Oops, I Almost Forgot!

(Blogger's not acting right and won't let me edit the previous post, so I have to add this in on a post by itself.)

Shawn butchered two of our roosters all by himself. Even though he's helped others with butchering, this is the first time that he butchered any of our own flock. I was able to use the feet to make super-nutritious gelatin-filled chicken stock. The kids got a kick out of eating "Rooster Soup" for several days after the butchering.


Now scroll on down and read the rest of what we've been up to the past two months!

So, It's Been Almost TWO Months!!

I bet you thought we'd gone into the Witness Protection Program or something, huh? Actually, I've just been really overwhelmed lately. Who'd have thought that homesteading would be difficult with a 6 year old, 4 year old, 2 year old, and newborn?

I'll just give a synopsis of what's been going on around the homestead.

We have a new baby chick!


The pears are being harvested. (This is just what could be reached on ONE tree. We still have to pick the top of that tree and another tree.) Looks like I'll be canning and dehydrating a lot next week.

Shortly after David was born I dehydrated 2 quarts of cherries from our cherry trees. We're also starting to get apples from our trees. I harvested the peaches, but we dealt with brown rot again this year, so I was only able to harvest about 25 peaches. I've got to figure out how to eliminate brown rot.

We have rabbits that need to be butchered starting next week.


Shawn has set up the first of our water collection barrels.


And he just recently got our outhouse completed.


We also managed to obtain a nice collection of old farm tools.


On the not-so-great end of things...Shawn now has his first experience with poison ivy. He says that he used to be able to roll in the stuff and not get a rash, but this week he developed his first rash. Apparently he got into some while clearing out the weeds near the barn while he put in the water collection barrel. Also, we recently purchased a 55" LCD flat-screen TV....but not for us. While visiting my parents, Shawn was attempting to show Sam how to work their Wii game. Since neither Shawn nor Sam have any experience with the gaming system, they managed to actually hit Mom and Dad's TV with the controller. After doing research online we now know more than we ever wanted to about the TV's very fragile liquid crystals and that Wii's wriststraps are there as a safety feature. We've also learned that our family is just not cut out for fancy gaming systems or electronics.

So, next week we'll be busy butchering rabbits, preserving pears, and putting in the Fall garden. We'll also be starting to homeschool the kids starting tomorrow. Always something to do...

I'll end the post with pictures of some cute kids!