uncle matts visit photos

matt should be here today

my best friend, matt, should be here this evening.


here he is in flagstaff, az on his way from santa barbara.

he is uncle matt to the kids. tristan remembers him but kassi was too young when we left california. it'll be fun to show him around the farmstead. we met as roommates when were attending school in santa barbara. we lived in isla vista, the city adjacent to U.C.S.B. i used to borrow his skateboard to get on campus until i got my own. i remember falling asleep listening to the waves crashing and the pungent smell of eucalyptus from the tree in the front yard. i ran on the beach every day and got tar on my shoes from the leaking offshore oilfields. it was a glorious time, halloween at U.C.S.B. was like nothing imaginable.

looking back it seems like a different life. one of many to follow. i wish my children a rich life like i have enjoyed. my current incarnation being the best--isn't it always? a good friend once said that i am like a chameleon embracing the changes that life presents. it is hard not to be nostalgic when a friend of many years turns up for the first time in my latest adventure.

promises, promises

the local weather people have let me down yet another time. the promise of snow (sled-able snow) and just the slightest dusting occurred. i know that there were many in the collective conscious rooting against me. we have kids and we want to sled. we want to build snowmen and snow women. we want to have snow ball fights. we want to perform the aforementioned at least once per winter.

it is a sad thing when two small children have brand-new shiny-red sleds and no place to go.

the intangible

there are certain things that make life better.

organic food is a great example where initially the difference is barely perceptible. after living eating mostly organically or locally farm-fresh the difference is huge. i get physically ill whenever i eat a meal of overly processed foods or hydrogenated oils.

we hardly eat out of plastic dishes even though we have kids. food and drink from plastic tastes funny. if a chef tries to make a soufflé and whipping the eggs in a plastic bowl it will fail. the molecular structure of plastic and egg protein is so close that they react during mixing and makes the soufflé not able to raise properly. scary right? i know that i don't want to consume petrol based non-foods.

we have a dyson vacuum because it's a chore to vacuum and using a dyson is almost a pleasure.

why are macs better than PCs? are they really worth the extra money?
macs are just better PERIOD. they are elegant and easy to use. a mac is intuitive and pleasant which makes it worth the extra expense. it is funny what you can learn to settle for. we had been condemned to a PC for too many years. the moment we unpackaged and plugged this computer in all of my concerns about the extra money immediately washed away. this thing is beautiful. i used a mac for many years and life was better then. i looked at things differently. all of those subtle differences came flooding back.



new photo uploaded from the camera. the computer automatically recognized the camera and had the photos waiting for me to work on.

picasa doesn't have a mac based application but they have an elegant solution that just plugs into iphoto.

new computer ahoy

it just arrived. i plugged it in and it just worked. it found our wireless internet, and here i am. whoo hoo!!! lots has happened but the big news is we are expecting several inches of snow tonight. the kids have new sleds and are brandishing them at the slightest sign of precipitation. i hope to have wonderful snowy photos tomorrow. i am so excited about the new computer that i don't know where to start--just staring at the huge monitor seems to be enough right now. the kids are blown away by this thing. i'll be back very soon

computer is going down

this will be my last post until we get a new computer. this computer has finally given up the ghost. i hope i'm back soon. now if we can come up with the money for a new computer:(

christmas cards

this is our christmas card photo that we are including in our christmas cards. i am finishing seed descriptions and photos. we should be ready to send everything off by monday.

today i cut a giant swath along the fence row where we plan to put the new fence. it was mostly scrub and just a few trees. i also cut down a large oak that was shading our intended pasture. it should amount to about a rick of wood. i have several more to cut down from that same area. they should provide more than enough wood for next winter and probably a surplus for the wood fired hot tub--if i have it done by next fall.

decorating the front door

the kids had a blast with tissue paper and liquid starch. they made stained glass art on the front door. tabitha and i did the unreachable areas.


top of door, i tried to make a sunset. can you tell which one it is?


