Happy 4th of July!
I can't believe it's been a week since I've posted... We've been keeping very busy, the days are just flying by.
It's been an up and down kind of week, but that seems to be the norm for us. On the "up" side, I had the vet out last night to give Blaze his shots and take a look at the donkeys... and everything looks good. We've finally decided on names for them, by the way... they are Tilly and Tucker.
What do you think?
I think Tucker is especially photogenic...
Anyway, the vet was out last night and the farrier was out a couple of days ago. Tilly's hooves are trimmed, she's walking better and no longer having to stand in the mud. I've also been able to stop the anti-inflammatory medication. I was told that she is about 9 years old, and Tucker is her "baby" and is probably about 2.
Believe it or not she still has milk, so Tucker was only recently weaned (or is still weaning, I haven't actually seen him nurse, although it looked like he was hinting around to nurse today... ). I guess it's not that unusual for a donkey to nurse her baby for that long... especially if food is scarce.
Tilly and Tucker, grooming each other...
Tilly was a wild burro... adopted at some point in her past from the BLM. Tucker was born after she was rounded up and adopted out. We were a little (ok a LOT) concerned that Tucker might not be "fixed", but the vet and farrier both agree that he appears to be gelded. Whew! (If he wasn't, we'd have to have it done, and it couldn't be done until I'd gentled him enough to halter him, and get him to stand still for a shot...which might be awhile!)
I called the folks at Longhopes Donkey Rescue and we are going out there tomorrow to watch their trainer work with their donkeys, and get some ideas for gentling Tucker.
The goats left yesterday for their new home... It was very hard to see them go. M fell apart for a while after they left, but pulled back together fairly quickly so all was good. It did seem funny this morning to go out to the barn and not be greeted by Betty and Rose... the barn seems kind of quiet all of a sudden. (lol, I guess that's a measure of how noisy those goats were, if a barn that still has two donkeys and a horse in it can be called "quiet"!)
Blaze seemed sad when they left... I took them out through the barn, and he stood in his stall for hours after they left, looking into the barn...
Waiting for them to come back?
I caught Blaze this morning throwing his weight around with the donks. Here's Tilly, done eating, is heading out to the pasture... but Tucker has to dart by Blaze (who is extremely cranky, check out his ears!) to get out of the barn.
Whew, he made it, Tucker's a pretty quick little guy!!
So that's the news from the barnyard.
I was going to write more but since this post has gotten long enough, I think the save the rest for tomorrow...
I'll close with some pictures I took this morning of the twin fawns that are living on the hill just west of the pasture. We've been seeing them off and on for a few days, but they are still very tiny and keep very close to mom.
Here they are taking a break from their nibbling to check me out...
Mom was there quickly though (my cue to get AWAY from the babies!) and seemed to be checking them out to make sure they were ok.
Sorry the pictures aren't any better... This is the best my camera could do while still keeping me far enough away from mama deer to be safe!
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And finally, and sadly, an update on my friend Christiana...
She took a turn for the worst late last week, and her doctors are saying that there is nothing more they can do. She had the option of going on life-support, or going home with hospice support. She choose to go home. It sounds like it's only a matter of days that she will be with us....
Please keep Christiana and her family in your prayers.
That's how long M's good spell lasted.
If I'm remembering right this is one of the longest, calmest, spells he's had since the onset of his schizophrenia about 7 years ago.
It was a very nice 12 days... he was more stable and connected than he's been in years.
It's been hard to go back to the edginess, restlessness, volatility and unpredictability. Things are manageable, but it's still hard to make the shift backwards...
Anyway, it's a busy week this week for us! R is in Girl Scout day camp all week, so M and I are on our own for most of the day.
We got some running around done yesterday morning and spent the afternoon doing school. The deal is that he does school this week, and takes next week off to balance out R not doing any school this week...
M's pretty excited about getting to just hang out next week while R has to do school!
We've got things planned every day this week just to give us some structure... (M tends to not know what to do with himself when R's gone.)
