I’m sure Brian is going to post with all that we have accomplished (Ed. to add, we were too busy to post!) but we’re still alive and working hard.
Amanda
Busy Weekend!
Reply
The Beginning of the End…
the end of the school year that is!!!
We have begun the end of studies.
Awana finished this week.
Science through our coop finished last week! We are using Considering God’s Creation for our primary class. Christian Kids Explore Physics is the text for our middle elementary class. We are using Apologia’s General Science, Abeka’s Physical Science, Biology and Chemistry for our highschool students.
We finished up the bulk of our unit studies this year! Our elementary children have finished a geography unit study, Presidential and elections unit study based on books, Lapbooking of missionaries by Hands of a Child and our colonial study that culminated in our trip to Williamsburg, Yorktown and Jamestown with the MOMYS.
Ok —> we probably had some fun on vacation too! This is the bulk of us at Hershey Chocolate World, in PA.
We have also been able to thankfully finish up some smaller things. Various children are all caught up in several things. I praise GOD for a year of progress.
A
Posting about workboxes, not leaving you hanging!
We created our workboxes and the nine elementary children loved them. It served the EXACT purpose I wanted it to, they are so excited about doing their work. We haven’t used them as consistently as I wanted to. My laptop got in the middle of a wrestling match so I haven’t been able to plan or print off what I want.
I also am thrilled that we were able to finish our missionary lapbooks from Once Upon a Child. (insert pictures here). That has taken up some extra fun time this last two weeks. For the next week, our extra fun time will be our Williamsburg binders. (no pictures yet!) Again, this is stymied by the lack of computer and printer.
Overall, I am thrilled with the workboxes, and am thankful I did the work to set them up.
Amanda
More Upgrades to our homestead
We have begun a few more upgrades at the same time. Since we are increasing our meat chicken count, we are moving our meat chicken yard to the back of our chicken coop. This will allow us to have a larger area. So we had to do some tear down of the existing fence
This also happens to be where the greenhouse is going (Project #2). We had lots of help!
- My wife helps to instruct on saw usage while I’m working on the frames
- Fun with Framing
- Steady now…steady
- What would we do without the 18V Dewalt?
Walls are Up!
Trusses
This is all we could accomplish on the greehouse before we could call it a day. We were supposed to get a storm that would dump about 14 inches of snow. One time when I’m glad the weatherman was wrong. Ok, the trusses and shelves were next and then the plastic. We’re ready now the real work starts.
Shleves are up and gravel is laid
Finished!
The last project we’re working on is the Pig and Turkey areas. My children worked hard on clearing out all of the overgrowth, trees and debris to make room for these 2 new animal additions this year. Pictures to follow
workboxes
Here we are prepping the workboxes… BEFORE
New Blog
am transporting posts from blogger and homeschoolblogger.com … stay tuned!
HSHS Momma
The Chickens are coming the Chickens are coming
Well Spring has finally sprung on the FamilyPlusHomestead and we’re in full swing. Every year we come out of the gate ready to hit the road hard and fast. I’m hoping we can maintain the momentum this year. We’ve already done our trash pickup, stick pickup and general toy pickup. In addition, we’ve made the preparation for our chickens and turkeys to arrive. As I mentioned in a previous post, we had some issues with some high flying chickens and a curious dog. We’ve decided to restock the layer and meat chickne base as well as add some turkeys to the mix. Recently, we were staying with friends on the way back from a trip out East. He mentioned that old refrigerators make great storage for animal feed and why don’t I use them for putting the baby chickens in. They are already insulated and are quite large so that’s what we did. Here’s his idea in action.
We removed the doors off of each Fridge or Freezer and then laid them down. You may be asking yourself, where did you get all those Freezers? We have been frequent contributors/shoppers on Freecycle. Those appliances usually only have a little life left in them. When they died, we moved them our to our machine shed….until now. Rather than paying $40 per appliance to have them hauled away, we’ve been able to use them for a good purpose.
Our chickens are doing great!
Rhode Island Reds
Buff Orpingtons
And last but not least our Broad-Breasted Bronze Turkeys
Broad Breasted Bronze Turkey
Glad to report all are doing well and we haven’t lost any of them 2 weeks into it. I’m also keeping a log book this year so I can keep better track of food/water consumption as well as growth and production. We have about 4 meat chickens that never made it to the butcher block last year as well as 4 layers. These are continuing to produce good eggs, pictured here with some happy egg harvesters.
Upgrades on the homestead
Part 1 of the homestead upgrades – The Chicken Yard. We were consistently having issues with our chickens getting out of the yard. The first 4 yrs we lived here, we did not have issues with the chickens getting out. Then we added some new breeds and tripled in size. Parts of our fence were small enough that some of the chicks got out and the rooster decided he needed to protect them as well and flew over. Once he did that the some of the other hens decided they weren’t going to be unprotected and next thing you know I had a host of free ranging chickens everywhere. The problem with that is that most of them hung out in the horse barn, eating the grain, dog food, cat food, whatever they could find; not to mention the presents they left behind (if you know what I mean) I see why dogs are meant to eat dog food. Anyway, I thought if my son would just put them all back and we block off the fence to keep the chicks in we’d be fine. Unfortunately, the taste of freedom was too much for them and they begin flying over our fence and then I found out also, that my son had been throwing them back over the fence (further boosting their flying confidence). I know you can clip/pull out the flying feathers. Just seemed a little inhuman to me. We’re trying to keep everything as much as possible as God designed it. Here’s the finished product after the 3rd snowfall:
Egg yields were good this year. Here’s a sampling of the differences in Egg sizes as compared to a white store-bought XL egg. The far left is a double-yolker. We had a chicken that was always laying double-yokes. The middle one is a normal single yolk and the far right is the white store-bought egg (obviously)
Fresh (non-caged) Benefits
Favorite Seed Companies… Mine and Yours!?
Why Heirloom Seeds are so important
From Mother Earth News:
Heirloom vegetables, fruits, flowers and herbs are varieties that have remained popular with home gardeners because they grow well and taste great. Loosely defined as plant varieties that have been grown for at least three generations (and sometimes for three or more centuries!), heirloom food plants are varieties that have been selected for their flavor, resistance to pests and diseases, and other traits important to home gardeners. Unlike modern hybrids, heirloom seeds are open-pollinated, which means they will breed true and can be saved by the gardener from year to year — an important consideration for food security and self-sufficiency. Also, heirloom seeds are never genetically engineered.
Our Faith, Our Family, Our Farm 