Happy birthday Girl Punk

 
This is some salad, just from our garden. It was pretty so I am giving you a picture, the purple salad greens taste a little like a mild pepper. They came in a variety of "specialty green seeds" so I do not know what they are. The rest are spinach. 
   
Nathalie made a card and a present for me, we share the same birthday. I was wearing my working clothes still, forgive the look. stained jeans and holey shirts are kinda my norm.
   
She had some pieces of ribbon that were sent to me in some fabric, she spent weeks making a card for me. Coloring and drawing when I wasnt around. the little tiny box was handmade by her, including a little pillow with a pretty green rock that she has had for years. 
   
Tad bought a card for me that was supposedly going to incinerate something. Classy. They both got Itunes cards for me to buy some music with. 
   
Tad acting like he doesnt love it when I hug him. Which is unreasonable. He hugs me on purpose. 
   
Nathalie is wearing a party dress that mom bought her last yr, all she does is get taller! 
   
We gave her presents before people got here, well present. They are old enough now that they get 1 big thing. Tad got a 30/30 when he turned 11. He bought an ipod for himself recently and she loved it, so we bought one for her birthday. 
   
I made a card for her in the "if you give a moose a muffin" style. So it has a poem and pictures drawn, she LOVES handmade cards. Reading the little poem was much too much work so she went to daddy for that. 
   
Opening her gift...
   
Of course he bought the pink otter box for her. she loves it! She already has some games on it. The reason for ipods for both of the kids is music. They love music and like to have it in the car. or in the shop, we can plug in an ipod in the shop, or even out at the barn site and listen to music. 
   
Tad trying to look cool. Frank calls him Goldilocks (reference from the movie avengers, Director Fury from Shield calls Thor Goldilocks-though Frank says he does NOT mean that Tad is Thor or Thor-like) and I call him snowball. My grampie called my white-haired brother snowball and I loved it. Tad is proud of his hair, and does not mind being called a girl. He works like a man, and he knows it. 
   
Nathalie and small cousin. Small cousin lives here with her family-her mom is actually my cousin and was born and raised here. I took pictures of everyone at the party but they didnt all come out great so I wont post them here... Nathalie had me french braid her hair for her party, it is so tight her braids bend like wire!
   
She is even wearing make up and jewelry... my baby be all grown up. 
   
And making wishes...we of course do not know what they are though I suspicion they have something to do with NO MORE DEPLOYMENT. 
   
The candles were Lego candles, though Nathalie was disappointed that they didnt have proper backs. They cannot be put together. Rachel (party-goer and our friend who owns the RV park we stayed in) took some of the pictures. 
   
Tad couldnt find a fork so he went for the chopsticks. Rachel and Brian thought this photo worthy. Like Frank, Tad can eat pretty much anything with chopsticks. They still total stump me.

We had a great birthday, we got the barnyard fence done earlier in the day and all the animals moved out there to the larger space. I will blog photos of that one the rain lets up, I need finished product photos.  

Pistons and boys

 
Tad has this little motor, he recently made a boat that actually worked in the bathtub using it. I do not know what this is, or what the purpose is but "it works and it runs."
   
He found a tiny, real piston in the shop and Frank said he could have it-it is inside of this cylinder on the end (I think) and it goes up and down as a piston should. 
   
Good lord someone brush this childs hair! Its crazy hair day apparently. He loves electricity, he always has. He understands it and respects it. Frank has taught me to wire, but I am wary of it. Tad is attracted to it! When he was 3 he tried to wire a broken fan into a socket in order to make it run. It was broken because the cord end was cut off by accident somehow. He wired it into the socket! Knocked himself backward and turned a portion of the wall black. He has been respectful of electricity from that point on. He loves to make things go, batteries and wires are part of his "stuff" collection. He takes things apart, figures them out, puts them back together and they work, either again or still. He says he does not want to be an electrician, he wants to be a jack of all trades instead. 

 
You have to be wondering if we will ever get this done. We feel the same way, we wonder this pretty  much daily. Each time we think, yes we are ready to move on to something like roof or siding, we realize we were wrong. 
   
It could be we have never ever built a barn before. We read several books on it. Right now Frank is putting up the braces along the front and back truss. he measures, I cut and hand them up. 
   
And um, this picture... is showing you, well this picture is for me ok. He does go to work and I cannot look at him at that time. I need photos during those dark times.
   
Tad is usually helping us outside, Nathalie often is. Today Nathalie worked in the house a lot, cleaning and cooking. 
   
