Gardening, fencing, and potty training

We had a very busy weekend!  Last weekend I knew that I wanted to tackle the boys' potty training this weekend.  I started on Thursday by giving them multiple vitamin C tablets.  That may seem like an odd way to start potty training, but I had my reasons!  We had two boys with "issues".  Jedidiah has been number 1 trained for some time now, but number 2 freaked the poor boy out.  Jonah insisted he was terrified of the potty and would scream bloody murder if we tried to get him to wear underwear or sit on the toilet.  Sigh.  So all week we talked about how their diaper days were coming to an end on the weekend. 
Well things went pretty much like I thought they would.  Jonah was fine about the underwear...for about 20 minutes!  Then he went bonkers when he realized that he couldn't have a diaper on.  He screamed, and cried, and screamed and cried.  I had to put the diapers up high, out of his reach.  Oy.  BUT that being said, he only had two accidents for the whole day.  On top of that he stayed dry both nights!  Which is weird because during the day he was running to the toilet every 5 to 10 minutes, but could hold it all night.  Jed on the other hand could hold it for hours during the day, but can't make it through the night.  Either way, both boys are going potty all day long!  Yay!! They got a ton of stickers and fun tatoos for their efforts.  Even Aubrey has taken interest in trying to go on the potty again.  He had the unfortunate incident of coming down with a bladder infection the day after he decided he wanted to be a big boy and wear undies, and the pain freaked him out and he has been scared of the potty since.  But he wasn't about to miss out on all the sticker fun!  He still has a long ways to go, but I'm just glad that he is taking interest in it again.

This past week Saoirse took to making a list of all the foods she wants to try to dehydrate.  Her first attempt was an apple and some bananas.  She set right to work, and is checking off her foods as she accomplishes dehydrating them.  Too cute.

Saoirse, cutting up the bananas.  A really good choice to begin with as it is easy to cut.

I was able to get the flexible sheets for my Nesco, this has opened up another avenue to dehydrating.  It has been very, very handy to have saved the Nesco.  I was going to get rid of it, pass it on to someone else.  But with these sheets it is now being used...a lot!

Saoirse's little set up.  She is sitting on a booster chair, set on the ground.  She is using a plastic lid to cut the banana on, which is set on the boy's plastic tool bench :-)  She put the dehydrator try behind her.  Her only problem, which was a very serious one....her siblings kept sneaking in and eating the food!!  She was not happy about that.  Dehydrated fruit doesn't stand a chance lasting more than a couple of hours in our house!

We  accomplished a lot over the weekend outside.  Jeremiah put up the fencing for the boy goats. It's not ready for them to move into quite yet, but it should be by next weekend.  I can't wait!  Our milk tastes great the first day, but by day two there is an off taste.  This has never happened with our goat's milk before.  We are suspecting that it is due to the females and males being housed together in close proximity.  They are separated by a fence, but that is all.  The boy goats will eventually be moved to the other side of our house, giving enough distance to not interfere with the taste of the milk.  For now, since we can't have raw milk anyways, I'm heating up the milk to 180* before turning it into yogurt.  I would prefer to make raw milk yogurt, but I don't want that taste in our yogurt!

Above you can see my very special veggie markers.  Um, yeah.  This is called, wait till the last minute to plant your seeds and write out the veggie names with marker and run the paper through the laminator.  I had tried to paint rocks, but that wasn't working.  Currently the rocks are holding down the above marker in place at the beginning of each row.

Flannery wanted to paint the veggie names on wood.  This was a great idea, and you can see she did a cute job. The only problem?  We only had one piece of wood! 

Flannery and Saoirse joined me to do half the planting in the warm afternoon sun.  Later on we finished the job with Moira and Aubrey joining us.  The girls decided that each seed spot needed to be marked with a stick.  So now we have all these small sticks sticking up out of the ground!

Saoirse moving the mulch out of the way.  You can see some her sticks behind her hands.

Now I have to say I was plenty impressed with how dedicated Saoirse was to getting these seeds planted. She isn't exactly known over here for following through and finishing the work she is supposed to be doing.  But she planted many rows of veggies all on her own.

