Fall Camping

It can be tricky to leave the farm. Who can we trust to take care of the farm while we're gone? We have remarkable neighbors. The girl who helped take care of the farm while we were gone is only 14. She is responsible and trustworthy. She does exactly what needs to be done while we're gone.

She knows that animals need proper care or they may get sick, or they may die. She has helped me before while I'm home and learned her farm lessons well.

We had fall break last weekend. It was wonderful! We visited Little Grand Canyon and San Rafael Swell. I've never seen petroglyphs before so it was really interesting.

The Little Grand Canyon is still very big!

These photos were taken from right outside our camper.

It was hard to believe that people between 1,000 years ago and 2,000 years ago left pictures on canyon walls. That is so long ago! There are so many stories in the pictures. We don't know the stories they were trying to tell, so we have to figure out what they were thinking. It's not easy.

You can make up your own stories using the petroglyph pictures. That might be fun!

There are so many petroglyphs on this rock that it might be a very long story.
There are so many people in this picture, maybe they are having a feast!

What story would you write about this picture?

I think I would wright a story about a ram and a squirrel for this picture.
What do these pictures remind you of?

We also got to see a dinosaur footprint. It was remarkable!
I should have put someone's foot next to the dinosaur footprint so you could see the size. 

Imagine that! A dinosaur that left a footprint here thousands and thousands of years ago. That footprint was there long before the people painted on canyon walls.



It was really fun to watch Nathan fly his drone. He is so good with it that he can tell it to land and he can snatch it right out of the air!

I love going camping! I love being outdoors and seeing so many beautiful and interesting sights. I have fond memories of camping with my children when they were younger. We used to go to the same places every year.

Now we're making new memories by visiting lots of new places and seeing more wonderful sights.

Sometimes we have trouble before we leave, or while we're camping. Sometimes things break that we don't expect, and sometimes things don't go as planned.

Before we left the cable on the camper that holds up the roof came unhooked.

Thankfully we have an awesome camper repair man that can come out the same day and fix it!

This pole holds up the tent pull-out on our camper.
It wasn't in great shape when I left, but a windstorm the first night made it unusable.

Until Nate cut a piece of wood and taped it inside the curve of the support.
Now it's stronger than when it was new!

I love it when we have challenges and we can work together to figure out a way to get things solved.

Another think I love about camping is that the food is delicious! I love eating outside. I love the smell of fresh air. I love looking at the trees, canyons, mountains, and streams. Where ever we camp, it is beautiful.

Coming home is wonderful, too. Some of our family can sleep anywhere, but some of our family is more comfortable in their own bed at home instead of in a camper.

It's always nice to come home and see our pets and our farm again.


Did you know you can teach some cats to do tricks? Tommy can do a fist-bump for treats!

We love camping and seeing wonderful sights. We love being home, too.

We live a wonderful life

because

we believe we do.

Wonders 2nd Grade Unit 2 Week 2

Getting Grain

This is a repost from January 2016. We're still getting grain from Leland Mills. If you're new, this is fun to watch!

I thought you might like to see where we get our grain, and a little bit about how we pick it up.

We drive down to Leland Mills in Spanish Fork.
That's not our truck, there are many farmers who buy their grain here.

This is opposite of the store.
These are grain elevators.
This is where all the grain is stored.

This is what a grain elevator looks like on the inside.

Diagram found here

When we get to the mills we need to weigh our empty truck. The scales don't look like your bathroom scales, do they. This scale is very long. The worker reads the scale inside the office and marks it down on a piece of paper.

After they write down the weight of our truck we drive around to the truck that has the chicken feed in it. 

The arm of the truck pours the grain into the barrels while they are in the back of the truck.
It doesn't take long to fill them.

Next we drive around to the scales so they can weigh the truck again. They make a note of how much more the truck weighs so they know how much chicken feed we got.

We need grain for the goats, too.
The barrels have to be unloaded from the truck and taken into the big grain barn.
We can't drive the truck into the big barn, it's not allowed.

The grain barn is huge! There are piles of grain in different areas.
Each area has a different kind of grain.

The grain piles have walls between them so they don't mix too much.

The workers who are inside the barn need to wear a mask because
breathing grain dust is not good for you.


The grain comes out of the shoot so fast that it fills up the big barrel in about 5 seconds.
That is so fast that I almost didn't get a video of it!
I wasn't allowed to get very close because I don't work here.

The barrels with grain for the goats needs to be loaded onto our truck.

Those barrels are heavy!

They weigh the truck again. The new weight tells them how much
grain we got for the goats.

The scale is read in the office while we are in the truck.

The last thing we do is pay for the grain. It's just like paying for groceries.

We drive our truck home full of grain, unload the big barrels with our tractor, and put the barrels in the barn.

We only have to go to Leland Mills every 2 months because those barrels hold quite a bit of grain.

This time we got 5 barrels of grain. We got three barrels of grain for the goats. How many barrels did we get for the chickens?

I hope you enjoyed our visit to Leland Mills!

