Henry just finished a whole memory puzzle on my iPhone. I guess it’s not that big of a deal, but I’m very proud of him and he’s very proud of himself. Now he moved on to a different game. I love watching him operate my phone. Emily told me that he even taught his cousin Isabel how to view the pictures on the phone. ”Me show you. You push this, and then push the flower, and then you go joop joop joop to look at the pictures.”
The big news of 2009 is that we added quite a few farm animals to our already-animal-filled life. In May we adopted a small pony named Cowboy. A few weeks after that we got three baby goats and named them Banjo, Moon and Cosmo. Sancho, the big pony, was acquired in June. In August we found the final touch to the backyard farm: Brad Pitt the llama. Our first winter with farm animals has started out OK. It is always an adventure finding and moving hay to where you need it. Now I understand much better why many people move their animals to the grass instead of the other way around. I also have a greater appreciation for the simplicity of our flock of laying hens. That is, at least, when they are laying…
Henry turned two in May and the big hit of his birthday was a battery operated four-wheeler. He rides that thing ALL over the place, and has become a bit of a trick rider. As a two year old, he specializes in mayhem and general destruction. What’s special about him is his incredibly sweet nature and physical affection — if you want a great hug, it’s worth waiting around until he’s ready to give you one. Ryan and I are lucky enough to be hugged and kissed by him all day every day (pretty much).
Delia turned six this year. (I know. We can’t believe it either.) She continues to learn from everything she does, only this year we are calling it homeschooling. Around her birthday in October, she started swimming and loves to be in the water even more now that she has experienced displacement in a calm manner (aka FLOATING). Although she didn’t finish last year’s class, she’s trying ice skating again with her eye on the goal of performing in the show. All that pesky practicing between now and then sure is boring, though.
Ryan’s dad, John, is fighting lung cancer so the last few months have seen extra traveling, worry, and uproar. We are so appreciative of the help from many of you, and the well wishes too. We look forward to 2010 with hopes for good health, great memories, and prosperity for all.
He says “I know” when he has an idea. Example: “I know – I’ll wear my boots!”
I cut open a round bale yesterday. Gave a little to the goats, and now it’s for Brad and the horses. We’ll see how long it lasts.
Got 56 square alfalfa bales today, for $4 each, from a guy in Wright. I weighed one and it was 33 lbs. Started feeding it to the goats today. We’ve also been giving them some alfalfa pellets. I think we bought the bag on about 11/23.
I’m up with Henry in the middle of the night because he HAD to go to sleep at 6 PM today, and slept until 2 AM and now… well, we’ll see what happens next. The transition away from a nap is an adventure for sure! The good news is I thought to write a post to try to document some of what’s been going on around here.
Henry is: SWEET. Completely, totally, utterly sweet. He kisses us, all the animals, gives hugs and says “awwwww” when the cats are curled up together. When I say he hugs and kisses, I mean pretty much constantly. Every time I walk into his field of view, or he walks into mine, he wants to greet me with a hug and a kiss. It’s so, well, sweet.
He wants to invite TV characters over to play, he stuffs things under his shirt and says “Ho, ho, ho!” to be Santa. He is into playing on the computers and writes all over himself with marker every chance he gets. He loves to give high fives and ask for “up high” then “down low” and pull his hand away and say “too slow!” He tells a few different “knock knock” jokes. All this with most of his works beginning with D… I translate for him quite a bit! 
Delia turned six and received some money so we’ve started her on a spending 50% and saving 50% plan and it’s been really neat to watch her spend her money in wise ways. She invested in some beads and is working on making some bracelets to sell and give as gifts. We are wearing some to test for durability. A few days ago she and I went to Target. I was discouraging her from spending $5 on a box of foam stickers, thinking they wouldn’t be much fun. The past two days she has spent probably 10 hours coming up with incredibly creative ways to use those stickers! I have beautiful decorations on my computer, my cell phone, a bouquet of foam flowers in a tiny vase, and lots of other neat things. I told her earlier today that I was SO WRONG about the foam stickers not being worth the money!
For Delia’s sixth birthday we went to a hotel that has a waterpark. We all had fun, and Delia made a breakthrough with her swimming skills. She started practicing going completely under water. For the next few weeks, we went swimming several times and Delia made breakthrough after breakthrough. First she was dog-paddling 6-8 feet at a time. Then she got the confidence to keep her feet up longer and could paddle for 15-20 feet. Then she started swimming underwater! The last time we went to the pool, she floated on her back, and would swim for 3+ hours if she could but her brother is not up for that!
At the waterpark in Duluth they have a giant bucket that fills with water and then tips over and pours a huge splash of water over everything. It’s pretty scary and it can almost knock you over. We always wait until it tips to go near there so we don’t get splashed. One time we waited too long and it poured out on us. I was holding Henry and I put my hand around the back of his head and held him close to shield him from the water. When it was over, he was a little scared so I laughed and said “I saved you!” to kind of cheer him up.
