Curve balls

Before the destruction. Notice the nice trees...

Life has a habit of throwing curve balls but this one wasn't completely unexpected.

It just showed up a heck of a lot quicker than we figured!

My FIL is elderly and is having a hard time taking care of himself. We knew this was coming and we offered our help. We offered for him to move in with us.

He's finally accepted our offer. It was getting hard on Dave also, since he was constantly there, taking care of FIL's house too. It had gotten to the point that Dave told his dad, he couldn't keep taking care of two houses. A decision had to be made.

After...Notice the missing trees

So an addition is being built on our house and FIL is moving in.

The curve ball is selling FIL's house. It was put on the market and sold 3 days later!!! Houses around here sit for months...years!! before selling. Not three days! So instead of taking our time building, since most contractors are booked a year in advance, we are scrambling to find someone to build. We found someone, J.'s hockey coach and my dad will help.

Today the excavating company came to dig the hole for the foundation. Five hours later..... WOW!!! It's scary. They'll be pouring the cement while we are gone on vacation. Then in 2 weeks the building begins.

Yikes!!That's one deep hole.

It's exciting and scary at the same time.

We don't have the approval of the rest of Dave's family. The think that we're just after his money, but we are after his wellbeing. He needs help. They live 5000 kms away. They have no clue.

We have been under an extreme amount of pressure the last few weeks because of all this conflict. I've been praying...and now it seems that God is making things go smoothly.

Well have to wait and see.....

Have a Blessed day.

Lisa

Salted onions...

Good news! Dave went for his stress test and he has the heart of a 30 year old man! Woohoo! So it's not his heart. Phew! They figure it's a pinched nerve somewhere in his neck that is causing the numbness in his arms.

Yesterday and today I've been cutting up green onions and salting them. Salted onions are one of the main ingredients in rappie pie and fricot. That's what gives them their flavour.

My green onions before the chopping!

It's really simple, chop the onions and then add lots and lots of salt. They then keep for years. Usually people keep them in gallon jars. I've done that, but last year I lost mine. The salt corroded the lid and it seeped into the jar contaminating the onions.

The end result, salted onions.

My mom told me that she freezes hers. So this year that's what I'm going to do. Since it's so heavily salted, it doesn't freeze, so you just go and get the amount you need, whenever you need it. So simple. Why didn't I think of that?

Have a Blessed evening.

Lisa

Sorry...no pictures this week

Last Saturday was my day at the market. Of course it rained and rained and downpoured and rained some more. I'm so sick of rain! I'm getting so moldy I'm getting green spots all over me. I left the farm market and I had to spread out my soap on the living room floor. It was so damp and slimy from the moisture. I brought the dehumidifier up from the basement to dry it out. It worked well. Thank goodness. Moldy soap is not a good thing.

Well the garden is growing not bad. Tonight I had to spread out slug bait, but the sunflowers, pumpkins, peas and beets are doing great. The greenhouse is doing excellent. I water it every two days with manure tea sweetly given to me by the goats.

Cindi Lou is doing alot better on the milking stand. I don't have to pick her up anymore. She was getting heavy. Ninety pounds of squirming goat is not good for my back. Most times I don't have to use the hobble anymore . She doesn't poop on the stand either. So it's going alot better all around.

Febe got into something a few days ago and she had the poopies really bad. She wouldn't eat either. I confined her inside for the day on just hay and water, plus it was also time to deworm everyone anyway, so they all got their medicine. Today she's doing alot better. I let her outside to play and she's even started eating again.

I'm weaning the babies from the moms. They are all going Friday. We finally sold Azelle. So they're all going. The boys to a friend of ours. I know they are all going to good homes. That's the worse about this. It's hard when you don't know if they are going to nice homes or not. People can seem to be nice, but you never know.

We had a scare on last Monday. Dave was rushed to the hospital by ambulance with chest pains. He stayed overnight, but they couldn't find anything. He's going for a stress test on Thursday. We need lots of prayers.

It's J's class trip tomorrow, so I better sign off and get some sleep, since I'm going to be a chaperone. Ugh.

Have a blessed evening.

Lisa

Exciting Stuff!!!!

Friday was J.'s school mini Olympics. I brought my camera to take photos. His team did very well. They placed javelin, discus and potato sack race. It lasted till 1p.m. then I headed off to work.

