It’s Been A Busy Summer, Part 1

Oy!  Where has the summer gone?  I can’t believe we are almost to the end of September!  Ack!

Today is my son’s 10th birthday!  Happy Birthday Daniel Kevin Meyer, Jr.!  I can’t believe it has been 10 years!

 

 

He is my funny man!  He is always being goofy and horsing around.  Sometimes too much for this mama, but I am learning to deal with it.  It has only taken me 10 years to get there.  This picture was taken while we were on vacation this summer (our first since the kids have been born).  He was showing off and being his normal awesome self!  I love you Bubby!!!  I don’t know what I would do without you!

Well, summer has just flown by.  My garden sucked and went downhill from there.  I did get zucchini out of the garden and a few tomatoes off our plants before the goats got out and ate all the tomatoes and the plants.  Kevin was able to salvage one plant and has it planted in a big tub on the front porch.  We will see if it does anything before it dies this fall.

I did get a whole bunch of tomatoes from my aunt in the past few weeks after she was done picking her tomatoes.  Here is a picture of part of the ones I got from her.

 

So I have been diligently canning and dehydrating tomatoes as fast as I could.  Which really isn’t fast at all.  Luckily I didn’t lose too many tomatoes and the ones that got past the prime became chicken food.  They LOVE them.  So I don’t feel as bad about some of them going bad.

Speaking of chickens, our older ones are not laying as regularly as I would like. And half of them are still free ranging and I have to try to find eggs every day. Which doesn’t always happen.  They had been laying in the goat shed in the hay rack and in a corner. But now they’re not so I have to try to find their new nest.  Who knows how many eggs it will have when I find it.

Our turkeys are getting so big. We still have the four and they are still in the same enclosure.  I want to get them moved to a bigger spot so they can have more room to move around and so they can forage a bit for their food.  They are heritage chickens so they can forage and stuff but they can also FLY.  So we are in the process of building something for them.  Luckily our trampoline decided to bite the dust this weekend.  It has been working on it regularly by the springs breaking.  Well, the springs don’t break, but the part that they’re attached to the mat does and then you don’t have a spring holding it on.  Kevin has been threatening to take it down for some time this summer, but this weekend Gabby went to get on it and another spring broke where she was and it scratched her.  So that was it.  It was done.  

 

 

I wanted to put a picture of the kids jumping on it, but of course I can’t find one right now.  I will as soon as I get done with this post.

So this is going to be a new turkey enclosure.  I’m not sure it is going to stay like this exactly, but Kevin was just playing around with it.  He said he didn’t really want me to see it because I would want to turn it into something else.  And I do.  A GREENHOUSE!  Wouldn’t that be AWESOME?  But that’s okay.  The turkeys need new digs.  I will get my greenhouse some day.

So in the last few months I have finally sold my last two Kinder goats.  We are now officially a full sized dairy herd.  The problem with this is fencing.  Obviously the fencing that kept our Kinders in all day long, is nothing for these full sized and full sized to be goats.  Arg!!!  We have spent all summer trying to outwit the goats.  It has not been easy.  It would have been easier if we had unlimited amounts of money to just go and buy new fencing, but we don’t.  So we have had to use a little bit of imagination.  I have finally rigged the pen fencing up enough that they don’t get out of their pen.  But now they don’t stay in the pasture and that really bugs me.  They have acres and acres of grass, clover and trees and brush to eat. But heaven forbid they stay out there without me.  They can jump that fence while they are standing flat footed in front of it.  Just jump.  Or they walk up it.  Like climb it.  Like it is just a ladder for them to use to get to the other side.  It wears me out.

So on the evening that we took our last two Kinders to my friend’s house for her to take to the sale barn (I didn’t want to, but sometimes you just have to), somehow one of the goats she was going to sell at the sale barn ended up in the back of our van.  I’m not entirely sure how it happened, but I am pretty sure my friend and her goat were in cahoots against me.  She is a Saanen and she is HUGE.  I am finally starting to get used to her, but she is still bigger than any other goats we have or have had.  I call her a cow.  Luckily for me she loves to just do what you ask her to do and will walk with you anywhere without fighting and pulling.  She is a sweetheart and always wants hugs and scratches.  She is all lovey dovey to me, but when another goat comes along wanting some loving, she butts them away.  I am working on teaching her that she can share.

