Snow and Spinning

I hope you had fun playing in the snow this week. There was a lot of it! I shoveled the driveway on Monday. It took me 1 1/2 hours! Thankfully Tim helped for the last 45 minutes. It was a wonderful storm. We are so grateful for the winter snow in the mountains that will provide all the water we need during the summer!

There was so much snow that I couldn't drag the wagon to the barn.
I had to shovel a path from the house to the barn!

Scout and JJ love to watch and wait while I'm doing chores.
They keep an eye out for people or other animals that might come while I'm working.

There was so much wind and snow that the snow blew in through the slats in the hay barn.
It was a surprise because we looked at a lot of types of hay barns, and this one was supposed to keep the snow off the hay!

We are always trying new things on the farm. We will change the barn a little bit in the spring to see if it does a better job protecting the hay next winter. It's best when the hay stays dry all winter.

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The little chicks that were born in September are all grown up.
They are both roosters.
We already have a rooster so these two found a new home on Wednesday.

Chuck was an unexpected surprise in the barn this morning.
He doesn't belong on this side of the barn.
He broke through the fence.

Sometimes things happen that we don't expect. Sometimes we have to do extra work that we didn't plan for. It took a while to get all the animals back into the right areas this morning. It took extra time to shovel on Monday. 

When you have extra work to do, what goes through your mind? 

I decided that I could get mad and complain, or I could pet and give the animals some attention while I was herding them back where they belonged. I didn't mind spending the extra time working when I chose to think good things about the extra work.

I didn't mind shoveling the snow on Monday, either! I learned that it's all about my attitude and my thoughts! I learned that I can change my thoughts about what I have to do! I have all the power to make my day a good day no matter what happens!

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I decided that MissE and Chuck want to spend some time together. I think Chuck was tired of hanging out with the Curly and Side Kick.
I let MissE stay out in the pasture!
She is so excited to have a new part of the pasture to explore!

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Can you see the little plants growing?
I'm excited!
My family gave me an AeroGarden for Christmas.
The herbs are starting to sprout and grow!
It won't be long before I can use them when I'm cooking!

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Wow! It's cold outside! It's a nice day to do chores, then work on indoor projects.

I thought you might like to see some spinning so Matt took a few short videos for you to look at.

This video is really short. Can you see my foot pedaling? It's making the wheel on the spinning wheel go around and around. 

The wheel is attached to the pedal by a short cord.

When my foot works the pedal, the pedal pushes the wheel around.

This is what happens to the wool when I'm spinning it into yarn.

You'll have to watch very closely to see how the yarn winds onto the bobbin.
When the bobbin is full, I take it off and start a new bobbin.

Many years at Christmas I spin on a drop spindle at the Alpine Living Nativity. It's a lot of fun to answer people's questions and let them watch me.

Here is a 'fun fact' 

Did you know Mrs. Hahn used to spin, too? She did! She wanted to learn how when she was younger so we both took a class together on spinning wool into yarn.

If you have questions about spinning, I hope you write them down and send them to me. Or if you are reading this online, please ask your question in the comment section. I'd love to answer you!

Have a great 100th Day of School, and have a great week, too!

Then and Now

It rained a lot yesterday! Then it snowed last night.

It was a mucky mess in the barnyard last night when I went out. I was so glad that I have tall rubber boots to keep my feet dry!

I think a snow covered pasture looks as pretty as a pasture full of
green grass in the middle of summer.
Winter snow and rain bring the green grass of summer.

It snowed last night so it's hard to see the big puddles behind the barn.
Can you see the wet spots?
When I stepped in them the water went up to my ankles!
Chuck doesn't mind walking the the watery, mucky mess.
Curly and Side Kick don't like it at all!

I usually feed Chuck, Curly, and Side Kick by the fence. It was so rainy and snowy last night that I fed them inside their shelter. It was hard to get Curly and Side Kick to follow me through the big puddles into the shelter. They decided that they liked dinner more than they hated water on their hooves, so they followed me in and ate. 

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On a small farm like ours we do some things the old-fashioned way, the same way they did them a long time ago. Sometimes we do chores the way bigger farms do.