A little while later the bucket poured out again (though we weren’t very close to it and not really in danger of getting splashed). Henry saw it going and put his hand on my head. ”Me save you,” he said.
Tomorrow my little girl turns six.
As I write this, we’re in Duluth at the Edgewater Hotel and waterpark for Delia’s birthday celebration (we had the waterpark almost to ourselves since it’s Monday!) Six years ago at this time we were at the hospital in Ely, about to have out first child.
I can hardly believe that she’s six already, but today she was swimming on her own, and even lost her third tooth. She continues to amaze us with her curiosity, creativity, intelligence, and humor. She’s quite a almost-six-year-old girl, and we love her so much.
After much back and forth, consternation, worrying, aborted plans, and research, we decided to put up an electric fence for the horses. We needed more area for them to roam and while we want to do a nice permanent fence at some point, time and money just weren’t going to allow that to happen right now. I found a good deal on used fence chargers and T-posts, and the relative ease of putting up a large electric fence made the decision for us.
The project started with an afternoon of pulling the T-posts out of the ground at someone else’s farm, followed by spooling up a few thousand feet of wire. I got about 75 T-posts, two fence chargers, a fence tester, a couple hundred insulators, large wood posts, and various other supplies all for about $90, which was a great deal. I also found an old electrical box at the dump which worked out perfectly to protect the fence chargers from the weather. I decided to use both chargers – one for the top line of tape, and one for the bottom wires – so that if one failed or one wire strand was shorted out, at least one strand would still work.
It took about two partial days to lay out our fence lines, mow and weed whack, and drive all the posts. We put the corner posts in, and then stretched some string between them to get the line posts straight. I discovered that posts drive much better when you let the weight of the post driver do most of the work instead of trying to really ram it down on top of the posts. Delia helped me dig the holes for the wooden posts, and I used my $2 post hole digger I got from the garage sale in Hastings the day we picked up our goats. We didn’t use concrete. We just tamped the dirt down around the posts, and they feel very nice and solid. 3 ground rods is recommended. I bought two and I’ve only driven one in (that was a chore!) and it seems to work fine. I’m definitely going to do the second one just to be safe and maybe even a third so that I have a good chance of it continuing to work when the ground freezes. If we notice it not working as well in January, it’ll be too late to drive another rod.
It’s mostly rectangular except for one corner cut out of it to go around the pond. The long dimension is about 330′ and the short is about 175′, which works out to about 1.5 acres. It goes west a little past the pine trees in our back yard, north to about 20′ from the garden by the pond, east to where it starts to get swampy, and south to about 15′ from the tree line. I left room all around it to be able to drive the tractor or truck. We have one gate near the barn. In the future I’ll want more, but that’s good enough for now. It’s 49 T-posts and the one big wood corner post with the gate on it. I know it’s 49 posts because we had 50 post toppers and luckily I had one left when we were done and didn’t need to go back to Hibbing for another bag of 10. Emily and Delia helped walk around and attach all the insulators. I started to unroll the wire I collected and found that it was a lot more kinked up and bent than I thought it was. I worked for a few hours on cutting out the kinks and re-splicing, but then decided it wasn’t a good use of my time when a new 1/2 mile roll of fence wire isn’t all that expensive. $50 for that saved me probably 6 hours of work and gives us a stronger and much nicer looking fence. We decided on poly-tape for the top strand for visibility. We wanted poly-rope, but the tape was quite a bit cheaper and almost as good. The tape is so lightweight that I was able to run that around myself. Emily helped me with the wire. That part of the job was very easy and we got it done in less than an hour.
The two fencers just barely fit in the box I got from the dump. I mounted some wood in the back of it with t-nuts in it so I can easily attach and remove the two fencers. I drilled holes in the bottom for the wire. I attached a bit of treated 2×4 to the wooden gate post and then bolted the box to that, and ran the wires down to one insulator for each fencer, and then I have them going to the actual fence wire with jumpers with alligator clips on the ends.
It works! I used my tester all around it and it all checked out. I also tested it with a piece of grass and got a good jolt. Cowboy touched it and acted like someone had just shot him. Sancho has gotten zapped a couple of times and he startled a bit, but didn’t seem too bothered. Foley has run under the low wire many times and doesn’t seem to have ever gotten zapped. Same with the goats. It’s not really meant to contain them at this point, but if we want it to we can just add another wire to the bottom. Cosmo touched it with his nose and jerked his head just a little, and then promptly touched it again with his nose. That makes me think I need a little more juice. That or goats are really dumb, or don’t conduct electricity well. I haven’t touched it yet, and neither have the kids. We’re going to turn it off when the kids are out playing.
The horses have spent the whole night in the pasture and haven’t escaped. It’s so much fun to watch them roam and run around. They were really bored being in their little paddock all the time. Today I put Brad in there with them and it was peaceful. I thought there might be some battles, but they did fine. They kept their distance though.