I imagine my surprise when a local contractor shows up with a baby raccoon!! Oh MY GOODNESS!!! It was soooooo CUTE!! It was beyond cute. It kept chattering at us. I can just imagine what it was saying in raccoon talk. Probably nothing for family viewing.

He was fixing up a house and a raccoon family had moved in. So he live trapped the momma and the babies. He brought one of the babies in to show us. He was going to move them out of the house. I guess they had damaged the house like nobody's business!! It's amazing that such a cute creature can be so destructive. But who'd think that a cute little mink could be such a cold blooded killer too. Such is nature.

I was just so happy I had brought my camera.

Then just before closing at 8pm, who shows up but MARK CULLEN!!! HOLY FRICOLI!!!! Can you imagine in our little store. For those of you that have no idea who Mark Cullen is just look here.

Mark Cullen and moi

He's the Canadian gardener's Martha Stewart!!!! Need I say more. Probably not, but I'm gonna anyway. We had a few problems with our plants at the beginning of the season, so our manager took pictures and wrote to him. Mark Cullen takes an amazing amount of pride in anything with his name on it. So he was in NS for a garden opening. He dropped in!! He was super nice and answered my gardening questions.

Again!!! Thank goodness I had my camera. I got our manager to take a photo of him and I.

The funny thing is that I wasn't even supposed to work Friday night. I don't work Friday nights anymore. But because I went to J.'s mini Olympics I offered to work that evening. What luck!!! I would have kicked my behind if I would have missed that.

Phew! Ok, I'm calmed down now.

Dave went to the farmer's market today. Strangely enough, it was a beautiful day, yet not many people came. Sales were low. Not very encouraging.

Tonight I bought 6 americana chicks from a guy I know. They are so cute!! They had a nice hatch. I think they said 36 out of 40 eggs hatched. Alot better than my zero out of 36 average for me.

Well this star struck blogger is going to bed.

Have a blessed evening.

Lisa

Ouest-Ville Perennials and garden planting.

Well Saturday was a fantabulous, but cold day. It was my first day at the farmer's market. It was sooooo cold and it wasn't too busy, but I managed to sell soap and Epicure. So if I'm doing well now, I'm hoping when the weather gets better and the tourists show up I'll do even better!

Then after the market was done it was off to Ingomar (about 2 hours from our house) to get my custom made whirly gig Dave had ordered for me. A woman milking a goat! It's so cute.

Then we stopped at an old friend's house in Pubnico. I hadn't seen her in years!! Like I mean over 12 years! Alice owns a garden business. The last time I had been there it had just opened. It was just tiny. Now it's a booming, thriving business. I'm so happy for her! Check out her website. Ouest-ville Perennials

We chatted, and then had a photo session with her photographer friend, Margie. We had a good laugh, because neither one of us are good at having our photo taken. It took at least 15 shots to kinda get a nice one. But it was fun.

We left her place around 6pm and stopped at another friend's house, not far from Alice's house. We met last year when she got some kids disbudded at our house. She also has sheep. Mary (had a little lamb..lol), gave us a demo in sheep herding. They train herding dogs. It was amazing I had never seen that before. The dog brought that flock of sheep right to us. Amazing.

Then we came home had a plate of nachos and went to bed exhausted.

Yesterday I decided to bite the bullet and plant the gardens. Mud or no mud. It had to be done. So I started yesterday. I got the lettuce, peas, beans and beets done.

Then today I finished with carrots, more peas, pumpkins and half a kg of sunflowers!!

I also planted my tomato plants while the chickens were out. Not a smart move. It was a hard go planted a garden, making rows while sinking to your ankles.

But it's done. Hopefully they'll grow.

Cute animal picture of the week.

Have a Blessed Day.

Lisa

Funny ways people find you.

On Blogger there's this tab called Stats. It's for the blogger to check all sorts of things about their personal blog. Things like who's looking at your blog, where they're from, how many people looked in one day, week, month etc...

My favourite is "Traffic Sources" with the subtitle of "search keywords". This is what words people used to either find your blog intentionally or unintentionally.

phrases like:

-Raising spring peepers

-spring peepers in the basement

-kids say the darndest things food

-what are spring peeper babies called

-peepers and the maple syrup season (what peepers and maple syrup have to do with one another is beyond me?)

-spring peepers boy or girl?

-how to get rid of spring peepers

(WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT TO GET RID OF THEM?)