I suppose we won't be winning the "Most Organized Gardener" award anytime soon :-)

Above you can see my 'shovel'.  Yup, that green stick!  Somehow small trowels go missing whenever you need one.

Speaking of sticks...some may remember that I had a stick, from the mulch above, stab me in the foot about 9 months ago.  The doctors who saw my foot insisted that nothing was left inside.  Um, yeah, tell that to my foot!  About 2 months ago I noticed that the area, which has remained raised since the accident, was now pink/red. Then it started to itch, and get a bit painful every once in the while.  Not two weeks or so ago it began to blister!  There is something in there...trying to get out!!!  I think I will head to the doctors as it still seems to be lodged, but clearly my body is trying to get rid of it. Isn't the human body amazing?!

My rock/laminated paper veggie markers layed out in the order that I planned to put them.

We all got a bit of sun today, with pink cheeks and for some, pink shoulders.  It was finally warm!  Not the warm because the sun is shining, but still cool/cold air, but really and truly warm.  Ahhhh, it felt so good to be out there soaking up the sun and digging in the dirt!

See?  Springtime bliss :-)

These are our naughty chickens.  The two younger girls and the two older boys had just spread this straw out over the herb garden.  There was one small area on the right where the straw bale sat, and so there was a bit of straw on the ground.  But these naughty girls were digging through it, looking for goodies, and you can see all the straw outside of the rock border!

Flannery suggested I take this picture...a *hands full* of dirt....a play on my blog name. 

Our new mantra...."Grow, garden, grow!"  Ha, ha!  It will be interesting to see if I find any of the girls talking to the plants or our baby trees. They thought Jeremiah was silly for telling them that talking to plants help them to grow.  But he insisted it was true.  We'll see if they believe him :-)

A decent outdoor day

Can someone tell me where spring is?  I'm afraid we will skip right over spring and jump right into summer.  I don't like when that happens.  It is more difficult to adjust to the high temps.  For now, there are no high temps...brrrr (for spring mind you).

Two little boys hanging out.  I was thinking how long it took for us to get Jonah to wear long sleeves and long pants as we headed into fall/winter.  We've only had one day that short sleeves were wearable, and Jonah freaked out.  So I suppose it will be the opposite, he'll be wearing long sleeves and pants when it is 95* out, until he gets used to the idea of short sleeves/pants.  Silly boy. 

Please excuse Aubrey's bloody head, he had just banged his head, opening his wound up.  So much for getting him stitches!

Although Jonah won't wear summer clothing he will wear his new sandals, provided he is also wearing socks.  Baby steps, baby steps.  Aubrey on the other hand is obsessed with these winter boots.  He's not too keen on his new sandals, which match Jonah's.

Checking on the baby trees.  Jonah has the nurturing spirit in him.  He is very intrigued by the trees and wants to take care of them.

Getting a closer look.  We Jeremiah was able to finish off the fencing in the front yard.  This should keep the goats out, and stop them from eating the garden.  But I worry a bit for these baby trees as some are literally only a large stick size, making them vulnerable to little boys :-)

 Here Jeremiah is 'fixing' a snapped branch.

We took advantage of the nice weather to get some painting in.  I had painted some arrows on some rocks for their treasure hunt and all the kiddos wanted in on the painting action.

Aubrey painted the longest.  Jed and Jonah painted for a bit, but went off running after each other.  Aubrey painted the afternoon away.

So cute.

It was neat to see how focused he was, and how he really was trying to carefully paint the top of the rock.  He wasn't just slopping on paint.  Though he had difficulty in keeping the colors from mixing.

Thoughtful artist.

.At At some point Saoirse joined us and she brought along a few more things to the 'table'.

Thankfully the messes stayed outside!  I must remember this for future painting time.

Saoirse at work on something.  I wasn't sure what she was doing at first.  But she came up with a cute idea:

Stamps!

See all that mucky mess!  How wonderful that it is *outside*.  Yes, I am repeating myself, but that is only because the following day the boys found the paints and decided to have a painting day inside....along with the mess that follows.  Oy.


