Target Practice!

Caleb, Seth and their friend Elijah were target practicing with their bb guns last Sunday. A friend of mine, Elijah's mom, asked Paul to give Elijah instructions on gun safety. She gave the instruction day as a "gift certificate" for Christmas. He's spent the last month looking forward being able to do it, and finally, the weather warmed up enough to plan it. All of the boys took the lesson, but about an hour later my boys came in complaining that it was too wet and cold out. Elijah made the most of his lesson and stuck it out for at least another hour!

They did it!

Seth and daddy skinned the possum! It only sat in the cage, dead, waiting to be skinned by Seth (and also waiting for Paul to work up the nerve to help him) for about 4 days. Good thing it was cold out! But, they did it! I'm proud of my guys! Now they're talking about collecting skins...

Good Doggy

If I've ever said anything bag about my dog (and I know I have), I take it back! Lady caught us a possum!!

Now here's the whole story...

It all started when Noah, my six year old was sliding across our wooden floor like it was an ice skating rink. Not all of our floor is varnished so well and he caught a piece of it and jammed it in his heel. He managed to get a good size sliver. Now, normally I enjoy digging slivers out of my family's body parts (yes, I know it wierd), but this one was too deep and too big to torture him anymore than I already had. So, instead, we doctored it with potato pulp, honey, some black drawing salve and stuck a bandaid on it.

Well, on day number 2 of the sliver saga, Noah insisted that he couldn't walk out to do his daily chore of collecting the eggs. Seems to me, if we were going to walk to get ice cream, he'd find a way to make it work... Anyhow, his sweet little sisters volunteered to do the egg collecting for him. Here's how it went when they came back in...

Ellie: "Mom, there were 5 eggs, and I think there's something in the chicken pen"

Mom: (distracted while checking my email) "Oh, yeah? What?"

Ellie: "It looks like a racoon with a long, pointy tail and I think it eats chickens"

Mom: BOYS!! GRAB YOUR COATS! WE GOT US A POSSUM IN THE CHICKEN COOP! YEE-HAW! (I didn't really 'yee-haw', but it fits in with the hill-billy scene)

On the way out (after grabbing a baseball bat, of course), I saw our cat come out of the chicken coop with a menacing grin and for a moment I wondered if that was the "racoon" that Ellie had seen. It was kinda dark in there after all. But, just a few steps into the chicken coop confirmed her report. There was a possum sitting on top of the nesting boxes facing the wall with the tip of it's tail chewed off (thus, the smirk from the cat). We dodged back out to get anything we could find to catch or kill the thing. We came back armed with a live animal trap, a bucket, a rope, a baseball bat and a pipe. I didn't know how or what we were going to do it, but we were going to do something.

As it sat there, I contemplated whacking it with the baseball bat... but I'm just not that cruel. As I was trying to think of something else, it crawled down the back of the nesting boxes (that used to be an old bookshelf) and wedged itself between the wall and the back of the box. I tried pushing it with a shovel, but it's kind of a gross, creepy feeling when you can't see what it's doing, and the thought of it climbing up the shovel handle kept popping into my mind. We tried to make a lasso type thing with the rope and pipe, but that only made the egg-eater slide further down the wall. At the bottom of the wall was an escape route to freedom, so I had the boys standing guard on the outside of the coop while I tried in vain to get it to climb into a cage on the inside. All this time, our dog was going nuts outside the fence, and finally, one of the boys got the brilliant idea of letting her in to do the dirty work...

And work she did! She dug a tunnel right under those nesting boxes and pulled that nasty farm menace right out. She carried it around by the nape of the neck like a little pup. That is, until it gave up the fight. Then she played with it like some sort of chew toy. The boys and I were grossed out by the crunching sounds, but Lady did what dogs instinctively do and made sure it wasn't going to go anywhere. Go Lady!!

Now, that's not the end of the story... the infamous dead possum is sitting on our porch in a cage. Seth begged to be able to skin it. Guess we'll have to do some homeschooling research on that one...

My poor garbage man...

This is sooooo funny!! (In a sick, twisted sort of way)

If you’ve read my earlier blogs, you probably know that one of our dairy goats died. Well, I asked Paul what he did with her (since the ground is frozen and he couldn’t bury her), and he just said, “Just don’t go snoopin’ around.” I assumed that he was going to put her out for the garbage man on trash day a couple days later.

Late in the evening of trash day, admitting that he put her out to be picked up, Paul commented, “I wonder what the garbage man thought.” I replied, “He probably thought, ‘Man, this is a heavy bag’.” He looked at me kind of funny and said, “The bag was CLEAR.” Can you believe it?? I sooooo wish I had known earlier that day so all seven of us could stare out the window and see that trash man’s face when he opened the lid and saw a goat staring up at him. Talk about a shock treatment!!

WANTED

Did you ever have one of those weeks where there is too much to blog about and not enough time to do it? Well, it’s been one of those weeks around here.

