New Animals (pictures)

Hello!

We got some more animals! Here's some pictures:

This is one of two pregnant does

This is John our new billy

This is another of himThe other doe

A better picture of one of the does

We made a trailer cage that we brought the animals back in

We also got two geese and a bunch of ducks

This is some of the Bornamann family and us. They are the people we got the animals from and stayed with yesterday and the day before

This is the trailer

We did end up loseing one of our does and this one seems sick too :o(

We made some moveable pens like this to keep healthy goats and sick ones seperate and out on the pasture

These are some puppies that our dog had a couple of days ago

Peter

Bad news :o(

Hello,

Bad news= we may loose a goat tonight.

Starting a couple of days ago our mother goat, Ebony started getting sick and weak. We think she has Johne's disease or somthing like it. We went to Boisavain in Canada to get some herbal treatments this afternoon for her. She is laying down with not enough strength to lift her head up. I hope we won't loose her! They say that there isn't any cure for this disease.

This afternoon I made a cutout of an eagle out of ash on our scrollsaw. Dad was busy on his computer so I couldn't put a picture on this post. I cleared a spot on our bookshelf and set up all the things I made on the scrollsaw. Today it was around 40 degrees so the snow was melting and it was all slushy outside.

Got to go,

Peeter

Music Video

Here's a song I learned not too long ago.

Peter

Febuary 23 2007 Video Update

Hello,

We figured out how to post short videos so I thought I'd try and post one. If you've looked at Jonathan's blog recently you know what we did yesterday. In case you didn't I can tell you. We did dog sledding. I drove a team of six dogs for about 6 miles along trails. Our neighbors the Pozarnskies have thirty sled dogs and so they set up three sleds for us to use. I went with Andrew, Jonathan with Mom, and Dad with David. The Pozarnskies rode on snowmobiles and coached us along the way. It is like you're sliding, up hills and down hills. It was really fun! There was a brake that would dig into the snow to slow you down but it was almost all you could do to stop the dogs completely. Jonathan's blog has a short video of the adventure and some pictures. Today it was really windy. We repaired a rip in the house wrap this morning. That is about all that is interesting. I hope the video works!

Peter

Fire!

Hello,

No it's not a chimminy fire. I went outside wondering what I should do, so I went down to the lake and built myself a fire. I used only the stuff in the wild and the things in my pocket. I have a 5 in one survival whistle that I keep strike anywhere matches, small candle, bandaid, sandpaper, and a knife blade in. I used the inner bark of an aspen tree for tinder. I scraped the outer bark off of a dead standing aspen tree and peeled off the light brown dry inner bark. I only used two matches. Not really good but at least I didn't use three! The first match burned the tinder a little but then it went out. I used the second match and lit the candle and held the match and the candle to the tinder until it started burning. I suppose you wonder what the sandpaper was for. I used it to strike the matches on. The strike anywhere matches don't really strike anywhere, so I put the sandpaper in my kit to strike the matches on. The last time I tryed to light a fire with the strike anywhere matches I tryed to light them on my jeans zipper but then I just wore the white tip off. I got the fire blazing with just all the things in my pocket. It is nice to know that wherever I go I have a fire in my pocket to keep warm with.

The things I carry around in my pocket is: #1 jacknife, #2 five in one survival whistle, #3 small 9 LED flashlight, #4 pocket watch. In my right pocket: jacknife and whistle, left pocket: flashlight and watch.

Peter

Cold weather

Hello,

Recently we have been having pretty cold weather. Ether Jonathan or I get up at night and check on the goats. We have some lamps going in the barn to keep them warm. The temperature has been in the 20 belows at night and in the day time it is around zero. The turkeys are fine and so are the cats and dogs. Somtimes like last night the dogs seem cold so we have them in the house. Samson our german shepard slept with me last night. I sleep on the bottom bunk and Samson just climbs right in! He seems to like sleeping with me but part of last night it felt like I was sleeping with him. He pulled most of the covers under him and his head was on the pillow. After a while I got him to move to a different place.

It seems like every night Mom asks us what we should have for supper. Lately it has been popcorn or something with eggs but just recently we had toad in a hole. It is where you take a piece of bread that is buttered on the back, stick it in the baking pan, put cheese on, put a piece of bread with a hole on top, crack an egg into the hole and sprinkle cheese on top. After it is cooked it tastes really good!

Outside we have been having fun too! We pile snow up into a large row and dig the inside into a tunnel. We have some winding tunnels that lead into a larger room. The snow is a good insulater. If you are outside in the windy field your hands will get really cold if you don't have your gloves on but in the tunnels it is pretty warm. You can still see your breath inside though.

Selah is walking around inside right now so I think she is going to stay in tonight. It is 6:13 p.m. and Mom's not sure what to make for supper. Maybe waffels. Jonathan is trying to make a shelf to put by his bed but the hard aspen wood is not easy to work with. Part of the shelf split.

You can probably guess that I don't have much else to do. Today Jonathan and I played music for a while. Yesterday Paulett and Steve came and we got ready to order seeds. Dad went to town yesterday too after getting the car started by putting hot coals from the wood stove under the car. He got a magnetic block heater in town.

