Cows

We have two dear cows, Sir loin and Taco.  Well that isn't their real name those are the joking names we call them.  Just when I thought cows couldn't have too much personality, ( a safe place for me to be since I have to eat them) they go and show up all sweet and sneaky and stuff.

Apparently the little calf, a wily black and white faced girl with horns, got out of her pen.  It isn't to uncommon she is becoming known as quite the escape artist.  I think I shall give her the real name of Houdini.  Anyway I got home and found her out side gorging herself on our alfalfa.  I tried to wrangle her in by employing all the kids.  Things didn't go down so well.

I told Judah (7) to stand guard with a pitch fork, stretched outward as a blockade, but when she ran his way he attempted to stab her!  I got so mad and sent his half dressed butt in the house, ( he was wearing his new school underwear and a shirt, we were trying clothes on when chaos broke out)  So that left me, Abby and Mason.  Sudeenly Nettie (8) comes out in the field chasing Serenity almost 2 now, naked as the day she was born right for the loose and wild horned calf.  "moooommmm she wanted out!!"  I said a few bad words and yelled at Nettie loosing my foot hold on the calf capture plan and sent Mason inside with the two girls to get them all out of harms way.  That left me and Abby, suddenly the renter of our barn appeared with her dog, on leash barking a storm, she got tangled up and said her own few bad words nearly being impaled on the garden post.  I continued to try to maneuver the cow back to the fence but with no luck, when suddenly Mason reappears and informs me that a neighbor boy ( 12 years old) is here and has a gun.  I gave up.  I threw the whip across the yard and continued to yell into the wind.  Who lets their kids roam the hood with a loaded pellet gun strapped to their back?  I told the kids I didn't think what he was doing was safe, but allowed my oldest son to stay outside and talk to him for a few minutes.  Meanwhile I tried to cool off by calling Gary to yell at him just because I needed him to  know what it was like when he was gone.  He suggested I call the cowboy down the road in for help.  Ummm ... No.  So I told him I could get it and I didn't need a man to help me.  That is when Abby remembered that we left the gate open for the other cow and horse to get out of.  Rolling my eyes I asked her to go and shut it and watch for snakes because two had been spotted at the awning.  She came back 10 minutes later and reported that she single handedly got all three animals back in the pasture using a shovel and good wit.  Ya hoo for the 8 year old girl.  see. we didn't need a man.   Upon realizing we were all mostly in our pajamas and the kids in underwear I would say not bad for a evenings work. 

Ohhh better get a bloggin

I haven't updated this poor dusty blog in a month. I don't know why. Oh yes I do... Serenity. No not like that peace and calm feeling, I mean my daughter Serenity who is as I type banging on the toilet and ripping paper off the roller. The sound of music.

I really can't stay and chat, there is a storm coming and it is perfectly beautiful outside. I am grabbing my baby, my big dog and my husbands hand ohhhh and camera and we are going for a walk before the four older kids get home and we have to really start our day. Today will mark the first day back to scouts for the boys, well at least Mason. Not sure how I am going to swing school ending at four P.M. Then guitar at 4:45 and scouts at six. Big sigh. I was really hoping to at least get somewhat dressed so I don't make a horrible first impression but alas it won't be. We are part of a new pack this year since we moved so it will be a learning experience for us all. They will learn i am generally scattered and disorganized. Okay off to play in the much needed rain and teach our big dog not to eat live chickens. Day one of training.

Friends

These are two of my daughters, they are about the same age and best friends.  I love this picture because it is very candid and I am surprised my oldest daughter got dressed up as she is quite the tom boy!!!
But her little sister talked her into it, they play for a long time as we shot "friendship"

Anything but simple

Who said that the quest for raising your own food and living a more clean self sustaining life was going to be simple?? 

I lost it today.  Poor kids.  As if I ever had "it" I haven't.  If "it" means my "act together".

I NEED them to help me.  I have become this militant crazy mom lately and I don't like it.  No wander the pioneers never smiled in pictures.  They were freaking tired and didn't have time to smile.  I actually told my kids today that I would have time to listen and snuggle if I was going to be forced to do all the chores on this property.  I also told them they could sit in their rooms while I did everything and then I made a list of all I would have to do by myself.  I told them this was not just our dream but something we were doing for them.  I doubt they got it, because something I have learned about kids is they are in fact kids.  Mostly self centered and very distracted.  One minute Abby is pledging her allegiance to the farm and the chores in question and the next she has dissapeared, butterfly net in hand, hunting geckos.  I have to admit, I just now grabbed her butterfly net, now wrapped in duct tape due to its overuse, and went outside at 11 pm, I saw a few geckos on my chickenless porch and I thought I would help her out.  I swore she wouldn't get another animal due to her lack of responsibility with chores.  I need to remember she is only 7. 