Then there's the just plain weird

-fire dept mutual aid moocher

-farm mating ladies (hmmmm...I won't even go there)

-it's mating time

(I wonder what was on this person's mind? hmmmm....)

And here's a few of my personal favourites

-undies on clotheslines

-ripped the head off my chicken and didn't leave the body. (huh?)

-the media hype with willy the wimps death

Then there's the normal (thank goodness!!)

-farmer lisa blogspot

-spring peeper farm blogspot canada

-spring peeper farm

Some of these I have NO CLUE why it made my blog pop up. I mean come on...willy the wimp? Who the heck is willy the wimp?

Some I can kinda see where it was from like the "undies on the clothesline" , but it also goes to prove that one should watch what we put for labels attached to the post.

I'm still confused on the willy the wimp one. Strange, strange people (shaking my head).

Have a Blessed evening

Lisa

Farmer's Markets

J. and Junior enjoying one of our rare sunny days.


Yesterday Dave and J. went to our first farmer's market. He did well, selling over 100$ worth of soap. We are almost out of soap. I have two small batches curing at the moment, but it's not enough. Tomorrow I'll have to make a few batches, and really everyday for awhile. I'm not expecting to be successful every weekend, but one has to be prepared.

"Red Green" and his new tool. Mixing soap.

Dave thought he had invented a new way of stirring the soap, but it didn't really work well. He had a small paint mixer on the end of a drill, but it didn't make the soap trace any faster. I really don't know what the deal is with those stick blenders. Why they work so well. But like most soapers know they overheat fast. I have two identical ones and alternate them all the time during the batch and still they get really hot. Really I'd need another one for good measure.

Soap taking waaayyy too long to trace.

Today we went for a drive to the Bear River farmer's market. It was nice. It was smaller than ours but still nice, with lots of nice people. I love Bear River. Most of the buildings are on stilts, it's so cool.

J. in Bear River today. Notice the building in the background on stilts.

Bear River Farmer's market.

We left some of our soap in a local boutique there. Another local boutique approached me last week to carry our soap. She tried one bar and fell in love with it.

Well we've been having a few goat problems lately. First Cindi Lou is not still not being cooperative on the milking stand. Still pooping while I'm trying to milk her, squirming, jumping etc... just being a regular pain in the beeehind!

Next Febe has been having udder problems the last month or so. A few weeks ago she had a broken blood vessel in her udder. The milk was full of blood. Yuck! It's not dangerous to her or us, but needless to say, drinking pink milk is not very appetizing, let alone knowing it's blood.

So we called our trusty vet. He told us to take the kids off and milk her several times a day. That's kinda hard when you're working fulltime. I did what I could, but the kids refused to take the bottle. I ended up leaving them on her.

After 7 days it cleared up completely. Yesterday I noticed that it's back again. It's not as bad as last time. Dave never even noticed. I did. I figure it'll only take a few days to clear up this time, but it's still a pain in the buttocks and a waste of milk.

Next kidding season mark my words!!! I AM BOTTLE FEEDING THE KIDS!!!

Did ya'll hear me! Next spring I want you guys in blogging world to remind me of these words!

This year's greenhouse.

Tundra and Moocher playing around. Dave has finally finished the other end of the pasture.

Our son is growing up. Sigh.....he's actually mowing the lawn.

Growing up. Sigh...

Every morning when I milk Febe and fight...uh...I mean milk Cindi Lou, Tigger waits patiently for his treat....the strip cup. To people who don't know what that is, it's the cup you use to put the first three squirts of milk from each teat. This milk is used to get rid of bacteria that is harbouring in the teat and to check the milk for clumps, nastiness and blood. Cats don't really care about all that. I spoil the cats though. I usually fill the cup with milk, not just a few squirts.

Tigger having his snack.

Anyway I digress...Tigger waits patiently for the cup. He sticks his head in and drinks to his little hearts delight! Down to the last drop. The first few times, he actually would jump on the stand and curl around Febe's legs. After he got stomped on and kicked off he now waits at the bottom of the stand.

We moved the meat kings and laying hen chicks into the big pen. It's amazing to see the difference in size. They're the same age yet the meat kings grow so much faster!

Meat king in the front and laying hen in the rear.

We had to move the older hens, so that meant they needed new laying nests. So voila! Milk crates! It works actually very well and they've stopped picking at the eggs.

Our new nest boxes!

Well it's time to go separate the kids from their moms for the night.

Have a Blessed evening

Lisa