The other day we had the goats out in the yard, and they started running toward us just as Henry started running to the trampoline and right across their path.  Emily yelled “Henry!  Look out!”  Henry panicked and hit the deck, tornado-drill-style, right in front of a charging Banjo.  Banjo very gracefully did a picture-perfect high jump right over him, and never broke stride.  Henry cried a bit because he was scared, but he didn’t get hurt.

We had the vet out last week to see all our farm animals.  For my reference, she gave CD-T to the goats, and rabies and West Nile vaccinations to the horses.  Brad also got CD-T.  She said to give Brad injectable ivermectin once a month during warm weather months to protect him from brain-worm.  Goats can be dewormed twice or three times a year.

We planted three apple trees and a cherry tree about a month ago.  They seem to be doing fine.  If they look good next year, we’ll plant more.  We’d eventually like a nice sized orchard on the other side of the drive.  We did a lot of clearing of brush over there and Emily has been working on it with the mower.

We’ve been finding lots of snakes lately – mostly in and around the hay.  Lots of redbellies and a few garter snakes.

Our pond is full of minnows!  More than I’ve ever seen, and some really big ones too.

I really need to work on this site more!

Delia and I spent Thurs – Sat on Basswood Lake with our neighbors.  The weather was pretty bad but we had a good time and Delia wanted to stay out another night.  Delia caught a walleye and ate it!

Henry and I went fishing today for the first time today.  I caught a 20″ largemouth on Johnson Lake – my biggest bass ever (at least in MN).  Emily and I worked hard to get rid of the leaks in the boat and it worked.  Not a single drop came through.  The motor performed well but did have one instance of surging / bogging.  I’ll keep an eye on it.

The big news is our house addition which is moving along, though it feels like it’s going slowly.  That’s just how this type of thing goes, and I think we’re finally getting very close to starting demolition and construction.  We can’t wait!

Joe and Bev were here and we did some work reclaiming our land from the onslaught of brush.  We bought a device called a brush grubber, which is basically a clamp with teeth that grabs onto small trees so you can yank them out by the roots.  It works great.  We cleared a lot and Emily mowed and now the land across the driveway is looking great.  We planted three apple trees and a cherry tree over there.  Some day maybe we’ll have a nice orchard there.

Henry is speaking more clearly but he still has a ways to go.  He’s so talkative and it’s adorable.

Delia and I made a trip to Nama’s house, and Delia did great – Nama made sure of that by spoiling the heck out of her.  :)  They had a day in Chicago and went to the American Girl store, where Delia adopted Felicity.

My garage is really taking shape.  We can almost fit a car in there now.  :)

We lost two cats in a short time.  Harvi developed liver disease and Coby had cancer (or something – we’re not sure).  It was sad and we miss them, but 3 is a more manageable number of cats in one house.

The weather since we’ve been back has been amazingly warm.  It’s nice that we’re having an early spring, but it cut snowmobiling season short, and I only got one short ride in.  Emily rode with me for the first time ever!  We went to Giants Ridge for lunch, cruised around Wynne Lake a little, and then rode home.  That was it for me for the whole season, though it was a very nice ride.

As of today, the driveway is almost completely clear of snow, and large portions of the yard are too.  Everything is really muddy and wet, but in another week or so I bet it’ll be nice and dry.  Of course, as soon as that happens we’ll probably get two more feet of snow.

A couple weeks ago, Henry and I took my Dad’s truck to Virginia to have lunch and get a yard cart that was on sale.  I’ve been wanting one since we moved here, and now we finally have one.  Henry helped me put it together, and he really did help – he handled a socket wrench like a pro and together we got the axle bolted on to the cart body.  My 4 wheeler doesn’t have a trailer hitch of any kind, so after much thought and a great suggestion from instructables.com, I made one out of muffler clamps and a steel l-shaped bracket.  It was a bit of a tricky welding job, but I got it done and after some use it seems to be holding.  Welding is hard.  There are so many variables to figure out in order to get a good weld.  With this project I winged it, and while it does seem to be holding, the welds are far from good.  My problem was mostly getting sort of a hollow bead.  Instead of having a nice smooth fill, it’s like there’s a groove in the bead, so it almost looks like two small beads.  I think it may be due to using too much current, but it might have also been the angle at which I held the rod, and the motion I used.