The donkeys are settling in pretty well. Jenny has about the sweetest, most even disposition of any animal I've ever seen (except maybe our Golden, Emma... she's also pretty laid back). She is friendly, calm, and very easy going...
Jack, on the other hand, is very easily frightened, and it's taken 5 days of work just to get him to eat out of my hand, and let me lightly touch his face.
He's also afraid of our goat Rose, which is kind of funny... He's so much bigger than she is, but all she needs to do is give him "the look" and take a step or two towards him and he takes off. It was hard getting him fed last night because he was afraid to walk past Rose to get to the hay!
After thinking about it, we've decided to sell the goats... We don't need this many animals (lol, we don't need ANY animals!), and hay is expensive, so I'm going to start looking for a new home for my "girls". It will be hard, because they are both wonderful, gentle, goats.... but we just can't keep adding animals without getting rid of some.
Most of our animals are either rescue animals or animals with special needs... Part of the reason for that is finances, we just can't afford to spend hundred (or thousands) of dollars on pets and livestock. But the other reason is because I tend to have a soft spot for the underdog, for the "fixer-uppers"... It breaks my heart to see animals that haven't been well cared for, and need someone to love them and given them consistent care. I love watching them becoming glossy with health and strong again.
I thought it might be fun to post some before and after pictures of a few of our animals...
Blaze before-
...and now.
Rose before (with Betty as a baby)-
I didn't realize it until I compared these pictures, but Rose is showing her age...
Look at all the white in her coat compared to two years ago!
Grant... He doesn't look that thin in this picture, but he was pretty skinny when we got him. The dark spots on his chest are places where his hair was gone. He was also lame when this picture was taken, it took six months (three vet visits, four farrier visits, and corrective shoeing) to "fix" the problem, but he was eventually pain free and sound...
Here's his "after" shot... He was such a great horse, we still miss him.
Jenny is also a "fixer-upper". She is very thin and has some lameness. Her hooves look very different that Jack's, and are overgrown. At times she walks as though she's in pain. The vet has me giving her an anti-inflammatory and standing her in deep mud for several hours each day.
Needless to say my pasture is a mess... I've been living in mud boots for days!
So here's Jenny's "before" picture... a sad, skinny, little donkey standing in the mud.
Give me a few months and I'll post an "after"...
Yesterday was kind of a strange day...
To start with, the wind blew HARD for most of the day, which is always unsettling. I had intended to get some work done outside, but when I tried to do some hand watering, the wind was blowing the water sideways and I had to stand just right for any of the water to reach the dry plants. So I decided it was just too windy for outside work and came back inside.
Then M had a total disconnect right after lunch... Usually the time from lunchtime through early afternoon is his best time of the day, so this was unusual.
The disconnects are so hard for all of us, and so painful for him... It's just impossible to describe the trauma of someone disconnecting from reality.
It's not like it looks in the movies... It's a horrible, painful, experience for the person going through it.
M finally settled down for a (psychopharmacuetically induced) little nap, and while he slept R got school done.
She's so funny... She has yet to see the pattern in adding 10 to a number (24+10=34, then 44, 54, etc) even through I've explained it to her countless times. But yesterday, as I started teaching her about perimeter... what it is, and how to measure it... she was right on top of it. I skipped most of the scripted lesson because she "got it" the first time I explained it and was already happily measuring the perimeter of her quesadilla!
M wasn't able to get any school done... Once he woke up from his nap we kind of limped through the rest of the afternoon, he was still pretty fragile so I kept things as calm and low stress as possible.
That all changed right after dinner though...
Dh had gone outside to spread manure in the pasture where Blaze and the goats are. Not thinking that Blaze is a lot younger and trickier than Grant was, he left him out in the pasture while he worked. It took Blaze all of about 10 minutes to dash through the barn to the unfenced, and thick with grass, big pasture.
Dh didn't even notice Blaze was gone (he was still mindlessly driving the little tractor around, chopping up and scattering manure!), but M saw Blaze was out and came running to the house in a panic... R (now also in a panic) and I headed out to try and catch him. Unfortunately he didn't even have a halter on and spent the first couple of minutes we were out there dancing away from us.
