This day is such a teaser. Nearly 70 degrees. Managed to (finally) clean out most of the rotting tomatoes and plants from the garden. Tore out a section of the walking path to our back door that was sinking into the ground and replaced it with a couple of stepping stones ... The kids have been planning gardens, and I have to keep reminding them (and myself) that spring is really a few months away still.

Overhearing Joe:

"What happens if the Holy Ghost gets me? The Holy Ghost will take me to jail."

An Admission of Failure

I bought Scrabble Jr. for a family Christmas present. The idea was to have fun while learning by playing with words. Patience did not come in the box. I sat there on the floor struggling to let the kids maintain control of their game, to not just tell them what to do, to not get upset when Finley refused all three or four of my suggestions. I am thankful that she likes to play the game.

Some days, my patience wears thin, and as I yell at them, I pray that they will forgive me someday, that my harshness and criticism won't hinder their pursuit of life.

And here comes Joe, soft blankie in hand, bleary-eyed this morning, ready for another day.

Thanks to Santa, I have a couple of dollars burning a hole in my pocket. So I've been thinking about how to spend it... I suppose a normal person would be thinking about treating themselves to a massage or buying some clothes or a new electronic device. Or something. But I've been thinking about vegetable seeds and a chicken coop. A chicken coop. Big chicken coop... I can't get it out of my head.

I know. We're in the middle of building a house. But there isn't much I can do in the way of building on the house while Chris is at work. I can, however, build a coop on my own. And it is going to be big enough for me to walk inside, and it will have an actual perch for the chickens, and it will have a living roof, and it will be beautiful.

Baby Goats

Our neighbors invited us over to see their baby goats. They ranged from a few days old to a few hours old, and 13 more mamas are expecting. I suppose my kids will be wearing me out to see the neighbors' kids. ;)

Finley came into the living room yesterday morning with bright pink smeared above her eyes, some of it sneaking up onto her forehead. "Finley," I said, "you might want to look in the mirror when you put on make up." "I did!" she answered. Oh.

I suppose because I don't wear a lick of make-up ever and could probably look nicer than I do most of the time, I have no credibility with my daughter. So, when I tell her that her application of make up doesn't look good, she shrugs me off. Either she really does think she looks better with bright colors plastered above her eyes, or she doesn't care that she looks silly. I'll just be glad when the make up she got at a Christmas party this weekend is GONE.

Got down into the single digits last night. When I woke up, it was a little cold in the trailer as the heater couldn't keep up. Thankfully we have nice, warm clothes and blankets.

Went to check on the hens before I took Fin to school, and didn't hear any of the typical soft clucks coming from inside the coop. I worried for a minute that I would find three frozen or catatonic hens. Like I said, I'm not one to do mouth to mouth on a chicken. Thankfully, when I opened the door, they were alive. Just quiet. I threw down some hay on the ground to keep their feet out of the cold snow and fed them some soaked bread, then added some more hay to the coop to give them a little more insulation.

First Snow of the Season at The Funny Farm

Fifteen degrees and snow covered after a "winter storm" came through yesterday. (Yes, they actually used the term 'storm' on the local news yesterday. These Tennesseans have no clue.) The cat and the chickens refuse to leave their shelters. Granny hen braved the snow yesterday, but this morning, she is staying in the coop with the other two. I worry a bit that they will starve to death in their refusal to make the two-foot trip to the feeder, but I really don't want to pamper them. I refuse to turn into the lady that bathes and blow-dries her silkie on a daily basis. (See The Natural History of the Chicken. Not an actual history, but a documentary that is strangely entertaining.)

Stairs

Yesterday afternoon, I started cutting the stringers for the stairs. At first, I used the chop saw set at the appropriate angle to start the cut on the risers, but I couldn't use it for the tread cut as the angle was too sharp. After the first stringer, I decided I was handy enough to make all the cuts with the circular saw, finishing out the corners with the jig saw.

I finished the stringers this morning, and by lunch, we had two of the three stringers up and treads in place for temporary use until we are ready to drywall and put the permanent stairs in place.

