I'm currently uploading 962 pictures onto my computer from my phone. I have NEVER had so many pictures on my phone. I usually take care of uploads quicker than that. Obviously I have been delinquent in more ways than this blog. So last time we had just cleaned up the homeschool room for the summer and now we have been back in that homeschool room for the 2020-2021 school year for about a month! I will break down our update by person: Bug is going to be 5 in just a few weeks! Eek! Our baby... and I am striving to not treat him like a baby. He started gymnastics a couple months ago with his brothers. He loves his coach and sometimes needs a reminder to not talk to his coach all through gymnastics practice! This school year he is required to sit with the family while I teach bible to start off our school day and we are being a little more intentional about learning his letter sounds and he gets to play Monster Math on my iPhone to work on his math. Hulk just turned 6 last month! So he is allowed to do more formal learning this school year and we are calling him a kindergartner. He has officially started Alpha-Phonics which is the book I use for teaching reading. He is doing very well, when he is able to focus. ; ) But we only work on reading about 10-15 minutes a day. He also sits with us for bible and reading aloud. Him and Bug play a lot together and often Wild Man is hanging out with them as well. Wild Man turned 9 last month and is in 3rd grade this year. He has been working really hard on his penmanship, which is not great. But he's made a lot of progress. He does all of the school work that his older siblings do. Wild Man is wild and has a really hard time with focus but in general he is a great joy to teach. He doesn't get overwhelmed easily. And he doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about himself, wether that means his abilities or lack of abilities, which frees him up to just enjoy stuff. I signed all of the boys up for gymnastics because I wanted Wild Man to take gymnastics. He is very strong and demands a high volume of physical stimulus. There is a gymnastics gym just three miles away from us and I saw a great opportunity for Wild Man's benefit. He has loved it and has excelled. All three of our youngest kiddos have grown 2 inches each since we moved here! The Boy is growing so much. His body is lengthening and looking more like a young man, while his face still looks like his. He joined the youth group this fall because he is in 6th grade now. Which does not seem possible to me. I'm focusing on his writing progress this year a lot but he does all the normal subjects for school. He reads for fun a lot! And enjoys playing quietly by himself. He's always been like that. Lately he has been into writing and illustrating comic books. His sense of humor runs along the same as the Far Side Comics, which I realized I need to buy him some books of to help nurture that. Hurricane has embraced the farm life whole heartedly. She enjoys researching all of the things to help us. She also spent most of her summer writing fiction with some long distance friends. She reads for fun a lot as well. Hurricane is my library trip reminder. She is in the 8th grade this year and we let her skip a grade in math. She seems to have really buttoned down in her homeschool studies. After the pictures you will find a portion of the update that she wrote. Tender started dual enrollment at SBU this fall. She is taking two classes there and as a result is only doing math and a subject I'm calling "Current Events" that I made up for the girls, at home. She was working part time at McDonalds for about 9 months and then a couple of weeks ago she switched to Taco Bell. A couple of her christian friends from youth work there so she is hoping for a more encouraging atmosphere there. She works about 16 hours a week and is gone every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 9-2 for SBU classes. We have also been working on her driving skills becuase she got her permit. She is old enough now to get her license and we are going to do that soon, hopefully. Robert is getting in the swing of things at work. He is very good at what he does and is starting to enjoy it. Which has been my prayer since we moved here. I have longed for him to enjoy his job above all. Every Saturday he goes to the sale barn to see if there is any more livestock that we desperately need! Ha! Currently he is errating the lawn and hoping to plant good grass soon. We are also planning on planting several fruit trees next spring! I have been feeling out new chores in regards to new farm animals and the size of this house. I've been doing some extra studying in being an assistant for a local midwife and a doula. I started those classes a few months ago and it seems like my brain barely has enough space for me to cram that knowledge in! But I have so enjoyed it! Right now we are trying me being on call to assist at one birth a month to see how the family does with my being absent that often, which is unpredictable. I have no plans to become a midwife, I just want to be the humble "fetch and grab" for a midwife. : ) My garden is about done for the year. We had way too much cucumebrs, canteloupe, and okra! Overall it was a very productive garden this year. I also have a TON of pictures to share. Click on the picture if you want to see it bigger and read the caption... The Farm So Far by Hurricane