We managed to get his halter on, but then Blaze refused to walk back to the pasture... planting his feet and refusing to take a step. (*rolling eyes* sometimes this horse is just too big for his britches!) I've been using this technique of making him back up when he gets ornery (my understanding is that it's very hard for horses to back up, and most would rather do most anything... even leave a pasture full of long green grass... to avoid being made to walk backwards), so I made him back up and then tried leading him forward again and we got him moving and back into the fenced pasture without too much trouble.
With the barn doors open and the wind blowing, there was a lot of dust blowing around in the barn so I decided to take advantage of the wind and clean the barn out. One thing led to another and R and I ended up working for over an hour... sweeping out the dust, organizing the tack, moving stuff into the hay loft, etc... and doing lots of talking.
We corralled the goats and trimmed their hooves (an activity known around our house as the goat rodeo!) and I started teaching her how to use the big trimmers. We gave Blaze some extra treats for being such a good boy (sometimes) and talked about how much we both still miss Grant.
It was female bonding at it's best.
We worked until (past!) bedtime and the barn looked so good by the time we were done that I was ready to set up a few chairs and a cot and move out there!
It was a wonderful way to end a difficult, unsettled day.
I feel like all I've been blogging about lately is the drama around S (our little house guest) and M.
So..... lest anyone think we are spending all our time sitting around stressing about S, or getting things ready for social services to come knocking on my door to check on M, I thought I'd post about some other things we've been doing.
We just finished a very cool unit study on spiders. We only spent about a week on it, but we made some very fun lapbooks and learned a lot about spiders. The unit study started accidentally with a large black spider I found on the kitchen window screen. I didn't want him (or her... as it turned out) in my kitchen, so I caught it, and since it was such a big spider I decided to save it to show the kids. One thing kind of led to another and pretty soon we had two mama jumping spiders and two egg sacks, which eventually hatched out about a million cute little baby spiders. (Yes, even baby spiders are cute!)
Here is R getting up close and personal with a (dead, but very well preserved) funnel web spider. It really was amazing to look at it close up... The spinnerets were very easy to see, as were the tiny claws on the legs. We never could see his eyes though....
And here is one of our "crops" of baby spiders.
Before S came back we also went to a great pizza making class at Whole Foods. The kids got to make their own crust, fill it up with toppings, then watch as it cooked in the huge pizza oven. Afterwards we sat outside and enjoyed the sunshine and the wonderful pizza. Mmmmm.....
M and R, ready to start baking--
Another exciting thing that happened (although probably only exciting to me!) is we had a load of hay delivered. Since we sort of ended up accidentally getting a horse, I only had enough hay in the barn last year for the goats... so I've been having to buy small loads of hay once a month or so to feed Grant. Hay is very expensive here right now, and I hated having to drive to the feed store (30 minutes away) every few weeks to stuff my minivan full of over-priced hay... I really wanted a load of hay, enough for a year, neatly stacked in my barn. Then, no matter how many blizzards we have this next winter, I'll know I can feed the animals (and don't have to drive through snowdrifts to get to the feed store to do it!) Before I could buy my load of hay though, I had to wait for it to grow...
Finally, just a few weeks ago, my neighbor had his fields cut and baled, and I placed my order. Then we had to quickly clean out the barn...
That whole underneath area (where Rose is) had been full of a boat, odds and ends of lumber, lawn tools we never use... you name it, it was stuck in that corner of the barn! It took one whole dirty, sweaty, afternoon to empty it out...
Here comes our hay! One hundred and fifty bales of timothy...
It took him five tries to back that flatbed into our barn...
Tossin' and stackin'... We paid three college kids to unload and stack it. They unloaded and stacked all 150 bales, it took them just over an hour... and they charged us $10. each. What a bargain!
There it is... a year's worth of hay for one horse and two goats. Actually that's almost a year's worth, it wouldn't all fit in that area so the last 25 bales are stacked in the feedroom.