Winter Is Coming

It got cold fast this week! There is ice on the water buckets every morning when I go out. I left the water in the hose on just a little bit so that the water wouldn't freeze in the hose last night. If the water in the hose freezes, I can't fill the barrels in the morning.

This weekend we'll put our heated hose in the barn, and we'll put some bucket heaters in the water barrels so they don't freeze solid.

A few hens are still hiding their eggs.

These eggs don't look like they are hidden.....

until you are outside of the hay barn.
Can you see the chickens on top of the hay stack?
Their nest was hidden way in the back of the hay barn, near the ceiling.

It's hard to see the hens on top of the stack because they are in the shadows.

I had to climb all the way up the stack of hay and squeeze myself along the top of the stack until I got to the back of the stack where I found the eggs hidden in the corner by the rafters.

I had to be very careful with the eggs while I was getting down. I didn't want to break any fresh eggs in my coat pocket. Can you imagine the mess? Yuck!

Crazy chickens! I think they were looking for a warm place to lay their eggs.

Look who else likes to get up on the hay in the barn.
What a funny puppy!

She can jump and climb almost as well as the cats! Sometimes she gets up on my sewing table!

The mama hen and her chicks are doing well! She's keeping them warm and safe. These chicks spend a lot more time underneath her than chicks born earlier in the year. She's such a good mother hen!

I bet you can guess what's underneath the hen.

Chicks!
I've never seen a chick hide on the back of a hen,
but this little yellow chick was hiding underneath some of the hens wing feathers.

This is the first time we've had chicks this late in the fall. The chicks seem to follow their mama hen and I think they will adapt to the cold weather with her help. They seem eager to stay close to her, and don't wander very far.

The last few nights the animals have been eating a lot, even before it got cold. I think they could sense winter coming quickly and were eager to get their body ready for it.

It's gotten cold so I opened the stall so Echo would have a dry place to sleep at night.

She's getting ready for winter and getting ready to have her calf so we spoil her by letting her into the stall. She loves it! It's a little more work for me because I have to clean the stall every day. Cows don't know how to use a bathroom, so she goes to the bathroom any place she is standing.

I think this winter will be colder than last winter. That's normal. The climate in the desert is often cold in the winter and hot in the summer. The climate changes from year to year, too. Some years are wetter and colder, some are dryer and not as cold.

When my children were little there were a lot of Halloween's that they wore their winter coats when they went trick or treating. The last few years most children have been fine walking around in their costume. I have a feeling that this year children will be wearing their winter coats! What do you think, will you have to wear a winter coat and dress warmly for Trick or Treating this year?

Look at our Halloween cats!
Tommy is the orange cat.
Liza is the black cat.

They are waiting for their treats. Tommy can do a trick for a treat. He knows how to fist bump.

Wonders Unit 2 Week 1

New Chicks!

Do you remember when I told you a black hen was made a warm nest and snuggled herself down to try to hatch some eggs?

I would check the nest every day to see how the eggs, and the mother hen were doing.

I checked on Tuesday and some of them hatched!

I love looking at new chicks!
They are so cute!

One chick is still a little bit wet because it just finished hatching!

After the chicks hatched, the mother hen stayed on the nest for 2 more days.
Wednesday morning she was out and about letting her chicks explore the stall.

The chicks were born on October 1st.

I wonder how many are roosters and how many are hens.

We won't be able to tell for a few weeks. I'll watch to see which chicks grow bigger tail feathers, and which ones grow bigger.

I don't have to keep a heat lamp in the barn because the mother hen has lots of fluffy feathers. She knows when to call her chicks to gather underneath her to keep warm. She knows it's her job to keep the chicks warm and safe.

There were six eggs in the nest, but only 3 hatched. That's not unusual. Our hens usually hatch out about half the eggs. Some just don't grow properly inside the egg, so they don't hatch.

Chores on days like this are so much fun!

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It was fun visiting your school on Friday. It was really fun to teach you some fun facts about apples. You learned a lot about the tools I use to make cider. I'll have more photos about cider pressing next week.

While I was walking Mishka I found a rose bush that had rose hips all over it! It looked just like little red apples covering the big, green bush.

The scientific name for roses is
Rosaceae

The scientific name for apples is
Aplicus Rosacea

Almost everything around us has a regular name and a scientific name. The scientific name helps scientists put things in categories, and that helps them learn more about what they are studying.

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Echo was born February 10, 2014

Her new calf will be born the same week as Thanksgiving. This will be her fourth calf. How old will she be when she has her calf? Her last calf was born August 13, 2018. How old was she when she had her last calf?

I'm all done milking Echo until after she has her calf this fall. I don't have to spend as much time on chores because milking takes about 45 minutes from setting up the milker, to cleaning up all the equipment.

I don't know what we'll name the calf.
I don't even know if it will be a boy or a girl.

Maybe you can think of some names and send them to me. I would love to have your ideas on a good name for the calf. You can put them in the comments for this post, or you can write them on paper and give them to your teacher. 

Did you know you can choose to think anything you want?