Category: Homeschooling

Listing Animals

We are listing animals for sale. I have the pot belly pigs listed, and someone has already said they would like to come pay for them tomorrow and pick them up on Saturday. I will be listing some of the goats soo too. We have a couple of llamas that will need to find new homes as well. Though they are old, or one that is young and needs to breed elsewhere because he is related to the girls we are keeping.

If the pigs do go, then we will lower our feed bill substantially, which is great! I welcome that. It is an expensive hobby to keep animals around for fun. Having some money free should allow us to focus in on other hobbies, too. We plan to get back into this animal business on the other side of a move.

This weekend we relaxed again. Missus has a lot of stress at work right now, and needs these weekends to come down from it a bit, and get her head back to Earth. We had our grandson by, too. That is always fun! We did comb the rabbits, and picked and carded some llama fiber.

This week coming will likely see us putting the new oven in, and hopefully getting that trailer in the front yard cleaned out and moved empty into the back. The weather should be cooler, so I really should get the chainsaws sorted and ready to cut some firewood down to size ready for splitting. I keep putting it off for cooler weather, so I won’t overheat doing it.

My spare time is spent looking for hand tools for woodworking. There are a few I want to get so I can get going on specific projects. There are a few specific tasks I would like to be able to do, and while some could be done with power tools, there is just no need for all the noise and danger of power tools for what I have in mind. It is getting time to order a new tool as soon as it is available from the tool maker, so I am getting excited, if you could not already tell. There is in fact one that I am getting when it is available no matter, even if I have to pay it on credit. It looks that useful. It is a tongue and groove router, and in my thinking, it is going to do a lot more than just allow lapping of wood panels. I see it for inserting backs, making drawers, and even making cabinet drawers with. We’ll see if I am right in only a few days after one comes available!

Missus has shown me a bobbin lace pillow that she likes, and I would love to be able to frame the wood pieces of it for her ready for her to put together the padding and cover. I think we can do this. I’ll need to get her some good wood, rather than doing it in pine and having it causing her troubles to do it being a softer, inferior wood to something like oak, which I think would hold pins for the cover much better.

So that’s where we are at on a Sunday night. The school week is about to start up again, and I have more than a few things to do this week, though none as stressful as helping little one through a meeting with her teacher, or getting her set up for testing, as we did last week!

Today Is A School Day

We are not busy today. But we are! Our youngest is in class this morning, then I have a meeting with her teacher this afternoon right after lunch, then youngling has a test that she has to do to see where her reading level is at the moment. Happily, I think she is doing better than she will admit to herself. Her trouble is, I think she realizes that when she admits to what she can do, and she tries a little harder to do it, she thinks she will have to work harder than she does right now. So today we are going to put in place some ideas to help move her along.

There are no plans for our older boy to come by with his son today. He might turn up on his own, but we don’t know and have no formal plan. Grandson will be over this weekend though, and that ought to be fun!

I have decided to commit to my hand tool workshop, and have a new scrub plane coming in the post today. Despite the status through package tracking indicating that it has been in the local city for the last three days, it looks like it is going to show up on the planned time, unless they drop it off with the post office to have them do the originally planned last mile delivery. Package delivery being the highest anxiety I have today, life is not bad.

The scrub plane is a roughing plane that helps get a piece of wood worked down to shape and size fast, as it removes a lot of material. I have had hits too that it can make a lovely rough finish, but I will have to see that when it comes.

Each payday, I plan on ordering one or two tools (depending on the combined price) and building up the workshop with tools needed to make some furniture. I want to be able in the end to cut down a tree and make a dressing table or chair from it with a relatively decent finish to it. All excess wood will go to the heating arrangement on the house. That’s the goal, anyhow. It is a motivator in moving, too, since I would greatly benefit by having a woodlot of several acres.

Well, I don’t like to talk specifically about my goals because that seems like a temptation for things to go wrong, but there we go. Braving the commitment and the possibility to failing and having to admit it is a lesson I need in my school today.

Smoke: Many Summer Mornings

Smoke in the air over our place at 8:30 this morning, August 31, 2021

It is heartbreaking to know that the smoke that hangs over us is from places where forests and towns and homes are being destroyed. I know what it is like to see the glow on the horizon in the night skies, to see the smoke billowing up in the day, making the sunlight look red at midday. I know what it is like to wait, and hope that it does not burn towards town, but to not know if it is going to be safe. But I don’t know beyond that. I don’t know what it is like to lose everything, or to run from hell.

We awoke this morning to this in the sky. It is a pall overhead that only hangs there, menacing if you are old enough to remember clear skies in summer, and days that shone bright, hot, and happy. Things are changing in this world, and not necessarily for the good.

We are looking to move the farm somewhere away from our lovely little mountain valley. But West has not got a lot of appeal when these mornings are blown our way from it. Plus the earthquakes, floods, mudslides, population, and everything else that is there, kind of push me along. I have seen them all first hand, and while it is amazingly beautiful out west from here, it I have been there, and done that. I’d like a change.

One of the kids is starting school right at the moment I am typing this, and I everyone has had breakfast but me. Everyone has their day started, but me. I need to go get something to eat, then get my animal chores done, preferably, before the second child starts class, too. I just wanted to jot down some thoughts, and show this image above.

The First Day of School

The girls officially started school today, which interprets as, the younger one had an hour long class, and the older one helped me get her logged in on time and in the right place, and get her papers printed off for her to have ready for class. The older one will begin classes tomorrow, but as of yet, I don’t see either of her electives working out, and we have to get that sorted out as quickly as possible!

I let the work on the homestead go for today, apart from regular chores, in order to focus on the girls and their preparedness.

It is worth noting though, that the chickens are laying about four eggs a day among the new egg flock, the Buff Orpingtons. They are still in the appendage cage next to the egg coop as the pea-chicks are still too small to risk them in the same coop together. They are too valuable to lose to hens that are prone to pecking as a means of keeping order, then pecking an injured bird clean to death once they have ordered it.

All the other animals on the farm appeared to be fine today. Nothing was out of order.

The weather is lovely right now. It is a strange late August! Today’s high was 84°F. That was the high recorded on my weather station. It was reached in the evening, making today a very bearable day for most of it, and the forecast calls for cooling temperatures over the next ten days. Show me where I can live like this year round, and I will show you my new home. When I was a kid, I think we called that California.

I expect this week will remain not busy, apart from maybe when we go get our glasses, or when I go get groceries. I plan to keep week one of school available for the kids as they get rolling in their online classes. Then it is probably out to the woodpile for me. I also have a few animals to try to sell. But most important is making sure they are set for success and we all know their schedules. They also have homework and chores to keep up on.