I guess that's about all,

Peter

Bird feeder

Hello!

Recently I have been feeding the birds on a feeder out in the front of the house. Mostly I have been getting common redpolls and chickadees the feeder but somtimes a bird that isn't in the bird book will show up. It stands about a foot high (when it is bending over eating), and is a brownish red color with some white on the wings. It comes out around the time that we do chores. The most we have seen recently of those birds is six at a time. We try and chase the big birds away to let the little ones eat. Look at the bottom of the post to find out what they are.

We have been doing homeschool in the mornings. It has been around 20 degrees here but a while ago we were haveing -20. Durring the cold weather we were getting 5-6 eggs a day from our eight laying hens. Today some friends are comming over and we will get ready to order seeds.

Peter







They were our turkeys

Windy

Hello,

It is really windy here today. There isn't a lot to do inside. It is cold outside and that's why i'm writing. We did start to put in a outlet upstairs but we got cold. There isn't much to write about,

Peter

Busy

Yesterday and the day before we were really busy. Two days ago we went to our friends the Hendersons place. We left at 7:30 a.m. and it was still dark outside. We got there at around 9:30 a.m. The reason we went was to help them butcher their hogs. After the killing and gutting we skinned them and brought them in the house. They used a band saw for meat and that helped speed things up. We left there at around 11:30 p.m. and had only sliced and wrapped one of the three hogs. They gave us the meat from the one we wrapped. We got home at about 1:00 a.m.

That morning Dad had to get the copier machine to Minot by 8:00 a.m. so he got Jonathan up at 5:30 a.m. and loaded it up. Dad left at 6:30 a.m. At 9:00 a.m. we got a phone call asking if we could go help do a bulk mailing at Metigoshe Ministries. We did that until 3:30 p.m. Then Dad got back before supper.

The next day. Today it wasn't so busy. We did homeschool in the morning and then had lunch. I did dishes for lunch. I went outside after dishes and started helping Andrew and David make a snowman but I had to go help Jonathan on the barn door. Dad got some heavy hinges when he went to Minot so we needed to put those on the door. Before today we would nail on the door with nails at night. Today we won't have to do that any more. We screwed the hinges on and made a latch for it. Now the turkeys won't get in there and poop all over! It makes a mess. I guess we are going to have popcorn for supper,

Peter

Hello, between today and yesterday andrew and I built this:















We made it all out of wood and a few pieces of wire. (and paint)

This afternoon my brothers and I recorded our music. It was the best we have done yet!
Listen at www.musicaccord.net/Peterbartlett.

Peter

New Barn!

Today we were finally able to put our goats in our new barn! We have it separated into half for goats and half for the milking stand and other stuff. The barn is 28' long and 12 ' wide. On the roof we put tarpaper and slats to hold it on. We didn't want to put our buck inside because he would stink it up! :op

We have been getting ready for winter. We have moved all the stuff that was out around the semi and put it away. It is supposed to snow tonight the storm moved in this afternoon. For the last two weeks we had been working for a guy doing honey extracting. It is really sticky. We did eight pallets of forty boxes on each pallet per day. I am glad to be done doing it. On our way the first day we saw: a cow and a bull moose comming off our property, 14 muskrats sitting on the edge of the ice, thirty wild turkeys, and a coyote all in one half hour drive. Today when we went to pick up a refridgearator from a friend we saw a bald eagle. Probably the same one we saw a couple of days before.

Upstairs we each have our own shops with our tools organized. I made a bench for myself and hung up my mechanics wrenches on a board with nails and drilled in another board for putting my screwdrivers in and have three tool boxes full of tools. Last night andrew and I arranged tools upstairs for dad. We have a table saw, band saw, radial arm saw, scroll saw, 12'' plainer, drill press, belt sander, wood lathe, and a big red craftsman tool box.

Oh yes, this morning we heard our turkeys fighting and our dog barking and it turned out that a wild turkey was trying to show whose boss to our turkeys. Eventually our turkeys chased it off. Maybe it is still in the woods! Tonight we are going to have popcorn and whatever else we are going to have.

Peter

Tuesday

Hello!

A couple of days ago I went with dad and we helped a guy do honey extracting. We had to fix some things and clean up so tomarrow Jonathan will go with dad.

Here is the barn we have been working on,

This is the amount of carrots we got, the tops are still on and there is some dirt in with them.
HELLO!!!!
That is the stray cat we caught, it's name is Pipsqueak!

This is a pretty short post, but pictures are worth a thousand words!

Peter

Finished House!

Hello!

We're pretty exited! Mr. Kranz and two of his sons came day before yesterday with another one of our friends and helped us sheet and wrap the final part of the house. We had to finish sheeting the front and back sides and finish wrapping three sides of the house. We used scaffolding for most of it but the ladder helped in some places. The back of the house was the last to do. It was probably because of the height! We used six levels of scaffolding to reach the peak and each scaffolding is about five feet tall. We strapped the scaffolding to the house in a couple places so it wouldn't wobble so much.

