Quiet Pastures

And just like that, my whole world has changed....

I wake up, look out the kitchen window, and there are my cows, standing in front of the barn, waiting for their winter hay.  The ground is covered by about two inches of snow now.  Not much grass left poking through.  The air is cool.  There isn't much romping around going on out there these days.  They're quiet and patient and waiting to eat.  Standing in the hay zone, waiting for hay to arrive.  Where they will stand eating for the rest of the day.

But wait...  Why am I looking at cows?  Since when are they not chased off to wait their turn?  Oh...

Goliath died.  We went out one morning to do chores, and he was laying down.  Goliath has been a difficult horse for some time.  He had string halt.  Special diet.  Always a fight to keep weight on him.  He laid there looking at us sorrowfully.  We tried our best to get him on his feet.  He wouldn't budge.  Hubby finally said it was time to let him go.  Put him out of his misery.

Goliath, last fall.

That was about two months ago.

Goliath was hubby's favourite.  He only worked with Blondie once this year.  He gets frustrated with the actual work involved with working with horses.  I mean, he can work with them.  They are amazing animals.  But a days work with the Belgiums yields so much less than a days work with equipment.  And hubby is not home very many days.  There is always more work to do than he has time for.

Blondie.  The working girl.

Bella has never been worked here.  Hubby harnessed her once, in the beginning, and she didn't cooperate.  Since he was just learning, and Blondie was more cooperative, and then later, Goliath was such a pro- he never got back around to Bella.  She was #1's 'pony' for a year or so.  It was amazing to watch them run barrels.  But her wide girth was hard on his small legs.  When we bought more riding horses he lost interest in riding her.  She was only taken out of the pasture for deworming and ferrier this year.

Bella.  The REALLY big pony.

And along came winter.  Our hay guy has had some medical issues.  Our winter hay hasn't arrived.  He's not ready to do a days work loading, transporting, unloading hay.  He's been bringing us two bales, twice a week in his pick up truck.  The herd plows through that in no time.  We've been supplementing with our small square bales- the goat hay.

And the whole thing got me thinking.  And we discussed it.  And it was time to move on.

Thunder sold first.  He was the little pony stallion that we bought for #2 in the spring.  He was a sweet heart, but easily distracted by the girls.  If no one was in heat, he was a joy.  But with 5 mares around, he seemed to have more fussy days than good days.  And rather than being fun, it all seemed like a lot of work to #2, when it was much easier to grab Tori or Sugar and go for a ride.

Thunder

Bella and Blondie went on Monday.  It was hard to let them go.  They've been a part of our family for so long.  But it was time.

Along with the girls went our future in sustainable farming.  Sort of.  We had dreams of harvesting our own hay, plowing our fields, growing our oats, harvesting our oats...  with horse power.  Without relying on fossil fuels.  The thing is, we were using massive fossil fuels to feed them.  Buying hay from another farmer.  Transporting it here.  Moving the bales with the tractor.  And all for a dream.  We're no way near ready to harvest anything.  I now know better than to start plowing.  We're still working on grass management to feed the crew through the summer.  We have many fences to build.  It all seems kind of crazy when you consider the relief our whole system will have by not having them here now.  Maybe some day we'll be ready to work with horses.  But right now it's kind of bass ackwards.

The hardest part is looking out the window first thing in the morning.  And missing their huge bodies watching the house.

There are new watchers now.

And I will adjust.  But it will take time.

Back to School

So, how about a homeschool post, lol.  Winter is coming!  It really is.  One of these days I'm going to wake up in the morning to two feet of snow, and the sun is not going to come out and melt it all away.  One of these days.  It really is going to happen!

 One of the things I have always loved best about homeschooling is the freedom to work on our own schedule.  We don't have to do school from 9-3.  We don't have to do school from Monday to Friday.  And we don't have to do school from September to June.  If we want to do school in our jammies sprawled out on the living room floor at midnight on a Sunday- it's allowed!  It's encouraged!  It's preferred!

