Information overload

Thursday was another wet and rainy day around here. And I couldn't take it! Feeling trapped in the house, we somehow ended up on a little road trip. Traveling to the next biggest town?City? about an hour East of here.


Oddly we came across a coffee shop that had a basement full of used books. Mostly for a dollar or 2 each.


these were my wicked scores from the shop...

The New Complete Great Pyrenees by Paul Strang

And Raising Sheep the modern way by Paula Simmons.

I've been devouring both these books in small doses ever since I got them (funny with 2 small kids I can no longer sit down and read a book cover to cover).

I find the Complete Pyrenees book so interesting because although we own 2 dogs that are at least 1/2 Pyrenees each, I've only gotten my information about the breed from websites or blogs...and I never have time to read any website in it's entirety. So to have an actual book that I can flip through and find answers in is awesome. Plus the index to look up specific questions...it's one of the things I miss most about not always having books as your resources any more. Although the Internet is usually more convenient and faster for researching ( and way less heavy than boxes and boxes of books when you've moved as many times as we have) Some times it's nice to be able to scan an index and start from there. Not having to know what your looking for specifically.

The sheep book is a wealth of knowledge that I want to absorb like a sponge. I finally got my answer to how many sheep per acre!!!

The answer is 4 sheep per acre if you have good pasture and 1-2 per acre if you have poor pasture. In case you were wondering.

My mind has been running in overdrive as I read about fencing, and the importance of buying sheep that are prone to twins lambing.

I have been concerned about the state of our fences for quite awhile and wondering how much repair and or extra wire would have to be added before we could introduce any animal especially sheep to the pastures. and I read this...

"Sheep quickly learn to jump sagging fences...If you wait until they have the jumping habit, they may still do it after the fence is repaired. One jumper can set a bad example and should be sold, or slowed down by temporary "clogging" until retrained."

"Clogging" is strapping a piece of wood around the sheeps front ankle that gets in the way to prevent it from jumping- who knew? not me, I've never heard of it. (of course tonight I'll probably have some strange dream of sheep jumping over the moon in actual clogs -like the big dutch wooden shoe kind)

How does your garden grow?

We have a small Forest in the front window (still)

I'm pretty pleased almost everything sprouted. And I'm dying to put them outside, but since we had snow Saturday night I'm thinking I might wait at least another week. I'd be awfully upset to lose everything after tending these little ones for 5 weeks already. But I'm also worried they are out growing their little peat moss pots right now.

The plants on the left of the picture. Are tomato plants. the tallest ones. I felt pretty smug at Canadian tire a couple of days ago they were selling plants about the same size for 4 dollars each.

I Have 28 plants that size that cost me less than 2 dollars in seeds. I felt good.

class is in

Remember me mentioning how excited I was about Herbal maid fiber farm and Kathy's online classes?
You can see the previous post here

I started the first 2 classes today.
I'm taking a Goat Hand milking and cheese making class
as well as a Goat milk soap making class.

No we don't have goats yet.

But all of the course is sent in e-mails that can be saved for later reference.
Even if I can't participate in making all these fabulous looking treats right now (although I may post an ad on kijiji to see if anyone sells fresh goat milk in the area) I still think that just reading all of the information will help it sink in for when and if we get goats later on.

In fact Kathy has a guest instructor teaching the soap making, and she buys her supply of goat milk from local producers it doesn't sound like she has goats of her own either. So I don't feel quite so strange in doing this.

Such a productive weekend

My Dad came for the weekend. Nathan was in heaven. He adores my dad, his Grandpa Zoom. But Dad is great to have around for productivity.

Chris rototillered the whole garden. Now it just needs a quick wire fence wrapped around to keep the dogs out (as you can see)

Dad cut down the dead tree in the front yard.

It was crazy cold rain all weekend it even started snowing Saturday night so we focused most of our energies inside. We got to work on this wall in the garage.
(Above is the before picture)

We found a bunch of Styrofoam insulation sheets in one of the barns. we got to work cutting and fitting the pieces in between the studs. I spent most of the afternoon out in the garage with Chris helping to measure and cut all the pieces. It was funny to see how well we can still do projects together when there's no kids in the mix. By the second or third piece we got in we had a rhythm and routine down and start whipping through them faster and faster. It was a flash back to how well we could get things done TOGETHER before kids were around. We were a good team.

We found pegboard sheets on sale at one of hardware stores for 2 dollars a sheet a few months ago. So Chris screwed all of those to the wall over the new insulation. It has mad that whole space so much bigger and brighter looking. and so much more usable and accessible.

And Dad brought a bunch of my paintings (that I did in high school) we got them hung and screwed into the walls in the stairwell to the basement.

Dad also managed to get a threshold cut to size and screwed into the door frame of the mudroom entrance (so happy about that there was a quarter inch gap in the bottom of that door that created the biggest coldest drafts ever). And the boys managed to get the fridge that died a few months ago finally out of the kitchen. It was just to big and too heavy for Chris and I to do it.