Frost Ribbons

Update

It's cold here, causing work on the house to slow.

My folks made it here to Tennessee, but their stuff hasn't yet. Apparently, it won't get here until Monday.

I am reading another Pearl S. Buck book called The Living Reed, which tells the story of the Korean struggle for independence from the Japanese in the early 1900's. It is a moving story, and I am realizing how much world history I am ignorant of.

When the night grows cold enough for a hard frost, sometimes the stems of certain plants burst from the water freezing inside them, and ribbons of frost grow during the night. I keep meaning to get a picture before the temperature warms enough to melt them...

Eavesdropping on Z playing with Pig and Horse:

"Horse."

"What."

"I tired. I take a nap."

"Okay!"

"But, Horse."

"What."

"I s[l]eep here. Spider [s]care me. A spider my room."

"Your room?"

"Yeah, my room!"

"Oh, no! I see her!"

...

"Pig aseep. Wake up, seepyhead! Oh, I fall down!"

This crazy, bright-orange, jelly fungus pops up now and then out of old deck boards or fence posts after a rain. It makes for something happy to look at on a drizzly day.

What Christmas living in a trailer with little kids looks like:

As I was walking up the steps this morning onto the porch, this caught my attention... I am used to seeing ice form in those geometric crystal formations. I had no idea water could freeze into such beautiful vine-like patterns.

This dent in the subfloor is the result of my trying to hang 2"x10"x10' ceiling joists in one of the bathrooms while Chris was doing something else. But I did not give up and managed to put up the rest of the joists ALL BY MYSELF!

Here is the view of the topside of the ceiling right before I called it quits for the day: Of course, Chris kept working and finished the rest.

Mike and Chris work on the kitchen's ceiling joists.

Living room.

After having the sky for a ceiling for so long, it feels strange...

Dragon is finally pulling his weight around here... This is his second mouse this week.

Quick Non-Building Post

It's not all house building around here these days, although it feels like it.

Today, I let Jane out of her hutch, only to find right as we headed out the door to go to the grocery store that she had dug under the fence and was out. Grocery plans aborted, I chased her around the yard until she ran under the deck and found her way under the trailer. The neighbors have a live trap, but it was too early to disturb them, so I set about devising my own trap. A carrot, an emptied out storage bin, a stick and a string, and I had myself an old-school trap. I just needed patience. Eventually, I sent dragon under the trailer to chase Jane out. She didn't seem to be finding my baited trap, so eventually, I crawled under the deck with a chunk of celery and coaxed her close enough to grab her. I suppose I need to line Jane's entire pen with rock before I dare to let her out of her hutch again...

Another funny sight today: our dumb chicken (that's not very nice of me, is it?) decided she wanted to roost on a section of 5 foot chain-link fence. She flapped as hard as she could, only to fly right into the fence. Loud noise, embarrassed chicken, good laugh.

As if we don't have enough going on here: trying to build a house, having a child in school and all that entails, parents moving down to TN and trying to help them out as best I can, me and the kids fighting colds for the past two or three weeks... I started another quilt. So night that I am not completely exhausted, I have been trying to cut and sew the blocks. I think I almost have enough blocks done to piece it together... I'm hoping to have it done before spring so Joe can make good use of it.

Today, we finished fixing the headers above the big windows and doors, finished framing out the closets, then put on the top plate. Not bad for a husband and wife team. Chris was about to make me help start hanging the 2 x 10 ceiling joists, but I'm glad he decided on cleaning up the site and reorganizing before the rain hits this evening.

I know. I bet you all are wondering what the kids were doing while we were so busy today. I won't lie. They watched quite a few videos. And they played outside some. Kudos to Finley and Joe who took care of and fed themselves and Z all day long.

Setback

Setbacks are what occur when you are doing something for the first time and don't know the code book by heart. Thankfully, we are smart enough (most of the time) to catch mistakes before we get in too deep.

Today, we discovered that some of our headers (big boards that go above window and door openings) are not beefy enough or supported enough to pass codes.

Time to break out the sawzall. The fixes shouldn't be too difficult.

Walls, Day 4

A forest of studs.

