You know spring has arrived when you spot robins eggs. Our children have found a couple of robin’s eggs in our backyard. When our four year old came to the door with the second one I managed to think fast and get a couple of pictures. Unfortunately, when he went to put it under one of our trees he tripped and cracked the egg. That’s when we found out why we were finding them on the ground – they were duds. Only an egg yoke was inside, no baby bird was developing.
I know a lot of my posts lately have been about our farm animals and pets, but hey they provide fresh content! 😉 Tomorrow marks one week since we got our puppy, Padfoot. He provides entertainment, as well as lots of cuddles. He’ll soon be too big to carry – all that nutritious grass, I mean, puppy food he’s been eating!
Our children love playing with Padfoot. He is funny because he will start doing rolls as you pet and play with him in his excitement. He going through the puppy biting stage so we have been trying to remind the children not to allow him to bit THEM but give him a chew toy or stick to chew on instead. After all it is normal development for puppies to bite. WE are just not use to it.
We all generally love just holding, cuddling and petting Padfoot or playing with him. The children are teaching him to “fetch” though he responds “get it” better.
Padfoot is a good puppy. He stays within our patio area unleashed and we leash him at night. We do not always give him dog biscuits for good behavior, but when we do we have been using Cesar Cookie Crunchies. He really liked both flavors: Chicken and Fillet Mignon. As you can see from the photos and video he shows a very favorable opinion – he thinks they are the best dog treats!
I think the photos and video speak for themselves. Yummy in his tummy! When handed these treats Padfoot gobbles them up. How’s that for a puppy’s review? 😉
“I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of Cesar and received a product sample to facilitate my review and a promotional item to thank me for taking the time to participate.”
Yesterday was a busy day as we tried to get some of our garden tilled and planted. Due to baby wanting to nurse, I was not too much help, so our second oldest took over tilling (very hard even with a tiller!) She’s sore. I keep telling her to put Deep Relief on, as it is an essential oil blend that soothes sore muscles. My oldest daughter made weeding our family garden fun for the younger crew by telling stories to them to make them forget they were even working! My husband started to build our new composter that I won in an online giveaway. It can hold up to 600 lbs of compost! Much larger than the one we had at the townhouse. He got the stand completed before it started to rain and I had to leave to pick up more critters.
Bunnies
This is the cleaner cage of Luna’s.
My husband built 2 rabbit cages yesterday as well. I took one with me to pick up the bunnies. What funny creatures they are! We have them in separate cages and the black and white one now named Luna (formerly Lucky and Houdini) is very neat. We think she’s a female because she is so neat! Ha! She poops in one spot and pees in one spot. Darth Vader (formerly known as Java) could be Houdini as he has seems to want to get out of his cage. He is messy. His droppings are all over the place getting smooshed since we do not have them set up to just drop their droppings onto the ground (fertilizer for the garden!) yet because the children do not want them far from the house in case predators get them. Sigh. Now we have to wait for Padfoot to get bigger to ward off predators. At least he is growing up with all of these critters so he will know they are “his” domain. Another reason for getting a puppy since an older one could cause trouble by attacking the livestock etc.
Padfoot
The children playing with Padfoot with the box from the rabbit cages.
Speaking of Padfoot. He slept in the garage with the boys on Saturday night and let’s just say our boys do not wake up easily for Padfoot went several times in the garage. My husband and I quickly decided it was time to introduce him to his dog house. Uh-huh. The children don’t want him so far from the house either since he’s so little. So being soft parents we caved and let Padfoot sleep on the patio where he usually spends his days. Wrong decision. That dog is spoiled already and did not want to be by himself. He whimpered and whined all night outside OUR bedroom! He’s grown up in a barn and he’s at our house half a week and doesn’t want to be outside at night? Come on! We are determined to get him back to his roots, after all he is a FARM dog.
Now, he’s been sleeping all day since he wore himself out whimpering all night. I’ve told the children to tire him out today so he’ll sleep tonight.
