Animals...

I have had an interesting weekend with my animals.  It started Friday afternoon with a wonderful hatch of 15 new quail chicks.  It was so sweet to see them all hatching and to have so many at one time.  The sweetness was short lived.  They started dying off one by one...some didn't make it out of the incubator.  Several looked healthy and ran around their house.  I was left with just 6 when I went to sleep last night.  Brad gave me more sad news when I woke up this morning.  None were alive.  I have been racking my brain all weekend...cleaning their brooder area/monitoring temperature...I am at a loss.  One thing that occurred to me is I had a handful of birds hatch the day before and there was not time to sanitize the incubator in between...Maybe they picked up an infection.  I bought a new incubator and will try to keep this tragedy from happening, again.

Our donkey is a mess.  He is rotten!  Now, I am mad at him.  He wasn't happy anywhere we tried to keep him...in a pen alone or in a pen with goats.  We ended up giving him free range of the property..7 acres to himself.  Well, he is a bother at feeding time.  We give him treats of fruit and animal crackers.  He has his hay...all the grass/leaves, etc...We have been in a habit of giving him sweet feed with corn (just a bit) so he doesn't feel left out at feeding time...Last night while he was eating his feed, my Nubian, Buckeye, came to see what he was up to.  Howdy picked up Buckeye atop his neck with HIS MOUTH and shook him vigorously.  I was a wreck.  Thank God, Buckeye is okay.  He is the gentlest thing you would ever meet.  We are going to have to make arrangements for Howdy as Brad is now worried about the kids...

Our First Day of Home School!

Well, we did it.  We completed our first day of school.  We had science. We learned about shapes and colors.  We mixed colors of paint and wrote in our journal about our discoveries.  We have 16 new science vocabulary words.  Next, was History/Geography.  We learned about ourselves and our differences and how God loves us all and made us each special.  We have 9 new vocabulary words for History.  They traced outlines of themselves and decorated them.  They are hanging in our hallway.  Then, was Math.  Hunter was kind of bored with the first lesson.  I think it is kind of a review.  It gets more challenging as the lessons go on.  Finally, a bit of Language Arts we touched on suffixes and root words!  Wow.  Hailey did a lot of Hunter's work.  There was a lot of copying involved so she could participate.  I will be more prepared for that next week!  It was fun to watch their minds work.  Hailey will focus on the letter Aa and Number 1 for the next week.

Here is the best part!  I started a journal for Hunter for his vocabulary words and sentence practice.  At the end of our school day, I told him to write one sentence about his favorite thing from today.  He wrote "Being with you mom."  Are you kidding me?  I started crying.  Okay, so I am crying as I write this, too!  He made my day.  I didn't have the heart to tell him it wasn't a sentence.  He did capitalize "Being" and there was a period at the end!   I call today a success!

Bow and Arrow.  These guys guard our goats!

Our Hunter with his Red Ryder!  "You'll shoot your eye out!"

Hailey and Buddy, our guinea pig

My Kindergarten Graduate

Wow!  Now that's a snake!!!  We had dozens of these this spring/summer.

Newly hatched Quail

This is one of our Bantam Roosters

This is Buckeye, our Nubian Buckling

Dixie and Hailey

Here is Tom Turkey :)

That was easy!

How much fun is this?  I have been saying I would create a blog for ages now.  Here it is for everyone to see.  I am very excited.  So much so, I am without words....almost :) 

This week is the beginning of an exciting adventure for me and my kids.  I am going to start homeschooling.  They are thrilled.  Hunter is 6 and in first grade.  He is wild and in full gear all day long.  Hailey is 4 and will start Pre-K curriculum.  She is sweet and gentle.  They are polar opposites. 

We moved onto 8 acres this spring.  It has been quite the experience.  Before moving into the new house, Brad bought quail and chickens and turkeys.  I have been incubating the eggs and hatching  and raising the babies.  We now have 14 large hens (Cochins, Brahmas, Buff Orphingtons), 1 large Brahma Rooster, 10 show bantams, 14 Guineas, Bourbon Red Turkey, 2 Royal Palm Turkeys, 3 Turkins (these are a turkey/chicken cross), Auracana Rooster, and 2 Yellow Laced Wyandotte Hens.  Oh, and dozens of quail. 

We decided to take a shot at raising Boer Goats.  They are fun and sweet.  We have about a dozen in our herd.   We should have a half dozen or so Christmas babies!!!  Oh, and I have one Nubian bucking.  His name is "Buckeye".  He is a sweetie.  He was gotten before we decided on Boer Goats.  He is a part of the family now. 

We have a donkey named, Howdy.  He runs the show.  He "hee-haws" over everything and anything.

Of course, there is "Jake".  He is our lab of almost 12 years now.  I would love to know what he thinks about this craziness!  We got a new puppy, "Dixie.  She is just a couple months old.  She is a lot of work in herself.  She is a sweet little thing, but really likes to bite.  Ouch!  

Most days we are up a dawn and work until dark.  Our weather has been painfully hot this summer.  Each day runs into the next.  I am looking forward to a schedule.  School starts Friday!!!  Wish me luck :)