I made Mason cry.  I sat them all down and reamed them.  I made Abby cry too.  I don't really feel that guilty either.  Like I said I have turned hard.  Where is Gary? one may ask.  Not here to enjoy the chaos, rather enjoying his view in Hawaii.  He may never really understand  what it is like to go alone with the kids and try to train them and guide them full time.  So life on the "farm" is proving not simple at all.  Truth be told we are just starting, we haven't even got the garden in or the livestock.  My face just fell.  Excuse me while I pick it up off the floor and try to paste on a smile.

no camera

Well Nettie successfully found my camera, under the couch cushion that one of my kids fell asleep on and peed, I couldn't be too mad, I did after all find my camera.  Well now it is broken.  I got in one last photo shoot with the girls when Mason stepped on it.  I don't even want to talk too much about it because I have missed a hundred photos in the last few days.

The chickens are off the porch and out of the garage!  This is a big deal considering the two seperate occasions in which the chickens decided to make themselves at home in my house and on my carpet.  Their coop isn't totally finished and I feel wierd with them being so far away but it had to be done.  You have no idea how much chickens poop, unreal.  really.  We got the babies out of the garage too, so my three surving bantams are now in a brooder in the big coop hanging with the big dog (chickens) until they are big enough to merge.  One of my roosters has already pecked my baby, I hope he doesn't turn out mean.

The fence is going up.  Soon very soon.  I think work will start on Monday.  That means that our two adopted big dogs will be coming home.  I am nervous about this.  Four dogs.  Two of them weighing over 100 pounds each.  Then with our renter moving in and bringing her dog we will have five dogs running the property.  Should be fun.

Got the above ground pool set up.  Five thousand gallons of water, right on my doorstep all  held back by three layers of vinyl.  Should be fun.

Insert some random history.  We have been calling the area (our walk out basement) with the above ground pool "the pool area" for 20 something years, yet there has never been a pool there.  Well tonight we made that a reality.  For the first time in over 20 years kids actually swam in what is called the pool area.

Five kids ready to swim their little hearts out on our chickenless porch.  Should be fun.

I know I am just so classy how can I even handle it?

Since I don't have a camera we can all pretend that is is my family.  They are just like us anyway... so happy  and calm, notice the water level is in tact and there is not giant slashing hahahah typo splashing~ going on!  Yes just like my kids.

Tonight while I was building the ladder for the pool, Abby and I hear a knock at the back door.  I dismissed it knowing it couldn't be anyone, but she opened the door and slammed it shut immediately screaming.  Well that did wanders for my adrenalin.  She told me in a breathless sort of way that the giant bug was back.  Feeling like I was in a 70's horror film I told her not to scare me like that!  The bug she was speaking of came with a friend and the night before they collectively assaulted our house from the front and the back.  We are talking at least 5 inches of pure beetle.  So tonight when I had to turn the hose off out back I walked with much caution.  Heeby Jeebys.    Apparently they are the Palo Verde beetle and can get up to six inches!  They make their presence known in July!  Well there ya have it.

Where the Dickens is my camera!!!!

baboobug, I can't find it anywhere and we, meaning Suzanne did up Nettie's room!!!  So we will have to wait for her to post the pictures, although since then I have added a few things.

Hearts.

Quickly, my Nettie is a doll and tonight was her night!!!  It was her night to snuggle with me and we did so in her newly, thriftily decorated room.  Talk about making a little's girls dream come true.  All the night she kept telling me that she loved me and thank you and what a great job Suzanne did and how she was so happy that God gave her a mom, (she is adopted so there is much talk about missing family and such)

As we laid in her "heart, love" theme room (perfect fit for her) she said  "mom ya know what the favorite part of this room is to me?"  long pause,  "YOU!" and she leaned over and laid a big juicy kiss on my lips!  She was so grateful.  She said the room made her feel safe and she repeated that over and over.  For under 50 bucks we were able to create a masterpiece that means the world to this little girl.  Suzanne you rock and God has given you a gift go and spend it girl!!!

Not that girl.

Oh man why can't I just be that girl.  She is so inspired and poetic, I could have been her once upon a time ago when I had more than half a brain.  So recently a friend turned me onto this blog and I love it!  How can you not?  So for half a day with my less than half a brain I attempted to think and to "feel" poetic like I did before I had all these kids and this crazy life.  It didn't last long, by afternoon I was spent.  I did however post her manifesto of joy on my fridge and I am currently praying that osmosis will take over...I am not holding out too much hope,  it hasn't with my dusty elliptical sitting in the corner of my room cleverly disguised as a towel rack.  my butt is still big.  Darn it.

