Anniversary continued...

Like I said before Yesterday marked the 2 year anniversary of the creation of this blog. It was started the day after our offer was accepted on  the Acreage. The first post is Here. And Here is yesterdays post re-capping our first year.

Which leads us to 2010.

We went into it with an attitude that was kind of similar to get serious or go home. We were determined to add more animals and have a much more "farm" attitude the second year. (Most of these pictures have links to the blog post about them)

The Spring of 2010 marked Nathan's first Rodeo. He rode his first sheep at a Bull-a-rama, and was the greatest Mutton buster ever. He got to meet some real cowboys behind the chutes and this one let him check out the real gear.

We bit the bullet and order 25 baby chicks. That was an experience of trial and error. We definitely learned a few things stumbling our way through a first season of chickens.

We had another bird move in about the same time. The fact that she would so fiercely defend her claim on the hay bale lead us to believe she was sitting on a nest.

We had lots of outdoor meals this year been campfires and tent picnics with the boys. As well as lots of pool time in the summer months.

We started a bunch of seeds indoors hoping for better garden success. Nope. Garden #2 was also a gigantic FAIL.

By June we got better at recruiting help. Like my Dad who spent a weekend up here cutting down dead trees, or watching playing with the kids while Chris and I tackled insulating at least one wall in the garage.

Nathan did a second rodeo event in June. He was even better. Clinging to that poor sheep for all his was worth.

We eventually discovered that Mama Goose was in fact sitting on a nest, and when she just disappeared one day, it was over to the dug out with all the hatchlings in tow. We had a fun afternoon tracking them in the field and the pond trying to get a count of how many little ones were there.

By the end of summer we added our goats to everyday farm life. It's been an adventure getting the dogs and kids used to goats and goat antics.

It also lead to some farm lessons when we were outside with the goats and the cat caught a mouse in front of Nathan.

Most of our chicks survived and grew and GREW. We bought and constructed a chicken plucker machine, but in the end wussed out and took them into a processor.

The warmish fall saw us busy. We painted parts of the house, built, dug  and painted new fences from scratch. Sourced hay for winter feed. Painted and insulated barns.

And as the snow began falling we learned some hard lessons about hypothermia and goats. We heartbreakingly fought for and eventually lost one of our favorites. Added another just to lose him too.
It's made us reconsider a lot of things.
We have so many more plans, for how to do things differently in the years ahead. What types of animals we're interested in pursuing, and what we might give up on completely. But again this post is getting long. So I think I'll share some of what lays ahead and where we are so far this year in another post tomorrow.

An Anniversary of sorts

I've been thinking about and writing this post for more than a few days now.
Today marks the second anniversary of this blog you can see the first post here, I wrote it and started this blog the day after our offer was accepted on the acreage in hopes of chronicling our journey.

Rather than doing the Sunday Round Up I wanted to talk about the BIG picture. What we've done and where were headed (hopefully). To be honest it's not the greatest week to be doing a re-cap. Having Little One abort her pregnancy means we're at 3/4 of the hopeful offspring and milking ability that we wanted this year. Both Chris and I are frustrated right now. But we are working on some alternative plans. Like buying goat milk from another local producer and spending the summer experimenting with cheese and soap recipes anyways.

But before I go into a lot of detail about what were planning on doing I want to show you some of the successes and failures we've had in our almost 2 years here.

When all the snow melted in the spring we discovered that there was a lake in what was suppose to be a yard. One of our first major undertakings was jetting water from the yard to the field.
(or as you can see by Nathan and Maggie in the picture the major goal was splashing and playing in this fun new lake)

Next came A LOT of fencing. Poor Chris. The wire addition was an attempt to keep a tyrant two year old out of the dug out. Who knew it might also come in handy for penning in future goats.

We made an attempt at a garden (FAIL) with morning sickness it became nothing but an untended weed patch.

