We now have a sled dog!

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It's Samson!

Peter

Thursday,

Hello again,

Today it seemed colder than it has been for the last few days. You could see sun dogs around the sun this morning when we were out doing chores. Our chores have gotten a lot faster now that it is winter. The goats slowed down to only a pint of milk so we have quit milking them, we don't have to move the chicken pens, the goats don't need to be moved, and there's more too. Chores used to take about an hour and a half but now only fifteen minutes. Recently we had been getting very few eggs and were only feeding the chickens screenings but one of our white rock hens started getting pecked pretty bad. The next morning it was dead with all of it's insides pecked out. We figured they needed better feed with more protein so we bought a couple of bags of layer feed. Yesterday we got thirteen eggs and no dead chickens! It seems like we learn things the hard way and then never forget what we learned! Now we need to figure out a cheaper mix of feed that doesn't cost $10 a bag.

Now that the lake is frozen over we have cleared a little skating rink in the bay. For the last few days (except today) we went skating for more than an hour. My skates from last year are way too small so I have wear Jonathan's old ones (that are too tight) and he wears dad's when dad isn't skating. We broke off some curved sticks and cut some slices of firewood for pucks and we have our own little hockey teams, two people on each side.

We have had Samson inside at night so he has become a house dog and wants to come in all the time. So far we haven't had any accidents and he has stayed out of our way.

Until next time,

Peter

Monday

Hello,

Yesterday we butchered our 4 turkeys. The weather forecast is for 15 degrees for the next few days. We didn't weigh them but they must be about 20 pounds each.
Before...
during...
and after.

Mom cooked up one of them last night so we will probably have one today.

that is all,
Peter

Good time with the Kenney family

Hello,

Today the Kenney family left after spending a few days with us. They came up from Hawley MN to visit for Thanksgiving. We had a fun time with them. Daniel Kenney had recently gotten what is called a rip-stick and brought it along with them. You probably have never seen one but it is like a skateboard but only has two wheels and twists in the middle. You can make yourself go forward by moving the rip-stick back and forth. You can steer by twisting it in the middle as you go forward. It takes a lot of practice to run it without falling over. You pretty much have to move your whole body when you do it. I played with that quite a bit so I tried playing guitar while doing it.




Peter

Hello,

Here's a video clip of a potato cannon that Grandpa Bartlett helped us build when he came this fall. This video is of us shooting it in the dark.


Peter

Hello,

We've been having some pretty nice days recently. Around 55-60 degrees. It's hard to think it is November already. Yesterday we went and helped some Friends of ours put up a new TV antenna. It was on a tower about 30' high. Thankfully I didn't have to go up. The picture shows the old one that we took down.



















While we were there we saw a bald eagle over their lake.















Here's a cutting board that I just made for Mom!

I'm feeling tired so my post is short.

Peter

I haven't quit blogging!

Hello,

I'm still here but haven't had time to blog for quite a while now. Fall is pretty much here so the garden has needed work. Today Jonathan and I put up deer fencing around three (out of 25 or so) of our apple trees. There is about 6 left to do after those. We also dug up one patch of corn that was done for the year. Most of the family went to town this afternoon so I moved all the dug up corn stalks into the compost pile.

Last Saturday we played music at the Bottineau fall festival. We played for about an hour. I think we did better there than any other place we've played at so far.

During the last rainy days Andrew and I built little crank wood cutters. Here's a picture:

In the base there's a stiff wire that is bent so it pulls and pushes on the wires connecting to the men's arms

This is the crank.

This guy's arm moves up and down and chops (or tries to chop) the log.

This one saws back and forth on the log.

Here's some more pictures of what we've been doing:

These are our six kittens.

Pretty cute!
Here's something I painted

Here's something I routered
Here's the chickens in the barn we separated off a section for them to be separate from the goats.

There is egg boxes in the pen too.

Here's the goats.
And the pigs.

And our square straw bales.
And a picture of the trees. It's not as pretty as it was earlier in the year.

That is it for now,

Peter

It's about time I write. Blogger told me I hadn't written since June 30! We have all been really busy. The night before last we performed a selection of songs for an hour at the state park. It was for a bike trip that stopped in the Turtle Mountains as a sight seeing trip. I guess there was about 400 people there. Half way through the sound system blew up! Not quite that bad but it was smoking out of the volume control area. It was a friends sound system but it was getting old. Other than that the performance went pretty well. For the last half we sang louder and played quieter.
We have had our first sale of beans and chokecherries to some friends that live about a 1/4 mile from the Canadian border on boundry lake. We will be going to the farmers market on Saturday to sell produce. We are about sick of beans. Mom canned about 165 quarts of beans and we are going to can some for other friends.