Feeding the animals is done the old way on our farm. I fill each bucket with the right amount of food for each animal. Some animals get more food than others because of the job they do. If a goat or cow is pregnant we give them more food. If they give milk, they get more food. If they aren't pregnant or aren't giving milk they get less food because their body isn't working as hard.

We don't milk the cow and the goats the same way. We milk the cow with a milker, which is how big farms do it. A milker needs electricity and it is a lot of equipment.

We milk the goats by hand. I only need a bucket and a cover to milk the goats, which is how farmers used to milk cows and goats a long time ago.




The milker is hooked up to a vacuum pump. A vacuum pump is just what it sounds like. It sucks air just like a vacuum. The vacuum sucks the air out of the big, covered milk tank. Your vacuum sucks air out of a tank, too, which sucks the dirt into a tank or a bag.

The vacuum pump pulls air out of the tank which sucks the milk out of Echo's udder.




I don't need anything special to milk the goats. I need a pail and a cover for the pail to keep the dirt out if the wind blows the hay around in the barn.

This is the filter for the milker. A filter keeps the dirt out of the milk
just the same way the cover on the goat milk bucket keeps hay and dust
from blowing into the bucket.

The white filter was inside the metal tube. The milk goes through the hose,
through the filter, and into the tank.

There are advantages having the vacuum pump and milker. It's fast, and it works without me standing there. While the milker is milking Echo I have time to clean her stall and put some hay in her feeder. If I milk Echo by hand, like I milk the goats, it takes me about 45 minutes. I only need a pail and a cover.

The are also disadvantages to the milker.  It cost a lot of money. It was over $2,000 to get a milker set up like the one in the video. We need electricity to run it, so if the power is out I have to milk Echo by hand. It takes about 20 minutes to clean, and costs money for filters.

When my neighbor was young he had to milk 5 cows every morning before he headed to school. He had to milk by hand because they didn't have milking equipment for small farms 70 years ago.

We decided on our farm that it was worth it to get a milker for the cow.

We decided that it's best to milk the goats by hand. I could use a milker on the goats, but I have to clean the inflations and hoses between each goat. The inflations are the parts that attach onto their udders. It's faster to wash my hands between goats than it is for me to wash inflations and hoses between goats.

It takes about 10-12 minutes to milk each goat. That's less than 30 minutes, which is faster than milking the cow. If I used a milker it would take me 20 minutes to clean the milker between each goat, that would be about 40 minutes of cleaning, plus 6-8 minutes for the milker to milk each goat, a total of almost an hour!

A long time ago when more people had small farms, the boys and girls would often be the ones that would do the milking. Quin and Xander like to help milk when they are visiting.

It makes sense for me to use the milker for the cow, and milk the goats the 'old-fashioned way' by hand.

I hope you learn about the way things were done a long time ago, and the way things are done now.  It's nice to know a lot of different ways to do things. You will be able to come up with new ideas and new ways of doing things if you know a lot of different ways to do things.

Questions!

Thank you for your questions! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas vacation. We did!

Yes, I have to work every day.
If I can't do the work, I have to find someone else who will do my work.

The animals on the farm depend on me to give them food and water every day. You depend on your parents to make sure you have food and water every day. If your parents go out of town for a few days, they make sure that someone else takes care of you.

This is a good question!
I go out twice a day to feed and water the animals.

In the morning I feed and water, AND I do all the milking. In the evening I make sure everyone has hay and their water buckets are full of water. It's important in the winter that the animals have enough food and water at night or they can't keep warm. If they don't keep warm, they can get sick.

We live in the middle of a busy city. We don't have many wild animals.
Some of our neighbors have raccoons and foxes in their yard, but our animals have been safe from the wild animals.

One of the other chores I do at night is to lock the chickens into their coop. Raccoons and foxes can't open the coop and kill the chickens at night. Sometimes chickens aren't in their coop. I have to gather them up and put them in their coop so they will be safe. Sometimes they are mad at me for locking them up!

Chickens don't know that I'm keeping them safe by locking them up while they are sleeping.

We don't have any plans to get pigs on our farm.
I would love to get pigs, but it's against the law in our town.

We have 3 cows.
Only 1 cow gives milk.

MissE is almost 5 months old.

She is so cute and friendly!
Another family loves her, too.
They already paid for her, but she will live her until Spring when the other
family has enough pasture for her to move.