  Well, by most of us anyway.  We do have one weird little morning person here, but the rest of us are night owls.

So, a little explanation first for non homeschoolers.  There are three general types of homeschoolers.
1) school at home.  Where the classroom is kind of recreated at the kitchen table.
2) unschoolers.  Where the classroom doesn't exist, and the child follows his own interests, learning through life experiences.
3) eclectic.  Where the classroom shows up occasionally, or for certain subjects, but a lot is still done through life experiences.

We are eclectic.  We do math and English at the kitchen table on a pretty regular basis through the snowy season.  The kids use work books.  I teach.  They do spelling lists & tests.

We have, from time to time over the years, found some good science work books.  I've printed some online health units.  We have some geography work books that we started last year but never finished, too.  Those get tossed out now and again, and we do a unit study on the subject at hand.  They're not a part of the daily routine.

We watch a lot of TV.  Which is kind of funny, considering there are a whole host of homeschoolers who don't own tvs, or only use them for videos...  We watch a lot of TV.  Since my big kids were little, and totally hooked on Bill Nye the Science Guy & The Magic School Bus.  Two awesome shows, that as a mom, and their teacher, I had a really hard time telling them to turn off the TV to come do their school work.  As they got older, they really got into Myth Busters, and documentaries.  And there are few historical movies that I myself can easily walk away from, even though I know they've been Hollywoodized...  My kids, of course, figured out early how to use that against me (we started out school at home).  They figured out that as long as they kept the tv on the Discovery Channel, or the History Channel, that mom was likely to leave them be.

We also love, love, love computers.  I am a total addict myself.  In the early years we tried to keep it schooly.  They had questions.  The internet had answers.  We looked up all kinds of stuff, from Alcatraz to Komodo dragons.  We bought educational software.  Jump Start Explorers was a family favourite.  #1 & #2 Were about 7 & 8, playing a jump start game, when they asked me to teach them long division.  They had to get the answers right to progress in the game, so we got out the white board, I gave them a quick lesson, and they spent the afternoon between the white board and the computer.

We love field trips.  When we lived down south we had memberships to the Children's Museum & the Ontario Science Centre.  We took day trips to all of the local small town museums.  We went to a lot of Touring Players shows.  We met up with other homeschoolers for Science Club, day trips to police stations, fire departments, pioneer villages.  There were three large, active home school groups there, with all kinds of events & activities going on.

We learned how to do things differently.  Our Geography 'class' was a World Map on one wall, and a map of Canada on another wall.  We watched a lot of tv.  and movies.  I may have mentioned that already.  When the kids watched Lilo & Stitch, we went to the world map & found Hawaii.  When we watched The Amazing Race, we went to the world map and followed their travels.  When we watched Survivor, we went to the world map and found New Guinea.  When we watched the news, we went to the Canada map and found that town.

Phys. Ed.  Farm kids.  Enough said?  They have played some organized sports- baseball & soccer.  They have sports night at cadets, and lots of marching.  But mostly they are just healthy, active farm boys.  They play outside.  They run through fields.  They shovel manure.  They carry firewood.  They ride horses.

Art has ranged from simple crayons & paper, to painting rooms & buildings.  From crafts made with paper & glue, to crafts made with wood & nails.  From the recycling bin treasures to the expensive art supplies.

And we talk a lot.  About everything.  All the time.

The unschooly stuff doesn't stop outside of 'school hours'.  They keep learning, asking questions, watching tv, using the internet.  #2 reads for pleasure.  #1 listens to audio books for pleasure.  They make stuff because it's fun for them.  It doesn't stop because it's 3:45.  It doesn't stop because it's August.  It's a life style.

So, when I say 'back to school', it's the work books I'm talking about.  Two hours a day for 6 months is plenty of time for a year's worth of school.