......let it snow, let it snow, let it snow....
S went back to her foster home today. I'm not sure that it will last, but things seem to have calmed down again... at least for the time being. Foster mom backed down from her ultimatum to social services (thank goodness) but things are still very precarious for S. Fortunately her most recent visit with us went well, M didn't destabilize as badly as he did the last time she was here and R enjoyed having someone to play dolls and horses with. It will be very nice to be back to just two kids again though...
I'll have to finish this later... it's getting late and I'm worn out!
We don't usually follow a regular school calendar. We do school year round, taking days off when we need to, but not taking any long breaks. This past week we did almost no school at all though, and decided to call it spring break...
The week started with me sick. Not just a little sick, but SICK! As in the sickest I've been in years! I ran a fever for days, my whole body (even my hair) ached, and all I wanted to do was sleep. Since I can't just go to bed when I'm sick I did the next best thing and loaded myself up with ibuprofen and watched videos with the kids (dozing off and on) while dh brought fast food home for dinner. After 3-4 days of video watching and fast food I was starting to feel better, and by Thursday I was feeling almost functional again. I was feeling pretty good by then, and the weather was too nice to resist, so the kids and I headed outside to work in the yard...
It's too early to garden, but there were still opportunities for "playing in the dirt"... We hauled the composted manure from the manure pile to the big garden (not as nasty a job as it sounds...) where I'll turn it into the soil later. We raked the areas where Stormy (the horse) had spent most of her time during the blizzards, they were a real mess! We seeded the front yard and raked the back yard... cleaning up a whole winter's worth of dead leaves and dog poo. I also raked up the evergreen needles to use as mulch for a stone path I am planning to put around the back of the house. I haven't started working on the path yet, I still need to find a good price on stone, but I can't wait to get started. (I like to lay stone and the path should cut down on the mud in the house considerably!) Over the weekend we put a new layer of cedar mulch on the front flower beds, and I finally finished the border around the back of the house that I started last year and never got done.
I've been falling into to bed exhausted each night, but it's so nice to see progress on the yard. When we moved in it was nothing but weeds... I haven't much time (or money) to spend on it, but it's looking better. The front yard is grass now with some nice flower beds, and the back yard (while still mostly weeds!) has a nice kitchen garden, a flagstone patio (that I made last year out of salvaged flagstone) and a nice, newly finished border. The stone path is next, and I'd like to plant a few fruit trees later in the spring.
We finished up our "spring break" with the kids cleaning up the woodpile, and then doing some exploring... We found the coolest vole trails in the big pasture, I'll have to take some pictures of them, I've never seen anything like it.
The exciting news of the weekend is that the last of the snow has finally melted! The last little patch, on the north side of the house, melted away on Sunday. This is the first time in almost three months that we don't have snow on the ground!
We have also been happy to see the deer returning... During the blizzards they struggled through the deep snow for awhile, but around mid-January they all disappeared. We worried that they might be gone for good, but the herd is back! They look pretty good and we're looking forward to seeing the new fawns in a couple of months. I'll post some cute deer pics when I get them, but for now all I have is a cute goat picture.
Have a good week!
There isn't much going on here, but it seems like a good time to write anyway... (it just may not be very interesting! ;)
M has been struggling more lately... He's having spells of being very disconnected and the hallucinations are worse. It's been bad enough that I've had to increase his haldol... which is really discouraging because I've been hoping that we could taper the haldol and replace it with something else. Unfortunately it looks like that's not a realistic plan... at least for now.
Things are moving ahead slowly with the Intercept Center... the program I mentioned in this post. A couple of weeks ago, when we visited, the director sounded ready to have M in the program. He even introduced M to some of the staff, telling them that M would be in their groups. When we left he said he just needed to decide which staff would be working with M and talk to them then he would get back to us. It took him a week to call back (he said it would be just a day or two) and the "vibes" I got were a little weird. He started by telling me that their senior clinician would be happy to meet with me on a short term basis, for consultation, without M actually being part of the program. (Huh? not something we had talked about at all!) I said thanks, but I really wanted M to be part of the program so he could access all the supports and services they provide. He said that was fine, that he would pass M's intake information onto the clinician (a psychologist) who would be calling me (but there was no mention of the group that he told me M could start as early as last week!)
