a day in pictures

It's been a while since I did a day in pictures.  Today being a Saturday, means lots of non-normal activities for the day.  I didn't take a ton of pictures since lugging my camera around with a huge, non-working lens....well it got pretty tiring.  But, here is a glimpse into what I did today:

 After dropping off Isabella and Moira to horses (Moira was along for companionship as Isa would have been left alone for a while), I gobbled up some breakfast (oatmeal) and started on my "list".  First up was to get our chickens cooked, all six of them.  I am putting Isabella and Moira on the GAPS intro.  Way, way, way too many health issues with them, so it is a must.  But too expensive for all of us to be on it, so it's just them.  I will be joining in with full GAPS for the remainder of the pregnancy.

 Finally getting to putting in dividers in some of our binders.  This will make things much easier on school days.  This is my master binder which holds all of the schedules for each child, any maps and resources, plus some blank templates.

 I did this the other day, but I got to labeling my binders as well.  Nothing like having to pull out 5 binders until I find the right one.

I got our hymns and folk songs printed out and put into binders as well.

Today is my day to feed the animals in the morning.  It is also the day I clean out their water and feed bowls. Today though, I also had to make a run to the feed store.  I made that run before picking up the older girls.

 Yummy goat food :-P

I also had a small project in mind as it was getting too much to fend off chickens!  The baby goats will allow the chickens to just take over their feed bucket, which resulted in them not gaining the needed weight to be bred this year.  On top of it they are slow eaters!  I, nor the girls, do not have 20 minutes fending off chickens each and every day.  With the cold days coming, the idea was even less tempting.  Here Jonah is messing with the chickens, which he isn't supposed to be doing as this made them come towards me, where the goats were!  Oy.

 Jonah showing off his new boots.  He very much needed new shoes.  As the biggest boy there are no hand me downs to be had.  He had been complaining about his sandals not fitting for the past few weeks, but no longer.  He is thrilled with his new boots.  Smitten with them :-)

 Now the only issue is going to teach him to tie his shoes.  He doesn't possess that skill at this moment, which got a bit tiresome after tying his shoes for him for the 10th time today.  We have a rule, no shoes allowed while jumping on the trampoline.  But there is also the rule that if you are outside, and not on the trampoline, you must wear shoes :-)  Hence, tying shoes 10 times today!

 Our goats finally got some much needed hay!  As ruminants, they need the roughage, but it's not been on the grocery list for the past few months!!! And, yes, I have the animals feed on our regular grocery list :-)  Not only were the goats very pleased, but the kids were as well!  They rolled the huge hay bale up to the trampoline.  I am sure I don't need to tell you why!

 Why, yes, this is a picture of our dirt :-)  This stuff is a lovely dark shade, and makes the ground very soft to walk on.  This is one past spot where we have had hay bales in the past, and the left over stuff that falls to the ground turns into compost. This is the stuff I keep telling the kids to rake up and put in a pile before it gets worked into the ground.

 Uh, oh, here comes the chickens!  This is our one and only rooster.  The only rooster we've kept for so long.  He is amazing at watching over his girls, and has never been aggressive towards any one!  All of our other roosters have all had to go "bye-bye" since they would start getting aggressive.  And an aggressive rooster can do some major, major damage to a small child!!  He is the rooster we 'rescued'.  He had been attacked by some animal and with some tlc, he is king once more :-)

 See, hay bale.  Enough said.

 The chickens are starting to spread out, won't be long before they all head my way.

 Here is my handy stick....and a cat.  The cats all come for some loving...or milk.  But we are not milking anymore for the season, so the cats are bummed.

 This is what happens if I walk away from the goat feed bowl!  The chickens invade.  This was fine for the moment as the baby goats were done eating, there were just the little specks left over.

 Jed was on a mission to make a "cake".  We had to leave to pick up the girls, so he had to finish his mission later in the day.

 Back from picking up the girls, and I still had to scrub the buckets.

 I had the older girls unload the animal feed from the van.  Here it is, safe behind the fencing, ready to go into the feed room.

 Some crimped oats waiting to be used.  I mix up some feed for the goats to be used throughout the week.  We used to just dump each bag of feed into it's own pail, and mix as we went along, but a lot got wasted that way.  Now I do the mixing, and the girls just have to measure out the required amount of feed for each goat.  For the next few months we will see our feed prices go down, as non-milking goats require less feed each day.  The down side is we have to then start paying for milk at the store...so it might just even out after all!

 Here is an entire garbage can filled with mixed feed.  I put one scoop corn, one scoop mixed animal feed pellets, 1/2 scoop oats and 1/4 scoop sunflower seeds.  I just keep layering the feed in that order until the garbage pail is full.  The feed will get mixed as we scoop.

 Here are the three feed buckets hung up...my little project for the day.  You can see one of the baby goats checking things out.  This is a temporary solution as eventually there will be walls on some of those studs.  But I don't see that happening anytime in the very near future.  I wanted a place that they could eat under shelter, especially with winter coming.  I am sure some tweaking will be needed, but for now I think it will serve it's purpose....the chickens will not be able to get at their food!  I tried it out and sure enough, though the chickens came running, and were scrambling after any little morsel that dropped, none of them got in the buckets!  Yay!

 Jedidiah back to his mission, to make a cake.  He was not pleased to have help.  Especially when that help knocked the whole lot over just minutes after taking this picture.

 Aubrey testing the ingredients.

 Flannery and Saoirse were busy making these covered shelters with the dropped hay.  Although this seems like a waste, goats are funny in that they do NOT eat anything and everything, especially dropped hay.  Silly creatures!  So the girls got to work making these shelters.

 Flannery on the hay bale.  And, yes, my mommy's heart sometimes can not stand to watch them on the trampoline :-)

It was finally time to come in.  By now it was almost 4 o'clock.  I needed to glue some magnetic pieces to the backs of our letter tiles for spelling.  Long ago I purchased some needed magnetic sheets, but they were not the ones with the sticky backs!  They were for printing on.  So I have to glue them on to what I need.

After this I tended to some other 'office' related stuff, managed dinner, boys baths, deboning all of those chickens, making stock, cooking up some ground beef for future meals, dishes....oh,  you know the usual :-)  Although it is only 8 PM, Jonah is asking to go to bed!  So off I go to tuck in a few little boys.  I am hoping with all of the outside time today they will be in dream land quickly.