My Mom stayed with us for a week and the kids had such a great time with her, as did we.  She got to meet Brad, the goats, and the horses for the first time, and she stayed at the great B&B near our house.  The weather was gorgeous so we even got to spend some time outside.  She also provided babysitting duties so Emily and I took a super romantic trip to the dump.  She even rode on the back of the four wheeler while Delia and Henry rode Sancho down the road.  Sancho did great – especially since he hasn’t been saddled since last fall.  We had some nice meals out, and she got to see Delia’s big ice skating show!  Delia did great, by the way.

We got 6 big round bales from Dale.  It was quite a chore to get them off the trailer.  The other round bales we got rolled right off, but these were SUPER heavy.  With his help, we finally got it done.  They’re all scattered about and I’ll have to get my tractor running to move them around.  Delia is having fun climbing and jumping on them.  She calls it Haytown.

We had a bit of sadness too.  Two of our chickens had apparently been sitting in some water late in the day, and ended up getting frozen to the ground.  Hypothermia claimed them during the night and I found them in the morning, stuck to the ground.  :(  We had thought about getting chicks this year and then decided against it, but now we’re going to since we only have 4 layers left.  I think we’re going to get six – two white leghorns, an easter egger or two, maybe a black australorp, and I’m not sure what else.

Things have been busy and the kids stay up really late these days, so I haven’t had as much time as I’d like to write stuff.  This has been a very eventful summer!  In May we got Cowboy, and then the goats soon after that.  In June we got Sancho.  I think that’s about where we left off.

The goats continue to grow and man are they ever strong.  They’re also very stubborn.  They’ve eaten all the lower leaves and needles off our trees.  I made them a moveable pen out of cattle panels, but it turned out to not be very moveable.  I have some wheels to put on it, but I haven’t put them on yet.  Moon’s horns are growing but they’re brittle at the ends and tend to crack, so I think we’re going to have to have the poor guy dehorned at some point.  We just about have them weaned.

We just recently got a saddle for Sancho, so we can ride him now.  He does pretty well, but both of us need more practice.  He’s a very sweet horse and the kids love him.  Delia can ride him around the pen by herself!  Unfortunately he has bad table manners and likes to destroy round bales rather than eat them.  I’m hoping to make a round bale feeder out of some pipe I salvaged to make the bales last longer.  Speaking of the dump, I’ve been making semi-tegular trips there to get materials to build various things.  Delia and I made a really cool cooking tripod for the fire pit out of tent poles, a grate, and cables we got from there.  Delia has cooked brats, burgers, and even stir-fry on it!

Delia just had her last baseball game of the season.  She went to every game, and I’m very proud of her for that.  She seemed to have fun with it, even though she often asked me “Daaaaad – when is this game gonna be OVER?”  She’s a very good hitter!  I’m amazed by how many hits she got since she didn’t really practice baseball much before joining the team.  She’s also very interested in pioneers now.  First it was cavemen, and now we’re up to pioneers.  Her interest began with Little House on the Prairie.  Emily read the first book to her, and the watched the recent mini-series adaptation a few times all the way through.  Just about every day she does some pioneer activity, such as making a fire, weaving, gathering wood, etc.  She even went to the woods with me one day to cut down trees for firewood.  She brought her own saw along and cut up little logs while I used the chainsaw on the trees.

Henry is changing faster than we can keep up with!  He’s growing up.  He’s the sweetest little boy in the world, and he’s so funny.  He likes to dress up or put on funny hats (usually using something that’s not really a hat), and then when we laugh at him, his face just crinkles up and he cracks up.  He’s always hugging us, and he’s the best hugger.  He’s gotten good with legos, and he builds robots (and then makes “beep boop boop” noises), and the other day he made a hammer.  He ran up to us and said “I made hammer – wubbzy”.  One of the characters on Wow Wow Wubbzy uses a hammer called “The Whammer Hammer” and that’s what he was talking about.  He’s such a great talker.  His pronunciation still isn’t great, but he has so many words, and can really get his point across.  He has a few lines he got from TV shows that he uses a lot.  One is “Daddy too!”  That’s from Caillou.  It wasn’t even really that funny, but he sure thought it was, and whenever he sees it on TV he cracks up and then repeats it about a hundred times.    Another is from the Legend of Zelda cartoon.  In it, the character often says “Well exCUUUUUSE ME, Princess.”  He says it so much it’s completely obnoxious actually.  What’s funny is Delia thought that was hilarious when she was younger too.  Well Henry picked up on that on his first time watching it.  He laughed and laughed, and then repeated it.  Some months later, he saw a picture of the characters, and he said “Edoose Me Dincess”.  That’s another thing – most of his words start with a D.