this is the lower kids part. the light that comes through really gives the feel of an old cathedral.


this is our sorry looking tree. although, it is beginning to grow on me. notice the lack of ornamentation on the lower reaches. toly loves christmas ornaments. luckily the kitchen chair doesn't easily cross the scooting barrier threshold into the bathroom. otherwise, we'd have no place left to hang ornaments.


toly is very comfortable walking, running, hopping and especially climbing. his agility for his age scares me. the worst thing is he understands that pushing something to stand on will increase the trouble that he can get into. baby proofing the house has become impossible.

the hotbed and cold frame are doing marvelously. the arugula has been up for a few days. it was in the low 20's last night i'll check how it fared this morning.

better?

happy birthday tabitha. she's not up yet

this morning i feel much better. as of last night, tabitha and the kids were still very sick. my chest is still tight and i still cough until it hurts or a piece of my lung comes up. i'll get some exercise hauling wood today and that'll help. the kids have been cooped up for so long that they have the maniacals. they delve into fits of the craziest of uncontrollable crazies. over the last three sick days i have read the first three in the harry potter series. luckily it's fourth grade reading or i wouldn't have survived.

we forced ourselves to walk across the street into to the wooded field and cut a christmas tree yesterday. i never realized how perfect cedar is for a christmas tree when you have kids. it is so prickly that it is self regulating as to the damage the kids can inflict on it before their skin crawls and itches. our very own whomping willow of sorts. although toly, being the third hence impervious to pain, still needs close monitoring. the tree is so ugly that it's beautiful. we almost rejected it once we got it inside but the kids fell in love with it. it was pretty easy to convince me not to go back for the one i wanted. maybe i'll get to choose next year?

our computer is about to give up the ghost. the power supply went out and nothing could be done for it. we were headed for a seventy mile trip for a new one. i dreaded spending $150 for a new one since we are planning on replacing this computer in march--tax return. did i mention that the car has been acting funny lately? after getting the whole family ready and excited to get out of the house. we piled into the car. about two miles down the road the check engine light came on. i panicked and promptly turned around. tristan started to bawl. i'm sure he was hoping for a rendezvous with a certain mexican restaurant. wasn't gonna happen anyway.

lamenting our sorry state, broken car and broken computer, tabitha put the laptop back together and it magically worked--was it ever broken? YES i swear.. having just read most of the first three harry potters, i was convinced some dark magic was involved. as tabitha went to phone brag to her father that she just fixed the computer i sunk back into the couch and the rest of HP#3. if the check engine light mysteriously stays dark next time i attempt to drive the car well have proof that dark magic was indeed involved.

i got this cool new T-shirt the other day. a goldfish wearing a crown captioned with KARL IS KING. yes, spelled with a K--my ego won't recover from this one very soon. presents that inflate your ego--is there a better kind?

the hotbed cold-frame has started the anabolic reaction--it's really warm in there. i hope to plant some arugula today. arugula is my favorite salad greed. there might be some swiss chard involved too. it has been a while since the seed box has been pawed through. speaking of seeds, i finished the first page of our christmas present. one more to go. we ordered little baggies for the seeds and hope to send the omelay heirloom seed pack presents very soon.

we really want to get the kids a pentatonic harp for christmas. affording it is another matter. $150 seems like so little, yet like a fortune in the same breath. the car can wait to get looked at since we now have a second vehicle. hello online shopping while we still have a working computer. keep your fingers crossed that this one holds together until march.

i also have another large design job that will help pay for the new computer. that'll happen in spring. we just need to get through the holidays and we can coast after that. we want to get a mac and leave this horrible windows realm. it'll be better for the kids. i hope this piece-o-crap computer isn't paying attention while i conspire against it.. better go.. nice computer, nice computer, just kidding computer...

sinus infection

we went to silver dollar city saturday and all i got was this lousy sinus infection. the kids touch everything whenever we go anywhere. if there is an illness they will ferret it out. i try my best to remind them that touching everything is a guaranteed way to get sick. they can't help themselves. i guess we need to stop going anywhere.