Here's Chuck telling me good morning.
He's very friendly, too!
He's almost about a year old.

You remember Echo.
She is the cow that gives milk every morning.
She gives 4 gallons of milk every day!

We are kind to all our animals. We want our animals to be friendly and easy to work with. I do most of the work every day, all by myself. It's not safe for me to work alone with mean animals, so I make sure we have gentle animals on our farm.

I hope you make it a great week full of learning and growing and playing!

And I hope you remember that.....

Who did you help today?

Christmas 2018

I don't decorate a lot for Christmas. We keep it fairly simple. We don't have decorations in every room. Homes that are completely decorated are beautiful! Like most families, we have a lot of responsibilities which means that we don't have a week to spend 'putting up Christmas.'

This is our simple tree. Last year it was teal and silver. This year silver with some red flowers.
The lights are colored so it looks as pretty at night as it does during the day.
You can see Tim's large nutcracker by the tree. It's the only one that doesn't fit on top of the piano.

Tim has been collecting Nutcrackers for a long time! We give him one or two every year.
It's my job to clear off the top of the piano.
It's Tim's job to set them all up!
There are a few that need a little repair, but no one really notices
and we all enjoy them standing tall and looking festive at this end of the front room.
In the back, on the left, you can see a beautiful candle holder that Tim turned for me many years ago. It stays out all year because I love it so!

I should probably take the red and white quilt off the back of the couch.
It's there all year and some years I just leave it.
I made the quilt on the wall a few years ago. It was a lot of work on the embroidery machine
and I loved the challenge!

My friend and I painted so many of these nativity puzzles many years ago!
She wanted one for each child in her family, I wanted one for my family.
It was quite a project getting them all cut out, sanded, and painted!

I bought this Nativity puzzle from Bless This Mess when she had an Etsy store.
One of my dearest friends painted it (Melissa's mom) and I wanted something to remind me of her
and the love we share.

This lovely nativity reminded Bryon of Lladro. He spent 2 years in Spain and he fell in love with Lladro while he was there. He found this nativity many years ago in a shop in the mall and got it for me for Christmas. I don't know how he managed to save enough money, it was out of our budget. It's very dear to all of us.

Of course Santa needs a magic key to get into the house! We always lock the doors at night, and I'm sure Santa doesn't want to come down the wood stove chimney!
I made this a few years ago, too.
The grandkids and many other families have one
because it's so important to make sure Santa can get into the house to leave his gifts!

I hope you enjoyed the little tour of Christmas at my house!

I love this post about Christmas. Brad does a lovely job explaining the meaning and importance of this wonderful season. This year our family has seen so many dear people pass away. It's at this time of the year that I remember and miss them. I also remember all the other family members that have gone before me. At this point in my life everyone who knew me as a baby is gone. It is an odd feeling.

However, I love that during this time of year I feel especially close to all those wonderful people. I'm a little sad when the 'holidays' end because it seems that I miss them even more.

The traditions that we enjoy link us to those who have gone before us. They remind us of family and friends, and help us remember to spend time together with those we love now, to think about the Savior, and to make memories with the people we love.

With so much to do and so much fun to have during this season remember that we can still do something nice for someone else every day! The nice things I do, I do in memory of the family and friends that have gone before me. They would love me to reach out to lift and strengthen others that are also feeling loss at this time of year.

Water Barrels in the Winter

It's cold outside!

Echo has a big heater inside her called a 'rumen.' Cows have 4 stomachs and one of them (the rumen) produces a lot of heat. We make sure Echo has plenty of food and water so she stays warm even when she's covered with snow.

JJ has a warm fur coat on.
Her coat helps keep her warm in the winter.
She doesn't mind the snow!

Scout has a warm fur coat, too.
His coat keeps him warm, too.
You can tell that his fur keeps him warm because the snow is on his back.
When you wear a coat the snow stays on the outside of your coat, too.

Midnight usually stays inside the barn when it's snowing and cold.
She has a warm fur coat, too. She doesn't like the snow even though she has a nice coat.
She likes to find a dry place in the sun to warm herself.
She's about 10 years old, that's very old for a barn cat.

Water is really important for animals. They need to have water to keep healthy. It's been very cold outside so their water freezes.

We use electric water heaters and electric buckets for the water.