Ducklings
When we picked up the bunnies yesterday we also had to stop at a farm that runs a petting zoo as they wanted a couple of turkey poults. We exchanged them for…..? My husband didn’t want any more bunnies, I would have preferred a few bales of hay, but didn’t have room in the trunk for those so we got a pair of mallard ducklings. Remember the book, “Make Way for Ducklings”? Yep, we have two of those. They are very skittish compared to even the turkeys.
Turkey Poults
We didn’t dare put the ducklings in with turkeys because when we got home from picking up bunnies and ducklings we discovered a dead turkey. 🙁 I’d be lying if it didn’t affect me. It made me sad. I questioned what we had done wrong, did we handle them too much? Life and death are a part of life on a farm but don’t ever fool yourself into thinking it’s no big deal. It made me feel like a failure, even though turkeys are known to have high morality rates, even though they are stupid enough to run their own fellow poult over even with just 12 of them in the box. Down to 11 turkeys and counting, praying the rest make it unscathed. You can see how much they have grown already. Their white feathers are coming in too.
Baby Chicks
All 40 of our baby chicks arrived safe and sound. 3 days old. Though the hatchery mixed up our order, which I still have to call about. They are smaller than the ducklings so we put them with them. The ducklings seem happier now with the chicks. Before the chicks arrived the ducklings huddled in a corner together. Now they mingle and are quite lively.
We won’t be lacking in stories with all of these animals, that’s for sure!
All photos are mine. I was too lazy to watermark them! And in the words of my daughter, please do not steal them! If those that steal photos even read blog posts!
Our Puppy
Meet Padfoot, our 8-week-old Newfoundland puppy. He’s smart and sweet (most of the time). We found him through Petfinder.com after a friend said to check there. I had expressed my concern to her that I doubted the Shelter would accept our pre-adopt – they had a three-page questionnaire and I wondered if they would even accept us after filling it out. That same night my friend sent us the Petfinder.com link, we looked on the site, found Padfoot – same price as a adopting from the shelter – emailed the owners because guess where they were located? Very near where I went to pick up the turkey feed! The owners emailed us back Wednesday morning, I called and we set up a time to meet at the feed supply store. That was God ordained, if anything was! Very thankful for how God leads. Truly amazing, that we got a puppy all because of a questionnaire, a friend’s help and no local organic turkey feed to be found.
Thanks to Padfoot’s previous owners he is potty trained and can “shake”. He is the perfect fit for us because he was raised on a farm around goats and chickens. His father is a Golden Retriever and his mother is a Newfoundland that his previous owners paid $1100 for! Yikes! We are trying to train Padfoot our property boundaries, to walk on a leash and not to nip/bite our fingers and clothing. He still naps a lot during the day and has been pretty good at staying on our patio even when we are not out there. My husband commented on that tonight and we are hoping that Padfoot is being trained to stay on the patio while we are inside…that might be wishful thinking though.
The children have been incredibly helpful with the puppy. They have taken the majority of responsibility of taking care of him. They came up with the idea of rotating who picks up dog poop, who walks him, who feeds him, who sleeps in the garage at night. We have been very impressed. The owners of the home we are renting gave us their dog house, but it is in the barn and we have to get it out, so the garage is Padfoot’s home at night time for now. We aren’t allowed inside pets and that’s ok with us.
And yes, those familiar with Harry Potter, the puppy is named after the character in the movie/books. We finally let our older girls watch/read the series. Surprisingly, they have learned a lot from it. Not wizardry or witchcraft either, contrary to what many Christians believe about the series.
Turkeys
We got a call from the Post Office at 6:30am on Friday saying our 15 turkeys had arrived. My husband had already left for work, thankfully only 20 minutes into his 50-60 minute drive. He came back and helped me finish up the box for the turkeys’ home, then he was off. One of the older girls and I finished up and everyone helped introduce the little guys (and gals) to water and their feed. Unfortunately one turkey was dead on arrival, but so far we’ve only lost the one.
Turkeys are really stupid. They walk over sleeping turkeys and they get stuck in their feeder. But our children love watching them and holding/petting them. They will make some tasty meals in the fall. 🙂
We have a pile of feed in our garage and had to pick up puppy food tonight, as the previous owner generously gave us 3-days worth.