We have all the main walls done on the main floor. All that is lacking are some closet and bathroom walls.

This is the view out of our bedroom window:

After weeks of dry weather, the rains came. And the barren soil that was packed by the hard play of children soaked in the water. And little, green slivers of life sprang up, ignoring the threat of oncoming winter, reminding me that there is always hope for new life.

Walls

Chris and my bro, Mark, got a good start on the framing yesterday:

We lost another chicken.

Found one of the Polish hens dead in the coop this afternoon. She looked like she had just fallen asleep, face straight down in the hay. Finley and I performed a quick burial, then I cleaned out the old bedding in the coop. So now we are down to three.

Finley decided she wants us to get five more chickens in the spring for a total of eight. (Notice the focus on first grade math.) She still wants some that look like Goldie (the deceased Araucana), and is starting to talk about a rooster, as well. We shall see.

It is finished.

The subfloor, that is.

Chris and I worked feverishly today. I must say, we make quite the team, and have been managing to avoid heated discussions about the way things should be done. I was thankful, however, when Terry showed about the time I had to pick Fin up from school and helped finish things off.

Time is rushing toward me from all sides.
The past and the future is growing shorter in this middle age.
Now that life no longer stretches to where I can't imagine its end,
I am remembering how important is this present.
And in that remembrance, I am lamenting the lousy coffee in my cup today.

Rome wasn't built in a weekend.

Neither was our floor.

The last row of floor joists didn't go quite as smoothly as the first three, so it didn't get finished until today, which set us behind our idealized schedule. I didn't help much with the build today. While my brother Mike and his father-in-law came out to help today, I cooked up a nice, big pot of white chicken chili. Yum.

Foul

A week or so ago, we heard some scritch-scratching from inside the wall behind the stove. Chris set out some sticky traps in a cabinet only to find the next morning that a mouse had gotten stuck, then managed to pull itself free. Chris rearranged the traps to ensure a mouse wandering through had no choice but to step on one, but it must have learned a lesson from its encounter with the traps.

A day or two later, I heard the mouse further down inside the wall. I went out and bought some trusty snap traps. The trap I set up never caught a mouse, and I never heard another sound from the wall.

I was beginning to think the mouse had decided life was better in the big outdoors, until a foul odor started coming from the pantry-slash-laundry room a couple days ago. I found and disposed of a rotten potato, but yesterday, there was still a foul smell. Chris peeked behind the dryer last night, and noticed some left-from-the-previous-owner mouse poison. Great.

Why anyone uses that stuff is beyond me. The last thing I want is a dead mouce stuck somewhere I can't get to stinking up my home...

Scene at the house this morning:

Z (in living room): two, twee, heah I come!

(stomp-runs to their room where Joe is hiding)

Z: boo!

(giggles, laughter)

(Z runs back to living room)

Z: twee, foe, fie, heah I come!

etc.

Floor Joists, Day 2

Today, we had help from our neighbor, Terry. He is a rock star, as far as neighbors go. With his ingenuity and experience, we were able to fix a few iffy spots on the work we did yesterday, then lay another row and a half. Thanks also to Nana and Papa who helped keep an eye on the kids for several hours today while we worked. (And thanks to GrandDad and Great Grandma who entertained the kids yesterday.)

Floor Joists

It took us a while to get moving today. By two o'clock, we had about 1/3 of the first row of floor joists down.

But by five o'clock, the first row was done. Only three more to go, then we can start laying the subfloor. Not too bad for three of us who didn't have the clearest idea how to do this. (Thanks again, big bro, for lending a hand.)

I was a little worried that my late plantings of tomotoes would yield nothing. And now, as the season comes to a close, there are scores of green lumps hanging from the vines. I can hear them taunting, as, daily, I check to see if any of them are showing a blush. For the past several days, I have glimpsed one or two flashed of deep red buried in the thick foliage, and dive in only to find a tomato half eaten by some critter, and one tomato that is almost, almost perfectly ripe. As I throw the ruined tomato over the fence for the chickens, I stand there in debate with myself. Should I leave the good one on the vine one more day in order to let the tomato mature to it fullest and best flavor? Or will some unknown in the night ruin it somehow...