Well... it's been almost another week and no call. I'm wondering if they are hesitant to have a client as "involved" as M.... they seem to really be dragging their feet on this.
On a brighter note, the vet was out to look at Grant and he's in good shape (Grant... not the vet... although the vet looked to be in pretty good shape too, if you like very tall, rugged, cowboys!) He said I need to fatten Grant up (and had the nerve to imply that my goats are a little "chunky") but otherwise he looks healthy. He said appaloosas tend to be hardy animals, but even so... Grant is an old horse and who knows how long he'll live. I know a horse who is 40 (but that's almost a miracle!) and quite a few in their 20's so hopefully, with lots of good care, Grant will be around for years.
Well.... I'd better run. M is up already (or still... he's been up and down all night... it might be an extremely long day!) and I need to get out to the barn before R wakes up.
....that one of my favorite feelings is coming back into the warm house after spending time outside in the cold. That rush of warmth as you walk in the door... peeling coat, gloves, scarf, boots off... slipping cold toes into fuzzy lamb's wool lined slippers, and then finishing the warming up process with a cup of hot tea (and maybe a piece of chocolate if it's the day after Valentine's Day!).
So now you know what I've been doing this morning...
It's cold here (11 degrees right now) but I've spent a happy hour out at the barn. M is sleeping so I slipped out to clean up the barn a bit and spend some time with the animals. I had a farrier here last night and he trimmed Grant's hooves (he's now 1/2-3/4 of an inch shorter than he was before!). The farrier is from Argentina and a very colorful character. I don't think I've ever seen anyone as patient with an animal as he was with Grant. Grant's hooves needed a lot of work, and Grant doesn't like his back legs messed with too much. Several times Grant started kicking, trying to get his back leg free... and each time Raul just stopped, held Grant's hoof against his thigh (well-covered with heavy chaps) and waited until Grant calmed down. He wasn't able to trim as much as Grant really needed, it would be too much to do at one time... so he's coming back in about 6 weeks to trim them again.
The vet is coming this morning to take a quick look at Grant. I think he's healthy... just thin... but I'll feel better once the vet looks him over.
It's been fun to watch Grant and the goats (Betty and Rose) get to be friends. Betty is crazy about Grant and spends most of her time with him, even laying at his feet to sleep. He seems to really like them too. Stormy left on Sunday night (more about that later) and so Monday morning I tried letting Grant into the main pasture... the one he hadn't been in before because Stormy was there. He got really stressed out by the big empty pasture... running around (through the deep snow, over the ice!!) until I got worried that he would hurt himself. I put him back in with the goats and he calmed down again within just a few minutes.
Last night, when the farrier was here, Grant wouldn't even walk into the dark barn at first... but once Betty went in he followed her with no problem.
Thankfully Stormy is gone but the whole experience has left me feeling pretty cranky and out of sorts. I agreed to keep Stormy for two months, possibly longer. I kept her for almost 7 weeks, during the worst winter we've had here in years. I spent hundreds of dollars of my own money on hay and grain, and she looked good when she left. She wasn't thin, she was in very good condition (in much better shape then Grant is in!). I only asked for her to be moved because we got Grant. When her owner came to pick her up she was angry that I wouldn't continue to keep Stormy, expected me to give her hay and grain (that I bought and need for Grant and the goats) and never even said thank you. In fact she questioned whether Stormy had been so cranky while she was here because we'd mistreated her. I fumed for awhile over this and then decided this is a good opportunity to practice forgiveness. So that's what I've been working on... letting go of my anger and trying to forgive.
It has been very nice NOT to have cranky Stormy in the barn the past few days... to be able to trust the animals that are out there, both with each other, and with the kids.
