OUR PLANS MULTIPLIED: Doing Stuff

OUR PLANS MULTIPLIED

In the beginning, JD adamantly only wanted two children. I thought that four would be perfect. Once we caught God's vision of putting orphans into families, our plan was multiplied by God. We are currently blessed with 12 children; five biological, six adopted and one more waiting in Ethiopia. Our first adoption was from the U.S., the next three were from Liberia, West Africa, and our last two were from Ethiopia. We are supporting our 12th child in Ethiopia after her adoption could not pass court.

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Doing Stuff

There is a lot going on and I often forget to stop and blog about it; sometimes I even forget to take pictures!

We are happy, happy, happy that it is spring, at least feeling like it. We celebrated one nice morning with fresh donuts.

Saturday was Tori's last weekend basketball game. See that blur going for the ball? That is her. She played really well and enjoyed the team. Her Saturday game was in the neighboring county that Alei lives in and Alei was hoping for her Dad to visit after the game with his drill.

I had a pressing matter that needed JD's attention more, however, so James and I showed up with the drill. James helped her with about three pieces of furniture and we installed a doggie gate across the kitchen for Toby to stay in while Alei is at work. Toby has never minded using the carpet if it isn't convenient to go out to the bathroom.

JD stayed home and built a cow stand that we can lock Mooster's head in for milking. I've been gored with her horns one too many times to even try to prepare her for milking without locking her in. So far, I have fed her the last three nights in the stand. After a week, I will start locking her in. Then I'll work to rubbing her and attempting to tie her tail to practice for when the calf comes and we need to milk.

We own too many fat goats at the moment and I'm pretty sure that Leia is close to having this springs babies. I thought I had bred her for a May delivery, but I think Vinny must have jumped the fence early as she is looking rather round and waddling.

Hans the pig, I mean goat

I have figured out that it's ok to have all the spring roosters live at your farm all summer; they basically just hunt bugs full time. What isn't a good idea, however, is to go into the winter or next spring with them. I had about 14 roosters move into the barn for the winter and poop on everything. Now that it is pretty outside, they are still living and pooping in the barn. A few days ago we put one rooster in the hen coop to fertilize eggs and a second snuck in. Turns out they spent the day fighting each other and we have two one-eyed roosters now. We are going to have to narrow down our rooster population, as there are more eggs in the incubator already that will result in a new pack of roosters along with the desired egg laying hens.

We haven't tackled cleaning the chicken coop yet, but it's close. We did rake all the gum balls out of the chicken mansion and put down a layer of fresh leaves for them to dig around in. Elijah was very helpful as you can see.

Today I finally started planting seeds in milk cartons. I sure hope they work out the way we hope and I get a jump start on my plants, so we can have an earlier harvest. Selah and Bella love to help plant.