And usually, I harvest, slicing my one tomato for a toasted sandwich, slathered with mayonaise. And as the almost perfectly delicious juice trickles down my chin as I eat, I decide I made the right decision.

Lumber

Our lumber was delivered this morning.

Since Chris had the day off, we took the opportunity to do some work on the house. We slapped that mud sill down like we knew what we were doing.


Joe helped tighten the nuts that bolted the mud sill to the foundation. If the big bad wolf comes along and blows the house off the foundation, it will all be his fault. ;)

How Great Thou Art

I must have been five or six at the time. It is all a little hazy, but I remember sitting in children's church in the basement of the church we attended. They had books and props to use as visual aids for the songs that we would sing... For example, pictures of the same drawing of a child, each colored differently, were glued to popsicle sticks to use for the song 'Jesus Loves the Little Children'. It you had the honor of holding one, you thrust it upward as your appropriate color was sung: red, brown, yellow, black and white. It took concentration and good reflexes to hit it just right.

Most Sunday mornings, they took requests. While other little kids chose songs like the aforementioned and 'Jesus Loves Me', I inevitably would choose 'How Great Thou Art'. To this day, I can't quite figure out why they even had a flip-book with such a somber-sounding, old hymn in it for children's church... but they did.

Thinking back when I was older, I have to admit, I was a little embarrassed at my odd choice in song. I had the feeling that the adults and other kids got tired of me choosing that song every week.

It had been years since I had really heard (much less sung) that hymn, then one Sunday, a little over a year ago, it was sung for worship at the church we were attending at the time.

O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder

Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made,

I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,

Thy power throughout the universe displayed;

Then sings my soul...

It hit me. Even back when I was little, I loved nature. Soaking in his creation was communion with him. Nature was the base from which he began to build a relationship with me. No wonder I like this hymn.

When through the woods and forest glades I wander,

I hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees;

When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur

And hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze;

Then sings my soul...

Sometimes the things in the past are little love letters he gave us that he knew we wouldn't be able to read for a long time.

Our neighbor stopped by on his way to hunt some deer with his crossbow. After he had wandered off into the woods, Finley immediately set to work making a dummy deer for him to shoot instead of the real thing.
She made sure to find some sticks that looked like antlers, because she thought that was the reason he wanted to kill a deer. I told her he was more interested in killing the deer for its meat. I think she's okay with that.

"...she laughs at the days to come."

She doesn't laugh because she thinks the future will be happy-funny. She laughs because she is strong enough to pursue her dreams, knowing full well that life will throw all kind of obstacles in her way, and the only way to get through those obstacles without feeling completely overwhelmed and discouraged is to find it funny.

Take today for example.

I had the idea that I would take the kids and the chainsaw on my lawn-tractor/wagon setup down the road to quickly whack down some woody brush that was growing up in the fencing. First, I added some bar and chain oil to the chainsaw, spilling a bit, then added the gas/oil mix. I then spent the next twenty minutes trying to get the thing started. It sounded agonizingly close to starting. Just one more pull, I kept thinking. Until I realized a small blister was forming on my hand and my arms were feeling so rubbery I was in danger of dropping the saw.

Of course I couldn't let the fact that I couldn't get the chainsaw started ruin my fun, so I packed up the handy battery-powered reciprocating saw into the wagon, along with a trash bag and pick-stick to pick up some trash. With Z sandwiched between me and Joe, I started the tractor and Joe steered up the drive to the spot I wanted to clear.

First, we walked the further up the drive to where beer cans and bottles littered the ground beneath the trees. Everything went smoothly aside from the tantrum Z threw when she got tired of walking.

Then back to the tractor where I cut down a few saplings growing in the fence line. The reciprocating saw worked fantastically for this, and was probably a whole lot easier to handle than the chainsaw for such light work.

The wagon was full, so we were about to head back... but I couldn't get the tractor started. So I pushed the tractor out of the drive, then proceeded to get hair and clothing caught in blackberry brambles. I was thankful to have my gloves on.