Do you see the round piece of metal at the bottom of the bucket?
That is a heater that keeps the water warm enough that it doesn't freeze.
The animals are a little sloppy and they've dropped hay into their water.

This bucket has an electrical chord that plugs in.
The bucket has a heater inside the bottom, you can't see it
because it's enclosed inside the plastic.

This is a special hose.
The hose has a heater in it!
It keeps the water from freezing inside the hose.
That's important because if there is ice in the hose we can't use it.
If we can't use the hose then we have to carry buckets of water to fill all the barrels.
That's a lot of work! We would have to carry 14 or more buckets of water every day
to fill up all the barrels. 

Water is important for healthy animals. If they have enough clean food and water they can stay warm and healthy during the winter, even when they live in a barn with no heaters.

There is also a heater in the water that the chickens drink, but the chickens don't mind eating snow if they aren't in the pen. The cows, sheep, and goats don't like to eat snow or peck at ice to get their water so we make sure they always have water, not ice, in their barrels and buckets.

Heating water takes a lot of electricity so this year we put solar panels on
the roof of the barn. They help pay for the extra electricity we
need to keep the water from freezing.
We have a great place for the solar panels.
Not everyone has as nice a place for the solar panels as we do!

The little tree by the barn has solar lights, too!
I love turning the Christmas lights on when I do the barn chores at night.

Especially during this holiday season remember that....

Animal Feeders

Do you remember the types of dishes and bowls and cups you used during Thanksgiving dinner? Some dishes were probably flat, some were more like bowls. Each bowl or dish is used on purpose to hold each type of food.

The animals on the farm have certain types of feeders, too. We use the word "feeder" for something that holds animal food.

This is the feeder on the milk stand.
It's called a 'hang over bucket' because it hangs on a bar or a piece of wood.

This is what it looks like with feed in it.

We don't wash the feeders very often. People need clean dishes, bowls, and cups to eat out of. Animals don't need to have their feeders cleaned that often.

This is Echo's 'hang over bucket'.
It's much bigger than the goats' bucket because Echo's head is much bigger!
This is the same size bucket that horses eat out of, too.

The chickens eat from a hanging feeder.
I pour the feed into the top and it fills a dish at the bottom.
The chickens are so messy that I put a rubber feeder underneath to catch all the food that falls out.
The chickens can still eat the food in the rubber feeder and it doesn't get wasted by falling all over the ground.

This is how we feed hay inside the stall.
The fence holds the hay and the goats can pull out what they want to eat.
We take the hay that's on the floor and bring it out to the chicken pen.
We put it inside their nesting boxes, and sometimes spread it on the ground.
The chickens love to eat the leftover hay.

This is the feeder we use for Echo and the little goats.
It's really a horse feeder, but Echo doesn't mind it.
We like to feed her outside because she always poops while she's eating!
We don't have to clean the stall as often if she poops outside.
The feeders are all under some sort of roof in the winter so the food doesn't
get spoiled by snow and rain.

What about water?

You drink from a cup or a bottle, but that doesn't work well for most animals.

The white part of the container is filled with water.
There is a float at the bottom so all the water doesn't spill out on the ground.
Look closely and you will see a black cord coming out of the top of the waterer.
That cord is attached to a heater that sits at the bottom of the bucket.

I'm sure you've noticed that there is a lot of ice on the playground, and maybe around your house. The animals can eat snow, but they like liquid water better. If they have enough water and food, and if they have a place to get out of the rain and snow, they stay warm without a furnace like we have in our homes.

The blue barrel, and the green barrel, both have electric heaters at the bottom.
You can see the chords plugged into the grey box on the post.
Echo, River, and Serenity use the green water barrel.
Misty, Clover, and Annie use the blue water barrel.

The hose also plugs in! It's hard to get water into the barrels if the hose is frozen. Someone was really smart and figured out a way to put a heating wire inside a hose so that farmers can use a hose in the winter instead of having to fill buckets of water, then dumping them into the barrel where the animals drink.

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Every morning Scout, JJ, and Midnight like to have a treat in the barn.

JJ gets her sip of milk from an old plastic feeder on the floor.

Scout gets his sip of milk in an old metal pan near the milk stand.

Midnight gets her sip of milk in an old metal lid.


Bubbers used to love drinking out of a running faucet.