Henry also likes to help, and loves bringing people things such as cups of water.  The other day he brought Emily a little cup of water and had one for himself.  “Dea” he said (which meant tea).  When he asks for things he always says please, such as “Water peese” or “Hep peese” (help please).  I hear “Daddy hep” a lot when he needs help with a computer game.  And likewise, he always says thank you.  “Dane doo dada” or “Dane doo mama”.  He even uses “peese” by itself.  A sample conversation:

Henry: Dada, pop tart?

Dada: No bud.  Not until you eat something good.

Henry: Peese?

Dada: Sorry buddy.

Henry: PEEEEEEEESE?

He has become pretty independent too.  He’ll start to walk away to do something and if I follow, he’ll hold his hand up and say “No.  Daddy stop.”

The sun is shining, the temperature is perfect, there’s no big wind.  Geese visit in the pond and honk when we get close.  Cowboy the pony is a pony!  In our yard!  Delia’s building – a stool out of wood, and various tools and weapons and toys out of sticks and string.  Caveman style.  Henry’s drawing with chalk on the driveway or zooming around on his four wheeler.

Ryan’s putting new handles on our Freecycle wheelbarrow, or putting a latch on Cowboy’s fence, or changing the oil in the lawnmower, or zooming around on a four wheeler.   I’m pulling grass out of the flower garden, feeding Cowboy carrots while I try to comb his mane, or zooming around on the lawnmower.

Sure, we’re kind of harried chasing the kids and animals around, and the house is a mess because we come in to eat and head right back outside again.  But overall, the past few days I’ve almost constantly been thinking how wonderful it is to live out here.

Spring is finally starting.  The snow is all gone in some spots but still deep where it drifted up.  Our chickens have mysteriously stopped laying eggs.  A few are molting which makes them slow down, but we were getting zero eggs, and even in the coldest part of winter we were getting 3-6 per day.  I put some old eggs in the coop with them in an attempt to remind them that all that yummy mash and water comes with a price, and today I finally got one egg.  I hope the rest join in soon.  The white leghorn has taken to roosting in the rafters of the coop.

I adjusted the barn doors so they close easily now.  I also put the new wheel on one of the quads, and took a load of garbage to the dump today.  The wood boiler is doing fine, and we’re using a lot less wood now, of course.  I’m thinking about cutting up some of the downed trees in the north woods to use for next year.  I need to get a little trailer to pull behind the quad though, because I’m certainly not going to carry each log out myself.

I spent some time today rearranging my office, so now it’s slightly less dungeon-like.  I also put up a bunch of new pictures from the past few months, but we still need to do captions for them.

Chickens are all together in an mostly finished coop, completely with little chicken chute tunnel to get through the fence into the run!  We have a bulb on a timer so we’re getting 5-7 eggs a day (from 11 hens) and Ryan’s doing finishing touches like hanging the water/food, getting the deep layer of shavings in for winter, etc.  Today he put the heater in to keep them toasty.

Chubby stopped eating for a few days, so we took him to the vet.  They were pretty sure he had eaten something like thread or yarn and recommended a few days of lubrication therapy (smearing Vaseline behind his teeth), but it didn’t work to dislodge the blockage.  He went in for successful surgery Friday and stayed there over the weekend – we’ll pick him up tomorrow.  They found thread, ribbon and other assorted non-food bits in him.  He’s been chewing on weird stuff (Crocs and the spongey floor tiles I have by my workbench) for months – I don’t know if he’s been trying to fix the problem or his stupidity of chewing on everything finally caught up with him.