We’ll start off with our MOST WANTED photos…

This is Caleb the Baker

He’s wanted for Obstruction of Health. Lately he’s been making doughnuts and cookies as if it were still December (the month that holds the record for weight gain). He’s gotten quite good and has the ability to lure any innocent passerby into tasting his wares. The following photos catch him impersonating a bakery owner while making the world famous Jelly-Filled Doughnuts and his unsuspecting consumer.

This is Nathan the Bugger

Nathan has a knack for Disturbing the Peace (especially when it’s time for his momma to exercise). He has to be confined to a playpen at workout time, but even then he refuses to cooperate by slinging plastic toys and puzzle pieces at the moving treadmill.

Hunting... to no avail...

Paul took Caleb hunting with him this year. They went out twice together and Paul went once or twice alone. The first time Caleb went, it was a bone-chilling ZERO degrees out! Crazy! They stayed until noon with not even a glimpse of a deer. Then, just this past weekend (the last opportunity of the season), it warmed up to a whopping 30 degrees, and it must've felt like a heat-wave, because they ended up staying out all day. Unfortunately, they only came back with reports of squirrels, a possum and a ...bob-cat?

Our Goat Balli

Balli, our 4 year old Nubian dairy goat, finally died yesterday. We've been trying to nurse her back to health for the past two weeks. With the weather sooooo cold last week and the week before, and a change in diet, she came down with some sort of cold or pneumonia... We couldn't figure it out exactly. We didn't know if she was pregnant at the time, but a few days later she miscarried twin kids (that's baby goats for you non-farmers) and she kept going downhill from then on. I've read that a goat, after losing it's babies, can have the same depression problems as humans and just sort of give up. Even before her miscarriage, she was too weak to stand up by herself, so Paul and I have been going out at least twice a day to help her up and walk her around so she could keep the blood circulating to her legs. In the mean time, I had been giving her various shots prescribed by the "goat people" to help boost her immune system and appetite. We would practically have to hand feed and water her. Even cooking oatmeal with raisins and molasses just so she'd eat. At one point I was forcing Ensure into her mouth with a syringe for the nutrients... We've realized that you have to be somewhat hard-hearted when dealing with animals, because if it's a functioning farm, you are part of many animals deaths, whether intended or unintended. But when it's an animal you intend to keep and interact with individually on a daily basis, you learn it's personality and get more attached.

Finally, a few days ago, she started refusing food or water and we knew it wouldn't be long. To be honest, it was time. She was skin and bones from eating so little and the extra work was wearing on us. It was obvious she was suffering, so in the end, it was good to see her go.

On a positive note, she was a good momma and she gave us a cute black doe last winter that should be expecting another kid later this spring. In fact, if all goes well, we should have 3 does kidding this spring!

Sledding!!

We made it out sledding for the second time this year. We met some friends at Four Season's park in Shorewood. That hill is super nice for the parents because you can watch the kids walk up the side of the hill and sled down with a front row view from the car (while sipping some hot yummy drink, of course)!! Whoo-hoo!

Noah keeps up with the big guys!

Caleb and Seth's new thing was to snowboard down on their sleds. I tried to get video of it, but my camera ran out of battery...

Nathan went down with me once and was not too happy about going so fast. He was OK until we took on a little spin. I figured out that he was just as content sitting in the nice, warm car munching on banana chips. Poor Ellie looks like she's in distress in this photo, but I assure you, she made it up the hill just fine! In fact, she's quite the little sledder. Watching the kids sled makes me think that they are probably ready to hitch on some skis and hit the real slopes... We'll see...

Happy New Year's

Alright, so I'm doing a little catch up... and backtracking... to New Year's Eve. Caleb, Seth, and Noah stayed up long enough to ring in the New Year with Paul and I. The girls had an early celebration with us and then were tucked snug into bed. To confess, I took a little nap myself while the guys watched some movies waiting for the clock to strike midnight. I was up for the last hour waiting, but we all missed the "grand moment"... when we looked up, it was 12:03. Ah, well, there's always next year, right?

Here's some shots of us having our traditional New Year's Eve Eggnog! Yum! There's no store-bought 'nog that can compare to the thick, creamy, extreemly rich (aka-fattening), delicious taste of the homemade stuff. Mmmmmm-mmmmm!

Nathan's checking out the snow

I braved the cold weather and finally took Nathan out to romp in the snow. Well, he didn't really "romp" because I couldn't find any snowboots that were even close to fitting him. You'd think with five kids that have gone through that size I'd have some boots somewhere... even pink ones... but, nope. So, he got to ride around in the new wagon that Uncle Bryan, Aunt Jenny and Sydney gave us...

He had seen the snow before, but not really up close and personal. He got to feel it and taste it this time! I'm not quite sure what he thought... the only thing I can guess is that "it is COLD!" And then it was time to go back inside...