 

Here is a wee sign of spring. Maybe, as these are on one of our apple trees, and these started coming out when they were inside...our warm house.

A wonderful Easter

Before I get into the details, I ask you all to lift up a friend's sister.  While at our house, our friend received a phone call telling her that her sister had tried committing suicide.  I ask you to lift up this woman, that she would recover fully.  Please pray for peace for their whole family as they deal with this heartbreaking situation.

Yesterday I was very busy with making food, cleaning and putting together the treasure hunt.  We were blessed to have three families join us in our Easter celebration.  One family had just moved back to the area the night before!  It was neat as they are a family who eats Paleo.  So it wasn't weird having to explain why we eat the way we do! 

I had two mostly GAPS legal desserts planned.  One, an almond cookie, didn't come out as I imagined.  The review on it was that no one would know this was a GAPS cookie.  I would beg to differ!  Of course, it could be I didn't make it correctly. It's not one I want to jump in and try again right away.  The other was semi GAPS as it was a brownie made with sweet potatoes.  Sweet potatoes are kind of a fence rider when it comes to GAPS compatibility.  But, for the holiday, I thought we would indulge.  Now, I've made a black bean brownie recipe a couple of times in the past with bad outcomes each time.  Again, the reviews about these type of brownies was all thumbs up.  So I was a bit apprehensive to give these a go.  But boy where we VERY pleasantly surprised!!!  They were terrific!!  A definite "We have to make this again, soon!" kind of terrific. 

I got the recipe from HERE.  I  must go write a review for them :-) 

I didn't have enough time to make the two treasure hunts I had planned.  I had planned on making one for the older kids and one for the younger kiddos.  Time was running out so I just made one for everyone.  They all had fun.  We finished up just in time for some of our guests to leave.  I had them going all over the place, hoping to wear them out ;-)  Not sure if it worked, as my kids were up pretty late.  Hmmm. 

Today, I am hoping to get on the ball to get us back on track with all that needs doing.  That task seems very daunting right now. 

Update on my "Milk Jar Help" post

Although we have only started milking last weekend I have been using the colored circles and the "y's" and "k's".  The "y" stands for yogurt and the "k" stands for kefir.  I feel that it's been long enough to give an update to see how they are working for our family. 

So far I've only had one problem with this system....I don't have enough of them!!!  Ha!  I have plenty of the plain colored circles, probably too many, though they will come in handy should we loose any.  I did not have enough of the y's and k's.  Being that I had a large batch of yogurt in my dehydrator, and not enough y's to go around I took action.  As I thought more on it I realized how much easier things are to label, and that I should have more of these labels handy for some of my other milk type products.  I was trying to stick with one color per day for the milk and one color for the other milk products (yogurt, kefir, etc).  I did not have any more brown paint chip cards so I decided to make due with what I had.

It didn't take too long to make the circles, cut them out and write what was needed on them.  I then laminated them, and after cutting out the magnets from the magnet sheet, Jonah attached the magnets to the back of them.  I was a little bummed that some of the marker smudged.  I really wasn't up to using a permanent marker, like I did the last time, as I don't like their smell.  So I went with regular kiddo markers.  Oh, well, they will still work! 

So here is a shot of my current stash of labels:

 Lots of y's!  I made some for coconut kefir, animal kefir, villii (a room temp culturing yogurt), whey, coconut milk, coconut/nut  milk, and one for starters.  There's nothing quite like opening your fridge to see a bunch of glass jars with white stuff in them and not exactly knowing what is in each!  Problem solved.  Although masking tape works great, I would have to actually find said tape and find a pen...every. single. time. Not fun.  This is working like a dream for us!

 Ok, so there is the problem of them all staying in their proper place.  But, still better than hunting down tape and pen.  The girls did not know I had made new labels.  One of them went into the fridge for some yogurt and proclaimed we were out of it.  I told her there was no way we were out of yogurt as I had just made up a large batch.  I told her to look for the jars with the y's on them.  She was thrown off because she was looking for a brown circle.  As you can see I have them in purplish colors now.