we had a blast at the amusement park. tabitha went on most of the rides with the kids. i hung out with toly. tabitha did try to take toly on the frog hopper ride. he loved it until they started the ride. he freaked out and the ride had to be promptly stopped. toly was very cute hanging out between my legs when mommy was off with the older kids.

i look forward to the new baby because that means toly comes over to the dark side. he's mine all mine. he's already a daddies boy. first words "da da." most used words "da da."

since i've been sick i have been watching movies. ratatouille is a great movie. care about what you eat was the message that i took away from it. something that we encourage around here. i gotta go lay back down.

where the bodies are buried

before i put the bales around this it looked like a fresh grave


i finished the hot bed / cold frame today


it looks like it is going to work. planting will start tomorrow.


this is the little pile of wood that was from a single little tree that was down near the ravine. the sections were laying in the forest litter. i wanted to wait until the snakes were gone before i lugged them to the house. i'll burn this wood late winter.

babies

you guessed it... we're expecting the fourth and littlest o'melay. hooray we love babies.


other news

• i closed up the eaves on the milking house and it's ready to paint.
• i built a cold frame (* see photo below)
• i planted the garlic and mulched it with leaves.
• i started a hot bed cold frame

that's a sliding glass door window pane.

i need some bales of straw for the next step of my hot bed. i read a few websites and the back to basics book. all of them required digging too deep for my taste. so i am using the frost protected shallow foundation concept to alter my need to have a huge hole in my garden. i did dig a foot deep, down to sub soil. i then added twenty or so inches of fresh "HOT" manure into the hole. i'll surround it with straw bales, add eight or ten inches of top soil and top it with double pane glass.


as the manure breaks down the anabolic, exothermic reaction heats the hot frame from below. we plan to plant arugula and maybe a few other leafy greens. if all goes well we'll be "in salad" all winter.

halloween slide-show carving pumpkins

these rocks have fire in them

tristan is confined to use his shovel on muddy mountain. muddy mountain is not just one of the land marks in dora the explorer. we have our very own muddy mountain--the root cellar backfill. tristan has a full sized shovel of his very own. he, if given license, will dig up the entire yard. muddy mountain is an esthetically safe place to dig--it can't get any uglier. here in the ozarks flint is a regular type of rock. it breaks easily and the local native americans used it for tools. tristan dug up a large golden red piece and proceeded to smack it with the edge of the shovel. he brought the shards inside and proclaimed that they have fire in them. i explained that they were partially flint and that they would spark when struck with ferrous metal. home school lesson plan for the day.

these photos are tabitha's but i stole them--ykwim.

garlic & winter wheat / rye

i planted roughly twenty five pounds of garlic. the chickens promptly broke into the garden and scratched a mess of it up. the following morning i caught each of them and clipped the feathers on their wings. that after noon i had to chase several of the out of the garden. i traumatized each of them a bit. running them until exhaustion. i still need to shore up the defenses.

i also planted winter wheat in the remaining tilled area. winter wheat survives remarkably well here in southern missouri. last winter several hard freezes never even slowed it. i'm not sure what snow cover does to it but i imagine it just lies in wait until the sun can strike the blades. last year i also put raw manure in with the seed. that seemed to work out fine since that ended a very fertile area for spring planting.

i finally finished the back wall of the root cellar yesterday. i'll take photos today. i also insulated the water main that runs through the cellar against freezing. the front entrance is now my focus as time will allow.

the dark days of winter local challenge almost ensnared me. i opted out by default. i haven't had a moment to sit and write. the eat local challenge, although a worthy cause, hijacks my blog entries. in our defense, we eat local to our farm more than twice per week. last night tabitha made enchiladas. i almost exploded. the entire meal was local, chicken, cheese, sour cream, tortillas, and our very own green salsa. the tortillas were the only thing from off farm.

we are expecting rain today--hurray.