Puppy, Turkeys, Feed, Oh My!
FAMILY TASK LIST MASTER (I found this by Googling “Chore Charts” or something like that. I just customized it with our family tasks.)
Contrary to my frazzled post early in the week bemoaning, “Puppy, Turkeys, Feed, Oh My!” my calm has returned. I have created a family task list so we can streamline tasks and everyone can see and check off what they have done. I still have to come up with a more thorough farm task list, but this is a start so everyone knows what needs to be done and who is to do it. We’ve kind of been just assigning things as we go along and I am hoping this will keep us organized and get everything done that needs to be done. The beauty of it all is that it isn’t just me doing all of this. Our whole family is involved and everyone down to the youngest, though our 2-year old is still not capable of doing much, he can fetch things, take things to the garbage etc. Things appropriate to his understanding and age.
We are excited and thankful for our start to farm life with critters.
All photos are mine. I was too lazy to watermark them! And in the words of my daughter, please do not steal them! If those that steal photos even read blog posts!
Gifts from boys. You never know what one of our boys will come up with, but this is the gift our oldest son chose for his big sister on her birthday a couple months ago. Pretty sweet gesture that melted her heart! I love it when children do stuff like this! It is a pretty frequent occurrence in our home, amazingly enough, but we still have lots of those other moments where they are still learning to love each other! After all where there are people there is conflict.
I didn’t get to a Monday Motivation post. I was making calls to feed stores, the hatchery and the post office. Our chicks and turkeys are being shipped out this weekend and I remembered we are down to one car and if my husband is at work how am I going to go pick them up at the post office? I really don’t want to find some of them dead because I couldn’t get there at the right time. Yeah, a slight dilemma to say the least. I am also having a hard time finding a local source of organic turkey feed. Talk about feeling crunched! I was told this one particular place had it a couple of weeks ago and then when I call to order on Monday I was told they didn’t have organic turkey starter. We don’t want to raise our animals on GMO feed (Genetically Modified Organisms). So I am a little freaked out right now at the thought of not having any feed for the turkeys!
Update on Feed Situation (since this was started on Tuesday AM!)
Our horse is not even mentioned in this post, but feed is!
My mind is so boggled right now. I usually pride myself on being organized, well, as much as I can be with 9 other people living with me. Oh sure I procrastinate about filing papers and crunching numbers at tax time because my files are such a mess; but I am a planner by nature and this all has taught me that I did not plan well enough.
Also, I am slightly kicking myself in the behind because I discovered that our turkeys actually arrive April 25-27 – could be today! This realization occurred late yesterday afternoon. We had absolutely nothing ready. Oh my husband had boxes. So, I had to make a run to Farm & Fleet to get shavings for bedding and packing tape to make their chick house, chick/turkey feeders and waterers. Forgot the heat lamps. These are all fairly inexpensive in the scope of things, so we knew we would get these at the last minute due to space issues for storing farm supplies, until we got the garage clean out more and boxes moved to basement storage.
Thanks to the help of farmers in my Growers Group I found a turkey starter source, but have to drive an hour and a half to Wisconsin to get it – today. Plus we have the other chicken feed, rabbit feed and organic soil arriving anytime of the day – today. The turkeys could arrive – today with a call from the Post Office- and I am feeling a little frazzled and am thinking, “What am I getting myself into?” Then I have to remind myself that I want to feed my family fresh, wholesome food without any of the chemicals and other junk they are putting into the food these days. Just think pink slime and you’ll understand why I want to get away from purchasing most things at grocery stores. Pretty radical, eh? I know and it’s a huge leap of faith too because we are beginning farmers and there’s always a huge learning curve. Plus, we want our children to experience animals, develop a good work ethic and a sense of responsibility at young ages so they grow up to be responsible adults. Our girls are well on their way, it’s our younger crew that needs the help! 😉 Ha!
