But today I said good-bye to my 3 ducks. It wasn't an easy decision, but one that's been begging to be made for about a year now. I had to let my ego take a backseat and admit my failure and strong dislike for these 3 ducks.

Last year, my male duck (pekin cross) started brutalizing my call ducks. He even killed a few, he's like many ducks, in the way that he insists on mating with ANY water fowl. Nevermind that he out weighed the calls 3 times over or that he was trying to mate with the males as well, that didn't matter to him. I separated the 3 standard ducks by tossing them in with the chickens. They did just fine there, too.

Unfortunately, I lost the last of the call ducks during the winter to a very wiley possum. That finally stopped, I envisioned the giant rat crossing the highway a mile away or trying to take on one of the many dogs that wander the area, either way, the killing stopped.

Nobody has bothered my dominiques, the big ducks or any of my other birds for many months now. Then the Cottonpatch came. Within two weeks that stupid duck started brutalizing one of my geese. That was the last straw. Still I hung on, thinking that Alfred would finally punk him out and he'd stop bothering Matilda. I didn't care anymore that I had hatched these ducks from eggs in the incubator and raised them to adulthood, but I wasn't willing to part with them yet.

Then Monday I left the pen spittin' mad. I had fallen so hard for my geese, that seeing Matilda's head with a bald patch and a few sores and the dominant male duck chasing her around without mercy put me into a tailspin. That was IT!!! I was done. I had worked around these 3 ducks long enough. They had to go, they'd done nothing but make me angry for a year now. My patchies, dominiques, and turkeys are my priorities. NOT 3 mutt ducks.

Tuesday morning before work I put the 3 onto Freecycle. Today, they went to their new home, one with no call ducks, no geese and another female duck. The dominant male will be VERY happy and I'm sure the other male and the female will enjoy having another friend. When I got home from dropping them off, I swear I saw Matilda smile and laugh. She knows she rules. Gracie and Alfred are happy too I'm sure since that darn duck chased them around as well.

Through my escapades with ducks over the last several years, I have learned...I prefer Muscovies. They're the only duck I'll ever have again. No matter how blasted cute they are as ducklings, if they're not a Muscovy, I'm not bringing them home or incubating their eggs.

If I feel so justified, why do I feel like such a failure?

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• 2009-Jul-2 - Kristi and Mya's new adventure in pictures

Posted By m j in Home

Okay, Janet is in trouble she let Kristi and Mya run free on the mountain. Worse yet with a camera . Here are some pictures of the adventure.

1. Is Kristi finding out there are more than one of her:

2. Mya discover pine cones, do pine nuts come from pine cones??:

3. Is Kristi playing cars (she is the car)

4. Maybe I will be a better car sitting down??

5. Better yet I will play speed bump!! Did I send Kristi with her insuance card???

6. Mya discovers a cow and gives it a kiss !!

7. Milk comes from here ???? I know the poor thing , will she ever get over the shock???

8. Then they made friends with the locals:

JANET!!!!, we do not let the girls play speed bump in the middle of the Road!!! /. We need to let the girls out of the house once in a while. Poor Mya was so lost as to where milk comes from!! And did not know what a pine cone was!!! Poor Kristi she thought there was more than one of her!! Look at the locals nails on that local, see how long they are?? They could hurt the girls!!

Sorry but I had to write and show the pictures , they are so cute. I will show more latter.

Blessings Mj

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• Thursday, July 2, 2009 - Log trucks and cinnamon rolls

Posted By Marie

We woke up to a cool day today! So far our high has been about 60 so while I had the opportunity I fired up the wood stove and baked! I made a batch of almond biscotti, bread, rolls and about 4 dozen gi-normous cinnamon rolls. I hope this holds us over for a bit.

Today is also a noisy day. We are select timbering two of our hills and so the logging equipment is out there making a ruckus. Hopefully after this, there will be enough light coming through so that the younger trees can grow big. Right now it is just too crowded out there.

I got outside for a minute and took some pictures today, but it looks like I am out of space here so I will have to go back and delete some old ones before I can put them up. Maybe later if I am not to lazy. I took a picture of the garden but I cropped out my tomatoes. I am so ashamed, I did not pinch off the suckers on my tomatoes like I should have and it seems that everyone notices... how embarassing.

Then yesterday I announced to Mark that I had not been able to go shopping for a month, we were on our last half roll of toilet paper, and I only had three pairs of underwear and they were coming apart. So, he came home early, loaded me and the little girls up and we went to Walmart. I was so excited, We got the enormous 24 pack of scott toilet paper. It is sitting in the outhouse right now. I was reading the packaging on it though, and it has a "Scott tissue community" advertised on it with a little picture of a steaming coffee cup, as if there are actually people who pour themselves a nice hot cup and want to chat about strength vs. softness. Give me a break! (But wait, what am I doing here....:)

I also was so excited about purchasing new chonies that had "do not ride up" on the packaging that I failed to notice that they come up to my armpits. I guess that is one way to get rid of panty lines, to have never ending panties. But alas I digress.

Mark is going to try to sell his tractor at an auction this weeked. I hope it goes well, if it doesn't look like it will bring enough, we will just buy it back ourselves. But it is just too light to pull the brush hog up into the hills and he REALLY wants to find something with a front loader on it. We shall see. The first step is to see what we can get out of the current one.

Well, I'm going to see about deleting some old photos. Have a great day!

~Marie

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