New Members of the Family

We have done a lot this past week.  We got our potatoes and onions in the ground.  We are trying something new with the potatoes.  Robert read somewhere about planting the potatoes in straw and when it came time to harvest them, you just had to dig them out of the straw, easy peasy.

He wasn't sure how much straw we would need, so Robert got 10 bales, and used 1 1/2.  The kids had a some fun playing on the other bales.

The weather has been mostly nice this past week, so the kids have been outside a lot.  They also turned in the water, so we have water in the ditches.  Lindsey wasn't feeling good a couple of those days, but Taylor was and since we have water in our ditches she wanted to find out how different things float.  She first tried floating part of a coconut shell.  She had mixed results with that.  Then she made a raft using a  piece of styrofoam.

It went around in circles in our little pond, but it floated.

On Saturday we spent quite a bit of time outside working on our garden wall.  I have wanted a fence around the garden for quite a while, but I was figuring it would still be a while before we would get it fenced in.  When we came up with the idea of using the pallets and stacking rock against them it looked like I just might get my fence sooner than later.

The nice thing about living here is that there are lots of piles of rocks around.  Robert took the tractor and got 6 bucket loads of rock so far.  We will need quite a bit more, but I think it's going to look really cool when he gets it done.

For Mother's Day the kids made me toast and mango smoothie for breakfast.  They also all made me cards and got a pie for dessert.  It got even more eventful when I got a call from a friend who raises sheep.  We had talked about getting sheep before and my friend is wanting to slow down a little bit.  It's lambing season and she has been finding other homes for the lambs who need to be bottle fed and asked us at church if we were interested in raising some bottle feeders.  We said yes.  Then, when she called me, she had 2 ewes who had 8 lambs between them today.  There was no way that all of them were going to make it if someone didn't come and bottle feed them.  So, we now have 4 baby lambs.  One of them is really small and we aren't sure if she will make it, but we are going to try.  The other 3 are more hardy.  We have 2 ewes and 2 rams.

Becky seems to be pretty good around the lambs.  She was in there trying to figure them out, but she wasn't aggressive or anything towards them.

Taylor has named hers "Quinoa" because she said it's wool looks a little like the grain.

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 This one Rachel wants to name "Mary", but it's a boy.  Not sure if the name will stick or not.

This is "Lamby".  Lindsey named him.  He is the best eater right now.

So, the next couple of days are going to be full of fun and excitement as we learn all about bottle feeding lambs.  The kids are excited right now.  I hope that excitement sticks once the novelty wears off.  This brand of sheep are a dairy sheep.  They are smaller, but are supposed to give really good milk.  Who knows, maybe we will go into the sheep business and I will learn to spin and felt the wool.  We can milk them and make cheese and ice cream and maybe even soap.  We are really starting to have our own little farm here with our chickens, garden, and now sheep.  I guess Robert will make a country girl out of me yet.