Country Living

This is my first post on my first blog. I have been reading the blogs of several friends, and I thought I would give it a try too. It should be fun, if I can get it figured out alright. I am by no means computer literate.

We were very busy this weekend. My hubby and boys cut a lot of sod from the back of our property, and moved it up around the house. It's sure been a blessing to have access to sod for free. He estimates we have already saved about $2500.00 in free sod.

Meanwhile, we had to haul our goats over to a neighbor's house. They are going to live there now. We have to reclaim our land for agricultural pursuits. Pictured above, are our 2 female goats, Rosie, and her baby Petunia. Rosie is 2 1/2 yrs. old, and her baby is about 7 mos. old. They sure are sweet, and we will miss them in our back yard, but at least we can visit them everyday if we want.

I did my work inside the house this weekend. There is never an end to the piles of laundry, but I am quite caught up at the moment. I also made my 2nd batch of applesauce with the help of B, of course. At 4 yrs. old, she likes to help quite a bit. Hopefully she's learning at the same time. So now we've got 24 pints of applesauce in the freezer. The trick is to get it into the freezer faster than the kids can eat it! We also made 2 batches of gluten-free bread using a new recipe. It worked very well, and I think we like this recipe the best of any we have tried so far. I guess I was in the kitchen quite a bit this weekend. Yesterday we made potato leek soup for the first time. Boy was it good! Even the guys liked it and asked for seconds. I froze some, so we'll see if it thaws well. I really want to try and put away some things in the freezer for meals in the future when time for cooking is somewhat lacking. Thanks, M, for the inspiration!

The guys had their heart set on dove hunting this evening after working all day, but after their sod duty, it began to rain, and by the looks of the radar, will not let up for a while. (And thank God for the rain! We need it so bad....) They actually took it pretty well, and will try again this week sometime. Now, if I could only get them to put their camo, shotguns, and shells away! It seems like with guys, things just end up where they are cast off....we'll have to work on that. It's definitely a case of "Like Father, Like Son", only X 2 sons, not one.

C is so funny, though. He was hoping to "kick up the bobcat" as they trekked about for the doves. We believe there is a bobcat den on the line between our property, and that of our neighbor's land. We have seen the bobcat(s) several times. Everybody's seen them except for my hubby. He's still miffed about that. We have seen a panther just a 2 blocks from our house. We have also seen bald eagles, great-horned owls, red fox, numerous raccoons, coyotes, and various types of snakes, frogs, lizards, gopher tortoises, turtles, etc. C and my hubby saw a large coyote again this weekend. C thought it was a really big fox, because it had a tan-colored tint to it.

I read a book yesterday. It was pretty good: Brooklyn Rose, by Ann Rinaldi. I really like juvenile historical fiction. Even better, it was somewhat based on a true story; the grandmother of the author.

We are headed to another orchestra class tomorrow. This time it will be a lady playing her harp. It's a preview of sorts for string instruments, before our strings class in another 2 weeks. So far, we've been to 3 other orchestra classes in the series: percussion, wind, and brass. They have been very good so far.

Well, I guess that'll be all for my first post. It was actually pretty harmless. Of course, it's not posted yet. I don't know if I can erase something if it turns out wrong! It's such a learning experience. I guess I can learn in our homeschool, too!