We start when the snow starts.  I am a hermit.  I hate to go outside in the snow and cold unless it's absolutely necessary.  So I work my ass off from spring to fall.  When the snow comes, I stay indoors.  I do school with the kids.  We play board games.  We watch movies.  We curl up with a blanket & a good book in front of the fire.

I am ready for winter.  We are done this years chores.  We've got a head start on next spring's chores.  I am ready for winter.  I am ready for a good book and a warm fire.

Firewood & Fall

We have been so lucky this year. It's still autumn. Not news to most of the world, but here in the north, it's a little odd to still see grass and warm sunny days.


We finished filling the basement. Quite impressed with myself and my boys.

Basement

6 Rows. It's never held six rows before.


So... now what? Should we refill the long rows along the side of our house? We still haven't built a proper wood shed. Should we build a little temporary A-frame wood shed? It would store another 3 or 4 cords.


Nope. #2 takes the bull by the horns. He's the one that helped Grandpa build the green house. He's going to build us a wood shed the same way. He is 13.

He did build it himself. Only needed help putting the beams across the top and sides. I am so impressed with that boy.

Putting on the roof.  Vapor barrier plastic.  Slippery.

The weather held. We kept cutting wood. And cutting. And cutting... Wow. Is winter coming? Usually it's a scramble to fill the basement. This year, we've got a wood shed. And it's nearly full!

And we've still got this mess to cut amd pile...

We're so far ahead of where we usually are, we even left a present for my brother.

A-frame wood shed in background, blue.

#2 and #1 also built this lean-to for their other grandpa.

We've been clearing old trails at my parents new place. We've got a trail cut from our place to theirs. We worked on their trail to the creek bridge. It's all downhill from where we left off, and I didn't feel safe continuing. As nice as the weather's been, it's probably still too cold to take the truck for a swim in the creek. And now we're working on another trail that goes back to a natural spring. The trails are pretty old, and haven't been cleaned up in about 15 years. It's pretty easy pickings for firewood. A lot of dead fall.


And since we're so far ahead, we started getting a head start on spring. I mixed up a bucket of seed- grass, clover, beans, broccoli, lettuce, romaine, pumpkins, gourds, melons, swiss chard. Maybe a few other things that I've forgotten.

I walked through the pasture, tossing them out in the front corner, in the cropped grass section. Then we ran a third strand of barbed wire around. When we put the two strands up in the spring we ran out of wire. The two strands kept the horses out, but the cows walked in between. It was on the plan for next summer, but as long as the weather co-operates, we might as well get ahead on a few extra chores.


Two more loads of firewood should finish off the wood shed for this year. If the weather still holds after that, we'll start stringing barbed wire along the property line.


The horses started wandering out of the back pastures when the frost killed the leaves and brush. Once they could see through the trees the figured they could go wherever they liked. They've been back in the pasture since then, eating bales of hay.

Rita and Sugar

So, here we are.  The last day of October.  No snow.  It has snowed.  Almost every day.  But it keeps melting.  The ground isn't frozen.  Still fall.

Happy Hallowe'en!

Cap Gun Training

At Linda's request...

I mentioned that we had done cap gun training in this post.

Linda said
"Cap gun training? Hmmm...does that keep them from being frightened of any loud noise? Now that I think of it, it seems that any dog needs to be unafraid of a gunshot so it could be a protector. So, how is best to train a dog with a capgun? I think this calls for a whole post."

Yes, the idea is to keep them from being frightened of loud noises.  If you play with guns, and have a gun shy dog, it can cause a few problems.  Likewise, if you've ever had a dog afraid of a thunderstorm, or kids shrieking...  you get the idea.  Some gun shy dogs will hide in a corner.  Or hide behind their owners.  Some will howl.  And some will really freak out and rip your house apart.

Ebony is very gun shy.  Luckily, she is mostly of the hide in a corner variety, but occasionally will cause damage as well.  She is well aware of what makes the loud bang, and starts shaking and runs to hide as soon as she sees the man (or the woman) with the big noisy stick.  This makes her impossible to hunt with, as well as a bit of a pain in the ass at times.

