Hello world!

Obviously I'm SO behind on my posts...we are having computer/internet difficulties up here in farm - ville! But when I DO get it up and running, these are some highlights since my last post:

1. Meat rabbits breeding. HILARIOUS. Have to post a video. The male gets on top of the female, goes nuts for about 4 seconds, then freezes and falls off sideways...

2. Female bunny having the babies. The miracle of mother nature. The soon to be momma pulls off lots of her soft hair from her belly and lines the nesting box with it. Soon she is a big balding pregnant bunny who has made a super fluffy soft nest for her babies. When she does have her babies, you don't even see them for about a month. All you see is a big wad of fur moving around in there. The little babies get nursed once a day then the momma just sits on the side waiting for the next time she needs to nurse. The bunnies are cute, but we're not too attached, after all, they are MEAT rabbits.

3. Three cows. Did I blog about our steer yet? Well we have a female cow now. We are raising the 2 steer for beef and the female will be our family cow. She will have a baby who we will either sell or raise for beef. And we will milk her for a good year after she gives birth. OH! And we LOVE our cows. LOVE cows. They are calm, peaceful animals. My favorite thing to do is sit on the trunk of my car with the boys when the sun is setting. Colt and Charley count down the sun going behind the mountains. The cows are peacefully grazing, big green tractors are harvesting across the way in the huge spinach feilds, the sprinkler is quietly watering our fresh new garden, the world is just quiet. And there's always a slight breeze in the air.

4. OUR GARDEN. We spent SO much time and energy getting the ground tilled and ready to plant. We have a 25' by 50' garden and we are growing 18 different crops. After SO much work to just get the ground ready to plant, I squeeled with excitement when I saw the very first tiny green bean sprout coming up! Happy day. We now have green beans, corn, cucumbers, watermelons, squash, onions and pumpkins coming up! It is so fun watching it all come in. Although we planted so late, we'll probably have watermelons for Christmas! And anybody who is reading this (all 2 of you) can come up and pick your own watermelons and pumpkins!

5. T-Ball. Out here, the only sport they have is T-Ball. I know, its surprising they even have a leage, right? And its a big deal! They had opening ceremonies, and closing ceremonies. Trophies and professional team pictures. Several T-Ball and Baseball teams for a 2 month long season. I was the team mom so I was in the dug out with the little uniformed 5 year olds. It was SO fun. We met good people, and nobody was too competetive. It was just pure fun watching these boys and girls cluelessly run around the feild, play in the dirt, run into each other while they all rush to catch the same ball, run the wrong way all the time...I loved it! And people out here are just normal people, not trying to impress anybody, easy to talk to, its great.

6. Colt and Charley are more buds than ever before. They just play together all day. And the question, "mom can I play in the mud?" always gets a "yes" from me, because hello! We're in Anza. Yes, get dirty from head to toe, then go rinse off in the sprinkler.

7. Growing our own hay. So here's our plan: starting this winter we are going to grow our own hay. This will be great because the cows, horses, and goats eat hay as well as free graze. But hay up here is expensive. Luckily, we really don't go through too much of it. So in the next year we may be able to sell our hay, sell our eggs, and sell milk. That would be cool. What if we did have a few loyal customers that bought eggs, hay and milk from us? Thats not our main goal, but it is definately a part of what we want up here: having the animals work for us. Oh, we are storing 2 Colts on our property for this lady. Long story. She is providing the hay and expenses for them. Although she says if we fall in love with them, they are ours. We'll see. It was not something we wanted, so we are glad she is paying for them. BUT it would be neat to take the time to train them and make them our own horses that we can ride. Maybe when the world is in the depths of disasters, Nathans HAM radio and horses as transportation will come in handy!?

8. I'm sure this has been super boring post without pics. But over all, we are really falling in love with small town Anza. There are things to do in this town, you just have to find them. Its a tight knit community with a festive spirit. Like the 4th of July Anza days celebration. Booths, games, and a super hillbilly parade full of good times and rednecks coming out of the woodwork. People are suprised to know that we have schools and our own church building out here. Because I spend so much time just being with my boys and my animals, and my property, I definately feel more in tune with my family. And I love the quiteness of life. I love not having neighbors constantly up in our biz. We have met our neighbors here, they are kind and to themselves. There are definately downsides and yes, this town has its own share of bad people who are up to no good. Church is tough, the members are hard headed and judgemental. And the numbers are few. But you get what you put into it and so far its been a great learning experience. I'm glad to have just jumped in with both feet and I think we plan on staying here for a while to see what the future holds.