We have a good mix of animals now... and R is still in heaven about having Grant. (We are going to to friend's house for dinner tonight, and R was wishing we had a horse trailer so we didn't have to leave Grant at home!)
Well R's horse was delivered on Thursday... and she's a very happy girl.
I had been planning on waiting to get him after Stormy left (giving me time to organize the barn better, and put down stall mats) but we ended up changing the plans. R was feeling sad on Thursday about Stormy leaving (which is puzzling because she doesn't even like Stormy!) so I called the riding instructor who offered us Grant just to make sure she was really going to give him to us before I let Stormy go. She said yes, she wanted us to have Grant and she happened to be loading up a horse trailer right then with some horses for a presentation she was giving... did I want her to just bring Grant over?
R was sad, crying about Stormy and asking me to promise to let her visit Grant, when the truck and horse trailer pulled up. We walked up the driveway as Grant was being unloaded, and when I looked at R, she seemed to be in shock. There was absolutely no expression on her face, it like she was in a trance. She was given the ownership papers for Grant and handed the lead rope and never said a word.
Still looking dazed, she turned around and led him back down the driveway.
Once R realized this was really happening it was like Christmas... only better. She's been beaming for days and has spent hours out at the barn with Grant. Unfortunately, he looks like he's been pretty neglected this winter... he's very thin, his hooves look terrible, and he's actually missing hair in places from wearing an ill-fitting coat (probably 24/7 for the past three months!! ). He remembers R though, and is so affectionate with her. He nuzzles her, follows her everywhere, and stands patiently while she brushes him or just gives him hugs.
Here are a couple of pictures of R and Grant....
I'm feeding him lots of hay, and giving him grain too, to get some weight on him. I called a farrier to come trim his hooves and today I'm making changes in his coat, so he can wear it through the snow and cold weather that's on it's way, without it rubbing more hair off. I'll probably also get a vet out to take a look at him and make sure there isn't anything else I should be doing to get him back into shape.
Stormy is still here... (unfortunately).... and cranky as heck about Grant being here. She tried to go after him when we first brought him into the pasture, so he's in with the goats now... where she can't get to him. The goats are crazy about Grant, especially our little one... Betty. He lets both goats share his hay and Betty sleeps at his feet.
So all in all, things are good. R is happy, and it feels so good to have Grant in our own pasture and know that he's R's and will be taken good care of from now on...
.... what the weather is like at my house today.
~
It's SNOWING!
No, I'm not joking.
Really... it is! Can you believe it?!
Yeah... I know it's a little unusual for this time of year in Colorado, and I can't tell you how surprised I was when I woke up this morning to find that we are... once again... snowed in. :(
Ok... I'm being sarcastic, which any of my grown daughters will tell you is the last refuge of the powerless... (family joke) and sarcasm isn't usually my style... but dang! I'm getting tired of all this snow!
We've got about another 10-12 inches this morning, on top of the 12-24 inches that hadn't melted from the last two storms.
It is pretty though, and so peaceful... It's a muffled kind of quiet outside, and it's easy to feel as though we are the only people for miles around. The animals are holed up in the barn, but still stick their heads out of their stalls when they hear my voice... and the goats come out far enough to "talk" to me before darting back inside when I go back into the house. Stormy only sticks her head out far enough to see if I have any hay. She's not much of a talker...
I've got dinner bubbling in the crockpot and made a cake for dessert, so the house smells wonderful... and one good thing about being snowed in is that there is plenty of time to keep the house picked up, and dinner on the table! (And it's cheap too... I can't spend money if I can't get to town. Although I did have some fun on ebay the other day!)
We started back to a light school schedule on Tuesday, and it felt good to get back into a routine after the holidays. I pulled out some of the Saxon Math lessons that we had left over when we switched to Making Math Meaningful, just to see how much the kids remembered. I was happy to see that they remembered a lot, and (unfortunately for M and R) I remembered all the things I liked about Saxon Math. So..... I found some very good prices online for both new and used Saxon Math materials and ordered them. Since Saxon Math can be grueling (for all of us!) I think I'm going to alternate Making Math Meaningful with Saxon and see how it works. Hopefully that way none of us will get too burned out...
