Bad, Bad Bull

Last night Ethan and I were both in town, although in separate vehicles. I got home a bit before him and put the kids to bed. I soon noticed that there were sounds coming from just outside the house. It was pretty windy, but I couldn't think of anything that would have been hitting the house. I was pretty relieved when Ethan finally got home. He thought it must be the wind too.

Ethan then went out to make his nightly rounds. He wasn't out long before I heard the door open and "Becca, get your coat, hat, boots, and two flashlights." When I got outside I was informed that our new, rather skiddish, bull was out along with the the cow and heifer that came with him.

Since he has been here he has been standing at the edge of his fence mooing and longing to get over to the other fenced in area - where all of our cows reside. Well, yesterday he had had enough and broke through the fence. Thankfully he went right over to the cows, and his family followed him.

So, it was now up to Ethan and myself to round up the skiddish, uncooperative bull on a mission with no outside lights, not much of a moon, and some pretty worthless - quick dimming flashlights. (I know what is going on our shopping list.) After many, many, many attempts, we finally herded the bull into the cow pen. Ethan was able to bribe the other two into the pen with a bucket of treats.

We were going to then cut out the bull into a separate pen, but after thinking about our previous dealings with him and assessing the situation, we decided to cut out the heifers instead. We got all but one, and boy did Ethan try hard. We decided it just wasn't going to happen though, and went inside. It was then 11:00 p.m.

Needless to say, I was not thrilled with having to round up a new bull, who obviously had a mind of his own last night, without much for lights. I am glad that we have a more docile breed because he really didn't give us much of a threat besides just not going where we wanted him to.

So Mr. Bull got his way and is with the ladies he so longed to be with. I hope he is happy.

Milk Jug Time

The weekend before last I was walking around outside enjoying the break from the cold spell. I happened to walk by my garden where we temporarily put my flowers during the move and noticed that some of the spring flowers were starting to poke through the ground! This got me thinking about spring and garden preparation. So I guess it's time to start saving my milk jugs.

Milk jugs make great green houses for tomatoes and other touchy spring transplants. Just cut off the bottom and place it over your plant. It keeps moisture and heat in and wind burn off.

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Sweet Potato Time

It's sweet potato starting time! If you have never started sweet potatoes before, you can check out my week by week postings from last March. You can pull them up from the dated blog archive or in "gardening" in the topic archive.

This year I am starting my sweet potatoes a bit earlier. I will hopefully have enough time to break off quite a few rounds of starts. I am only using one sweet potato to make starts this year due to space/house clutter from moving and continued construction. I was hoping to bring in some of the vine from last year's plants as a houseplant and try it as a ready to go start. Unfortunately, we were so busy with the construction and move I didn't have a chance to. Maybe this fall . . .

Anyway, last week I started my sweet potato. I am happy to see it is already getting roots. Here are a couple things I learned from last year:

- Not all sweet potatoes root the same. I heard that some are actually treated so they don't start to sprout in the store, which in turn leads them not to spout well out of the store. Since I have seen different varieties cycle through our local grocery store, I waited until they had some that looked as if they already had some sprouts forming - hoping they weren't treated.

- The water can get dirty quickly. I needed to have mine in a spot that was easy to check and easy to change - i.e at the kitchen sink. It isn't the best decoration, but hopefully it will look nicer when it gets some nice green leaves growing on it.

I don't plan on doing a week by week update this year, but I might have one or two. I'd love to hear about your sweet potato starts and things you learn if you try them this year though.

We Added a Bedroom

Last week we added a bedroom to our house. I actually started it when Ethan was at his Super Bowl party with the youth group. I spent the rest of the week working on it while he was at work. Now Isaac's room has turned from a cement floored, box filled, construction room to a floored, box filled, baby room.

Isaac had been sleeping in a bassinet in our room. Not only was his room filled all the way to the door with boxes and a homemade work table for our remaining construction, but I just didn't feel right having him sleep in a room with a cement floor - even if we could make enough room to push his bassinet in.

Now that he is almost 2 months old (on the 18th), he was needing to get into something bigger than a bassinet. We have a 3/4 size pack and play on wheels that Hannah slept in until she was 1, but finishing his room sounded much better.


So now the floor is done in his room and his crib is set up. It makes the house seem much bigger to have 3 functioning bedrooms now. Once we get the mudroom finished I should be able to unpack most of the remaining boxes and hang pictures. I don't think Isaac minds too much though.

p.s. I will try to post pictures of our laundry room soon. We just got a cabinet hung up this weekend so I am doing a bit more rearranging with the room.

Baby Bottoms

Baby bottoms are expensive! Or at least they can be expensive. I can't believe how fast they go through disposable diapers, and wipes don't last that long either. It is because of this that I dug through my mountain of unpacked boxes to pull out the cloth diapers. It may be a little extra work right now while we are still not settled in, but the savings is definitely worth it!

When Caleb was born I decided to go the cloth diaper route because of the expense of disposable. I I went with prefolds and my mom and I made the covers. With Hannah, I continued cloth and started using white washcloths for wipes to save even more. (That is all they got used for, by the way.) Now my cloth diapers are on baby number 3. I have had to recover most of them since they were wearing thin, but it was still cheaper than buying new ones.

It is nice to be saving again on baby bottoms - and also on trash bags!

Across the Fence

Okay, so we took the fence down last spring, but here is our closest neighbor who is a family just about the same age as us. They moved into their place not too long after we bought ours so we are both newbies out here.

They seem like they will be great neighbors. The husband stops frequently to talk to Ethan if he is driving by and sees Ethan outside. They have around 7-9 acres, I believe, and are going to have some livestock as well.

When Ethan and I found out that they had just bought the property, however, we became a little jealous. If only we had know that it was for sale at the same time, we could have boughten it along with ours and would have had a house already built. But more importantly, we would have had the barn! (The truth is that we could never have afforded both properties.)

From talking to the husband though, Ethan feels our neighbor wishes he had more land. So here we are eying their barn and they are checking out our land. :) Funny how we work, huh? Oh well. At least we can both have what the realtors call borrowed views. It IS a pretty barn to look at that we didn't have to pay for.

Everything else aside, we are excited to get to know our new neighbors and excited about who will be across from us when we put up the new fence.

Our Wood Pile

Things have been crazy around here lately. Actually, for a long time. We have had a hard start of the year farm wise, around Christmas Ethan was supporting the pastor and his family during his massive stroke, in November Isaac was born and we celebrated Hannah's birthday and Thanksgiving, in October we moved in and got busy unpacking, before we moved in we were in the craziness of construction and packing, before construction we were removing the old fence line, which brings me to spring when we bought the place.

All of that is to say that Ethan hasn't had much time to cut wood for our wood stove, which is our only source of heat. We have been extremely blessed, however, and have been able to keep warm. It seems like just when we are about to run out of wood Ethan has a half day that lines up just right to cut some more. We have also had people bring us out wood out of the blue just as we are about to run out.

Here is a picture of our wood pile now. At the beginning of the month we received over 5 truck loads of wood that 3 different people brought out for us. We have had some pretty cold days where I have been chucking wood into the stove as fast as I can, and yet we still have quite a pile.

When I look out the window and see the wood pile I am so thankful for community and hope that we can bless people like we have been blessed out here.