I do not like nail guns, ok I like finishing nailers. Pneumatic tools are not very easy for me to use, even the pancake compressor can be a pain. The nail gun wears on my bad wrist. I prefer a drill and screws, but that is slower and he is the one using the nail gun. I would like to add that there are MULTIPLE times that I have to use the nail gun. I guess I could refuse...but I do not want to be total unhelpful. 
   
This be mine. The saw, not the 2x4. The saw was my mother's day present 2 yrs ago, and it burned up in the shop. So we ordered a new one, from amazon.com and it cost less than when we bought it on sale at lowes. It is a 16" compound miter saw. I think it cuts 12" wide board, but as it slides you can cut 16."
   
Nathalie has come out to take photos, we are putting up house wrap in order to try to cut down on some wind. We will put siding on the outside, and if need be we will do insulation inside with wood on the walls. We are not sure yet. 
   
My ladder is what Frank is using, his is on my right. That is because his is 4 ft taller than mine and mine is easier for me to move. I am a girl right??? But it isnt my fault, I am of smallish size. I can work hard, but I just cant manage things 3 times heavier than myself and several feet taller.My poor husband... It is a good thing Tad is growing up so big and strong. 
   
Tad is holding the housewrap after he wore out handing daddy nails. IE he became distracted and forgot to hand him any nails. I was singing to myself, holding up the house wrap also not paying any attention but I can come down to earth if need be. 
   
Finishing the job, somehow the wrap makes the barn look huge inside. It seemed pretty big, now it seems enormous. 
   
You cannot grasp the enormity from this photo. This is the best I can do anyway. It is going to be very nice when we are done. We plan on finishing the fencing (almost all posts are finished as of yesterday) this week, and hopefully get the rest of the roof framing done and possibly get particle board up. Either way the turkeys, geese, duck and the duck's rooster friend will move into their this wkend. As soon as the fence is done, they will have a tarp inside the barn to go under and they will live in the barn yard. We will put the baby goats out there at least during the day, they will not respect house wrap as walls but they need space. 
   
While we did this, Nathalie was cleaning the kitchen. She let me know for the 3rd week in a row that we do not own a mop. Which is reasonable, and I will pick one up sometime soon. very soon. Also we are out of dishwasher detergent but we found something that works just fine. 
 
Before Tad came out to help us, he spent a couple of hours cutting up strawberries with Nathalie. In Ks, we waited for them to go on sale for 1$ a lb. Here, we are grateful for 3$ a lb. we bought a lot, and we are going to go get more.
   
Nathalie put them up in quart bags when they had made juice, we sprinkle sugar on them and it creates tons of juice. this winter we will eat them, in many different ways. primarily we eat them on pancakes and waffles, but also in pies and other desserts. You know, I love making desserts. Not cake, but anything else. Nathalie wants to make cake so I will let her. She is not allowed to do oven things, she has to call one of us other 3 to help her. she is a little girl and has nice skin, I want it to not be burned. 
   
She said she could make pizza dough for dinner which she can, but I came in to take pictures.
   
Yep she made pizza dough. Nice. It takes about 40 min to rise to this point, the book says wait 2 hrs but we do not. I have learned in the winter to put it on a heat vent and we have dough in 20 min, ready to put in the oven. 
   
We learned that putting a little less flour, and then knead in more before rolling out makes easier to handle-throw/toss, the pizza dough. nathalie cannot toss the dough yet, it just flops but she is learning. 
   
Rolling out 3 crusts. Yes, we eat 3 pizzas between the 4 of us. 
   
I am glad that my children can do so much independently. I regret that they are so big in some ways. I so wanted more of them, and these are so big. I miss babies, I enjoy this age just as much as babies. But its hard for them to grow up big. Nathalie will be 10 in 7 days. She has been able to clean the whole house, alone, and cook some meals since Frank's 2nd deployment at which time she was 6. She turned 7 more than halfway through that one. Tad can carry almost as much weight as I can, and he can also clean the whole house, they can both do the chores alone including milking. I think we have done a pretty good job, and they are really great kids. 
 

Bird addict

Help! I am a bird addict! I have spent the last hr drooling over birds at mcmurreyhatchery.com... I love to look at what is available! I have trouble choosing as well. I think we will buy 2 runner ducks, 4 turkeys and a bunch of barred rocks straight run. We will sell the eggs from the females, and eat the males. They are a dual purpose bird so it is good to raise the roosters to eat.

We miss good chicken, the chicken we raised in Ks was such good meat. Store meat does not compare. We also eat a lot of ground turkey, we prefer it over beef so we need to raise the turkeys for that. We do have a pair now and can possibly incubate their eggs, or maybe they will set their own. The ducks are Nathalie's pets, but we would also eat or sell the meat of their offspring.