 This picture and the ones that follow have nothing to do with my labels :-)  Just some pictures I took before I put my camera away after taking the label pictures.  Flannery and Saoirse have set up a drawing station at the desk.  They sit on the opposite side that you are supposed to.  We have wide window sills, and they use those for seats.

 Saoirse at work.

 Flannery has been very much into tracing pictures and coloring them in.

 Isabella was sitting on the couch across from the desk working on her math...until her little brothers convinced her to draw them some pictures of helicopters, dinos, cars and such.

Flannery's notebook that she insisted I take a picture of.  Oh, look!  A pencil sharpener!  We only have five pencil sharpeners in our house.  They either don't work, the batteries are dead, or they are lost.  This does not bode well with 7 kiddos using pencils and no pencil sharpener. 

A long awaited dream, coming true

It is funny when I think back to pre-family days, and the dreams I had for my future.  Although those dreams did include being married and having a large family, not much else is the same.  When I first became interested in gardening, some 13 or so years ago, one of my desires was to have fruit trees.  As we've had more children that desire increased :-)  Fruit can be expensive.  I'm still wondering if it is possible to have our own banana plantation!  Ha, ha.  I'm only joking...sort of. 

Each house we've lived at I wanted to get some fruit trees.  But alas, it wasn't so.  When we were in the midst of building this house and I was serious that we were never moving again under any circumstance, I wanted to plant fruit trees before we even moved in.  At the time Jed was a newborn, and well, we were in the midst of moving.  And so the dream remained, in my thoughts. 

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of getting online and choosing our first trees!  With a budget to work with I chose 5 apple trees, and one each of peach, cherry, plum and almond.  Last week a very large box arrived, the delivery man stating that it was a box of trees.  I tore into it.  Well, I suppose I would have torn into it if it hadn't been for the many gazzilion of monster staples that I had to pry off first.  And yesterday, in the very cold and windy weather, Jeremiah and I planted those dream trees.  I suppose it was mostly Jeremiah doing the planting, now come to think of it :-)  My job was to help find where we would plant them, and then after the holes were dug, I was to hold the tree in place as Jeremiah filled in the hole.  Of course I had the very important job of taking pictures.  At least that is what I tell myself. 

Before we get to the pictures I must share what happened immediately before we went out to plant the trees. Over a year ago I was in Walmart when a gentleman approached me.  He asked me why I had so many canning jars in my cart when the canning season was over.  We started a discussion which ended with him giving me his card and an invitation to come to his home to pick apples this past summer.  He told me that if I could keep track of his card, to call him and we could come and pick as many apples as we wanted.  The summer came, and I had kept his card safe for those 9 months.  I called, but never got a response back.  All eventually was forgotten...until last night!  This gentleman called and apologized for never calling me back!  He said he had been out of town, and when he returned the apples had all dropped.  He explained that he and his wife's health has been poor and that he plans on giving up the apple trees.  He said that we could come by and take a look at them and pick out any ones we wanted.  I think the plan is that if we care for the trees then we can have their fruit!  I told him that we were just about to go out and plant our baby fruit trees and what a wonderful opportunity it would be if we could come by and learn how we should be tending them.  In the meantime, as we wait for our trees to mature, we will have this opportunity to still have fruit!  He also mentioned he had peach trees, but I'm not sure if we will be doing anything with those, he wasn't clear on that.  I am just excited to learn about orchard care from someone who has been doing it for years, and excited at the prospect of a source of fruit! 

Here are the pictures I was able to take yesterday:

All nine trees in a bundle.  I had just untied the small ropes that held them all together, and opened up the plastic bag surrounding the roots.

 The digging part :-)  I stood faithfully by taking pictures.   Except for the times I needed to run into the house to look up information (can tree roots grow around rock, do fruit trees have tap roots, and such).  Or take the baby inside, or get my boots on, or...ok, so I stood by some of the time.

 Jonah insisted on me taking a picture of him.  He and Aubrey we very interested in the tree planting process.  At one point they needed to be brought in as they were getting a little too close to the action.

 Flannery trying her hand at digging. I think she found it easier to use the pick ax.