Baby Chicks!

So here's the 101 on chickens and eggs. A chicken is born to lay an egg a day. When she is about 5 months old, she just looks for a quite soft spot and she lays an egg. She does not need a rooster to lay an egg. The egg she will lay will never turn into a baby chick. BUT, if you have a rooster with your chickens, there will come a rooster mating season. Rooster mating season lasts quite a few months. The roosters get on the chickens like all day every day. They do their thang and there is no doubt that during rooster mating season that all the eggs that the chickesn lay are now fertilized. SO, during rooster mating season, you still just take the eggs and put them in the fridge. They will not turn into baby chicks in the fridge or in your frying pan. BUT if you want baby chicks, you just stick the eggs in an incubator instead of the fridge. That's right, during rooster mating season, ever single egg that the chicken lays will no doubt be fertilized. Which leads to the questing: What about the eggs I buy at the store? So the eggs that you buy from the store: they are probably not fertilized because they come from sad chickens that are couped up in a large barn that never see the light of day and are literally living side by side with thousands of other chickens just living in their own poop. Yes. The eggs you buy at the store, even if they are the nice brown eggs that say cage free, come from sad chickens. The mass producers of even the brown cage free eggs have found a loop hole. They literally make a door in their overstuffed barn for the chickens to walk out. BUT they pour a pile of dirt in front of the door and the chickens never go past that dirt. SAD. Now, here's how you know that you are eating a happy chicken egg: The yolk. The yolk in our eggs is BRIGHT ORANGE. That's because our chickens are outside eating fresh grass and bugs all day. The yolk in a sad chicken egg is pale yellow. Grain fed, hormone induced sad chickens...

So about a month ago, we saved 20 eggs. We just didn't collect eggs for a couple days. Then collected like 20 all at once and put them into an incubator. Exactly 21 days later, I heard little tiny pecks and teeny chirps...this video is what I saw. It was SO fun watching the baby chicks hatch! Now that we have chicks, we will either raise them for their eggs, or raise them for their meat, or sell them at any point. You can buy baby chicks or if you want eggs immidiately you can buy full grown layers.

Easter

Happy Easter! My commentary is below all the pics...I don't know why I can't copy it and put it all up here.

Happy Belated Easter!

We had a great easter weekend. Honestly I think this is the first year that we actually put effort into the holiday. Well, we were in Utah with our parents and cousins last year, so we all just did random egg hunts/colorings...by the time we got back home, I mean, we just didn't do anything at home because Easter was over. The year before that, Colt was 3 and Charley was 6 months. I mean, we kind of just colored eggs with our clueless 3 year old. So anyway, this year was great because Colt is really cool when it comes to just being happy no matter what. I wanted Easter to have its fun with egg hunts and easter baskets and treats. I also wanted to make sure that our home celebrated the real reason for easter. The Atonement and Ressurection. The most important event known to the history of man. I found a GREAT Family home evening idea online called Resurrection Eggs. You put tiny things into each one of 12 plastic eggs. Then the child opens one egg at a time and each thing represents something about Christ. It was very cool. On Saturday morning, we had a community easter egg hunt. The high school puts it on every year and there are games/prizes/egg hunts/music/cotton candy/popcorn. And its all free. Different stores around here donate treats and prizes and different things for the games. It was such a great community comming together fun day. Saturday night we had the family home evening. The next morning on sunday we just had two easter baskets for the kids when they woke up. Nothing too extravagant. Just a few things in there from the dollar store. After church that morning, we came home and had our own easter egg hunt, and colored eggs. Then while I cleaned everything, the boys watched Easter Veggie Tales that my mom sent us. Here are some pics

Update...

I've been posting a lot of pics of the outdoors/animals so here are some recent updates about the boys, including Nathan!Okay, so this was a typical scene every night for a few weeks when it was really cold. Flannel coat, fuzzy hat and light head band. Which, I laughed at him the first time he put it on but after using it personally a couple times, I want one. Its so handy for going out at night to close up the animal area or check on things hands free! Well here's Nathan getting ready to go rabbit hunting. Yes, shooting wild rabbits right on our property. And don't get all upset about poor bunnies with me. If you don't like our way of life up here, then stop reading my blog. Rabbits are nutritious and easy to skin. It makes for very good eats. AND every person around here HATES wild rabbits because they sabotage everybody's hard earned gardens every spring. So, we're just getting ready for gardening!