Near the beginning of June (I know, I know, that's like 4 years ago) a friend of ours accidentally bought a five-day-old bottle calf (how that's even possible at an auction, I have no idea). He was going on vacation the next day so he dropped it off at our house to ”babysit”. We eventually bought him and named him Grady. He was a lil sickly thing (Jersey cattle, am I right?) but ate and played fine. It didn't take more than a couple weeks for us to buy him a friend. She was a little older and feisty (as soon as we weaned her, she started to hate us). Since it was June at the time (and I blatantly refused to call her Miss Priss) we named her Joon(apparently after the movie Benny and Joon, which I have never seen). Anyway, she was fun, and she and Grady became very quick friends. The next week(or maybe the week before, I can't remember) we got 7 Buff Orpington chicks. Two ended up dying of some kind of internal problem, but surprisingly the rest are healthy to this day( I say surprisingly because our luck with chicks is cursed with the power of a thousand burning suns). Around this time Grady’s health was going downhill, and we started hyping him up on antibiotics. They didn't work in the end and while Tender and I were at camp, he stopped eating and even walking. Joon stayed with him until the end and dad eventually had to ”put him down”. Thankfully we didn't find out until we got home(although we did know they'd butchered all of our chickens(except Ms. D) because our youth leaders showed us the video mom had sent them. Both me and Tender’s reactions ranged from ”ew, gross” to ”haha. Jerks”) Mid July we got a 11 baby chicks(Rue(who died promptly), Prim(who lasted a little longer🙄), Katniss, Keefe, Spain, Toast, Dex, Tam, Lihn, Bear, and one who died so fast she never got a name and a duck(Lonnie, who is a jerk). Keefe and Prim were taken away in the night(oh joy), and Rue and the-one-that-must-not-be-named died of the internal thing(some luck, huh). The rest survived for another like 7 weeks under the rule of Lonnie(she led them around and freaked out whenever one went missing, it was hilarious and precious). Until (of course there's an until) one Sunday when we came home to find Bear, Spain, Toast and Dex all dead with snapped necks. The remaining three were gone and Lonnie was lonely and scared out of her mind. We got two baby ducks a few days later and christened them Penny and Desmond(from Lost) and she's pretty happy and over-controlling as ever now. Rewind a month and a half and Joon was spoiled single child. Dad decided he liked the bottle calf thing and went to get her a friend. Instead of just one, he brought home two: an absolutely huge black angus(legit though, we thought he was older than Joon he was so big and muscley) and another Jersey calf(the resemblance to Grady was striking and scary, it even fooled Joon). They were both about 5 or 6 days old. We named Jacob(the black angus) and Edward(the jersey) from Twilight(which was actually moms idea and dad thought it was too funny to not name them after the biggest joke in young adult fantasy). Thankfully Edward's still alive and very healthy at about eleven or twelve weeks. Jake is still unbelievably jacked and Joon is tolerating them both. A little while after we got the Twilight boys, we started wanting a horse(meaning me and dad) and I was told to wait until something came up. Soon something did: a 20 year old Paint that currently lived with dad's sister. He wasn't riden hardly ever anymore, but was chill enough to tolerate it okay. My aunt and cousins made the trip up here a week ago to bring him and hang out with us for a couple nights. Anyways, his name is Jake(we call other Jake, Jacob now to avoid too much confusion) and he does ride reasonably okay (except he did buck me the other day and sprained my finger, because as nice as he is, he's still overweight and old and kinda cranky) We also got more chicks and chickens a couple of days ago along with 4 Guineas(who, guess what! Were killed last night. I told you our luck with birds is cruddy. And to add to that, we also got a chick Splash Silkie with separation anxiety and kept her in my room for a few days, succeeding only in making her believe she belonged with us humans and causing her to panic and book it her first night outside😒) Anyways, that's all that's happened in terms of attempted farming in the past few months(or should I say years? That's sure what it felt like)
0 Comments
|
LindseyI'm the mama and wife. Updating you on our life! Archives
January 2022
Categories
All
|