 Hard work, I tell ya.

 There were only so many pictures to take of holes, so I found other subjects :-)

 More action shots. 

 Of course using my new camera for the first time had nothing to do with taking pictures of everything else!  I will have to tell that camera story some other time.  Let's just say that it will take some getting used to a new camera set up and getting used to using an SLR after being without one for a year.

 Total cuteness, even when blurry.

 Who can resist cute little booted feet?  Too large pants all scrunched up, wearing his older brother's sweater. 

 Our plum tree!  It's funny because when I woke up this morning I looked outside my window first thing to see my trees...except that from that distance they look like large sticks!  Ha, ha.  If it weren't for their tags still being in place I would have had to really look for them!

 We bought our trees from a site called "Trees of Antiquity".  They have a selection of about 150 trees!  Many were already sold out when I was ordering, which helped to narrow my selection.   It is pretty difficult to pick out apples based on a written description of their taste.  I went with a couple that we already eat, and a few that I've never heard of, like this Holstein above.

One last picture before I took the baby back in.  He was getting chilled.  You can see he is no longer wearing the sweater that he was in the above pictures.  He had already gone inside, gotten wet while trying to wash his hands, and re-dressed.  Here he is saying, "Cold, inside".  So in we went.

It was a great time working together on a project.  Many times Jeremiah or I are working on something independently.  But it is neat when we are able to work together to get things done here on the homestead! 

Our first full milking day

Yesterday, was a test run for our first milking day.  It was cut short by Aubrey needing to be taken to the urgent care for stitches.  Today was our first real milking.  Yesterday was a test run due to having dewormed the goats a few days ago.  I like to give at least a three day waiting/holding period if I have to use a chemical dewormer.  I would have just waited until today for our first milking, but I noticed that Lily was lying down constantly, in an effort to keep her kids off of her.  She was one of our two goats that had triplets.  Having only 2 teats, but three babies...well lets just say she's already "done" with the nursing thing :-)  Not entirely mind you, but I was afraid that we could see a huge drop in her milk production if I didn't hop right to it the very next day. 

So today was the day.  I had anticipated that there would be two of us helping out on the milking for the first few days until everyone was used to the routine.  But I had forgotten that the older two girls were to be at the horse barn early this morning.  So it was just me.  Things went smoothly.  Thankfully!

I will be making a video of our milking routine soon.  I want to make sure we have it down before I do.  There are some tweaks that will be made I am sure.  I had been debating whether to bring out a cooler with me to put the milk right into since we have 5 goats needing to be milked.  But yesterday when we got to the first Nigerian, it was a 'duh' moment as we realized that our regular sized milking pail is too big to fit under a Nigerian dwarf goat!  I was better prepared today.  I decided against the cooler idea.  I may change my mind in the future but I really don't want to try to get a cooler across our dirt yard, and through a gate.  Plus when I have to pour out the water I would have to pull the cooler to a place that can handle the water....not in the back!  Instead I decided to take out the large milking pail.  I milked our first two Alpines, brought their milk in, strained it and put it in an ice bath (in my kitchen sink).  I then brought out a small metal mixing bowl.  I milked Pippi, our smaller Alpine, into the bowl and dumped her milk into a quart jar.  She had just a little over a quart so I gave the leftovers to the cat.  I separated her milk because last year it tasted horrid and I wanted to check it before I combined it with any other milk.

Next I milked the Nigerians.  That was like learning to milk a goat all over again!  They have very, very small teats.  With our Alpines I need to use my whole hand to express the milk, but with the dwarfs I only needed a thumb and first finger!  This will take some getting used to.

I am not sure how long it took me to milk all five.  I suppose I will time myself after I feel that I can remember all that needs to be done without thinking too hard :-) 

After the milk had cooled for a few hours it was time to taste it!  I was nervous.  I wasn't concerned with Lily and Honey's milk.  This is their fourth year milking, so I was pretty sure it would taste as good as ever.  I had forgotten to mark the quart jars, one had Pippi's milk, the other contained the combined dwarf milkings.  The girls asked how would we know which is which.  Well, unfortunately we found out :-(  Pippi's milk is HORRID.  Yuck, ick, bleh.  I was really bummed.  The dwarf milk tasted sweeter (supposedly due to their higher fat content), but also more watery in texture, which I wasn't expecting since the higher fat is supposed to make it creamier than other breeds of goat milk.  But, it wasn't bad, just not what I was expecting.  The good thing, it tasted good, and this is their first milking, so there is the potential that next year will be even better. 