Then the walk back. Arms still rubbery, I had to carry a tired toddler all the way back to the house, struggling not to drop her growing, chunky body.

And so I have the choice to get frustrated or to laugh.

And that's why we call it The Funny Farm.

The hummingbirds have moved on to spend the cool season somewhere warmer.

Weather Whiplash

My parents were here last week to visit the Funny Farm and experience a little bit what life is like down here in Marshall County. For most of their stay, we had unseasonably warm weather (temps in the mid-nineties). Mom and I ventured outside a few times to walk the property and shred some dry, dusty leaves, and Dad did get to meet Buford, the neighbor's donkey. But since the heat was a bit too oppresive for their taste, we had a lot of indoor visiting time.

Now that they are back up in Nashville for the rest of their Tennessee stay, we are experiencing some beautiful fall weather.

Yesterday, I did a little work in the stable. The new pile of hay I had brought in the day before was already getting demolished by Elizabeth and her co-conspirators, so I decided to put a stop to it. I tacked one end of some three foot fencing to a wall post, and pulled it tight around the neatened hay pile. [I can't in good conscience call it a haystack... I know there is a way they used to stack hay to encourage water shed, but I don't know how they did it.] It will take extra effort from the chickens to strew about any more hay.

Before working on the hay pile, I cleaned out the second stall. Joe helped shovel up old hay and horse manure that then made its way to the compost pile. While I worked on the hay situation, the kids played in the newly 'cleaned' space. Living out here, it a good thing I'm not a germaphobe. I really hope there isn't some weird disease the kids can pick up from rolling around in dried, ground-up horse poo and decomposing hay. But really, I figure exposure to such a natural environment will only strengthen the immune system.

Last Night's Catch

Need to figure out the best way to dispose of this freeloader. I don't suppose possums are good eating, so my plan is to release him a few miles away near the state park. Chris hinted at another plan, but I don't think the rest of us will go for it.

Turns out lumber companies are not so excited to spend a lot of time helping you figure out what and how much lumber you'll need if they know you will be comparing prices with other companies. So right now, instead on starting the daunting task of getting together a lumber take-off while the kids entertain themselves, I am writing this post.

Finley is staying home from school today. She came home yesterday with a low-grade fever and a headache, and woke up with the same this morning. So I opted to let her stay home instead of suffering through a day at school.

I forgot to mention the strange noises we were hearing at night. Turns out an opossum discovered Dragon's leftover food on the deck and was making nightly visits to finish off anything he hadn't eaten. It would then crawl up and dance on the roof above our bedroom in order to wake us up at odd hours. So one night, we heard a disturbance on the back porch, and went out to see what we could do about it. We chased the possum around a bit in our jammies until we managed to corner it while Chris attempted to slam a big trash can over the poor animal. It must have been really funny to watch. I don't know what we would have done if we had captured it in the trash can, but when it started to fight back and lash out at Chris's bare feet, he gave up. He was later told he should have kicked it, because the possum might have played dead. Maybe next time if we have shoes on.

Eggs. One of my favorite ways to eat eggs is hard-boiled. Here, I run into a problem. Fresh eggs do not peel well. I imagine that I would have to let the eggs sit for a month or more (like grocery store eggs) in order to get them in a condition where they would be good to hard-boil. Oh, the trials we face.

Update on Jane (our rabbit): Last weekend, we decided to put rocks over the burrow Jane was digging to prevent any real escape attempts. Tuesday night, when Chris put her back in her hutch, he checked the hole and could barely touch the end of the burrow. On Wednesday, Jane started to fill the burrow back in.


The block layers finished the foundation on Wednesday. Now we have to figure out exactly how proceed from here. When talking to the inspector about our plan to lay the floor, I found out he wouldn't have approved, and to fix what we were going to do would have been expensive. So now we have to rethink things a bit. Really, we just need to make a habit of calling the inspector and going over every little detail to make sure we won't make any mistakes.

The past few nights, I've been waking up in the middle of the night only to lie awake thinking about construction. Yuck.

Much of the grass in the pastures is going to seed. I love to see the tiny flowers throw a muted haze of purple above the grass.