I also pulled the Handwriting Without Tears cursive program back out and we've started it again. R is really doing well with it, but last time we tried it, M just didn't have the fine motor skills to do it. (It was very hard for him and he got frustrated very quickly.) This time though M is doing well with it... I'd almost given up on him being able to write in cursive, but maybe I was wrong. I love being wrong about things like this!
We got some very good news in the mail the other day... M has been approved for developmental disability services! We did the intake about 6 weeks ago, and thankfully they didn't get too stuck on trying to pull apart how much of his disability is a result of mental illness, and how much is connected to his FASD. (They had originally told me that if his cognitive delays were connected primarily to mental illness, and not his FASD, he wouldn't qualify for dd services!) They still haven't made a determination about the CES waiver, which provides support for the most seriously disabled children and their families. There seems to be a good possibility of M qualifying for that too. The wait list for the CES waiver is much shorter than for regular dd services (15 months compared to 5 years!), and they would pay for a lot of in-home support for us. It would be such a blessing if he qualified for it... It wouldn't change M's illness, or the amount care he needs, but it would provide an extra set of hands which would lighten the load considerably.
Well... better go, the kids are waiting for me.
The house is quiet right now... M's asleep and R's playing outside... so I thought I'd try to steal enough time to write.
Nothing exciting is going on here, but that in itself is a blessing! M has settled down again and most days things are pretty manageable. The pdoc hasn't mentioned ECT for a couple of weeks, since things have gotten better it's looking like we may not have to make the decision after all...
I got a phone call the other evening from the man we bought our goat Rose from. He has a little 12 acre farm a few miles from us and keeps every kind of farm animal you can imagine. He had sheep, goats, llamas, donkeys, chickens, ducks, pheasants, miniature horses and more! We've visited him several times since we bought Rose and the kids always enjoy wandering around his pasture, looking at all the animals.
So Al called the other evening to invite us over to see the newborn llama and goats he had. The baby llama is just beautiful... he's black and white, and has the sweetest face... The goats were only a few hours old and R would have spent all evening in the barn just holding one of the newborn kids... The little buckling she was holding still had his cord attached and M and R were a little surprised... They had never thought about animals having belly buttons! I think we'll probably go back this weekend so R can play with the babies before they get too big!
The kids have almost finished up their solar system unit and their lapbooks. We have had so much fun doing this, as soon as the finish the books up I'll take some pictures and show you what we did. M has picked the next topic we're going to do a unit study on... the Civil War. I love history so this should also be a fun and interesting unit study. I've been amazed at how working on the lapbooks has kept the kids interested and engaged, and how much fun we've had putting them together!
Better go get something done....
Our goats are not allowed in the garden.
Yes, their manure would make wonderful fertilizer for my plants, and they both poop constantly...but my garden plants aren't going to need any fertilizer if they've been nibbled off at the ground by the goats! So we put up a nice fence designed to keep both goats and deer out of the garden.
Naturally that fence is seen as just another challenge by my never-say-never goats.
The other day Betty got lucky and wriggled her way into the garden... and I got lucky and happened to be there to see how she did it (taking pictures the whole time... I know, I need to get a life!).
Here our girls are nibbling on the lovely green grass closest to the garden (it's so nice and green because it gets watered by the garden sprinkler.)
Betty somehow spots a weak place in the fence...
...and decides to see if her head will fit under. (I read somewhere that goats are almost as smart as dogs... LOL, I think that might be a slight exaggeration!)
Her head did fit under, but then she couldn't pull it back out again! (Those big nubian ears get in the way sometimes!) She was stuck for awhile, and I had visions of having to get the wire cutters to get her head back out of the garden, but eventually....
...she wriggled her way in.
And what did she eat? The corn? The pumpkins or zucchini?
Nope, she went for the weeds...