when i was at the freshly patronizing beer store, a funny thing happened to me. a woman looked at me and said "you're the farmer." i gave her the dumb look of a startled deer. then the woman behind the counter said "you're the farmer?" my expression remained frozen. they lept into a conversation about our farmstead describing the progress and intricacies of our animals like there had been a regularly scheduled program of conversation. it is weird to see your reflection in other peoples eyes. their lens seemed skewed to me but we're weird and i admit it.

there is too much to do

the new milk house is operational. all that is left to accomplish is the painting, trim and a few small details. tabitha has been milking in it for the past few days. adding milk-house construction to the fall chores has really made things crazy around here.

i finally started to close down the garden yesterday. i pulled cucumber and squash trellis. i tilled about half of the garden to get ready for garlic and winter wheat. we are expecting rain on monday. tristan and kassi helped. they were picking dry beans off the bean arch, picking up rocks and mounding the weeds into castles. today we'll get the garlic and plant it.


so much has happened. halloween was a grand success. the kids went to a birthday party, swimming and trick-or-treating. i had an amazing time trick-or-treating. the kids were too cute. tristan and kassi have been busy homeschooling. tristan has expressed an interest in math. he is doing simple addition and subtraction. tabitha had 13 dollars in three separate notes. a ten, a two and an one. tabitha asked tristan what was 10+2+1 tristan looked at his hands to count it out on his fingers. he stalled realizing that he has run out of appendages. then it happened the cutest thing ever. he dropped to his butt and yanked off his socks and promptly replied thirteen. i laughed and laughed.

i made a fire protection grate for around the wood stove. the kids are simply too rambunctious and the stove gets too hot to not have some form of protection. i made it out of recycled copper pipe and a horse panel.


the chickens are laying about ten eggs a day. rosie finally stopped pooping in the front yard. nimue is finally looking better. nina is becoming part of the family. the ducks are everywhere. the guineas are down to four from ten. speeding cars have taken their toll on them.


christmas is on the horizon and the kids have been pouring over toy catalogs. we, like always, have sworn off plastic toys. although wooden painted toys aren't really safe anymore. the kids don't need a bunch of creativity stealing theme toys anyway.


i made a firewood box for the front porch. it is in the queue to get painted next. the kids are going to do the painting after i prime it. it has casters on the bottom to make loading and cleaning easier. i look forward to firewood mess containment.

milking house -photos during

the arrival

milking house -photos

hi, i'm not really holding it up.

there are three doors

the other end before the loafing shed that we built today

the south end before the addition

after todays efforts

a nice big area for the cows to hang out.

we built a milking shed

over the weekend we built a portable milking shed. lance, niña's owner, made the steel square tube frame. the following two days were a flurry of he and i designing and building the milking shed. saturday and sunday were framing and putting on the siding. i did the roof yesterday. lance bought ondura roofing. it was very easy to install. i installed the purlines and the roof in just a few hours.
i still have to build the stanchion and install all the amenities. the milking shed will have lights and switched electricity for the vacuum pump. i also plan to plumb a vacuum line so the pump can be isolated and the milking process can be quieter.

lance and darla took photos of the entire process. i'll try to get copies tomorrow to flush out this post. otherwise a photo of the end result will have to suffice.

this is niña

tabitha has fallen for her. she is a great cow and is becoming a wonderful addition to the pile.

guess what? chicken butt..

tabitha said that yesterday during chicken butchering just as she flipped the chicken over exposing his butt. we laughed ourselves silly. there are two ways butchering leaves us. we either end up worn and achy or giddy. yesterday was one of those giddy after the gruesome days. we butchered eight chickens in two hours thirty minutes. lurlee watched the kids which was a godsend.

nimue is doing much better. although we had an entirely new close call with her. she somehow broke the ratcheting lock on the screw off lid to the chicken grain. she ate about 30 pounds of grain. that usually kills a cow. they need lots of hay to keep their stomach healthy. after we discovered that she broke and unscrewed the lid in less than an hour. tabitha called the vet and i came home from work. we rushed her in to get a mineral oil drench. they coated her stomach in a gallon of mineral oil and she has made it through the toughest part.

