Animals

Puppy Time…

Okay, funny story…..Last night when I got home I got the dog’s food ready and fed them so they could get back outside and enjoy the nice cool weather.  When Randy walked in the door he said, “Mmm, it smells good, what are you cooking?”  We add garlic and cod liver oil to their dog food in the evenings.  He smelled that garlic and thought I had been slaving away on dinner (for him).  I could have dished him up a bowl, but he wasn’t interested.

 Speaking of dogs, this is what I left at our house this morning…

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You just don’t know what you are missing out on if you don’t have a dog (or dogs).  Yes there is dog hair here, there, and everywhere.  Yes it is an added expense.  Yes as puppies there are accidents on the floor, chewed up table legs, and scratched hands from puppy teeth.  But there are also wagging tails and smiling faces everyday when you walk in the door.  You have a partner for ball or walks anytime you feel like it.  There are snuggles with no words or opinions whenever you are just having one-of-those-days.

If people rescued/adopted a dog rather than buy from breeders?  If people would spay/neuter?  If there were tighter restrictions on who and how dogs are bred (puppy mills, individual breeders with absolutely no training or knowledge on breeding dogs, etc.)?  Would there still be overflowing shelters full of abandoned, abused, and neglected dogs?

We love our’s!  Even with three and and a baby on the way (via adoption) I still don’t think I could drive by an abandoned dog or puppy along the side of the road and just look the other way.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Around the Homestead

Bikers…

Two of Randy’s friends from work came out on Sunday to swim and have lunch.  They rode their bikes out, so Randy decided to pull his out of the garage to see if they would let him ride with them a little before they headed back.

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They said, “NO.”

Inspirational, Parenting

Poetry…Tasha Tudor and Parenting…

I have been reading and watching anything I can get my hands on relating to Tasha Tudor.  Last night we watched, Take Joy!, a video about her everyday life.  She uses favorite quotes throughout her books and videos and in the midst of searching for this particular poem she made reference to:

I Come in the Little Things  
I come in the little things, Saith the Lord:
Not borne on morning wings
Of majesty, but I have set My Feet
Amidst the delicate and bladed wheat
That springs triumphant in the furrowed sod.
There do I dwell, in weakness and in power;
Not broken or divided, saith our God!
In your strait garden plot I come to flowers
About your porch My Vine,
Meek, fruitful, doth entwine;
Waits, at the threshold, Love’s appointed hour.
I come in the little things, Saith the Lord:
Yea! on the glancing wings
Of eager birds, the softly pattering feet
Of furred and gentle beasts, I come to meet
Your hear and wayward heart. In brown bright eyes
That peep from out the brake, I stand confest.
On every nest
Where feathery Patience is content to brood
And leaves her pleasure for the high emprize
Of motherhood —
There doth My Godhead rest.I come in the little things, Saith the Lord:
My starry wings I do forsake,
Love’s highway of humility to take:
Meekly I fit my stature to your need.
In beggar’s part
About your gates I shall not cease to plead —
As man, to speak with man —
Till by such art
I shall achieve My Immemorial Plan,
Pass the low lintel of the human heart.

~Evelyn Underhill

 

I found this one:

 To All Parents

 
“I’ll lend you for a little while a child of mine” he said.”For you to love while she’s alive and mourn when she is dead.”

“It may be six or seven years or twenty two or three, but will you ’til I call on her take care of her for me?”

“She’ll bring her charms to gladden you and if her stay is brief, you’ll
have her lovely memory as solace for your grief.”

“I can’t promise she will stay, as all from earth return, but there are
lessons taught down there I want this child to learn.”

“I’ve looked the wide world over and in my search for teachers true,
and from the throng that crowd life’s lanes, I have chosen you.”

“Now will you give her all the love – not think the labor vain, nor hate me when I come to call and take her back again?”

“I fancied that I heard them say, Dear Lord they will be done, for all
the joy this child shall bring, the risk of grief we’ll run.”

“We’ll shower her with tenderness and love her while we may, and for the happiness we have known, now in our hearts she’ll stay.”

~Author Unknown

This last one isn’t a poem Tasha Tudor quoted in any of her books or videos.  Just one I found while I was searching this site for poems she has made reference to. 

Have a wonderful day!

Adoption

Dossier Has Been Reviewed…

Our agency has reviewed our dossier.  We have very few corrections to make on our dossier, mostly just notary commissions expiring.  I got the email this morning and already have new forms in the mail to references and everything printed to redo correctly.

Once our dossier is completed in full we will wait until January of 2010 when Holt will send it to Nepal. 

The adoptions taking place this year are going well so far and are moving along at a fairly quick rate.  This gives us hope next year will follow the same timeline.

2009 is the first year for adoptions under the new requirements since Nepal revamped their adoption process.  Nepal is only allowing 10 families to adopt from selected agencies each year, and we did not make the 2009 group.  However, this gives us the opportunity to follow families as they proceed ahead of us and get a better idea of what the process will be like when it is our year.

Randy and I have a list of girl’s names we go over from time-to-time.  Her room sits nearly empty in need of primer and paint.  We are being patient and trusting everything will happen in God’s good timing.

