TO: Jacob

Jacob Snakeup,
if you ever read my blog, you would see, that I'm coming to your party, he he he


(How's that for an R.S.V.P?)

My Rainbow Day

So I've been frustrated because my house isn't as clean as I'd like it to be, I never get all the things done on my list, and I don't play with my kids enough. Yet, I started today with a full list of things to do. But James developed a fever sometime in the night, and Ellie started breakfast with up-chucking all over the bathroom. Taking into account the extra care it would take to care of sick kids, I cut my list in half, and certainly not fairly, I picked all the easy things. I still made my bread, and some homemade chicken noodle soup to go along with it. I got my chicken divided up and frozen, made an apple pie, gathered the laundry, took out the trash, straighten the upstairs and did the dishes. More importantly I found time to play with Ellie(who had made a quick recovery) for hours, we played dishes and she spent much of the time babbling on her pretend phone about being allergic to chores, and other equally hilarious things. I also let James(who also made a quick recovery) crawl all around the house. He loved exploring the different rooms, I'd watch him pick out interesting objects(the lamp, the bookcase, the little piece of blue lint on the carpet, Ellie's toy, whatever, and then beeline for them. I observed today He can sit up from a laying down position and he can push himself up on the side of his crib, or a stair. It amazing the things he can do today that he couldn't do two days ago. Children grow so fast, I'm glad I took the time today to play, we had a wonderful day and I think I'll cut that list in half more often.

New Arrivals

Okay, we've had a lot of new arrivals we'd like to welcome to the our Farm.


First, and and in my view most important. A piano!!!! Yeah! My very own piano. Sorry, you can see it very well, Ellie was making very strange faces in all the other takes.
Next:

The geese, okay so they're not new, but last time you saw them they were babies, and now they are so big, besides they wouldn't move so I could take a pictures of the real new arrivals the.....


Sheep. Yep Sheep! Because no small farm is complete without Navajo Churro Sheep. 2 Female and 1 Male, who still remain nameless, but I'm thinking Curly for the ram.


Ellie and Barry planted Giant Sunflowers this year. They have some recipes for flavoring the seeds, we'll let you know how it turns out.


Ellie has a new pony. Cricket is his name. He's quite friendly, and even let me ride him, he also has a special talents ....see below...



Cricket loves to pull a cart. He's getting a nicer cart, it's just not here yet, for now this one works, and Ellie loves it. They ride around and around the yard. This picture is from out from front window. (Sorry the pictures aren't too good this time, I was having trouble getting any good ones)


and last but not least. Fluffy. Fluffy is adorable. He really is, and rather sweet, and friendly I've quite taken to him, he's cage is currently right outside my kitchen door, so it's easy access to give him veggie scraps.

More Harvest

Canning with a baby is hard. Canning with a baby going through separation anxiety is really HARD! Here's the little culprit. He just looks at me with those cute little dark eyes, and I just have to pick him up....


Yet, I am happy to say, I have finally got all the bottles scrubbed and put away, and have begun to reclaim my kitchen. :)

This year our harvest wasn't as good as we would have liked. I feel so blessed to have such kind and generous neighbors and family.
Grandma gaves us apricots and blackberries for Jam and nectar. From school Barry got free raspberries which I was able to freeze, and free corn which I was able to cream and freeze. We got free apples from the neighbors to freeze for pies and applesauce. We got a great price on peaches and pears to can. Banannas were on sale for 39 cents a pounds so we froze some of them. Our green peppers have done well, so I froze some of those. We picked 39 squash from our garden to store, and still more to go, the green beans are on right now, and we have 17 rows of Indian corn to parch, pop, and grind into corn meal.

Close UP!

I was trying to get a close up picture of James to show you how truly cute he is.
instead I got this....

and this.......


Unfortunately, James was more interested in eating the camera, camera cord, me, and what ever else he got close to. SO we compromised and took one lunging distance away.


James is quite the crawler now, he crawls all over everywhere, he can cross the room in a matter of seconds. I am very proud of him, but sad my baby is growing up so fast.

Feed Me/Bath Time

Ellie has wanted to try her hand at feeding James for a long time. Finally I relented, she did marvelously well. He did need a bath when they she was done, but alas I confess he needs a bath when I'm done feeding him too.

My Little Girl is 4!

Barry took Ellie to the fair for her birthday, she's been looking forward to it all year. They rode on the Ferris Wheel, a small roller coaster, and ate cotten candy. Ellie had a blast. Barry was a little scared of the Ferris Wheel, but I think he had fun too. They saw a bran-be-new baby cow that had been born the night before. Ellie said, "that cow was looking right at me," and she was right.
Here are some pictures








James and I stayed home and packed, so we'd be ready to go to Grandma's for Ellie's party. On the way to grandma's house Ellie threw up and developed spots all over her face. So Ellie unfortunately wasn't feeling very well during her party, but we caught a few smiles.