 

I can’t wait to get babies from her and milk her.  My friend said she milked around a gallon a day!  I hope so!  I will hopefully have five goats in milk next year.  I don’t know how I’m going to deal with it right yet, but we will figure it out.  We always do.

So if you have been able to keep up with the craziness of our Funny Farm, stay tuned for more updates in the very near future.

Can’t think of a title for this post. So this is it.

Oh my goodness!  It feels like forever since I have posted here again!  I thought we were busy in the last post?  Ha!  That was nothing.

My oldest daughter was back from Tomah for about a week before she left again.  This time she went to San Antonio, Texas (her first time on a plane.  Her mommy cried.) with her youth group from church. She had a great time.  They left on the 30th of June and then got back on the 5th of July.  Then she was going to leave on the 7th for Nashville, Tennessee.  At least I thought they were leaving on Sunday.  At 8:00 in the morning her advisor called and asked where she was.  I was like “Um, in bed.”  Well, lo and behold, they were leaving on Saturday morning!  We had got home after picking her up at 11:00 or so the night before.  Had a load of her laundry in the washer that needed dried but no time.  I told her advisor for them to go ahead and go on, I would catch up to them at some point.  We got her packed (with wet laundry) and out the door in 30 minutes.  It was horrible.  We caught up with her group a little over 100 miles down the road.  Did you know I have a pilot’s license and can make my van fly?  Neither do the cops, so don’t tell them, okay.

So I didn’t have time to be sad that she was leaving because of all the chaos.  But I was sad.  So she was in Nashville until Thursday with FCCLA for a community service project that she did with another girl this past year.  It was the No Kid Hungry project.  They raised money for our school’s Paw Pack program. This program sends food home with needy students on Friday after school so that they have some food to eat over the weekend.  We lost our funding from the area food bank and now it is all donations.  So they competed against 7 other teams that were invited to the National Competition.  Which was awesome.  They got a Silver medal for their project and now it is growing this year and Elizabeth is the chairperson or something (I really can’t keep up with it all right now) and they are going to take it to bigger and better places this year. She is really excited about it.

Meyer Family

The rest of us left our little homestead on Wednesday morning to go to Nashville to pick Elizabeth up.  We got there about 9 (at the hotel) after almost getting killed between two semi trucks.  So we decided not to get out anymore that night and had to wait until the next day to see her.  We picked her up after her recognition ceremony, spent one more day in Nashville and then started home.  We camped on the way home and had a good time.  First vacation we’ve had since before Kevin and I got married and that was in 1996.  Ugh.  It was interesting.

Kids playing in the river at Silver Mines campground

Daniel learning to use flint and steel to start a camp fire.

Got it.

Hiking up to Silver Mines

Elizabeth had a bit of a culture shock going from the Hyatt Regency hotel in San Antonio and the Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville to camping.  But she did it.  I really think she was just happy to be with her family again.  We were happy to have her back with us.

On the home front.  Let’s see.  Before we left we had a snake try to get into my redneck duck tractor to eat my baby ducks.  I had put the newest baby ducks out there, but realized that they were smaller than the others when I had moved them, so they could stick their heads out of the little squares.  Well to me that is just putting them on a platter for the cats and the dog.  So I took some wildlife netting and draped over it and held it down with bricks.  Gabby came in one day after playing on the swing set (about 5 feet away from the ducks) and said there was a dead snake by the baby ducks. I was working at the time, so got up and went out with her.  *shiver*  I seen the snake there and was turning around to go get Kevin but he was already on his way out there.

Snake tangled up in wildlife netting by my baby ducks

The snake all stretched out. Yuck.

(Kevin didn’t like this picture, but it’s the only one I have showing how long it was.  Sorry Kevin.)

This thing was pretty big.  We don’t know if it was just a black garden type snake or a king snake. All I know is it tried to eat my babies and got itself caught up in the netting and killed itself.  I had just moved them and been out there a few hours before.  It also gives me the willies that the kids have been playing out there around it.  Ugh.  I know that those snakes aren’t going to bother the kids but still.  We do have a bigger one somewhere because I accidentally stepped on it after taking the goats back to the pasture.  It was stretched all the way across our one lane road/path thing and still had parts of it on both sides.  It was pretty big in the middle where I stepped on it too.  I shrieked and ran like the girl that I am a little ways away and then turned around to make sure it wasn’t following me.  I know, I’m such a girl.