Here is Colt with his brown twin, Sale. Yes, his name is spelled Sale. But you pronounce it Sal-Aye, its polyneasian. Anyhow, Sale is like this little faced skinny preemie just like Colt. They are so cute together and in real life somebody at DQ actually asked if they were TWINS! HAHA


Colt is getting so big. I'm really proud of his progress too. I see so much improvement even in his school work from the beginning of the school year till now. Before, it was like pulling teeth just to get him to sit down for homework. (and no, that's not what happened in this picture!) But now, he has no problem sitting down at his seat for homework, and just concentrating right through it. He's really good at focusing and doing it. Can you believe he has about 30 minutes of homework a night!? No, no, no, he's not in middle school, he's in KINDERGARTEN! It hits me every so often that I'm going to be doing homework as a mom for the next several years...Ugh.


The boys are so different. Charley will take his time with toys and play with them. Focusing on little things like stacking blocks. I know I just talked about how cool it is that Colt is focusing on homework. I love that because Colt didn't focus on toys. He was always jumping and running and doing more physical things like digging and climbing. But here's Charley focusing on a block tower. Yes, I specifically remember now, taking a video of Colt climbing up our orange tree when he was 2 1/2. And here's what Charley does at 2 1/2.


There's always the occasional animal that comes through the house. Colt says "ooo you're so soft chicken, I love you so much!" He really has a bleeding heart for things. He tells the chickens that he loves them all the time.


And this is Charley's newest craze...STUFF! He calls it "duff". Any type of fluffy feather whether its from a down pillow or from a chicken feather outside. Any light fluffy airy fluff that floats in the air that he can catch and hold, then blow it up in the air again, he LOVES it. He's always finding "duff". Oh and it never gets old, he gets REALLY happy when he sees stuff on the ground.

March weather

Okay so March has definately been gloomy rainy wet and cold, and snowy! Above is looking out from our house. This was the typical scene in March. Just cold overcast. SO, because it does get rainy and snowy and wet, there are things that we need to be mindful of. Things that we normally would never think about in PD, because it NEVER rained in the desert.



Take the cushions off the chairs


Cover the hay. If hay gets wet, it gets moldy and it will make animals die. Except for Cows. Cows have 4 stomachs so they can eat anything. (in case you were wondering)


Look at the chickens, they are hiding from the wind inside the goat shelter.


And in case you didn't see this pic of me on fb, this is what I look like the whole winter. Scarves/coats/furry hats are a must.

Cows

Okay I know. We are seriously farm geeks. So we got cows. Not for milking. We got meat cows. So in the cow world: castrated cows are called steer. And the ones that still have their manhood, those are the bulls...the mean bulls! Female cows are literally called heifers. HAHAHA! Seriously, so when someone calls you a heifer, they are literally calling you a cow. HA.

We got 2 baby Holstein Steer. There are many different breeds of cows. Holstein is just a random breed well known for backyard farming and being generally easy to raise.

Cows are usually sold at $1.00 or $1.50 / lb. These cows are 5 months old and are around 300 lbs each. We bought them from a guy that just kind of needed to sell them so we got them for a good price. A full grown cow that is ready to go to slaughter is usually around 1200 lbs. And they are usually about a year and a half. So we will raise these guys for about a year....hopefully we don't get too attached!
Hank meeting the cows for the first time. He's our official animal checker.



They have about an acre and a half fenced off to roam freely right now. Eventually, we are going to fence off this 5 acre area in our yard and have the cows there. Then we will put the goats where the cows are now. We love that we can have happy roaming animals!

Frizzles!!

Well we have quite a collection of chickens now. 18 total. 15 of those are hens, and 3 are roosters. Aparently you can have roosters together from all different breeds. They just take a few days to figure out who's boss. Seriously, when we added another full grown rooster to our pack, the two roosters duked it out for a couple days. Now they are all fine. Anyway, the reason for the post: we got theee cutest fuzzy little chicks! They are called frizzles, and they are totally full grown! Its just everything about them is tiny! They are tiny, their eggs are tiny, and here's the kicker: one of these frizzles is a rooster! And he is just the tiniest little thing, and he is full grown. AND he has a TINY LITTLE CROW!!! It is so cute! So here are a few pics of the frizzles, and the last one is a video of the rooster frizzle crowing...enjoy! (And I don't know why this is all underlined, I am a retard and I won't even try to figure it out.)




They are just little tiny fur balls!


And here is the video...prepare for cuteness!