So here is my day on our much smaller farm, which actually isn't a farm at all yet because the only thing we have that is farmy is chickens and they have done nothing but poop on my carpet and die.

Here is my picture, and ya know what.... I am okay with that.


She stands outside in her pepto bismol cottom pink pajamas, evening is being called by night and begins her graceful decent behind the purple crest.... much like the 111 purple and pink mountains on her legs.  (Mosquito bites dotted with calamine lotion.)  She waves her hands in the air and shifts her weight from one leg to the other, growing impatient with the kids and the dog.  She only owns two pairs of shoes practical and impractical.  The practical ones carry her lifts that ease the tension in her aching not so joyful bones.  The impractical a thrift store find, black platform sandals that she manages to match with anything that is not a pair of cotton shorts.  But tonight as the golden sun kisses the moon, brushing her delicate cheek in passing she has no time to put on the impractical because the dog has run away so the black platform sandals, crusted in mud would suffice anyway pajamas don't really have a category.  down the road Mr Wiggles runs his little figure growing smaller...smaller...baby on her hip,  diaper on backwards, (bigger sister put in on, not a bad job for a seven year old)  there is not time to care.  Is there ever??  Kids come screaming and running, barefoot thorns attacking their feet while mosquitos dive bomb their panicked faces.  Pleading "please get Mr. Wiggles!"  She refuses and stomps back to the house, Mr. Wiggles can figure it out, coyotes are coming out.    Mr. Wiggles reluctantly follows after all.  Everyone is safe.  She is careful not to step on the pile of some vomit from something... As her daughter informed her could be the baby could be the dog.  Down Down Down (insert melodramatic voice) the stairs she goes.  Ah yes, she pauses at the hallway with heavy sigh she eyeballs her plans her stepping around little mounds of poo, chicken poo on her floor.  Round two of the poo.  This time she knows what to do. unfortunately.

The Chicken Chronicles

If you have spoken with me in the last few months you may notice I talk alot about chickens.  I can't help it, I am fascinated by the broody bunch of cluckers.

This fascination turned to horror yesterday afternoon when I arrived home from a day full of errands.  It was life as usual, screaming kids and baby.  I was unloading groceries when Nettie informed me in a breathless shocked sort of way ...something about chickens, and poo and my room, I only half heard her but she did mention I would be very angry and that got me thinking I better see what the trouble was.

I went downstairs to our walk out basement area to find chicken @#%$ all over my game room and bedroom floor.  Mason had left the door open when he gave them water before we left.  The chickens decided that sitting on my porch (and I thought that was a generous offer) was not good enough and my biddy's let themselves in, all 16 of them and had the run of the house for several hours.  I am sure they pecked and scratched the carpet and rested and pooped until we got home.  I do recall seeing them running from that general direction out of the kitchen window and thought that was odd.

Needless to say I wasn't mad at the chickens, I was upset with Mason and Gary for not yet having a proper coop for them to hang out in because 16 chickens hanging out on your porch makes one feel slightly hill billy.  Never mind how one feels when the chickens take up residence in your bedroom! 

Thank God one of my friends owns a carpet cleaning business and he immediately directed me on how to handle the situation.  Let the chicken crap dry and scoop it up with a spoon.  So I slept in my room that night very aware of the drying poop surrounding me.  I became one with the hens.  At five o clock this morning I was on my hands and knees with a plastic spoon and a brown paper bag scooping mounds of chicken waste out of my carpet.  It came up fairly easy and I am so glad I took his advice.  Well all of it nearly came up, there was a hen with an apparent case of the runs and that poo wasn't going anywhere fast.  While on my hands and knees scraping doo I picked up feathers,  scooped a wayward beetle and killed a roach.  Nothing like chicken poo and roaches to make one feel at home in the country.  Actually I had never killed a roach before, in my previous life I had been too scared of them but there is something maddening about being up at five in the morning surrounded by chicken turd in your own bedroom that makes one snap and I pounded that stupid roach to death and I didn't even feel bad. 

But what was really great was when I went back to bed and Judah came running into my room to say good morning, I scream don't step on the chicken diarrhea and before I could stop him he is up on my bed jumping towards me... too late.

Never mind, some of these chickens will be salad someday anyway, I don't blame them maybe they were protesting.

Nevermind some