In May we started to add animals. What's a farm without animals. Most of these attempts were MAJOR FAILS as you can probably guess by the fact that only one of the above animals still resides here. (You can click on the pictures to read the stories.) or here is the stories of what happened to Mac and the baby goat

We added our first (only) piece of farm type equipment in July. Wow did that make mowing over an acre of yard easier.

We also made discoveries about the water cistern (like if the float shut off isn't working properly the entire basement may flood) leading us to make the acquaintance of small local creatures like this salamander, who thought the nice wet basement might make a good new home.

The fall finally saw us add a pick up truck. Nathan and I loved (okay mostly me) to take it bumping across the field to gather some firewood in the trees.

We also added Jasper to the mix that fall. Our second Pyrenees but really? our only official guard dog since Maggie is a little to city-fied, read sissy.

Of course our Biggest and smallest addition was the surprise arrival of Greg in 2009. On Christmas Day. He wasn't due until January. But what a sweet Christmas present and way to finish off the year.

Since this post is getting awfully long and crowded already I think I'll break it up and talk about our second year 2010 in a post tomorrow stay tuned...

Sunday Round Up ( Feb. 14- Feb 20)

Our Week started out with some awesome Valentines celebrations

I spent entirely too long assembling these cupcakes for desert that night. But they turned out pretty cute.
You can go here to see the "ipod" valentine candy  I made for Chris and Nathan.

Nate was also in school that day (we've had our most successful week so far in the new program) and was thrilled to get Valentines from all his little friends. This is the first year he's exchanged cards and thought it was quite the deal.

Last week we visited a friend of mine whose moving/de-cluttering. The kids made out like bandits on the visit. About a million discovery toys, a guitar, a reading system, and....

The Coolest Tent/Fort EVER!!!! The boys are in heaven

See?

The Greg man is right in on the action.
Actually I've even caught Miss Maxxie in there a few times too. Speaking of which...

Our temperatures have dropped again meaning Maxxie is inside all day everyday. Nathan is loving having her around constantly and SHE'S Loving it too! Perhaps a little too much? since she's not allowed on the furniture???

Other than that it's been more of a productive week for my Minions amazing and helpful family, than for me.

My brother is nearly done our goat milking stand see all the pics here.
and in the post below you can see the little goat coats my mother in law finished up for me!

I'm so spoiled! and loving it!!!

Sunday Round Up (Jan. 31- Feb. 6)

It was a pretty slow week around here.
Everyone is battling a wicked cold still.

Poor Greggy, has morphed it into an ear infection in BOTH ears. So he's been extra snugly and needing lots of attention all week.

Nate started his new school class on Wednesday. We're praying this will be the program he needs.

The animals may revolt!
They keep getting teased with spring like temperatures that allow them to frolic and play outside for days at a time. Then the temps plummet again like tonight -25. And everyone is back to huddling for heat.

Our only big adventure this week was heading to town and getting Nathan's haircut. Do you love the puck rocker green? He does. Taking him to the children's hairdresser that sprays his hair and lets him play in a ball pit, is about the only way I can convince him to cut his hair chopped.

This was my funny pic of the week. Taken that day in the ball pit.
Poor Greg had fought me the entire time Nate was getting the hair cut. He so badly wanted to follow the "Big" kids in there. When I finally allowed him to go in with his brother this was the face.
Right before the tears started.
Balls are really hard to move around in when you still can't even walk!

And that's about it. It's been more of a sicky/kid week than anything really interesting or farmy to report...

Sunday Round Up ( Jan. 24-30)

 Last year (like the Christmas before last) Hubs got a retro arcade plug and play game. Which has Pac Man on it. After Dad showed him a few times, Pac Man is about the perfect skill level for a 4 year old. He would have played for hours if we let him. Needless to say it disappeared that night, to come out another day. But it was fun to watch how much a game that we grew up with could still be so much fun, to someone who's never seen it.

Meow meow, somehow managed to worm her way into the house today.