Tiller
The other mishap was the fact that we never did get our old tiller serviced last fall. It leaks gas and won’t run properly. I had a place lined up, then I look for the email and couldn’t find it anywhere so POOF! I had deleted it in a delete happy party. I looked on the brands website and POOF it’s no longer listed there either.:-( We really need to get our poor little plants in the ground. So I called one place and they did not have any experience working on our brand of tiller and were…get this TWO weeks behind! Ugh. The other place we are familiar with are pricey, my husband fixed our ride on mower cheaper by doing it himself. He hasn’t taken the time to figure out the old tiller, but I know he could. So out of desperation for our plants I looked at new ones, but finally settled on a refurbished one with a nice little payment plan with no interest – bonus.
As as side note, I did look at used on Craigslist too, but didn’t find any of the brand that I wanted.
Another case of poor planning on my part. Can you say humbled beyond belief? Yep, that’s me. Part of it is poor planning, but also I just didn’t believe we would actually get to do all of this and now we are…and I have been…well…unprepared. Ever do that to yourself?
Animal Update
15 Midget White turkeys due to arrive any day now (they are a slow growing breed, most are for our family but I have 1-3 possibly sold thanks to Local Harvest)
40 baby chicks – all laying hens – 26 Buff Orpingtons, 8 Arcaunas, 6 Australorps and 1 specialty that we got free with our order due to arrive between Saturday and next Wednesday
2 bunnies – Java (brown rabbit) and Houdini (black & white and now my daughter wonders if she should have name it that in cases it disappears…) due to be picked up on Sunday
1 puppy – possibly a Newfoundland estimated date of arrival, unknown, but hoping to visit a breeder today
The owner of the bunnies sent us a couple of pictures:
Houdini
Java is the dark brown one in the back and Houdini is the B&W one facing to the right.
Oy! So here’s to my sanity and that I get through the next week unscathed! And I thought I’d just wet my feet with animals this summer….Ha!
Ever thought of doing a family tree? Well here’s your opportunity! I found a website called My Heritage, from here you can download a free Family Tree Builder 6.0! Here’s what My Heritage’s site has to say, “The best free genealogy software in the world 31,373,916 downloads so far, but who’s counting…”
It also come in 37 different languages, I didn’t even know there were 37!
They have a celebrity and fun section. Where you can make a celebrity morph and look a like meter.
Check it out! http://www.myheritage.com/
You know you are a farmer when…….
you are excited to get a box of seed potatoes! 😉
Remember when I told you about KIWI Magazine’s New Allergy – Friendly Cookbook?
Why not try and win it first? When I read the rules they are only giving away 3, but hey you never know! Hurry because the contest ends on April 13th, which is tomorrow! Log onto Facebook – here’s the direct link!
https://www.facebook.com/KIWIMagazine/app_208195102528120
The NIV Girls Bibles if for girls 9-12 and not only does it have a Bible inside, but it also has a ton of extra features like a dream girl section where girls can use their imaginations, finding out what they have in common with great women of the Bible, words to memorize, and answers to questions that they have always wanted to find out about.
My girls really liked the notes on the side/bottom of the pages and the index in the back too. Most girls will love the frilly pink design and cute flowers that are scattered throughout. It also has a read the Bible in a year index is something that most girls will love and I know that my girls did. They will also love the list of verses to read when you are feeling bad or upset.
The NIV Boys Bible is targeted with boys ages 9-12 in mind. With tons of cool features and devotions designed to strength your boys walk with God parents will love that their boys are leaning values at a young age. The colors and textures in the boy’s Bible will appeal to them since it is very “manly” and they will love the metal cover. They will also love the gross and gory section that features all the weird and cool thing that you never knew was in the Bible. It seems to be very sturdy and I am guessing that it would last through even the most destructive boy.
Both Bibles are really nice and tweens will love the extra features. I’m not too crazy about the hardcover, but I prefer soft cover Bibles so that is just a personal preference. I think that these would make nice bibles for tweens and then you could “upgrade” to a more adult Bible when they reach their teen years and outgrow these.
The NIV Bibles can be purchased at bookstores nationwide and www.Zondervan.com A great last minute Easter gift idea!
Faith and Family Reviews received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While we consider it a privilege to receive free products to review, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the product.