So, new puppies mean cap gun training time.  I don't know if this can be done with older dogs or not.  I know with Ebony, once she figures out that we're training, she will run to hide when we fill her dish.  With puppies though, it's a pretty easy procedure.  Puppies are quite focussed on their food.  You set out a dish of food and let the puppy take a couple of good sized gulps, then fire a cap gun.  The first few times may startle the pup, but usually not enough to stop eating.  After a week or so the pup will accept that loud noise means food.  Food is good.  Therefore, loud noise is good.

After a couple of weeks we start to vary the routine.  Sometimes two shots close together.  Some times two or three shots a little further apart.  Sometimes no shot at all.  After a couple of months, I start feeding them outside, and firing larger guns.  First the .22, then the 308.  The 30-06 is last.  It's bang is loud enough to burst your ear drums if you're standing in the wrong spot.  With the bigger guns I use special treats, such as liver or kidney- things they wouldn't get in the house.  This helps prepare them for hunting, because they get the guts in the bush.

The cap gun doesn't need to be anything fancy or special.  I buy mine in the kids section of the dollar store.  Actual feeding times are required though.  If you usually leave a dish of food down all day long, you won't be able to establish the hunger/reward/loud noise combination.

I also recommend that you take some kind of treats with you on the first few hunting trips.  Waldo was very frustrated with me and all the loud bangs the first few days of partridge season, when my gun wasn't sited properly and I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn.  A few chunks of weiners calmed him down immensely.  He much prefers when I actually hit the partridge though.

Doe, A deer, A female Deer...

She came back!  This time she let me play with the zoom on my camera, so you can actually see her.  I know, she's still a blur, but it's the best my camera will do.  She's so pretty!

Hubby was with me this time, and he says, "man, she'd look good in the freezer."  I don't think so!  The bucks and the kids, I'm fine with.  But leave my doe alone.  And any other doe you see out there in the bush.  I'd love to see her again in the spring, with Bambi in tow.

Dorie's Home!

This is my girl, home in our pasture.  Dorie is a redish coloured meat cow, possibly some kind of Hereford/Limousin cross.  She was my birthday present two years ago.  I know, some people would not appreciate a meat cow as a present, but that's just the kind of girl I am.

We bought Dorie at auction, bred.  She was pretty shy, but had a taste for corn, so it wasn't too long before she would munch out of a bucket we held, and let us pet her.  She got fatter, from February, through spring.  We were very excited to see her calve.  Unfortunately, we don't have that kind of luck.  About a month before she was due, she got kicked by a nasty horse we had for a short time, and went into premature labour.  The calf was breached, and things weren't going well.  We had some help from a neighbour, and managed to get the calf out eventually, still born. 

We milked her.  Yup, no kidding.

The neighbours said don't do it.  She'll be too nasty & impatient.  The hay guy said don't do it.  She'll only give 1/2 a cup of milk a day.  It won't be worth your time.

We said phooey on them.  Where did the family milk cow come from any way?  In the pioneer days, folks didn't generally keep a bunch of different breeds.  They were lucky to have any multipurpose cow, and drink the milk, make cheese, and raise the calves for beef.  Dorie was the only cow we owned.  We milked her.

And for the record, she either took to milking like a pro, or beef calves drink a whole lot more than people realize.  Dorie gave us an easy 4L per day at her peak.  We drank lots of raw milk.  We made some paneer cheese, but didn't care for the texture.  We made butter, about a pound every 4 days.  We used the buttermilk in bread.  We made yogourt.  We drank a lot of milk...  For about three months.

Then Dorie got frisky.  Well, horny, to be blunt.  She broke out of the pasture three times, and walked about 5 miles, through the bush, to the hay guy's farm.  She made some friends there, but he didn't have a bull, so it didn't cure her condition.  He told us she was lonely, and we needed more cows.  Winter came, and she stayed put.  Until the first nice, sun shiny day of spring.