niña, the new cow, is doing well. rather, tabitha is milking her remarkably well. niña still isn't halter broke so leading her anywhere is impossible. tabitha bribes her into the stanchion. it can take several minutes before she'll go in. it is a pain in the guess what? chicken butt.. one interesting fact that we have just discovered is, niña has never been milked. tabitha is feeling wonderfully accomplished breaking a cow to milk.

rainy day today.

bathroom progress has screeched to a complete halt but we are enjoying it anyway.

toly has really taken to the whole bath thing. bathing is a family affair here at the pile.

generally all is well, just really crazy.

the game is afoot

niña arrived today. she is the five year old jersey we will attempt to milk. she has raised in pasture with her calf 400 pounds worth. we are not sure if she has ever been milked. tabitha is optimistic. things should get very interesting around here for the next little while.

pasteurized homogenized

kassi is allergic to regular milk. she can't control her bladder properly when she drinks it. kassi loves milk. we have stumbled across a couple of solutions.

janet, our friend bought our goats back in partial trade for cows milk. i'll pick up milk on wednesdays and everything will be fine for a while. that should be enough for the kids and some of that delicious cream for tabithas and my coffee.
the second solution will be much more long term. our new friends darla and lance are buying the mother of their jersey heifer. they want tabitha to milk her after they take the calf away and share the milk. keeping our fingers crossed that it all works out. we don't know how she'll be to milk--tabitha is very optimistic.

bathroom progress as screeched to a halt. the vet bills took all of our money for the next while.

the root cellar has also stopped. my wine bottle source gave them all to their wine making friend. i might go to the local restaurant and bar to see if they have any jake bottles that they can spare.

i have monday off so a good garage cleaning might be in order.

bovine drugs

nimue is on banamine (bovine pain killers) and eating and drinking wonderfully. now, if we can just keep her from contracting the secondary infection (pneumonia) we are in the clear. whew, if we survive the vet bills. we'll be back on top again.


thanks everyone that prayed and kept us in their thoughts. we are doing so much better. we were exploring the depths of depression and things looked bleak. the collective consciousness of prayer and well wishes really worked.

thank you, thank you, everyone that has kept us close to their heart


pablo all we need and already received are your well wishes.

a glimmer of hope

she is still up and walking around. she eats (very little) she pees and poops. if she had either of the aforementioned diseases she'd be in much worse condition--down or dead. after hours of tabitha pouring over cow disease websites. after nimue presenting a new symptom. after talking to a different veterinarian, better, nicer and more competent. we and he believe that she has blue tongue disease--not fatal.

NOT FATAL

secondary infections can be fatal. he recommended antibiotics. we gave her her first shot this morning.

we are meeting him to get more medicine later today

nimue our cow is dying

nimue is on deaths door. we went to visit her where she was visiting her beau. she was lying down and got up very slowly. as she painfully walked across the field i could barely stand to watch her amble toward us. she was skin and bones. i gave her alfalfa pellets and she couldn't eat them. she was drooling heavily and it appeared that she couldn't eat hardly at all. tabitha and i freaked out. if you have been reading this blog you know what an important part of our lives she is.

we dashed to the monhallands and Lance was luckily home. he said "we have to save the family cow." he helped us load nimue and calf for a journey to the vet. the nearest large animal vet is close to fifty miles away. we sped there so quickly that tristan noticed how fast we were driving. i said that we don't normally drive this fast only in emergency situations.

at the vet they were swamped with emergencies. we waited forty minutes. when the vet got there he sized her up and had us load her in the stanchion. he basically told us that there is two things that could be wrong with her and that both of them were fatal.

what?
fatal?
the kind of fatal that nothing can be done for?

anyway after about an hour of crying we managed to convince him that we wanted to treat her or test her for every possible thing that could cause this and wasn't fatal. he was an insensitive jerk and made tabitha cry even further.