Our chicken, Pluck, is molting. Her feathers are easily found all over the yard. She looks like she was chewed up and spit out. I am just glad that the bare spot on her back will finally have a covering again soon.

The pond is leaking. A little internet research revealed that the 3-4 weeks of dry weather we had and subsequent drying of the pond probably caused the bottom to crack in places. Any rain we get seems to soak right into the ground, now, leaving the shallow end dry. If we had any livestock, the animals would probably be able to pack the ground back down enough to hold water again... But since we're not ready for livestock, we might try to throw some leaves in this fall to help create a seal.

Fresh reminders of my inadequacy makes me thankful to live this life covered by grace.

Two Bags of Sand

Did you know that it is only going to take two bags of sand to lay the block for the foundation of our house? I thought that was strange. Until I saw the bags of sand.

The block layers are here today... In a few hours, they will have the foundation laid. What would have taken us a week (or more) is only going to take less than a day's work for the pros.

This is a bag of sand. A one-ton bag of sand.

Jane Update

If she decides to dig up, she's out in a matter of minutes, I'd guess. What to do? I'm having too much fun watching her progress, but we really don't want to lose her to the wild world outside...

The Not-So-Great Escape

I don't know if she thinks she's being clever, but she's not. She could have at least put the hole behind the bush where it wouldn't be so obvious.

Anyway, Jane has diligently been trying to dig her way out of her new little play yard. Perhaps she feels more like a prisoner of war than I suspected, or perhaps she thinks we plan to eat her some day. We don't. But I don't know how to tell her that, and I don't know how to communicate that she probably wouldn't survive in the 'wild' for long.

Still, I haven't had the heart to put a stop to her attempt yet. She definitely has made it under the fence, but I am a little curious to see how soon she will try to angle up with her digging, or if she is intent on making a real sort of burrow. Stay tuned for updates.

I might be able to do algebra and trig, but I can't count.

So today I decided to map out on the print of the house where the guy put the footings for the piers to start figuring what sort and how much lumber we need.

Nine feet, then eight, then nine... Something didn't seem right.

And then I realized what I had done. Somewhere in my brain, I had in my head that we were building a house 36 feet deep, but the print is only 32 feet deep. Oops. Guess I'll be reworking the print a bit.

We dropped by our old neighborhood this weekend. Stopped in for a visit with Rose. Looking out her front door at our old house, we noticed that the new owners had torn out all of the plants in the flower beds and put down mulch. All of them. Including the hydrangea and the butterfly bush and the big clump of phlox that proudly bloomed in a pale purple all summer long. They must not be gardeners.

I can't blame them, really. I know it must be overwhelming for former apartment dwellers to inherit more than a tiny patch of garden. I know how the weeds creep in. I know how it is to want to erase the blatant thumb-print of the former owner and make the place your own. After all, we tore out every single yew that shrouded the front of the house when we moved in.

But then I thought about all the daffodils and tulips hidden in the ground. I wondered if any of them would survive the upheaval and surprise the new owners in the spring anyway. I hope they do.

Rose said she watched as they tore everything out and tilled it up. Every once in a while, she wandered outside and waited for them to look up so she could wave. They never did. I told Rose they would probably plant some little square shrubs, something more manageable. We laughed. Little do they know a quick tilling and some mulch are not the answer. Bee's balm and burmuda root chunks are snickering under the layer of mulch, waiting for the right time show that they won't be so easily defeated.

Then we looked at Rose's garden. A mish-mash of flowers she loves intermingled with the weeds she is having a hard time keeping under control. "Do you see that weed?" she asked, pointing at a five-foot-tall plant topped with a spray of purple flowers. I had reconized it earlier as one of the plants that grow in the pastures around here. "I wish all weeds bloomed," she said. "Then people wouldn't know how weedy my flower beds are."

"That's not a weed," I told her. "That's a wildflower."

It is a wonder that I have the right to claim to be a gardener. I keep telling myself that one day, I'll get serious about this gardening business and do it 'the right way'. In the meantime, I continue to compulsively and impulsively dig up sections of soil and haphazardly throw seed down or shove mangled roots of some sort into holes.

