A Simple Prairie Life

And that concludes fall at our homestead. I still have some carrots in a raised bed waiting to be pulled. Other than that everything is pretty much ready for winter. Soon I will have to start filling the raised beds with manure and compost to breakdown over the winter and be ready again come spring.

Now, it’s time to curl up with a cup of hot chocolate and a good book (First We Have Coffee is my favorite). When work follows the seasons you gain a new appreciation for winter and the downtime that accompanies it.

We love to cut firewood and try to make it a fun experience for the girls also. We grilled out and had a makeshift campsite before cutting and loading up a tree the guys had taken down by the pond.

Then all three of the little ones took a swim in the pond to cool off. It was a fun relaxing day with a little work and the reward of a truckload of firewood.

We try to go to the pond at least one day during the weekend to hang out if not more.

Laila loves it too. She likes to run and wade in the water. She’s not much of a swimmer, but still loves the freedom she has there.

It’s just such a fun place where we can get away, get dirty, and enjoy nature. There are no cars, no cell phone reception, and no demands. Just us and about 10, 000 frogs!

We are in the process of having a pond dug, so we thought even though it isn’t finished, we could take the girls out on the kayaks they got for Christmas.

The girls had a great time. The frogs were all over the pond, so they got to see them up close. We had a little picnic lunch when we were finished kayaking before heading home.

We still have a long way to go, but hopefully by next spring it will be complete.

We went to my parents on Sunday for my birthday dinner.

While we were there three of the goats decided to have babies. While Canyon was less interested and went upstairs to play with magnet blocks and read, Aspen was right in the middle of the whole thing. She was so excited to actually see a baby animal being born. She has seen lambs before, but was so little she doesn’t remember it.

She had her camera out taking pictures, asking a bazillion questions, and was glued to the scene the entire time.

It was a pretty exciting day for her. It is so nice when all of us just take a day to spend together when we aren’t working on a farm related project. Kidding doesn’t count!

According to our girls, we are officially a “real farm” now that we have a cow. The llamas, sheep, chickens, cats, and dogs have not officially qualified us, but the cow has done it.

I truly can’t believe we actually took the plunge for a milk cow, but even through all the struggles of introducing her to our farm I have not regretted it.

She is a registered Jersey named Lexi, due to calve (a girl) in February 2021. She has come leaps and bounds since we brought her home. She still hasn’t adjusted to life in the same pen as the sheep and llamas, so for now she can only visit them over the fence. In all honesty, the sheep are the ones scared of her. They start running and in turn get her excited so she runs after them and causes problems.

We hope to sell her calf (once she is old enough or possible bred) as a family milk cow. That is a long way down the road. So for now we are just enjoying getting her used to us and looking forward to milking season.

To make a very long story short, while having our pond dug our friend stirred up a turkey sitting on a nest of seven eggs. It was right where he was digging, so we decided to take the eggs home and incubate them.

We did everything by the book, temperature, humidity, stopped rotating them prior to hatching…EVERYTHING. One hatched no problem, one hatched and never stood a chance. The girls named turkey number one, Lilly. Aspen spent hours with this little bird. She was adorable, seemed fairly hardy, and also lonely.

On Randy’s way home from work on day four of Lilly’s life he stopped and picked up the minimum required five chicks, Isa Browns, and TSC. That night Lilly and her five chicks were curled up sweetly sleeping. The next morning I awoke to find Lilly had died in the night. All we can come up with is at one point the previous day Lilly had gotten herself lodged in her water dish and possibly dropped her body temperature enough to where she couldn’t recover? We really have no idea.

All we know is that we had the most heartbroken little girl that morning when she woke up to find that her pet wild turkey had died. We’ve lost dogs, cats, pet sheep, an incredible guard llama and never has she been so upset. She loves animals and for some reason, losing this little bird was her breaking point.

So now we have five little Isa Brown (whatever that is) chickens stinking up Randy’s shop in a cute little brooder Randy whipped up for them in a day.

The are just as cute as they can be and the beginning of our restoration of our homestead. More on that later, but for now, our laying hen flock is growing ever so slowly.

Our little farm just keeps growing and getting restored from our 5 year hiatus.

Every so often I like to take the girls around the countryside and find fun places to take some pictures. We love doing this when the wheat is golden, the wind isn’t blowing too bad, and have a few clouds in the sky. We have a 1% chance of all of this happening at once in Kansas, but here we go.

It is so much fun when we take the time to do this. The girls are good sports and it’s fun to have these memories to look back on.

It’s warming up here and the garden and flowers and blooming.

The garden is doing so good and the weather is cooperating with rain to keep everything green and growing. So thankful for the girls help everyday to keep it all going.