Our rabbit is raising her 3 babies that have survived, somehow she has managed to kill off most of them. she started with 10! We think, from what the rabbit lady said,that Mrs B has crushed them by getting in and out of her kindle box too much. We re-bred her and bred our other rabbit female who is now big enough. So in 4 wks, we will have two more kits and can make sure they do not get crushed by covering the box in between feedings. For rabbits, that is only 2 x a day.

So we want to raise our meat, but it takes a lot of work and time. I will order birds so that we can raise them for meat, by the time they arrive (scheduling a later arrival date that now, prob a month from now) our barn will be ready to house them. Our meal worm farm will be producing their feed, and I have already found someone that I can buy some bulk grains for the winter from for a decent price. I feed the bunnies on a lot of greens that I am raising, we will continue to greenhouse huge quantities of salad for us and our bunnies. Farm raised meat is worth the work, and does not cost more money than the store meat. It both costs less, and is better for us in taste and health.

New birds

 
6 years ago I bought this orange fabric, that isnt terribly significant. 6 yrs ago my baby girl was almost 4, she will be 10 in 9 days. My boy was 5.5 yrs old. We lived in a neighborhood, in Sc, with no farm animals. I lived so close to my best friend that I saw her every month, it not more than 1 time a month. She and I shared this piece of orange fabric. It was 10 yds of washable wool that we paid 19$ a yd for, we made long johns and long sleeve shirts. We thought it was ugly, but loved pj pants out of the soft, warm wool. Now I know what true cold is, and still love my old pair of orange woolies. Nikki (best friend) gave me an old pair a couple of yrs ago that had shrunk, and my girl wears them now cut down. They are stained and worn, and too small but they were her mama Nikki's pants, so she hangs onto them. Last yr I made the last shirt I could from this for Tad, now this is just a piece that will wait until I have some baby to sew for. 
   
 But never fear, I have plenty of wool left. Which is good as we need it for coats, jackets, linings, long johns, pj pants, shirts and hats.
   
Nathalie has already picked from these jerseys, she wants petticoats to go under winter skirts, and she wants wool leggings to go under, double layer of course. She says that print leggings will go nicely with her snow boots! She knows fashion better than I! 

   
Now why in the hell would I put you guys through this, just because I am crazy enough to look at them. If you listen closely, with your ear at the edge, they sound like rice krispies and milk. Do you know how badly I want true self-sufficiency in every area?  The thing we have learned about that, it is varied. So many parts. You can completely sustain your meat, your veggies, fruit, eggs, milk, farm animals, or just some of your farm animals. You can go off the grid, you can create electricity, you can haul your own water. We will do some of these parts, until we can do all of the parts and we want to NOT do water hauling. We know it costs money to save money and right now, are spending it to learn. These worms however, cost us very little. We feed them on scraps and they grow up to be beetles, who breed and create new worms. Once we have enough worms being made, we can hand them out daily to all of our birds, this is called free food! Free protein. I do not think that we can raise their grain up here, but we can in Tn even if it is small scale. My best friend raised corn for her chickens, and just dried the cobs and let them peck it from the cobs. That sounds pretty simple.
   
It is fascinating to watch them grow and change. It is a science experiment that means a huge savings, my children keep up with this, help to feed them, clean the empty skins from the box. I think it is a good life lesson. 
   
Tad throwing knives, he and Nathalie found Frank's throwing knives and they spent an hr practicing here. 
   
The kitten (AKA Ns dog) was in no way harmed though he total stayed in the way a lot. The kids had to keep moving him, or take turns keeping him away from the target. N is filling the geese pool here, we change their water every couple of days. Unlike ducks, they do not poop in their water but they do soil it. 
   
Nathalie: "I hit it right here mama and kitten thought I did a good job." Hmm. "Baby why are you in your nightshirt?" "Because I woke up in it." Good logic. 
   
Nathalie's cast of characters. From the left- home ground white wheat, kamut, white flour, bosch mixer, dough enhancer, eggs, vital wheat gluten, oil and yeast. Oh you cannot see the sugar,and then quinoa (pronounced keen-wah).
   
We have her crack eggs in a cup, in case she needs a second to pick out her shells. She is making bread, we learned that eggs in the bread makes the bread softer for much longer. It maintains a shelf life better, which surprised me. I had extra eggs last wk and used one for the bread. I do not measure, neither does N. She knows what her dough should turn out like, and how much yeast to use per cup of water basically. The wet ingred needs to include some water or milk, some oil and the rest is up to you! We learned that bread with no eggs (I am talking kneaded bread-not the neat sponge breads we love to make) is great day 1, good day 2, starting to dry day 3, dried out and crumbly after that. 5 days after I made the bread with an egg, still just as soft and nice as day one. Not at all crumbly or dried out-great for me! I dont have to preheat the oven now and waste energy more than 1 day a wk for baking. 
   
