Perserverance rewarded

Our church holds an annual "music camp" for children so they can learn to sing in harmony, learn to do the dances that we regularly do at church functions (think Pride and Prejudice dances) and learn some history. This year's theme is "Martin Luther". I had been getting frustrated at the "life is about entertainment" mindset in my kids and so set before them a challenge. I told them that anyone of them that could write a well written, mostly grammatically correct with proper spelling, 20 page paper with bibliography, on the life and works of Martin Luther, by July 26th could attend Music Camp this year. I wanted them to understand that not only is this meant to be a fun time with their friends but it is also a time where many teachers are working hard to teach them and they should take that part seriously.

So far, two of my boys have risen to the challenge and their papers were really good, one of these boys who we have nicknamed "The Fool Around King" because of his mantra that life is a joke and work is too hard being one of the boys who finished. His paper was excellent and in addition to finishing a really hard job I gave him on the farm to pay back something he had broken in a moment of foolishness, he is showing me that he is growing up..:-)

One daughter is almost finished and another son is waking up a half hour to an hour earlier each morning to get his done. Two more children don't want to be bothered and two additional ones are struggling through-we will see if they make the deadline.

I am glad I did this as it shows them that anything worth having or participating in is worth working hard for and they will appreciate the camp so much more now that they have a frame of reference and worked so hard to get there.

Light hearted reading

I am enjoying doing some light hearted reading right now of a book called, "Coop - A Family, A Farm and the Pursuit of One Good Egg" by Michael Perry. Cindy at "The Bodie Bunch" recommended it and so far I am loving it. Its about farming, family, taking in special needs adopted and foster kids-obviously right where I am living. The author is humorous and as I am laughing out loud quite frequently the kids are wondering what I am reading. Eric liked his section about oatmeal every day growing up (Eric greatly dislikes oatmeal so he can relate).

Anyway, other than that we continue packing and planning the house addition for our new farm. I hope to do a step by step pictorial of the update/addition process as well as the conversion from a hay farm to a pastured enterprise for livestock.

Off to church and parish fellowship today. Have a wonderful Lord's Day everyone!

No, this is not the farm we finalized the contract on yesterday but I believe this will be the new logo and name - what do you think? Autumn is our favorite time of year and is also the time of harvest. There is a creek that runs through the new farm and we liked how that flowed with the word ranch. Since we raise heritage animals and plants and also hope to pass on a generational heritage to our children, the subtitle seemed fitting.

More details to come...

What looks to be an excellent book!

http://www.healthforgenerations.com/index.htm

Her book is available for pre-order and I will definitely be doing so!

Still waiting

We are still in the negotiating process on the farm we hope to buy. We did get good news from the contractor we spoke with regarding an addition - he will be glad to let us do as much of the work we would like in order to save money and to learn some valuable skills. The boys are excited about the prospect of picking up some extra money for painting barns and outbuildings there and the girls are talking through decorating ideas.

We went ahead and decided to put the plants I bought almost two months ago in the ground here yesterday. Most of the plants I bought survived but are kind of leggy. Not sure what kind of harvest we will get but we figured some is better than none and by the time we move it will be about 3 weeks from first frost. One of the boys put up three cattle panels and we planted peppers (Chocolate, Purple Beauty, King of the North red, Orange Bell and Jalapeno) and tomatoes (Roma, Gold Medal, Persimmon, Goliath, Early Girl) along these.

We also planted three rows of cabbage (we eat a lot of fermented sauerkraut and coleslaw), one row of bunching onions and 4 rows of potatoes. Today we will plant the one pumpkin plant, several butternut squash and few melon plants that survived. We dont expect any harvest from these but hopefully the new owners can put a frost cover over them and get some benefit.

We had several potato plants spring up in our garden beds from last year as well as quite a few squash plants. Today we will weed those. My lettuce, peppers and tomatoes in the earth boxes are doing well and we should harvest from all of those, God willing. We have a beautiful stand of oats growing in our used hay/manure pile so we have been pulling handfuls of this and feeding it to the animals.

We plan to haul all of our used hay/manure from this past winter to the new place (going to rent a tractor for this) and use it to fertilize and mark new garden beds. I will continue with Dick Raymond and Ruth Stout methodology and see how it works (raised beds and tilled beds). I am excited to use "Dick Raymond's Gardening Year" next year.

Finally, looking forward to listening to Vision Forum's Baby Conference on CD soon and a couple of books are being added to my wish list - the first being, "Kick the Hay Habit" by Jim Gerrish and soon to follow, Joel Salatin's new book, being released in September.

That's all for now...:-)

Offer process

We put an offer in on the old farm I posted about on Friday - still waiting to hear back their hopefully final counter offer. So far the process is going well. We have a contractor looking at the house to see the best way to add on and I have been perusing wall paper sites looking up victorian and vintage styled wallpapers. In addition, we found some episodes of "This Old House" and watched that so the creative decorating juices are flowing.

We continue to pack and get ready, its been very warm over the last few days but a cool front is coming through today so we are going to do some garden work. I purchased quite a few plants last month thinking we were going to moving much sooner than this but since it now looks like we will not move until the end of August, I am going to plant them and hope the new owners can have some sort of harvest with them before the first fall frost.

We are all enjoying watching Molly and the kids are engaging in daily water gun battles - the fun of summer..:-)

Meet Molly!!

Molly is our first Dexter born on the farm - her mother is a black Jersey and her sire is a red Jersey. Matilda, her mother had no issues calving and Molly looks healthy and is nursing well... We are very excited!!