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Great Day To Be A Dog #iLoveMyK9 #CBias #SocialFabric

Posted by html404 on May 20, 2012
in Animals, Articles, Family Stuff, Shopping

We love our new puppy, as if you couldn’t tell by how much I talk about him here on the blog! Ha! He’s become another member of the family and a source of endless stories. He is pretty funny. While we have been working in the garden this week, we’ve been trying to get him to stay out of that area, which is partially fenced but has some openings. So a few times we have yelled, “Out Padfoot!” It usually takes a few times with a clap of the hands. This one particular time I was walking towards him saying, “Out” in a growl-y voice. What does he do? It’s like he was sassing me, he does a little skip around wagging his tail, then goes down on his front paws and barks at me! Of course, I had to run over and give him a pet and “Good dog” because he did get out. 😉

The children have been having fun with the chicks, turkeys and ducks. This week they have been taking them outside and kind of tossing them up in the air and allowing them to fly down to the ground. It’s pretty fun to watch, except when one Turkey flew into a tree – that scared me because I thought it’s poor wings would be hurt, but it was ok. They have also been trying to train Padfoot to be nice to the poultry. My oldest at one point had two chicks on Padfoot’s back. He did pretty good, but she stayed with him the whole time. I should have told her to give him some dog treats but I didn’t think of it. He loves his treats and since he is almost out of the last ones we got, I had to go to Walmart to buy him more. There are many dog treats to choose from, many of which are unhealthy, I ended up deciding to buy the pup Pup-Peroni Mix Stix, Milk-Bone Trail Mix and Milo’s Homestyle Kitchen Chicken Meatballs. I am not sure which one he prefers yet, but he sure likes to eat! Update: Milo’s Chicken Meatballs are Padfoot’s new favorite dog treat! I chose small packages because I hate to buy a big thing of them only to find out Padfoot doesn’t like the treats. The children have a tendency to give the puppy too many treats, so much so he ends up neglecting his yummy puppy food. 🙁 Time to hide them!

While I was out I also purchased the same items for a friend who also got a puppy a few months ago. We wanted to surprise her with them because she is such a good friend and they were suppose to come over for lunch this week but we had to cancel. Here’s a photo of my oldest with our friend and isn’t her little Chivalry cute?

You can read more about my shopping trip here. And also feel free to connect with these brands on Twitter and Facebook. @Milkbone, Milk-Bone’s Facebook page and @PupPeroni.

When there’s dog treats around, it’s always a great day to be a dog!

“I am a member of the Collective Bias™ Social Fabric® Community. This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias™. #CBias #SocialFabric”

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Pest Control in Our Gardens & on Our Pets

Posted by html404 on May 16, 2012
in Animals, Farm Stuff, Gardening

It’s gardening season and warm weather is here, that means the pests are too. Shauna reminded me of some of these pest control solutions for our gardens and our pets, so special thanks to her for reminding me of these solutions!

For plants infested with insects, use one of the following essential oils. Fill a mist spray bottle with 4 oz. of water, add the essential oils and mist the infested plant. Several applications, a few days apart, may be necessary. (Use as little as possible). These same suggestions may be used on our pets as well. I know we have been using a combination of Purification, Citronella, Eucalyptus and Cedarwood on Padfoot, our puppy. We have found a couple of ticks on him, the children are very good about brushing him, and we put a drop of Purification on the spot where the tick was attached to cleanse that area. Cats can be more sensitive to the oils, so use very little on them. Just putting the oils on your hands, rubbing them together and then running your hands over their fur is enough for them. We are assuming the same thing for rabbits so plan to use the oils the same way on our bunnies.

He’s getting big, this was taken a couple weeks ago!

Here’s one of Padfoot just taken as I type up this post:

Our cutie pie! He provides much entertainment!

Pest Control in Our Gardens & on Our Pets

Spearmint: ants, aphids, caterpillars, black flea beetle, gnats, lice, moths, and plant lice.

Peppermint: ants, aphids, bean beetle, cabbage root fly, caterpillars, black flee beetle, flies, lice, moths, and plant lice.

