Building Fences

We have been busy building fences for the miniature horses. We started with their dry lot and have moved on to pasture fencing. In 2 weekends we have put up 86 feet of fencing and a 4ft gate. The kids enjoyed the fire we had burning both weekends and provided musical entertainment for us. We are separating the pasture in half, so there will be 2 halves. We are only trying to fence the first half right now...keep something accomplishable in sight, then go for the next stage. The horses have loved their freedom so far, it will be nice when they have 100% use of the whole pasture. Freedom sure beats me taking them out to exercise daily on a lunge line. The fence is 48"tall, post and board, and in between we have strung wire fencing with the 2"x4" rectangular openings. With this fence we can accommodate all sorts of things. We will not have to worry about our dogs running to China when accompanying us to work with the horses, and we will be able to keep the turkeys in. Lexi will be getting 4 turkeys this spring. The sole purpose for the turkeys is food, but I think it may be fun to just have them for show as well. I think this stage of the fencing still needs 200 feet or so, and a couple of gates, so busy we will continue to be.

'Tis the Season for Sugarin'

I spent today with a friend of mine and her poultry flock making yummy Maple Syrup. She is a novice and still learning tricks, but it is a fairly simple, but time consuming activity. She has been collecting sap from her Black, Silver and Red Maple trees this week, 50 gallons of sap was collected from 5 trees. A fire was started and the boiling process began . She made her first small batch last weekend. I got a small taste and wow was it big on flavor. I may have to get my own taps, technically called spiles and give it a whirl. The whole process is so relaxing. She has a very simple set up that works very well, so I thought I would share before I go take a shower and wash off all this fantastic cold spring day warm fire smell.

Free Pieced Letters

I have been having a very scrappy time lately making all sorts of things out of the scrap bin. I love making these free pieced letters, they are so definitely my style. The organic feel they have to me as they are being created really appeals to that side of me who craves no rules. We had a couple birthday parties to go to and a friend who needed a couple gifts to make them smile...so these are a few of the things we have come up with lately.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Carmen's class performed a wonderful celebration of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream last night. The kids rehearses, built props, rehearsed, gathered costume pieces, rehearsed, painted sets for the various scenes, and rehearsed some more. They did a wonderful job, every child should be very proud. I had the honor of helping the children organize their costumes and sewing like a madwoman. I am very thankful that we have been able to keep our kids at the school they attend over the years. I am always happy with the great stuff they are being taught.

Have a great day!

Fairy Costumes

This year Carmen's class is performing Shakespeare's Mid Summer Night's Dream...so I am helping make costumes. What better way to have fun than a great costume?!!! So, I have been making shoes for all the fairies...and are they ever entertaining to create for each child. I also made a few fairy costumes and a set of donkey ears.

Happy Valentine's Day

Our most favorite holidays are Valentine's Day and Halloween, what better times to use your creativity and come up with something wonderful. All the kids came up with very thoughtful tokens for their pals. Carmen folded a bunch of paper cranes and strung them with beds and cloth scraps to make wonderful ornaments. Anthony folded paper boats and added lots of colorful hearts. Vincent made crazy hearts with all manner of scrap bin finds. Isabella made cards with Love Bugs on them, while Francesca made Valentine Fairies. Gianina in her usual sparkly way made Cupid Wands for all her friends. Emilia was cute, as always. Hopefully you all had a meaningful day filled with love from the ones you hold dear.

Miniature Horses Have Arrived

We picked out 4 miniature horses in August, 2 weanling fillies and 2 geldings. We brought them home today. We have spent the last couple weeks in this freezing weather building mini sized stalls for them in our barn. So we would like to introduce you to Cedar Drives Diablo, Cedar Drives Patches, Cedar Drives La Bella Margherita, Cedar Drives La Bella Rosa.

Happy Halloween 2010

A pair of ghosts, a gnome on a toadstool, a skeleton, Little Red Riding Hood, Dorothy of Oz(and Toto), Max-King of the Wild Things, and a very small very sweet witch went out to haunt the neighborhood....they came back with bucketfuls of yummy sugary deliciousness. All is well on Halloween...one day of the year you can be anything in the entire universe. To all the kids and kids at heart...Happy Haunting!

Chickens and coops and runs

I keep trying to separate our chickens into groups that make sense.

*We have our big coop that John, the kids and I built last year. We still need to do a few things to it, but only finishing kinds of things. In the big coop we have our layer hens (Plymouth Barred Rocks, Dark Brown Leghorn, Black Leghorn, Black Australorps) and a couple fancy roosters(Black Australorp and Black Sumatra). The roosters need to be pulled out and given their own little rooster huts, but I haven't quite organized my ideas on this yet. We are getting plenty of eggs from these ladies, so I am quite pleased with how it has worked out. I am a little ready to thin the Barred Rocks out and get a few more new birds in there. But since the Barreds are the first chicks we ever got, this is a little more difficult for me to do, they are almost like pets to me.

















*We have the bantam coop which houses 6 little bantam birds of various breeds(white rock, partridge brahmas, buff brahma, mille fleur belgian bearded d'uccle, black silkie). This coop is perfect for the kids, none of the birds are aggressive, the coop is small and all things can be handled by the kids, they do 100% of the feeding, watering, cleaning, egg collection, run raking..all of it. All of the birds in this coop are super sweet, 3 of them are about 6 years old, so this is just a coop for fun and kids to enjoy their poultry experience. Last summer, the boys even built the run and gate themselves out of welded wire and J clips. I always love when you can give kids materials, let them know what you have in mind and walk away.














*A few years ago Anthony and I built an 8 foot by 8 foot pen for the kids to sit in with their rabbits and be able to play with them, with out worrying about them running away, or any predators. We only have 4 rabbits left now and they don't really try to run now when they are handled, so we turned the pen into a run and used the dogloo that came with one of our dogs for a coop. Our dogs are not outside dogs, so a dog house is useless at this point in our lives. Anyhow, we are using the dogloo with a modified door for our silkies we have them in black and white. Until the fair, our broiler birds, Dark Cornish, a dual purpose breed are living in with the silkies as well. We do not much care for the temperment of the Dark Cornish, so hopefully the kids will sell them at the small animal auction after the fair.


















* This weekend we finally finished putting together our coop and run for the Black Copper Marans. It has been one of those we will get around to it projects, a few minutes here and there, no big hurry and a grouping of dog crates to fill the gaps in the interim. Black Copper Marans lay dark brown eggs, and have a wonderful
disposition.



















*Carmen has 2 little BB Red Modern Game Birds that she adores. They stay inside when it is cold, but during the summer they have this cute tiny little coop they stay in.


















*And I am working slowly on "The Beach Cabana", made solely out of recycled materials. It eventually will house the silver phoenix trio we have.