Catching up from July!

 I feel like there is so much to share.. I don’t know where to begin! I guess the best place to start is with something new. The newest thing on the homestead would be baby ducks! One of our three broody mamas has hatched out 4 ducklings so far. She’s setting on eleven eggs, so I suspect she will be hatching out many more over the next few days. We put up a fence around the broody mamas so they can raise their baby’s in peace. I suspect we’re going to be over run with them in the next few weeks. 

While we’re on the topic of animals, I am happy to report that the ugly red trailer is now no longer a part of the animals paddock. They have houses of their own! The goat halo use was finished last month. And now the chicken lean-to has been constructed! 

We are just waiting on some sheet metal for the roof and then it will be complete! The chicken house includes a two part door. There is a small hatch at the bottom to only let chickens in. This makes returning to fermenting their food possible! Before the goats were always getting into the chickens fermented mash and leaving the chickens to starve. Goats are complete savage gluttons. The chickens having a safe enclosed area where they can perch makes me so happy! And they are loving having a nice high box to lay eggs in! 

Next up is the guineas! They have a beautiful coop now! Garret and his dad built it while he was visiting. It turned out beautifully and the guineas really like it… they seldom want to leave it. 

The garden has come a long way! We are beginning to enjoy things from the garden. Lettuce and Cilantro and a few herbs have matured enough to eat regularly. We have a few squash that have begun to flower as well. We have such a late garden  this year that everything that pops up is even more exciting than usual. One of our neighbors dug up a whole entire oregano plant and gave it to us. That was so generous and very exciting. It’s huge! 

We have begun working on developing the top part of the property. Several large trees have come down in preparation for our winter covers for the Trailers. We have begun collecting firewood for our wood stoves. We will all be installing wood burning stoves before winter. The reality of the matter is that we do not want to travel the mountain road and we may not be able to at some points during winter. Which makes getting propane un doable. And if there’s no heat….welllllll we all know where that leads. 🥶 Next order of operation will be getting the spring box finished and picking up a few cisterns. We want to be prepared in case our spring freezes. There have been talk of forgoing a septic system in favor of composting toilets. Not sure if that is something we will end up doing once we get up there or not. We may have to continue the good ol outhouse for quite some time. 

Amber took the young kids up top to help clear brush this morning while Bailee and I worked on a Math lesson. We managed to get really behind while packing and preparing to move. So we are finishing up second grade and hopefully finding a new curriculum we like better for third grade. Something along the lines of unschool. Using your environment to create lessons. Tomorrow and the next day we will be using baking as our math lesson. Bailee loves to bake so she is very excited. We will be working with sourdough for the next few days. The goal is to see if the oven in the trailer will behave it’s self  in order for us to cook a few loaves of bread. It tends to want to burn the bottom and cook the top just right. It’s pretty frustrating, but I think I’ve got it figured out… hope I’m not wrong!

We had two firsts this week. Neither were good things. Gwen got her first wasp sting. It got her twice on the back while wearing a pretty princess dress! As Gwen would say..”Das rooood”. The other first is illness! We have not had any sickness since moving up here. But that all changed last weekend. We think Alex (or Matt if you know him by that name) brought a bug home when we went to town for his birthday. This lovely sickness included profuse vomiting, loss of appetite and the inability to keep any food or water down. Alex beat it pretty quick. Bailee was out for 72 hours. It was a bit scary for a while. We have been dealing with 100 degree days and trying to hydrate when you can’t keep anything down is impossible. We ended up trying the AC for a few hours. We were able to use it for a few hours before our batteries got low. It was a nice reprieve from the heat. Bailee is recovering nicely and ate a decent amount of dinner last night and he been rehydrating like a champ!

The progression of things to move up top seems to be moving right along. Garrets been the main man on the sawmill. He working on getting the giant posts for our winter trailer shelters made. A really nice area has been cleared and for our barn which will be here in October. In the mean time we will be putting fencing up and leveling the barn area. We need to get a coop for laying hens done. The shelter for the Billy’s. And a milk station and stand done. So a lot still needs to be done. But as of yesterday…. Our corner posts are done for our winter shelter! Matt and the kids and I are heading to Lewiston tomorrow to get concrete and other fencing supplies. The next update I suspect I will be showing off images of the start of the rv covers! But here is a few photos of our rapidly growing lumber yard. 

 The next update will include our new bucks and a few other new additions to the homestead. 😍 Ohh and the duckling count is up to 23! With more broody mamas trying to start more nests.