So the turkeys and the roosters that we are growing out are getting big.  Yay!  It will be about butchering time for the roosters.

Turkeys and roosters

On that last batch of chicks that we hatched and had 8 live, I do believe that 6 of them are hens.  

The 8 chicks, hopefully 6 are hens.

So those along with the other 4 from the hatch before that and one from the farm store that survived we have our replacement laying hens for next year.  So we will be retiring the laying hens we have this fall probably when we do the roosters.  They are three years old and are slowing down on the egg laying.

Our first batch of ducks have gotten so big.  I can’t believe how big they are.

On hatching ducks I have learned at least one thing.  I read that you shouldn’t play with baby ducks too much for like the first 3 days or else they will get overly attached to you.  But I read this about a day and a half after our first ones hatched so then I was trying to keep the kids out of them for a bit.  But the brooder was on the floor and they kept going over and picking them up.  Well those ducks are fine.  No problems with being too attached or anything.  Nice calm ducks.  The next ones we hatched, I had the brooder up on a table so the kids couldn’t bother them too much.  I think that was a mistake.  Those ducks are the flightiest things.

The Three Stooges

I think the one that is almost all dark is a chocolate color instead of black.  That will be neat.  Then the one is all solid white.  Hope a few of all of these ducks are females.

I go over to give them food and water and they just run back and forth in their tractor bumping into each other like the Three Stooges.  They are nuts.  Hey, I think we are going to name them after the Three Stooges.  Just thought of that.  I don’t normally let the kids name the poultry because around here with all the wildlife, you just never know and I don’t want them to really get attached to them.  But these guys are just asking to be named Larry, Curly and Moe even if there are some girls in there.  So I know what we are doing the next time we hatch out ducks.  Letting the kids play with them.

The goats are doing fine.  Always hungry like normal.  Well, they think they are hungry.  Silly goats will eat themselves to death if you let them.  (Sorry didn’t get any recent pics of the goats.  I put them out to pasture today and they were all confused because the hay was gone.)

We finally got the hay done. The friends that do it for us and we split with them had quite a few places to bale and he works full time so it took a bit longer.  And the stupid weather wouldn’t cooperate long enough to give us hot, dry days.  But it is done.  We have double what we got out of it last year which is awesome.  We finished putting it up yesterday and sold the last 30 bales to a friend because they wouldn’t fit in our shed.

Hay in shed.

After looking in the shed I think we could have fit those 30 bales in there but Kevin would have had to get the first 15 or so out for me.  It’s going to be tough as it is.  It goes up to the roof of the shed.

I checked on my zucchini today.  I haven’t been picking the squash bug eggs off of it since we got back from vacation because I knew they got attacked while we were gone.  So at this point it is a lost cause.  I might pull them and plant some new.  But I got this pic today while looking for any baby zukes.

Frog on zuke leaf

See that baby frog of some sort on the leaf.  He scared me.  But not too bad.  I wish he would eat the squash bugs or at least those eggs he’s sitting beside.

Well, I think that is about all I have to update here at The Funny Farm.  Sorry for the extremely large post.  Hopefully things are going to slow down a bit, but I’m not holding out any hope for that.

I surely didn’t see myself here 15 years ago…

Fifteen years ago today I gave birth to my first child, a girl.  We named her Elizabeth Marie. She has completely changed my life from the very beginning and now she is getting to be such a grown up.  Happy Birthday Elizabeth and sorry that on your birthday it is just as chaotic as it ever is.  Thought maybe we would have a day off.  But nope.

Here’s a pic of my baby from this past fall.

Sheesh.  It is only 1:30 and it has already been a very eventful day.  To start off with I have been a hatching fool this spring. I borrowed an incubator from a friend of mine and got some free duck and turkey eggs from said friend and filled out the incubator with eggs from our Barred Rocks.  So we had 10 Barred Rocks and Barred Rock/White Rock type rooster eggs hatch.  We have lost one since then.  We had 4 duck eggs out of 13 and 5 turkey eggs out of 7.  Also I bought chicks at the local farm store and out of 20 ish chicks we had 3 survive the cat-astrophe that we had here.

But back to the hatched chicks.  We moved the Barred Rocks outside to a chicken brooder that our store bought chicks had been in and I finally made like Fort Knox and the cats couldn’t get back in.  We had baby ducks and turkeys in the house.  We HAD to get the ducks and turkeys out of the house.  They were really starting to stink.  And they had to leave because next week we start hatching again.  We have I think 29 chicken eggs in the incubator with 12 more duck eggs.  But the chickens will hatch first.  So earlier this week I made a redneck duck tractor just to get the ducks out of the house.  It has so far proven to be cat proof and they are enjoying having a bit more room.

