April on the farm

I haven't done any writing for such a long time.  It has been so overwhelmingly busy at our house I've only had time to tread water.  Our precious and dear baby was born the last day of February safe and sound.

 Here is a picture of her cooing at Emily and Ethan...

 And smiling back at them...

We named her Stephanie Eliana and she is such a sweatheart!

Our streak of constant illnesses since October has continued and the poor baby caught this last one and it was a doozy.  Nine of the children suffered earaches and all the crying and suffering was nothing short of a nightmare.  Steve and I both are so sleep deprived!  Everyone but myself, thank the Lord for His mercy on me, came down with this last one.  Here's Jacob with a creative resolution to his incessantly runny nose while milking...

But we have survived and are starting to be able to look around us and get some work done on the farm. 

Spring came without our help and despite our not being ready for it.  Here is an Eastern Redbud tree that is in our yard.

 Many times while I sat and held a feverish, fussy child I would look out the windows wistfully and watch the world wake up without us.  This is the sky above the East pasture.

Here are some sweet Johnny Jump-ups nestled in a bunch of delicate Henbit.

Everyone is on the mend now and we've begun easing back into life beyond survival mode. 

We had our garden plowed and tilled for us this year since we want to have a large garden.  

It is 100 feet by 67 feet.  We have all our peas in and some radishes and lettuces.  Emily planted the radishes and lettuces and all the girls helped me plant the peas.

It is encouraging to see those peeking up with their tender new leaves as we survey the rest of the mammoth garden that still needs the paths dug.  Here's Jacob lying down on the job!

Seriously, the boys have been working hard to help me dig paths and smooth out the uneven surface.  We are going to do our garden Dutch style with large beds and paths so that we won't have to pay to have it tilled each year.

We've been doing some yard work and weeding and planting in moments stolen away from bookwork here and there.  We've not accomplished much, but we decided we would reorganize our school schedule so that through the springtime we will spend our mornings working outdoors and afternoons schooling.


We got started on our indoor seeds a bit late.

We did peppers and tomatoes and brussel sprouts.  We also started seeds outdoors with the winter sowing method. Our peppers just didn't do well for some reason this year, but the tomatoes did fabulous and we have 98 tomatoes plants to put into the garden!  It will be the year of the tomatoes!!  I am rather sad about the peppers not doing well.  We only have 12 plants.  I will miss those late night chile rellenos we did with the older kids last year when we would stay up late with a project.

We have planted some mint and some chives that we given to us.  We are in the process of putting in a kitchen herb garden off the patio right outside the kitchen door.

We have enjoyed watching our tulips and the daffodils grow and bloom.  They are so cheerful!

Emily gave me a gift certificate for Mother's Day last year and I used it to buy the bulbs and we planted them together and eagerly waited until they woke up to announce the end of a long, bitterly cold winter.

Steve surprised me one day with bringing home a lilac start.  I just adore lilacs!  We planted it at one end of the clothesline so I can inhale it lovely scent while I hang laundry.  It unfortunately got mowed down, but I am hoping it will hang in there and come back.

The other end of the clothesline is bursting into glorious color as the burning bush has bloomed.

The little ones have set up house underneath the ornamental pear tree and it looks so idyllic.  They have spent many happy hours playing together there when the weather was nice enough to be outdoors.

Lucy is such a beautiful dog!

When we moved here we moved her to be an outside only dog since the house is carpeted.  We have missed her presence in our home but she as really thrived outdoors and is such a good dog to keep away the critters and protect our other animals.  Samuel loves to play with goosey Lucy!

When it got in the single digits we let her come inside to sleep in front of the pellet stove and she thoroughly enjoyed all the attention of little kids climbing all over her and we enjoyed having her with us for awhile.

Here is beautiful Girlfriend taking a rest in the L-shaped pasture.  I could see her through our big picture window in the dining room and had Emily run out and snap a picture of her idylic beauty.  

Cherry blossoms showing off on our little cherry tree.

Emily's chickens are laying again.

 Emily set the eggs aside until we built up a couple of dozen so that we could try to hatch them and start another larger flock.  We splurged on an incubator and hope it works!

It will be fun to hatch them ourselves and watch them grow.

Brisket has turned himself into a big old beef steer over the winter. 

We are all surprised by how "steerish" he looks.  (That gate is lying down because we were under a tornado watch with high winds and it doesn't connect properly.)  But don't be fooled, he is still silly ol' Brisket!  Can you tell he's smiling?

He is enjoying all of the good eating growing out in our pastures and our plan is to hold onto him as a house payment in our back pocket, so to speak. Ethan likes to ride him in from the pastures to the barn for evening chores.  We enjoy our animals, though we do get ribbing from our neighbors on how we treat them like pets and they wonder if we'll be able to kill and eat them when the time comes.  Emily took a walk out in the back of our property where the creek runs through it and Brisket followed her like a big puppy.

Our little piglets have grown quite nicely on all of our scraps and cast off milk products from cheese-making.  We had fun raising them, making sure to give them back-scratches to tenderize all that lovely bacon forming.

Emily's dog Jessie had her litter of pups the first day of April.

How wonderful to share this experience with our children!  We all eagerly watched her waiting and hoping we could watch them be born.  Jessie was very needy emotionally while she was in labor so we all took turns comforting her and playing doggie midwife and we were rewarded with eight adorable puppies!

The puppies have been delighting us all and have grown up so quickly.  They are listed on craigslist now and we hope to find them all good homes.  They will make someone good farm dogs!

Steve and the boys have been putting in some arduous days working at the factory.  The work is demanding physically but it has been a relief to have something coming in that we could count on.  We've spent our weekends and evenings doing work around the farm.  We've sure had our share of misfortunes lately.  Almost every appliance we own has given us trouble recently, our septic needed pumped and then was still not working right so we had to dig it all up and pull out the tree roots that had invaded it and then pick the gravel out of the dirt and put it all back together and buried properly.  It was quite a job!   Here is a picture of Emily standing at one end of the leach line to show what a big job it was for the kids to do.  I am so proud of them for working together to get it done.  They worked on it while Steve and the boys were at work at the factory, though they had help on Saturdays.

Our van has been in the shop multiples times.  It is sitting there now awaiting a new transmission.  And our mower broke a clutch so the April showers have brought more than May flowers to our land!  The grass and the weeds are taking over the yard!  We have the part now and will be getting it back on and up and running this week, thankfully!

We still manage to have fun in the little moments of everyday life.  Here is Steve making getting ready for bed hilarious fun for Samuel.

Well, that about sums up April, I suppose.  It feels all clumsily written and pieced together as I worked on it in the odd moments here and there, but... better to keep in touch unpolished!