Lemongrass: black flea beetle, fleas, mosquitoes, and ticks.

Tansy: black fly, carrot fly, fleas, flies, greenfly, mosquitoes, and white fly.

Hyssop: aphids, cabbage root fly, moths, and slugs.

Thyme: bean beetle, cabbage root fly, cutworm, and ticks.

Sage: cabbage root fly, cutworm, nematodes, ticks, and white fly.

Rosemary: cabbage root fly and carrot fly.

Patchouli: gnats, snails, weevils, and woolly aphids.

Pine: slugs, snails, and wooly aphids.

Sandalwood: weevils and wooly aphids.

If you ever order Young Living Essential Oils, I would appreciate you using my distributor number #1038605. This is my referral number and I receive credit when you use my number when you place an order at www.youngliving.org/robnt – Thank you!

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Tick Removal

Posted by Brande on May 15, 2012
in Animals, Articles, Camping, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Gardening, Health, Health and Nutrition, Parenting, Safety

Ugg… Ticks! I dislike ticks greatly! I dislike the stuff I have to put on my dog to prevent ticks! I dislike removing ticks! Ewe…. Yuck… They are gross insects! I recently received an email from a friend. I haven’t tried it yet, hopefully I won’t have to! But, it’s better than using tweezers.

“A School Nurse has written the information below – Good Enough to share – and it really works.”

“I had a pediatrician tell me what she believes is the best way to remove a tick. This is great because it works in those places where it’s sometimes difficult to get to with tweezers: between toes, in the middle of a head full of dark hair, etc.”

Tick Removal

“Apply a glob of liquid soap to a cotton ball. Cover the tick with the soap-soaked cotton ball and swab it for a few seconds (15-20); the tick will come out on it own and be stuck to the cotton ball when you lift it away.”

Let me know if it work, unless I need to do it before that!

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Organic Valley Farm Friends

Posted by Brande on May 10, 2012
in Coupons, Deals, Downloads, Education, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Food and Treats, Free Stuff, Fun Stuff, Health, Health and Nutrition, Organic, Thrifty Thursday

This was the first time I visited Organic Valley’s Website! Shame on me, right!?

We are all trying to keep our families happy and healthy, well Organic Valley will help. They have a fantastic website and even two apps for Apple devices (Organic Valley and Organic Moo Can), they are FREE and you can download them from Organic Valley’s Site! **Sorry, they don’t have it for Android at this time**

On this site you can Find your Farmer, Organic Valley Products, Recipes, Reason to Choose Organic Products, and more. Organic Valley’s website is full of wonderful information.

Head to the Tab “Community” – on the right you can a subscribe section. Enter your email and zip code. It will then take you to where you can sign up for newsletters and the “Farm Friends Welcome kit” – “The Kit contains Rootstock Magazine, a Kid’s Activity Booklet, a Go Organic! bumper sticker, and a booklet of useful Organic Valley coupons.” Sound good to me!

Head to Organic Valley and start your next organic journey!

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Wordless Wednesday – Spring Brings Robins Eggs

Posted by html404 on May 2, 2012
in Animals, Farm Stuff

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.

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Treats for Dogs: Cesar Cookie Crunchies

Posted by html404 on May 1, 2012
in Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Reviews

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.”

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Our Farm Has Grown! Bunnies, Ducklings and Baby Chicks!

Posted by html404 on April 30, 2012
in Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff

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!

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Puppy, Turkeys, Feed, Oh My!

Posted by html404 on April 28, 2012
in Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff

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!

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Another Belated Monday Motivation – LONG – Sit down, have a tea with me and catch up on our news…

Posted by html404 on April 25, 2012
in Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Gardening

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!

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Peel Garlic in Less Than 10 Seconds

Posted by html404 on April 24, 2012
in Farm Stuff, Food and Treats, Gardening

Unbeknownst to me and perhaps to most of the world, last Thursday, April 19 was National Garlic Day and I came across this on Facebook via @Momversation…and she shared this video of how to peel garlic in less than 10 seconds. Pretty cool and fast!

Speaking of garlic…I need to order more for the fall…determined to get it planted this year!