See, it’s my throw together duck tractor.  It is made from those square cube shelf things that I wired together, wired to an old milk crate and put bricks on top and fence posts on the sides to keep cats from moving it and getting the ducks.  See the milk jugs?  Those have holes cut in them and the ducks have to stick their heads in them to get a drink or food. This keeps them from wallowing around in the water and making it even nastier than they do in the first place.  So that is my redneck tractor.  Also, see the bottom half of my 3 year old Punky Brewster?  Yeah, I have almost given up helping her get dressed.  On occasion I make her wear something that matches, but I usually just by pass that fight and move on.

Well, my hubby has been working on an in-between tractor to put poultry in that are too big for the house, but too little for a tractor this size:

This tractor has 2 Silkie hens and one Silkie rooster and our 3 lucky survivors that we bought from the farm store.  There are two Golden Laced Wyandotte [spelled right??] and one possible Buff Orpington.  I can’t remember what I bought when and what survived.  But it is a buff colored pullet.  So this is a bigger tractor that the cats will try to get into to get babies, but don’t seem to bother the bigger chickens.  Hmm.

So today I have been moving stuff around. I got what I think is all the Barred Rock hens out of the brooder in the rabbit shed and put in the middle sized tractor.  I left the roosters and put the four turkeys we have left (one didn’t make it the other day when they were having a field trip to the big tractor), in with them.  So I hope by the time the turkeys need out of the brooder with the roosters, there will be 2 more tractors built to hold the roosters to butcher and to hold the turkeys.

While I was standing there watching to make sure the turkeys or the Barred Rocks didn’t kill each other, I looked down and found the new spot that the free ranging hens were laying in.  As I knelt down to get those eggs, I looked to the right (there is a rabbit cage with a rabbit that we thought was bred, but didn’t have her babies when she was supposed to over the weekend) and there was a black baby bunny on the ground.  So I picked it up, found a white one, had Daniel run in and get my phone to call my Kevin to find out what to do.  In the meantime, I found two more and while I was on the phone, Daniel found two more.  So four black baby bunnies and two white ones.  So we got the nest box in and with straw and put them in it and are in the process of praying  that the momma rabbit takes care of them.

So it has been a bit crazy here today.  I still need to try to squeeze in some work, a shower and then we are going out for the birthday girl to Mexican!  Yay!  No cooking supper for me!    Also I’m really going to go crazy next week when Lizzy goes and gets her driver’s permit!  ACK!  I’m not old enough to have a kid that drives!!

I can honestly say that I didn’t imagine myself here 15 years ago. I’m not sure what I thought I would be doing, but I don’t think it was this.  Not that this stuff isn’t what I want right now, it really is.  Even if I do complain a bit about it.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The Big P

We are potty training again. Not again like we are potty training our third child. But again, like we are potty training our third child again. Baby G has been a cloth diaper baby. Hubby didn’t want her to be. He thought it would cause diaper rashes and a stinky house. The only time Baby G gets a diaper rash is when she wears disposable diapers. I honestly think cloth diapers has made all the difference in the potty training. So I am really excited about the fact that we have even started on this journey since she has just turned two in September.

I have come to think that parents don’t really potty train their kids. Their kids potty train them. Baby G has been slowly potty training us since she was around 15 months. She first got to the point that she would try to pull her diaper off as soon as it was wet. Then she started crying when she would wet or dirty her diaper like she was mad at herself. Then she started to go on the potty if she didn’t have a diaper on.  But if she was wearing one, she would go in it. So at this point I started letting her run around without a diaper during the day when we were home all day. So she eventually got to wearing big girl panties around July. We went the whole month of July in panties with like 3 accidents.

Then she got tonsillitis. During this time our county fair started so we were busy in 4H with that. So with being sick she didn’t want to mess with going potty and then with us being busy, I didn’t want to mess with it either. So we lost it.

But she has finally decided to start the training program with us again. And we are all doing a good job. Daddy is in on it. Siblings are helping and grandparents are too. So maybe by the end of the month I can figure out what to do with the pile of cloth diapers that we aren’t using anymore. But we will see how my training goes this time around.