They were all tiny jobs, but just stuff on the list we never managed to find time for. It felt great to get so many crossed off all in a weekend.

Blooms

Finally.

There are some blooms coming through.

The lilacs are starting to bloom in the front yard.

I've got the perfect jug that I can't wait to fill with all the beautiful flowers as soon as there are enough open.

Answers to dumb questions

remember me complaining about dirty chicks?

apparently you can wash chicks. as long as you don't allow them to get their heads under water. Do it with warm water. and dry them well before they can get a chill.

At least according to people on the the backyard chicken form

Backyard chickens is quite the information packed site about ummm...everything chickens. funny how that works.

I found it through the site hencam.com, which was talked about on the scratch and peck blogspot
Lauren is such a cute illustrator, and writes with such a passion about her little flock you can feel the love she has for them. Totally worth checking out just because it's so darn cute.

Dandelions

I won't even go into how many times I've cursed at dandelions in the yard at all our other houses.
I've attempted to dig them out by hand, be satisfied with just popping their little yellow heads off before they can go to seed and usually end up resorting to some sort of chemical spray rather than continue the never ending battle.
Of course this yard is larger than any of the others we ever had. And proportionally the dandelion problem seems to be even bigger.
I have to tell you I am less than enthused about even attempting this time to dig them out.

But at the same time. Knowing our water source is below us, Chemicals to me become even more of an issue in my head.
Chris and I have already battled about this. His point is that the farmers all around us are spraying their field with round up or whatever chemical they choose. So if it's in the water the small amount we spray is hardly going to compare.
but it still bothers me

I did a web search of organic dandelion control and came up with this...
dandelion fix Corn gluten meal
Although it sounds like I may have to go on quite the hunt to find it. And I'm not sure it will work this late in the season. Since it sounds like it needs to be applied just as the grass is turning green in the spring.

Nothin' runs like a deere...

Except maybe Nathan,

chasing after Dad when he wants a "Tractor ride"

I was so impressed we parked the Deere in probably October. and the little thing fired right up this week.

The boys had to do a couple of quick zips around the yard. Hopefully the actual mowing will get done this weekend.

Blessing in disguise?

This is my little fireplace in our mud room. It serves no real purpose at least not for heating the house or anything. But it made it oh so comfy cozy to strip off all that horrible wet winter clothing in the coldest months this winter.

When I went through our insurance policy because it was up for renewal. I found out they had excluded our fireplace. That just didn't sit right. I could just imagine (knock on wood) any fire in the house would automatically be blamed on the fireplace and therefore not be covered.

Thinking I was pretty smart. I decided to change insurance brokers and make sure it was included in the policy.

Well

a month later.

a lot of pictures. E-mails and phone calls later

our new insurer has deemed that we will not be covered unless we remove the fireplace.

So with Chris home for the long weekend we finally managed to get it out.

I miss it already. and am not looking forward to how cold that room gets in the winter when it wasn't lit.

It sure makes the mudroom look huge with it gone.

and with it out of the way, I went back to painting the walls. (much easier when your not hanging off a ladder sideways trying to reach around a stove pipe.)

And honestly when we took it out and looked over the condition. I'm not surprised the insurance agencies where worried it was a fire hazard.

The bricks in the back had obviously heated up so much most of them were cracked.

the stove pipe wasn't properly secured it was resting full weight on the top of the stove.

and the metal mat? we thought was underneath it?

turned out to be some sort of spongy mat with a thin metal coating on the surface.

Not impressed.

I guess it was probably a good thing we took everything out when we did.

My Evil Friend

Can you see what's made it self at home on my hay bale?

How about now?

For the first little while I couldn't figure out if it was injured and dying up there.

At one point I took the dogs into the field and tried to get Jasper to put the run on her.

( In case you haven't guessed I'm not a fan of geese, In fact I have pictures of Nathan and Daddy feeding geese in Lethbridge and went through the entire album when I uploaded them to Facebook and tagged each one Evil goose 1, Evil goose 2 etc.- so there was no way I was going to investigate on my own)

But Jasper couldn't get her off that hay bale. She stood up spread out both her wings to make herself as big as possible and hissed. He decided this was not something he wanted to tangle with and took off into the other pasture.

This incident combined with the fact she's been there for nearly a month now. made me think the stupid thing has probably made a nest on there.

None of this would be a real issue but I would have liked to pull apart that hay bale and use it in the chicken coop. and her there hissing has caused that plan to go out the window.

But 2 days ago she finally disappeared. I immediately sent Chris over to investigate the bale (still not going anywhere near it in case she came back meaner than ever.)

He reported that there had indeed been eggs.

They were all broken in rather large pieces, and there are small chick like feathers scattered around.

So I'm not sure if she hatched them, or if they fell prey to something. (although Chris said there wasn't any gore to make him think that something happened)

Now I've seen a goose hanging around our front dugout. I'm wondering if she's moved the chicks to the water finally (would the weeds around the pond not have been a better place for a nest in the first place?) I just have to work up the nerve to get close enough to sneak up for a look.