BEANS!

I made myself a new belt buckle out of aspen:

It only took me an afternoon and a half a day to make it. I used some paint we had laying around on it.

Our bees are buzzing in the corn really thickly. They are fun to watch! I would have taped the hum exept we don't have a tape recorder.

That's all for now

Peter

My new knife

Here is pictures of my latest project. I got the idea from an old Backwoods Home magazine article.

I cut the blade from an old circular saw blade that wasn't being used. I was going to rivet the handle together but we didn't have a drill bit that could drill through the metal. I ended up using JB Weld epoxy to glue the handle to the blade.

It didn't turn out very showy but for me it was fine! The handle is made from some ash wood that was cut from our property. I used the router to make the handle smooth around the corners. I finished the handle by rubbing linseed oil on it.
I scratched my name at the base of the blade with a screw tip.
Here's an overall picture of the completed knife. It is aproxamatly 7 1/4 inches long from tip to handle.

AND... Here's the sheath! It was made from some leather that we had in the old house. I used our leather working tools and made the design. I thought it turned out pretty good.

Here is a full picture of the sheath.

Here is it on me!

Peter

Thursday, June 7

Yesterday Dad and Jonathan left for Iowa to a homeschool conference. It has been raining here some. This morning Andrew and I did the chores that Jonathan and I usualy do. Milk the goats, feed the cats, feed the dogs, feed the ducks, move the goats, water the goats, move the chickens, get the eggs, feed the chickens, water the chickens, move the turkeys, feed the turkeys, get the eggs from the turkeys, water the turkeys, feed the pigs, water the pigs, water the chicks, feed the chicks, move the chicks, and stake out a goat. I think when we do the chores we bring down the hill about 4-5 buckets of water (usualy a little over half full so they are easyer to bring down to the barn). This morning the cover to our new chicken tractor blew off the hinges. The hinges were only attached to the cover with the short small screws that they came with so I put in some better screws.

Peter

Friday, May 18

Hello,

We got our 60 or so chicks yesterday. They are mostly layers but there's some white rock. We've heard it's supposed to rain tonight and maybe hail. Today we did a whole bunch of different things, fixed the door between the goats and the rest of the barn, made the grain container on the milk stand better, cleaned up around the house, weeded some of the garden, and in the afernoon David and I went for a boat ride on the lake. We saw someone working on the lake shore of our neighbor's cabin area with a bobcat. Mom and Andrew went to town this afternoon and got a whole bunch of groceries. We have one of our new chicks that doesn't look real good. One leg is bent out from under it.

Just an update,

Peter

Chicks, geese, and piglets

Hello again,

Our chicks have been hatching pretty good. We've had two rotten eggs explode in the incubator. Kind of a mess. We have gotten two piglets now too. Here's some pictures:

We have hatched about 20 chicks and have only lost a couple before they hatched. We have saved ourselfs a bunch of money by hatching our own Buff Orpingtons.

Here's the piglets. One was 22 lbs and the other 20 lbs. We payed a dollar per pound for them.
There is the one that is kind of orange.
Our geese have been setting on a nest for a while now so we should see some goslings some time soon.
Samson likes to keep a close eye on the piglets. They got out twice today because they broke the wire that we put up to keep small pigs in.

That's all,

Peter

How to make a small camp stove

This is a video of me explaining how to make a small campstove out of things you might have laying around.

Peter

New Kid

Hi there,

Just yesterday we got another set of twins. One of those died. We have 9 goats now but almost had ten. We found it laying on the ground, not able to stand up. We brought it inside and gave it milk with an eye dropper and got it to swallow but it didn't last through the night. We were planning to have one of us get up every hour but when Jonathan (scheduled to get up at 11:00 pm) found it, it was already dead.

This is the now kid that survived. It is doing pretty well.

Here's a better picture.

This is the mother.

Here is what I made for the turkeys to live in. I built it yesterday

There is a perch that runs across the middle of the pen that also holds the sides from bowing out.

Here is some chicks we hatched from the incubator. They are the first and second chicks we hatched.

This is the third one. We have hatched almost seven now. Two are still cracking open their shells.

Here is the setup. We keep the older ones and the younger ones separate so they won't peck each other. Each bucket has food and water in it.


Here's a picture of some of our ducks. I think we lost our male goose somewhere. He hasn't been around lately.

I guess that's enough for now,

Peter