Sprained fingers

Hello,

I am writing this post with only one hand. We were bike riding on our dirt road east of our property and when I was going to pass Samson, who was walking next to me on the other wheel track, he switched lanes in front of me. I swerved to the side but fell and scraped across the gravel landing mostly on the back side of my left hand. My three fingers were sprained! They are a little swollen and it hurts to move them now.

We have gotten two people to reserve puppies so far, and one of those people came today. The puppies are about four weeks old so we will get rid of them at about seven weeks.

We are out of primer now, but Jonathan primed pretty much half of our barn so we can paint it soon. We finished shingling our barn tonight!!! That will keep the tar paper dry. We had tar paper on as roofing the whole winter so it is starting to wear out.

Paulette came over today and dropped off some clothes and a file cabinent. We have been getting some duck eggs the last few days. One of them was green! We have gotten chicken eggs, duck eggs, turkey eggs and goose eggs. Quite the variety.

We will be heading to the big city of Fargo in a couple of days. We are going to see Grandpa and Grandma Wagman there and see a lot of other friends there too. We are going on the birthday of our old neighbor Mrs. Nelson. She will be 100 years old! I'm sure we will be very busy all the time we're in Fargo.

Peter

Saturday

Hello,

Dad and Jonathan went to Minot today to a homeschool outreach gathering. They aren't back yet. Mom and the rest of us went on a bike ride to Metigoshe Ministries, about a three miles and then rode back (three miles) in time to put the puppies in and go inside before it rained (but it only sprinkled a little then quit). Our kids are doing good still. The one is still weaker and one eye is a little matted but other than that they are both good. There has been a lot of migration birds on our place. I was at ash point (a place we cleared beside the lake) and three wood ducks flew over me. In case you don't know what a male wood duck looks like they are one of the most colorful ducks I've seen. The head has red, green, blue, white, and black colors. Today was a lot more peaceful than yesterday and was about 70 degrees. For a lot of the day it was cloudy but the sun shown for most of it.

Not much to catch up on,

Peter

Just kidding!

Hello,

We just got twins yesterday afternoon from one of our does. The one seems healthy but the other (the kid closest to the camera) seems to have one knee that is not quite right. We now have a herd of 8 goats.

The kid doesn't seem to be able to bend it's knee out straight so it keeps falling down.

Here is the marking on one. They are both about the same in looks except one has a little more white on it's side.

We have been up to some projects lately. Andrew and I built this a couple of days ago. It was just recently painted.

What you see here is less than half the chicken we canned.
We have a broody hen that moves the eggs that are next to her (that a different hen layed) to under her so we found about 15 eggs under her. We took some out and put them into the incubator.

The puppies are growing really fast! They already are eating softened puppy chow. We keep them outside in a pen during the day and in at night.
Anybody want one?

Here it is really windy. Today we patched holes and repaired bikes to get them ready for summer use. Yesterday we planted some seeds in the ground outside: peas, carrots, beans and some experimental mangle beets. Let's hope they last!

Tonight it is supposed to rain. It looks like it too. Dad and Andrew finished putting spacer blocks in between the floor joists to support the posts that will hold up the second story floor joists, that will hold up the second floor, that will hold up me when I sleep up there!

Everything is going good here,

Peter

Progress report

We had been busy getting ready to continue building the house and today we nailed up the first boards of the season! It was the supports to hold up one of the two beams that will be put up later.

Yesterday and the day before we finished processing 150 chickens. We got 200 used laying hens from the Hutterite community three days ago. They were already gutted and plucked but we still had to cut them into chunks and seperate the bones. We canned about 150 jars of meat and broth mixed together. Steve helped us with them. We payed $1.50 per hen after gutting and plucking. It was a big job! We started around 9:00 a.m. and went to about 10:00 p.m. the first day and the second wasn't quite that late. We stored the chickens, some in the freezer and some in our second refrigerator.

Our ducks have been doing pretty good. The lake is mosty thawed so they can paddle around now. The puppies are already lapping milk from a bowl and are running around. We have them outside in a portable dog house with a chicken wire fence around them so they won't get into trouble.

Today (after we were excused from building the house) we tryed to fly a kite. The string ended up snapping and the kite floated to the end of the field. That was about a 1/4 mile away. It is windy here!

We have cleaned up around the yard and have the hoop house plastic on and our shed (is more like a out house) is moved closer to it. Our turkeys have been getting pretty mean. When they are both together (we have two) they will start thier war tune and dive at your feet. They must not have liked us chasing them away so much so they want to chase us away. We have our incubator going and when we get a couple extra eggs we stick them in there and monitor the days. It takes 21 days for a chicken egg to hatch.

That's about all,

Peter

P.S. The wood ticks are out so beware!