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Around the Homestead, Gardening

On the Farm…

We had a really nice and productive weekend.  Friday I spent the day doing laundry, working in the garden, and getting a few greens picked for dinner.

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Poke and Spinach collected

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Spinach ready to cook. 

I also built this handy-dandy trellis for my English Ivy. 

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It doesn’t look the greatest now, but I’m hoping my ivy will take it over (and cover it up).  Plus it was free, so nothing lost if it doesn’t turn out as I have invisioned.

Friday evening we had a surprise birthday party for a friend of our’s.  So I did chores that afternoon and as soon as Randy got home we loaded up and headed out for an hour and a half drive to her house.  We had such a good time visiting with friends and eating (of course).  We got home fairly late for us that night, but were still up with the roosters at 5:45 that next morning.

We had to finish clipping pasture fence and with a predicted high of 94 we needed to get an early start on it.  I took these pictures while we were out clipping fence: 

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This is the north end of Grandma’s pasture.  The sheep love it out there and always head north when they are let out of the lots in the mornings.

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This is where my camera was last seen Satuday morning.  Last night Randy and I had to run the fence line to beat an incoming storm looking for my camera.  It was nestled in the grass right about where that first shadow is, safe and sound, thank goodness.

It didn’t take us long at all to get the fence all clipped.  Then we relocated to the garden to pull weeds and stake tomatoes.  Craig stopped by and helped Randy get his engine in his pickup which was really nice.

Sunday morning we were up really early to finish up some of our outside duties before heading to Mom and Dad’s pond to meet Craig to fish.  I had homemade ice cream in the ice cream maker so we couldn’t stay very long and didn’t catch a thing.  Craig ended up with a huge catfish and a bucket full of bullhead, so he was please.  While Randy worked on the grain truck and Grandma’s, I dug up some starts for peonies and lilacs.  I have been reading Tasha Tudor’s books, and have a new desire to add flowers to our homestead.  Her books are wonderful if you ever get the chance to read them.  She also has a children’s line of books with beautiful illustrations she did herself.

Mom and Dad grilled steaks for lunch for all of us.  Afterwards we headed home to vacuum the pool and build a door for our second chicken coop.  We plan to use it for our Banties, so they can hatch out some babies and also to raise our meat birds in the fall.

It was a really hot weekend, but still got a lot done despite the heat.  This weekend will be more of the same heat-wise.  We have to weigh our ram lambs for the sale next weekend.  We want to try and send as many as we can to help stretch our pasture this summer.  We have barely enough acreage with Grandma’s pasture behind our house to sustain the number of sheep we now have.  We plan to sell off some of our ewes next year, but needed just one more year with them.  Hopefully we get enough rain to keep our grass in good shape for them.

Saturday’s dinner:  mahi mahi soaked in lemon juice and sprinkled with lemon pepper along with, sauted spinach and onions fresh from the garden, and garlic bread.

Sunday’s dinner:  homemade chili and potatoes left to cook all day in the solar oven. 

Monday’s dinner:  cream of broccoli soup and garlic bread

Tuesday’s dinner:  leftover taco mix from the freezer to make taco salads with homemade salsa

Tonight’s dinner:  I was given some bok choy from a co-work, so I will be experimenting with it tonight along with ham steak and radishes also given to me by the same co-worker.  The bok choy looks wonderful.

Have a wonderful day!

Animals

Walking the Dogs…

We finally took the dogs for a walk the other evening.  It was a nice cool evening, so we put leashes on Thai and Koal and let Ash go on her own.  For anyone who knows Ash or has heard stories about Ash, this will seem shocking to not have her on a very short leash.  However, this is her (possibly only) area of expertise.  She trotted along about 5-10 feet in front of us the entire time.

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Thai has some listening issues we are still working on, and Koal is a cold-blooded killer that would have been shoulder deep in every hole/den we passed had it not been for Randy keeping him above ground.

It was a peaceful night at our house since everyone was worn out from the walk.

Have a wonderful day!

Around the Homestead, Gardening

A Long Holiday Weekend…

We have had a busy couple of weeks.  My Dad and two other guys have been working to rebuild the roof over our front entry and porch.  It leaked really badly due to it being a more-or-less flat roof.  So the guys built it up so the water will run off better.

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 Before

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During

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 Daily messes we got to clean up when we got home from work.

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You can see here how much the roof was built up over the existing roof.

My order came in from Abundant Acres so I had tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and wolf berries to plant.  I wasn’t all that impressed with my order from them.  The plants were really over grown, and I’ve had to really work to keep them alive.  They yellow when I got them which I related to being shipped in a pitch black box.  Hopefully they will come around.  The rest of my tomatoes from Mom’s store are doing really well.  I also got soaker hoses ran throughout the entire garden on Friday.

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Here you can see how gangly my heirloom tomatoes were when they arrived.

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Compost Bin

 Randy was so good to help me Saturday, Sunday, and Monday morning in the garden.  We mulched the entire thing with leftover hay from the sheep’s pen.  It’s a shame they waste (expensive) hay, but at least it was put to good use in the garden.

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We missed the majority of the Memorial Day activities, but our garden looks great, our pool is open for business (once it warms up), and Randy had some time to work on his pickup engine while I did housework and cooked.

We had a really productive weekend!