Growing up I made 6 loaves of bread every 3 days. I kneaded this on the end of the table that is currently in my kitchen. The table was made by my grampie when my mama was a toddler, she remembers watching him sand the boards. I was 9 when I could make bread with no assistance, and sometimes I total failed. I remember crying next to my fallen bread with my stepdad gently questioning what I had done, until he found my mistake and explained it. (He ended up being a religious nut so they ended up divorced but he was not a mean fellow mostly) Over time, I excelled at baked goods. My stepdad was a good cook, and didnt use any measurements. Just tossed stuff together. 
   
As a child, and even adult until I bought a bosch-I mixed bread, kneaded, it rose, I punched it down and let it rise again in the pans. THEN I baked it. The bosch does something different when kneading. I am not sure what it is, but it means that there is only 1 kneading. we leave it in the bosch until it is smooth and elastic. The book, as well as some friends, say this rises in 15 min ready to bake but I have not had that happen. Instead it takes about 30. 
   
This is rising in the oven because its just plain cold here, it was about 48 degrees the day N made this. Our rise was a little lower than normal for trying to use quinoa. This is not a grain, its actually just a grass seed commonly used in place of a grain in some countries. It is gluten free, low in carbohydrates and high in protein. We are not gluten intolerant but some people that I know are, and I was interested in making bread that was tasty without gluten. I have not made it yet, I am still using some white flour and I do not think that kamut is gluten free. 
   
Her two loaves! I take them out of the oven still, or Tad does. I need to order a 2nd norpro oven mitt as it goes to her elbows and they do not burn, you can pick up 500 deg cast iron and can hold it for minutes and it does not come through and burn. With a cloth mitt, it will burn you if you do not set it down. At this age, I was baking alone and twice I burned my hands pretty badly. So yes, I am over protective about this but she will be big someday...she can use the oven alone then! 
   
We look like alcoholics no? Those are not all beer bottles, all of our glass from foods, soda and beer are on the porch. There is no glass recycling at this time anywhere in Ak, but a place to recycle is opening up about an hr from here. We are saving it up until then, they will be using it in roads. Recycling is exceptional up here otherwise, they recycle almost everything, even cereal bags and other thin plastics. The center is close to the house, I cannot throw away all of this glass. I hate to fill landfills at all, but this is usable stuff! I just have to wait... yes I know it is trashy but it was the only place I had to put it where it wouldnt fill up with water. 
   
Alaskan growth. We didnt plant this so naturally it grows well. This is the front flower bed.
   
The kids and I moved the chicken coops to the front yard, it was starting to grow long and needed mowing. We do not have a mower, and when we buy one it will be one with no power, just an old fashioned push mower for Tad to use. We may not actually need it, the chickens and geese do a good job. The bucket is their food, it is easier to use from their coops vs the garage where the bags are stored, so we mix their layer feed with grains in this bucket. The step stool here-the only place that I have cell signal. We had cell signal in our house, yard and on our road. Now we have no signal anywhere but the roof and this stool, until we are about 5 miles from home. 
   
What the hell... This is the neighbors cat, she is PUFFY. I think it is a she. She comes to our yard along with her dog. Her dog is a nice dog, and our animals like him. 
    
Our new friends! We were told by our neighbors that a woman just down the road was moving and had surgery, she wanted to get rid of her birds. She has hand raised them for yrs, all of her birds were incubated by her in a home made incubator except this turkey pair. She said someone captured the wild pair and gave them to her a few yrs ago, they fertilize and sit their own eggs. This is very difficult to get domesticated turkeys to do, they do not seem to function well without older turkeys in their flock which we do not have. This is our temporary fenced area for them, though they were loose in the other woman's yard. 
   
She also had this laying duck and a rooster, these two are best friends. We put them in a pen and they are not happy, they spend their time trying to get out. As soon as we can get the barn yard fenced, we will put them in it. we are putting up house wrap on the barn today, we wanted to work on the fence but our t posts are not long enough. We have to return them and buy longer ones. (twice the money...)
   
The geese like the new birds, they talk to them quietly instead of doing their loud, angry crying and carrying on. This is a rather messy looking area, it is hard to work with animals without the proper area, but they were free!
   
Kitten AKA the dog, has turned his back on the whole affair.