I love goats.
The REALLY good pictures would have been the ones of me trying to get her back out of the garden! Luckily there are no pictures of me chasing her, pushing her, pulling her, carrying her and falling over her, getting her out the little garden gate!
It's a beautiful fall day here...
The air is crisp but not cold, and the leaves on the trees are just starting to change color.
It must have been cold last night... my big garden froze, but my little kitchen garden is in a protected area close to the house and it seems ok.
We've settled back into our school routine after taking the week after Labor Day off. Our routine seems to be a good one. The kids are working steadily through their math, spelling and language arts....and we have plenty of time for homeschool group activities, read alouds, and all our fun Friday school stuff. (We try to have all or most of our regular work done by Friday. "School" on Friday usually consists of a cooking lesson, working on their poetry books and journals, and art.
I think it's a good schedule and one that's working, but I'm just not sure about math. M is doing ok in his book, but I just don't think R is understanding enough using Math Made Meaningful. She's having to rely on her Touchmath skills, and little tricks that she learned last year while doing Saxon Math. I keep wondering if maybe I should try to get her through another year of Saxon. She hated it last year, complained about it constantly (and school time often becomes a time neither of us look forward to!), but... she learned.
We haven't started Story of the World... and I'm not sure we're going to. The audiobooks I ordered are still back ordered from Amazon (I ordered them in July, but every month or so I get an email from Amazon saying it will be another month before they are shipped!), and the other places I've found that has them in stock wants a lot more money for them. If I knew the kids would like the SOTW curriculum I'd spend the money... but I've got a lot of curriculum materials laying around here that I bought, the kids hated, and are now sitting on a shelf gathering dust!
A friend from my homeschool group is giving me her copies of Beyond Five in a Row, Books 2 and 3. I'm thinking about adding that to our math and language arts and skipping SOTW. Some of the best hands on learning we've done in our homeschool has been while using FIAR or BFIAR. Maybe it's time to go back to it....
I've also got my sister's copy of the "Prairie Primer" unit study, based on the Little House books. I think it will make a nice unit study to put together for this winter... There is nothing like curling up with the kids on a cold winter night and slipping back into the Little House stories. It almost feels like we know Ma and Pa and the girls... we've spent so much time with them over the years.
Time to go, my plan for the day is to get the goat's hooves trimmed... I've only gotten one done so far (the easy one!) so I need to get outside and get busy!
I hope everyone is enjoying this beautiful fall weekend!
... don't ever mess with a cranky nanny!
I often write about all the wildlife we see on our land. It's not unusual to see hawks or even an eagle soaring over our heads, rabbits and voles in the garden, coyotes quickly scurrying across the back pasture, and mule deer does nursing their fawns outside the kitchen window.
Our goats, Betty (our baby... just 6 months old) and Rose (our "herd queen") don't usually pay too much attention to the wildlife. (Well, except for the coyotes, which leave them absolutely paralyzed with fear) The deer generally stay outside our little goat pasture, and the goats and the deer have seemed very happy to just ignore each other.
Rose takes her job as herd queen very seriously, and once even took on our golden retriever when she felt threatened by her. She rules over poor Betty (her herd of one!) with an iron fist (um... hoof) never letting Betty forget for a moment who's boss.
So when a mule deer doe jumped into Rose's territory the other day to graze, I was curious to see what would happen.
~
Here's the little doe, getting ready to see if the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence...
Betty and Rose (who had been laying in their most favorite spot in the world contentedly chewing their cud) didn't pay much attention at first. Betty was very curious, but Rose was busy guarding the prime spot in pasture (the highest level of the play structure) and looking regal.
After a few minutes Rose decided it was time to assert her dominance. Notice the body language? Very clear communication between species going on here!
When the doe didn't move quite fast enough for her, Rose decided she needed to be chased out of the pasture. Betty of course, is all eyes... and more than happy to follow Rose in the chase.
Afterwards... again check out the body language. If Rose could speak I could just hear her saying "And stay out!"