eventually we loaded her up and Lance and Darla took nimue home. we went in to pay the vet bill knowing that i had about thirty and change in the account. up until this point i was holding it all together fairly well. tristan said "mommy, i don't want nim to die." tears welled up in my eyes and i put my head down. feeing so vulnerable and having my son plea for our cows life was more than i could take.

i don't know how we'll recover from this one, emotionally or finacially. a new jersey will cost $2,400, if tabitha can convince herself to milk another cow. the kids know about death but not from this standpoint.

bathroom progress II (photos)

the toilet is out in the yard, literally.


the tile goes down


here the toilet is back in it's proper place. the supervisors approve.


a glimpse of the future


when they said the difficulty rating on this was difficult i didn't expect it to be so difficult on the physical scale.


my little helper


taaa daaaaaa the apple bath. it still needs cleaning

bathroom progress

in spite of all the busy farmstead activities. i have made some real progress on the bathroom. i actually took my first real bath in years saturday night--our old tub held less water than a mud puddle. currently, the floor tile is only half down. that was a major feat given the timing necessary. taking out the toilet, removing the old flooring, putting down new subfloor, installing new tile and replacing the toilet needed to happen as quickly as possible. we only have one toilet. i managed to do all the aforementioned in an evening and completed by late saturday morning, the next day. i laid the rest of that half of the room and installed the giant apple tub in time for an evening bath. i was so sore that i really needed a soaking bath.

sunday was already booked with ranching needs so i haven't finished the floor tile install yet. nimue went to visit a new beau. he is a young jersey bull that will hopefully sire our next heifer. we eventually hope to have two milk cows. we plan to keep at least one cow in milk year round. this should negate the need for milk goats.

speaking of goats and to answer the most asked question about their departure from the pile. goats are too much trouble the constantly are escaping and being naughty goats. i had a whole post entitled scapegoats which some of you caught. in an effort to be funny i unknowingly crossed the offensive boundary. that post was promptly deleted but thanks to those who commented on it anyway.

we slaughtered five chickens yesterday after visiting with nimues new caretakers for the next month. slaughtering is such a gruesome endeavor. it really stinks to take a life and eviscerate it. so much so, that it gives me a huge respect for the meals that come from it. not to appear zealot about the whole processed food machine but we really like not taking part in the tyson sin against nature.

the farm seems quite. the garden gives a nightly salad, the chickens crank out ten eggs a day and the broilers will be slowly entering the freezer over the next two weeks. the goats are gone. nimue and boca are temporarly gone. the only farm noise is the crow of the remaining roosters.

the garden is such a funny thing. it provided exceptionally well for us this summer. tabitha canned tons of sauce but it was much different than we expected. the tomatoes are all but done. no green ones left to make green relish/salsa--that is a sad thing. next year we might try some successive planting with determinate tomatoes being a later planting in an effort to get some green tomatoes for fall canning of green relish/salsa.

i'm working on a garden entry that will contain some of our lessons learned from this summer. it is an idea from christy. it should prove useful for years to come.

the kids are doing amazingly well. tristan loves his gameboy. bowser is very frightened of his gaming prowess. he reads very well. it amazes me. simple math is still a bit away but computer games are allegedly great for developing math skills. kassi is getting back to a normal sleep schedule. she really likes to be read to lately. it is funny how stereotypically girlie she is. we have made every attempt to not socialize her differently from the boys but she is innately girl. she has little collections and keeps them in bags. she changes her clothes several times per day. she definitely has a shoe fetish. toly is revealing himself as the feistiest o'melay yet. he is extremely clever, freakishly strong and likes to make people say no. what a crazy combination. a force to be reckoned with. i wouldn't have him any other way.

i hope to make real progress on the bathroom again this evening. the other day i replied to all of last entries comments but blogger lost it somewhere in cyberspace--maybe hacker has it? i don't have the heart to start that huge comment entry all over again. thanks to everyone that offered support, ideas and well wishes.