Actually I kept seeing her sitting in front of the goat barn spying on them through the crack in the door. It occurred to me she's not actually that interested in the goats, she's probably after their heated water. Which means the dog water is either frozen or Jasper's being a jerk again, and won't let her anywhere near it.

So she got let into the house to make sure she had access to water.

Speaking of the Dog's guess who's also in the house tonight?
The temps have dropped drastically again. But with all the melting in the last week all the melting has caused some massive humidity. When Maggie met me in the driveway tonight she was soaking wet and covered in frost at the same time. Considering the temps are suppose to drop to minus 29 tonight our buddies are getting treated to a rare night inside. No Coyote duty tonight. Yippee!!!

Actually the whole week has been pretty wrecked, since everyone has come down with one heck of a cold!

Poor little monkey spent an entire day miserable on the couch.

(it's so strange when he goes from 60 to 0 instead of the other way around)

My only big project around here this week was the start of the operation de-clutter the kitchen. I've decided it's time for a massive overhaul, where everything in the house MUST have a permanent home or be re-homed! So far these are the donate boxes just from the kitchen cabinets. We're closing in on 2 years here, and most of this stuff has sat untouched in the cupboards the entire time. I don't know if it's just cabin fever, or if it's the fact we have "normally" moved at least once in every 2 year span up until now. The moving always forced a de-junking, and without it I had to wait for the urge to purge.

- Not bad so far-

Sunday Round Up (Jan. 17-23)

Okay so I'm a day late with this one...

But it was kind of an interesting week around here.

* The weather finally broke, and we've seen plus side temperature a couple of days.

* The Goats are nuts for this weather, running, jumping and butting heads at being released from the barn (two weeks straight in there would probably make anyone nuts)

* Maxxie the Beagle has also spent the last two weeks cooped up in the house, we've been throwing her out the front door and she comes straight back after her business. Of course when it warmed up on Saturday I was leery about continuing the practice, but gave it a shot anyways. After 3 minutes when there was no scratch at the door I went to call her. She was on the range road down past the driveway. No amount of whistling or calling would bring her back. All of a sudden she took off like a shot right in the direction of the highway. By the time I got my boots on and ran all the way to the highway she was across it and in the Buffalo paddock across the road. CRAP! Someone was watching over both of us this time. She responded to my whistle finally, and thankfully there were no cars coming when she mad her mad dash back across the highway for me. Maggie had come out to see what all the commotion was about and actually herded Max back to the house. After getting knocked into the snow a few times by a dog 20 times the size of you running full steam to the safety of the house suddenly seems like the best idea "you've " had all day. So Miss Maxxie is back to going in her dog run during outside time. Beagles and their noses, shesh!

* Our land finally made us some money! Hopefully not the last. But we got a cheque this week for the seismic work that was done. It was good feeling to have some money back, since it seems like most of the time we just are shelling it out to live here.

* After a week of crazy kids I found its great therapy to take a 4 year old outside and chuck him into snow drifts. Watching him have to fight his way through snow is not only amusing but a great way to exhaust him! Yup, another mother of the year award for that one I''m sure.

* But the biggest news around here was the final demise of  Evil Cat. I hadn't seen her or even heard her in about 3 days. That's pretty normal around here, she seems to disappear as soon as the weather warms up, so I didn't give it much thought. But Chris borrowed my Van for a run to town, and before he hit the highway he realized he was out of windshield fluid. He popped the hood to add some, and made a bit of a gruesome discovery. Guess who had crawled onto the engine block to take a final nap?!?!
Hey after all the havoc that cat has caused around here, I'm not even going to pretend I'm sad. The only gross part about it is I'm not sure I haven't been driving around with a dead cat under my hood for three days. Ewwww.

* And my MIL is nearly done the first "goat coat" from the sweater pattern I sent her this week. Apparently she's knitting them in bright orange and bright green. No chance of losing a kid in the snow! I can't wait to see them.