My Dad gave Ellie a crown and earrings to wear on her special days. She loves them, and has wanted to wear them every day since.

Randy and Katie gave Ellie some paper dolls. She absolutely loves these, she doesn't ever want to put them away because she's not done playing with them yet.

Ellie had a four layer heart cake that was kindof pretty, but didn't taste as good as it should have. Oh well.

Grandma and Grandpa hosted the birthday party, providing pizza and pink cupcakes, they also gave Ellie Tinkerbell, which she loves and has watched and requested to watch so many times, I suggested she let her friends borrow it so I could get some peace. Amy and Mo gave Ellie gloves a wand and wings which she has also wore everyday since, and has shown to every lucky person that has come over.

Barry and I gave Ellie a Rabbit for her birthday, a miniture Lop. She didn't really like it when she got it, she likes it now though, and feeds it several times a day. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of it. So that is for a later post, with the other new editions to the Pate farm.

Clueless

Okay, I know boring picture, right? It's actually from spring a year ago. We have a pasture out there now, and a couple of stables and a chicken coup.



Yesterday afternoon I get a knock on my door, it's my 8 year-old neighbor. It appears he had been riding around on a mule(4 wheeler thing). He wanted to tell me that he noticed one of our goats was out. I thanked him, and closed the door. I knew the only reason one of our goats would get out is if something destroyed our electric fence, or if a big dog was chasing our goats around and scared one of them through the fence. Of course, our dear eight-year neighbor does have a very large dog, weighing in at ...well more than I do. Who, as I think about it was standing next to the boy panting. Perhaps that's why the boy looked so guilty?

We'll I had to save the free goat from the world, so I took James over to my neighbor, changed into my goat-tackling-clothes, and grabbed Ellie. When we reached the goat pasture I was surprised and delighted to see all 5 goats waiting for us. My thoughts were, "Mmmm that dog must have scared it back in again."

On with my day.....

Barry comes home and at dinner says, "Did you see what happened out there?"
"Yeah" (I said) one of the goats was out earlier, did it get out again?
(Barry) Uh Jill, maybe you should look outside again.
(I did) nothing seemed amiss from the front porch.
I came back in, "What Barry? I didn't see anything?
(Barry) Uh Jill, how many big trees do we have?
(Me, walking back outside) Uh well, three big big ones, and a few smaller..................on my goodness!

One of our huge cottonwood trees apparently had fallen over during the day (unbeknowst to me). Fortunately, only some of the top branches of it had fallen on our fence(luckily not the goats), knocking part of it over. Hence, allowing the goats to get out.

So I need to offer an apology to a very large German Shepherd with no sense of private property and a taste for our chickens. Sorry Dog! I'll catch you another time.

The only one for me...

Last night as I was washing silk off of seemingly endless ears of corn, I was reminded of a previous time when I was doing just the same thing, and I had remarked to Barry, that some corn seemed to have so much more silk than others, and wondered why that was......... We'll (says Barry)each piece of silk leads down to a kernel of corn, the more silk the more kernels., etc, etc.
I must have missed that little tidbit in school.

Thinking back to this I had to laugh at an experience we had a few weeks ago when a door to door salesman came around selling children's encyclopedia/textbooks.

The college kid from Estonia of all places, insisted on speaking with us both at the same time... with a thick accent he explained to us the pure wonders of these very, very expensive books. At one point, he exclaimed to us that if we used these book with our children, we could learn along with them, we could learn interesting things like.....

(Salesman guy)For instances do you know why a flamingo is pink?

(Barry) Well, it's because of their diet, they feed mainly on pink crustaceans,

(Salesman guy) What is crustacean?

(Barry) shrimp

(Salesman guy, (disappointed))Ah yes, you're right, shrimp

(Salesman guy)uhhhhhh, Well do you know what a Rhino's horn is made of?

(Barry) Hair, well keratin

I began to be embarrassed for the poor guy, oh course he had to pick up the biology encyclopedia to quiz us with, when Barry has a PhD in Biology.
But you know I really don't think it would have made a difference. My husband is amazingly smart, but so humble about it. He's just so interesting to talk with. That's really what I love most about him, well besides just looking at him ;)

Oh ... and don't feel too bad for the salesman guy, I gave him a loaf of bread ............................and Barry ordered a set of books.(Ahhgrrrhhh)