The vet asked about Lucy while we were there.  (Lucy had been really skinny in the spring, but is fine now.)  I happened to mention her leaking problem, which it turns out is a common (12%) issue in spayed females.  Lucy is now on estrogen pills (1 per day for 5 days, then weekly for maintenance) and so far it appears to be working!  Yay!

The washing machine is broken.  The spring that we thought would fix it, didn’t – well, not completely.  Now we are trying to figure out if we should buy another part and try to fix it, or have someone who may know what they’re doing come out and see what’s going on.  The dryer still works, so we have just been taking 2-3 loads to the Babbitt Laundromat when we’re going there anyway, then we dry them at home.

Delia’s started ice skating lessons again.  She’s in Basic 2 now, and it didn’t take long for her to get her skates under her.  She’s getting more confidence about reading, loves thinking about numbers and space.  In the past few days she’s made a few books “for Henry to learn,” decorated some bookmarks, and has been into Rainbow Fairy series books and the website.  She’s the “firemaster” when we have fires, which means she helps get them started, keeps them going, and sticks long wooden skewers in, chars them, writes her name on the logs in the fireplace, and holds them by Henry for him to blow out.

Henry’s dancing, jumping, and as Delia says “always into something.”   He loves Bob the Builder and Oswald.  He is saying lots of words but is even better at communicating by pointing, pushing and pulling.  He’s very patient and nods yes or no until we know what he wants.

The back windshield wiper on the car broke several months ago, and we had it in to a dealership but they haven’t ordered the part yet and now apparently it’s trying to to come back to life even when the car is off and it keeps draining the battery.  I’m heading to Ely tomorrow and I’m probably not going to turn the car off the entire time I’m there, just in case it won’t start again.  It’ll be just like the time on a roadtrip when my starter was broken and I drove from St Charles Louisiana to Tampa without turning the bus off.

We keep getting dustings of snow, but haven’t had enough to start riding the snow machines.  The pond is freezing up nicely, I think we’ll be able to skate on it soon.  Last year we did on Thanksgiving so maybe we’ll do that again this year.

Yes – I’ve never done it before, can you believe it?  Sunday I did it for three hours and this afternoon for over an hour.

OK – that’s about as far as I can take that.  This is a family blog.    I’m talking about mowing a lawn.  We got a riding mower at the auction last week and it’s SO fun.  It goes really fast and cuts through huge tall totally wild grass that’s grown ALL summer.

Mowing is cool because it’s something to do outside that can involve the kids and also gets something accomplished.  The kids love four wheeling and it’s similar but the lawn mower is more my speed.    Plus, no gears either.  And I prefer steering wheel to handlebars.

What else did I do for the first time this weekend?  Jack hammer.  I’m not ready to talk about that yet.  (This could be a joke, but I’m not that funny or dirty.  I really did use a jack hammer.)

I got my hair cut.  I love it.  I can’t believe I waited so long.

Also, see Delia’s site for a report and pictures of her first camping trip.
(The username and password to get to the pictures are both the same three letter word that is the first name of a claymation builder.)

Summer is really getting into gear now.  This weekend is the Blueberry Arts Festival in Ely, next weekend is the county fair, and there are tons of tourists around (in Ely anyway – we can escape them now going home to the farm!!)

We went up to Ely today, stopped at the festival for gyros (waited in a really really way-too-long line), and I hung out with the kids and Isaac at Fall Lake recreation area.  Brianna was there with her kids and 4 other ones, so we had 9 kids between the two of us, ages 9 months – 8 yrs.  It was fun!  All the kids were great, we had enough sunscreen, clothes, towels, food, older kids to help with younger kids, and the weather was perfect.  The kids were in and out of the water for several hours, with the playground to play on when they were drying off and warming up.

I found a leech on Delia’s ankle. UUUUUUggggggh.  It’s amazing how calm I was but inside I was screaming in disgust.  It was tiny and quickly filling itself with her blood!  Ew, ew, ew.

Henry was great around the lake.  He just waded in, chasing a big beach ball sometimes, but never went farther in than his thighs.  I put a floatie on him and encouraged him to go out farther, but he really didn’t like the floatie so I just took it off and left him to do what he wanted.

Ryan spent that time at our old house packing up yet more stuff.  I spent a few hours earlier this week getting almost everything down from upstairs and vacuuming.  A few more days and it’ll be ready to list.