I am SOOOO excited to start making raw milk yogurt with their milk.  I think I will start a batch tonight.  Since we are doing GAPS and have to let it incubate 24 hours, and then let it cool for another 8 or so hours it won't be done for a day and a half.  I was bummed about Pippi's milk.  What are we going to do with it?  Then I remembered that after seeing the hefty price for the powdered probiotic made for goats, that I was going to just give them kefir instead.  So I will use her milk to make kefir for all of our animals (goats, chickens, dogs and cats).  When we milk twice a day I will get a half gallon of milk for the animal kefir, plenty to go around.

Another first

Around here "firsts" are usually celebrated.  You know, the first time your child walks, says a word, learns to tie shoes, etc.  A couple of years ago we had a first that wasn't welcomed...the first of our children to break a bone.  Today we had another first, another unwelcome one....the first of our children to get stitches. 

Aubrey was attempting to jump on Jeremiah, who was on the couch, but he lost his balance and banged his head against the corner of our end table.  Ouch.  Remarkably, he wasn't screaming or crying.  Not sure if that is good or bad.  (I was outside helping to get our first day of milking off to a good start.)  Jeremiah picked him up and saw the gash on his forehead.  Flannery called out the window to me that Aubrey got hurt really bad and that Daddy thought he needed to go to the ER.  WHA?? Not words I wanted to hear.  I asked her what was wrong with him, as I was half jogging to get inside.  She said he hit his head against the end table.  Oh boy.  I was preparing myself to see blood everywhere, BUT it wasn't bleeding!  Weird.  Although it wasn't bleeding, it was deep. 

After some time with the ice pack, we headed out to the urgent care.  He was calm and acting normal.  Though, I would be expecting him to be crying, so maybe he wasn't acting normal?  We got there and no one else was in the waiting room.  The doctor took one look at him and was like, Yup, he definitely needs stitches.  By then the wound was open even further, maybe from some swelling.  Needless to say he got the pleasure of getting stitches.  He handled it as well as any 2 year old who has to be strapped down could handle it.  Poor little guy.  But really after the numbing injection, which clearly hurt, he was only crying because he was afraid.  Jeremiah and I were both there talking softly to him and reassuring him that everything was ok.  Thankfully it went pretty quickly.  The doctor made sure to get everything ready before we brought him into the room.

He has a headache now.  He seems to be ok with Motrin or Tyenol in him.  I've been keeping an eye on him and he's been acting fine, playing, eating, etc. 

Now for the kicker.  I took the boys outside to play.  Jeremiah was working on the new barn construction.  I helped him for a bit, but realized it was getting close to the time the older two girls needed to be picked up. Jeremiah was going to go get them, but figured he should stick to working on the barn.  When we got home and I was trying to get Aubrey to go inside, I heard Jeremiah yell out.  Oh.  No.  He had been using the hand saw when I had passed by.  Sure enough he got cut, but not by the saw.  He was sawing off some wood that was next to the metal roofing and as the wood was cut through it made his hand jerk to the side, getting sliced by the metal roof.  Now Jeremiah is sporting stitches!!!!  Can you believe it?! 

Let's just say I'm a wee bit stressed out.  At this point I'm about to duct tape everyone down.  Just yesterday Aubrey climbed up on top of a desk and fell off, head first.  And I mean, Head First, with his whole body above him.  I was so scared he had injured his neck!!  He was fine, though clearly in pain.  So now, after today, I will be trying to keep everyone from using sharp objects, or from running around too much, or from sneezing too hard (I'm JOKING!).  I am worn out. 

Please pray that they both heal quickly and without any fanfare.  Thank you!