Today, I finally planted my fall garden. If I can call it a garden. This week, in the middle of the excitement of getting footings poured for the house, we managed to string up some fencing to keep the chickens (and deer?) out of the 'garden'. As I put the finishing touches on the fencing, I had to laugh at the tiny little plot I had prepared as a temporary garden. (You should see the magnificent one I have in my head... laid out in a couple terraces above the pond, surrounded by a quaint wood and wire fence similar to the one I saw in a This Old House magazine.) Anyway, today I planted (in square-foot-and-a-half patches) some Romaine lettuce, spinach, cilatro, carrot, and radish seed (always plant radish). These were seed choices left in my collection I thought I might see some results from this fall.

I have yet to eat a tomato out of my own garden this year. The chickens have pecked mercilessly at any fruit showing a hint of red, and bugs have done their share of damage as well. I still have hope that I will get a chance to eat at least one tomato from the five surviving plants.

Let me take a moment to reflect on Finley.

When she was four, I bought her one of those big boxes of crayons. One day I walked in on her to find that she was organizing the box based on the color's beauty. On the right side of the box were the colors she thought were beautiful: reds, pinks, oranges, purples, and blues. On the left were the 'ugly' colors: yellows, greens, browns, greys, and black. I felt sorry for the colors on the left. How do explain to a four year old that colors you don't think are beautiful in themselves have use and merit, and that when they are used in the right way make a beautiful world even more beautiful?

Now she is six. She still has a definite sense for beauty, and it makes me a little nervous. I don't want her to be shallow. Her first week in school, she came home and told me that a boy she didn't like was line leader that day. "Why don't you like him?" I asked her. "He doesn't look very nice," she said. I asked her if he was nice to her. Yes. Carefully, I explained to her that even though he may not look as nice as she likes people to look, there were other nice things about him besides looks, and if she paid attention, she would probably find that he would be a very good friend... and that was more important than looks. Then, just to be safe, I threatened her with severe punishment if I ever found that she had been mean to him in any way...

My lecture hasn't stopped her interest in visual beauty, however... Joe told her one day that he had made a new friend: a girl named Katie. Finley's first question was "Was she beautiful?" And yesterday, she told me about her new friend at school. "She's very pretty," she said, then went on to describe the clothes the girl wore that day.

So on top of all the other prayers for my children is that they would be able to enjoy the obviously beautiful things in the world, but also have eyes to see the hidden beauty of things as well...

The Yolk Is On Us

A couple of weeks ago, we had some hot, dry weather here, temps reaching the upper 90's. We stopped finding eggs. I heard that hens stopped laying in very hot temps, so figured that was the case with our hens. Finally, it cooled off a bit, and we got some rain, and once again, we started finding some eggs in the nesting boxes in the coop.

Today, Chris came in and said he found a few eggs out in the stable by the tractor. Two of them were broken, and there was one whole brown egg. I was a little confused. I know Elizabeth, the only one I thought to lay brown eggs, had been giving me a daily egg, and I had gotten one for the last 5 or 6 days, I thought, and had already gotten hers this morning. Was she laying more than one a day? I took the egg inside and washed it off and set it out to dry.

Later, I went outside to bush hog for a bit. When I came back to the stable to park the tractor, Chris and Finley were standing by a cache of 16 eggs. Now, I doubt they ever stopped laying. They just found a cooler place to do it: under the bush hog. And I was wondering why the polish hen hadn't given me any more eggs once it cooled down... but I guess she still preferred the shelter of the tractor.

So I raked out the old hay to discourage them from laying there any longer. This time the yolk's on them.

Two Year Old Beggar

Z is mastering the art of begging. In her sweet, little voice, she'll ask for things. "Watch Cars, Mom? Pease, Mom, pease?" or "Mo milk, pease? Pease, Mom, pease?" Makes it hard when I need to say 'no'.

This week's project:

Jane's new home...
One of the first things I wanted to do when we moved was set up an area for Jane to safely hop around and munch on grass.


