Life is Busy!

Wow...it's already past the middle of June (***When I started this post, that was accurate!  Can we just pretend that it is still June?) and I have been busy, but don't have a lot to show for it it seems.  The beginning of the month, or the end of last month we went to our local Homeschool Convention.  I always feel inspired and rejuvenated to start school again.  The end of this school year was a challenge and I found it very difficult to stay on task and motivated to get our lessons done. We pretty much took all of April and May off...not a planned vacation, but for my sanity, we stopped.  I am in the process of getting lessons planned and organized because this year I will be schooling not one, not two, but three children.  Junior will be finishing third grade work and starting on fourth grade as the year progresses.  He has the reading level of a fifth grader and above (he's 8 years old), but struggles with math and writing assignments.  Bubba will be doing first grade work and Junebug will begin kindergarten.  She is so ready to be doing big girl school.  Pipsqueak will have her own worksheets to practice on and will do all the crafts and letter sound activities.  Monkey, well, we will plan to do school during his nap time which currently is from around 12:30-3:30 daily.  I'm sure by the time we start school he'll change his routine on me.  Such is life.  We "plan" to have a start day for the new school year on June 30th, that way, when the wonderful harvest comes in the fall we can take some time off and when spring weather arrives again next year I won't feel guilty about not finishing school like the public schools do in our area.  The freedom of being a home schooling family!

We took a geology field trip the first full weekend of June about 2 hours west of us.  The president of the Heartland of America museum took us out to a local quarry for us to dig around in the rocks and sand.  The children loved climbing up the mountains of rocks and searching for treasures.  Monkey got to ride on B's back and towards the end got to climb on top and feel the different textures of the rocks.  We checked on the different layers of the earth inside the walls of a dug out spot in the quarry and they showed us the operation of excavating sand.  We believe that the three littles all got Ecoli from said quarry.  We think that the water sourced used there may not be the cleanest and after running around and touching everything they had time from the quarry to the museum to sit in the van and suck their thumbs without their hands being washed.  Wiped with a baby wipe, but not a good scrub.  That's what I did the for the next week in June...puke and poop patrol!

After the geology tour we went further south and came across some interesting cliffs and went for a short hike.  The town we were in is near the Oklahoma border.  Parts of Oklahoma are known for having red, clay soil.  I thought our clay soil on our farm was bad.  The weather was nice for our field trip day.  Cool in the morning, warm in the afternoon, but not sweat your butt off hot!  My van looked like a hot mess after playing in muddy rocks, sand, and red clay!

I can't believe they are all MINE! Well, B's too, but seriously, we make cute looking kiddos!

The garden is growing, but so are the weeds.  It's an endless battle and I don't seem to be winning.  I am working on mulching the garden, but I go to bed too late to get up early enough to get outside before the kiddos wake us up and after breakfast we have been doing Summer Reading at our library and Vacation  Bible School.  Maybe tonight will be the night I go to bed early and get up early and make some progress.  It's too hot to work during the day and the mosquitoes are horrible at night.  Let's see, can I come up with anymore excuses?  We did harvest the first thing from our garden last night...peas!  They were the best peas I've ever had, with some fresh creamy butter.  Yummy!  I think we have enough out there for another meal, but otherwise we'll have to try again this fall and see if we can't get enough to maybe put some in the freezer.  Our dinner was primary grown or raised off the farm last night.  Pork kabobs and peas we raised/grew and potatoes with our herbs on them.  It makes all the hard work worthwhile when you have the children next to you raving about how much they like your food and can you make it again next week!

Our chicks that we brought home in early May have not done the best and out of 85 we have 35 left.  The hens we will keep for eggs and the roosters will go in the freezer.  B just got done making them a chicken tractor that we can move each day or every other day while the grow to get fresh greens and bugs.  They seem to be enjoying themselves.  The children helped paint the frame of the portable chicken run and I'm not sure who or what had more paint on it.  Probably the children.  No pictures of that, but you can imagine paint everywhere.  I mean everywhere.  I was picking paint out of the girls' hair for days!

Sadly, since writing this post we now only have two chicks left.  Our dog, Midnight, thought they were his own personal buffet, all you can eat, and wiped out our flock of laying hens and future rooster dinners.  B and I are beyond disappointed and frustrated.  Homesteading is hard and expensive!  Midnight is currently in lock up and we have an ad out for a free dog.  He's great with children and our other dogs, but not with chickens or lambs.  We will be advising who ever his new owners will be not to have livestock.

Mable had another litter of piglets, but out of the four that she delivered, only one survived.  She seems to be pretty feisty and full of energy and follows mama in the pasture.  We're not sure what happened to the other three.  They looked healthy, but something wasn't quite right.  We are going to have our water tested to see if something in it could be cause fertility issues.  Mulefoot hogs are know to have seven to ten piglets per litter at least twice a year.  Mable has only had a litter of seven once and out of those seven, only four survived.

Mable's three piglets from last September are growing and are learning that the larger pigs are in charge.  Wilbur was released from his solo pen and his sisters were moved from the garden to the main pasture.  We had hoped to plant in the garden that they were in, but haven't gotten to it yet.  There is still time to plant corn and melons, but have to let the ground dry up a bit to till it once and then mulch with hay and plant.

We did a fun little art project that I saw on another blog Whatever that involved continuous line drawing of an owl.  The idea is that you color each section a different color where the lines intersect.  We came up with some really cool artwork.  Junior, Junebug, and Pipsqueak each had one.  We are giving them to our library for our summer reading program, but I plan to have us do it again since it was so much fun and I want some colorful artwork in our school room.  These are frame worthy pieces of art!

Junior's Owl

Junebug's Owl

Pipsqueak's Mini Owl

We also celebrated Monkey's first birthday in June.  That will be the next post. 

Until next time,

T