We still had about three feet of snow, but the tricky girl broke out, and followed the snowmobile trails back to the hay guy's farm.  We left her there for a couple of weeks.  We went back to the auction and bought Mindy and Maddy- two Hereford heifers, and Susie, another bred cow, a Charolais.  That kept her happy for a bit.

Until we lost Susie.  She died during delivery in the middle of the night.  Her first calf, Nelly, came out fine.  She had a second calf who was breached.  We lost them both.  Nelly is still doing great!

A few weeks after Nelly was born, Dorie decided she'd had enough of hanging out with these young 'uns.  Her escape was aided by #1, who forgot to chain a gate.  Nelly stayed put, but Mindy & Maddy decided to follow Dorie off on her adventure.  We chased them down, managed to get them halfway home twice, but they kept veering off into the bush.  Mindy got seperated.  We eventually caught up to Dorie and Maddy, and convinced them to walk into the neighbour's pasture.  Mindy remained missing for awhile.

The plan had been to send Dorie to the neighbour's to be bred anyway.  She just decided to head out that way on her own a little sooner than planned.  Mindy came home all on her own later that night.  Maddy spent the summer at the neighbour's with Dorie.

We finally brought Dorie home last week.  She's not as friendly as she used to be, but I'm sure it won't be too long before she decides she likes us again.  I am so happy to have her home!  The pasture just wasn't the same without her!

Puppies!

We have been a four dog family for many years. Last summer was very hard on us when Marvin was hit by the school bus and passed away. Within weeks, we took Maggie into the woods with us while we were getting firewood, and she ran off. She wasn't a fan of chainsaws, and I don't know whether it was the noise, or if she smelled something worth chasing, but she was gone. We never found her. Within a month, we lost two of our beloved pets.

They were more than pets and companions though. They were our security team- letting us know when something was amiss around the farm. Toe warmers at night. Guardians in the woods. Trail breakers in the snow. Things were just not right around here with one chained outside dog- Cindy will chase cars all the way home unless we keep her tied up. She's only allowed off chain on leash or in the house. And Ebony- our 6 year old lab- is a bit past her prime in running with my herd of kids. She's also terribly gun shy, which makes her unfit for many of our routine activities.

So the search for a new pup began last fall. It was a long search. In part, because I prefer a free mutt over an expensive pure bred. In part, because I prefer some lab in those mutts. In part, because I prefer females.

All winter long I searched for a puppy. I considered a couple of giveaway older dogs. But it seems in our area, there are fewer accidental breeders than there are folks willing to give them a new home. Every ad I answered had no females left. By spring I was willing to take either male or female. I get a bit nervous of bears in the spring. Finally, we found Waldo.

Waldo is a lab with a touch of husky. A couple of months later, we found Wonder. She's a lab/bouvier cross, with a bit of pit.

Waldo on his back, Wonder standing

They are a great addition to our family.  Both full of energy, great for the kids.  We've done cap gun training with them at feeding time, neither one is gun shy.  They both eagerly hunt mice, moles, voles, and any other little tresspassers on our land.  They stay close in the woods, but let us know when something's there.  They bark at strangers.  Waldo started hunting with me this fall.

Ebony sitting, Wonder beside

Everything was going great.  Except, Waldo is scrawny.  He's tall & lean.  Long bodied.  He eats a ton.  He's still growing.  And he's scrawny.  I thought it might be a good idea to keep him intact until he developed some muscle mass.  He reached 6 months, and I knew better.  I knew he needed to be fixed.  But I thought I could outsmart mother nature by keeping him chained up while Ebony & Cindy were in heat. 

Cindy with her puppies

Ebony's puppies

Some days I marvel at my own stupidity.

Thankfully we live in an area where there are fewer accidental breeders than there are folks willing to give them a new home.

Looks guilty, doesn't he?