This past week, I finally decided to take the bull by the horns and get it done... especially since I was very tired of the ammonia smell that would waft from the litter pan to my nose as I tried to enjoy a sit on the porch.


I hauled an old hutch that was left here by the previoius owners (hereafter abbreviated 'lbpo') to the shop with my wagon (lbpo) and shingled it to weather proof the plywood roof (shingles:lbpo). Then I gathered fence posts (lbpo) and left over garden fencing, and created her hop area. The gate is a section of fence fixed to two long pieces of rebar (lbpo). The legs of the gate slide into conduit I pounded into the ground, and the top sides are velcroed to the fence posts that make the gateway. Some old deck boards (lbpo) make up Jane's ramp. I also tacked on bits of shingle (lbpo) to the ramp for a non-skid surface. At the time of the photo, Jane had yet to brave a trip down the ramp.

These are the moments I live for

a light rain adding a touch of coolness to the warm summer air
sheltered away on my porch where all I can see is green and fence and sky and all i hear is the rain on the tin roof above me
hands busy with a project that is finally seeing some progress
hummingbirds buzzing by
kids playing happily in the pool in the rain

A Rambling Update

I keep meaning to take a photo of my lawn tractor and wagon get-up. It sure is convenient to have around.

Today, after dropping Finley off at school, I started down our drive, and thought to myself, "The road feels a bit rougher than normal. Perhaps I have a flat." Sure enough. The kids and I walked up to the house, loaded up the wagon with a Chris' portable air tank (with the dim hope I could just re-inflate the tire and get the van to the garage) and car jack (I prefer not to use the little hand jacks that come with cars if possible) and headed back down the drive, Z on my lap, Joe steering.

It ended up that the tire had a pretty good sized hole in the side (from what, I can't figure) so I was forced to put on the spare. I miss the days when I had an actual tire for a spare, and the spare was conveniently located in the trunk. This spare is the kind that you have to crank the doughnut down via some obscure hole in the bumper, then crawl under the vehicle to lift it off its cable hanger thing. Anyway. The van is now parked at the house.

Back to my beloved tractor and wagon: I am finally learning how to back a trailer up. Today I managed to back the wagon into the garage so that I could easily unload the tire and jack. This is not to say that I am good at it. I keep forgetting that I need to turn my wheels in the opposite direction that the back end of the wagon needs to go, and I usually start to jack-knife at least once or twice before I get the wagon somewhere in the neighborhood of where I want it. But I'm learning.

In other news: We had been without a good rain at The Funny Farm for a good three or four weeks. The pond had nearly dried up, the grass was crunchy, but at least the hot, dry weather made for a nice clothes drier. Saturday night we finally got a good bit of rain. The morning found the water level in the pond much higher, but the surface was littered with dead fish. We didn't even realize there had been that many fish in the pond and weren't sure what exactly caused their demise. Were they dead before the rain and just stuck in the mud, or did the sudden influx of fresh water put them in shock? Thankfully, I spotted one little fish still alive near the banks, so we are hoping the population bounces back.

The hens had been on strike the last few weeks, but have started laying again now that the weather is cooler.

Last week, I finally pulled up the plastic where I had planned for the veggie garden and turned over the soil and dead grass. Now I just need to decide what to plant for our fall garden and surround it with some fencing to keep the chickens out. I saw one of the chickens pecking among the tomato plants yesterday. I am hoping they don't ruin all of the fruit. It would be nice to eat at least one tomato from my own garden this year...

Last Sunday, I started dismantling some of the old barn, stacking the old tin, throwing rotten wood into one pile and reusable posts in another.

We also got our builder's permit last week. Now we have to start building...

A Finley Story

ThE HORsE ThET IS FREE
by Finley Knight

Once there were horses, and one horse wanted to live all alone. It wanted to live somewhere under a part of the world.

It went under water when it was raining. She fell on a shark!

Then the horse said, "There is no place for me."

Then it remembered where its old home was. It had to go forward and turn left. Then it should go straight some more, then you would have to start galloping. Then you had to jump over a river.

Then the horse had babies.

THE END

First Day of School