Last night as we were driving on 43 we hit a mink! Dad stopped and we picked it up. It didn't get very messed up so we took it home to skin it. This morning Jonathan skined it and I helped a little but half way through he cut one of the sent glands by the tail so we worked on it with our noses plugged. Right now it is stretching upstairs. (the reason we were driving on 43 so late was we went to Paulette's to watch and bring some bees for her to do bee therapy on a friend)

This afternoon since we had a break from building my brothers and I made some clay coins. It was out of the clay we were digging in the trench. So now when we want to use boards from each other we can pay with our coins. Andrew and David made a little lumber company beside the outhouse. They stacked all the little cut offs from the studs we used for the house and some of the strips of chip board they put on a shelf that they made. It has a front desk and some empty cans that are for sale.

Mom said 5 minutes till bed,

Peter

Hello,

Today we put the sheathing on the SE side of the house. We also got the house wrap on top of that. It is a challenge to get the nine foot roll of plastic up at the eight foot level or higher. Last night Samson barked a lot But I didn't hear it! Mom was pretty tired today and so I hope she can sleep better tonight.

Yesterday I got this picture of Samson: :o)











Actually as you can probably see I put three pictures together. The one of the moom, one of Samson, and since I couldn't find a picture of a rock the thing that is supposed to be a rock is a hubbard squash.

I'll write again soon,

Peter

Saturday

Hi there,

Today we got the other side of the roof done with shingles! Tomorrow we will start with the ridge cap. We took turns carrying shingles up. First it was dad with Jonathan, Jonathan with me, me with Dad, and then Dad with Jonathan and over and over. Mom went to Minot this afternoon and brought back house wrap for after we finish the sheeting. Mom wants us to post some more pictures of the house but it is too late tonight. I hope Samson doesn't bark all night like he did last night. I think he barks at the coyotes. They seem to be loud for some reason.

Maybe since we got the shingles on we will have more free time to blog some pictures.

Good night,

Peter

Wednesday

Hello!

Today we started out by putting the starter shingles around the edge of the roof and that took untill about 4:00. The reason it ended up being so late is because mom's washing machine broke down a couple of days ago and we went to a friends storage unit to borrow a washing maching from her.

It was a bumpy slow drive. They were tearing up the pavment on the lake loop road so we had to stop for a couple of minutes at a person holding a stop sign, and then follow a pilot car for another while and when the pilot car left and it turned out that the road farther on was worse.

At one point there was a grader, excavator and scraper parked across the road and dirt three feet high in front of them. Dad stopped we thought about it for a while and then decided to cut down into the ditch and onto the walking path and go around the vehicles. It was the only way to get past them. If we went the other side we would have drove into lake Metigoshe! (not good). We got past them, so that was good but even farther on we were driving over bumps and around rocks and just barely not rubbing on the belly of the car. We seemed small with big scraper machines driving past us and and a bulldozer dozing on the other side. Finally we got there and picked up the washer and headed home. There wasn't any trouble after that getting home (thankfully).

Back to the roofing. We got two rows of real shingles on! It is nice to see the roof coming. It is supposed to be nice weather for a few days so maybe we can finish before rain :o) Maybe it will be hot then the shingles would seal up. Then we can see if it drips! Hope not,

Peter

Tuesday

Hello,

I haven't written for a while so I thought I should write before nobody checks my blog anymore.

Today we put tarpaper up on the roof to help prevent rain INSIDE! A couple of days ago while my Uncle was here it rained but we had borrowed a big 30x50 ' tarp to hang up inside the frame of our house. (that worked out real good)

I guess I haven't written for so long that nobody knows how far we have got on our house. Like I said, we put tarpaper on the roof so that means we have put the trusses on and the chip board sheathing on. And also we have both end walls complete and we have a little more sheathing to do on the outside of the walls.

The peak of our roof is about 26' at the front. A little high for carrying up sheats of chip board. We got things figured out, we had Andrew and David on the floor with the piece of chip board they would lift and pass it to Jonathan and I, then we would lift it and Dad would guide it onto the top boards on the saffolding and then Jonathan and Dad would climb up and lift it onto the trusses (which is the roof). We have taken a lot of pictures so that we can look back and see what we did to build our house. I can't wait to be able to look and think back to the time when we were building the house.

Mom has pictures at her blog but they are kind of out dated. Since I haven't put any pictures on for a long time they'll be new to you.

Andrew (my brother) has turned 10! It seems like just a little while ago he was 9! he was :o) He got a .22 long rifle for his birthay from Grandpa! he is exited
Sorry for the late post.

Peter

Picture journal

Here's a picture review.

HOUSE BUILDING...

The wood unloading.

The first third of the first wall. (we built the side walls in thirds so it would be easier to lift into place)

This is the first wall almost done.

The other side almost done.

I'll do another post because the computer won't let me put any more pictures on.

Peter

I guess I'd better write

Helllo,

We have gotten quite a lot done since I last wrote. We have two 40' walls built on the house. The walls are 16 feet tall. We are going to put the floor in the middle somtime other than now because we would like to shell the house together before winter. Last night it rained a little (6 10ths) and it leaked in here a little too! Mostly in dads office, but we covered the stuff in there and collected the water in icecream pails. For the last few days that we have had a break from building we have worked on my treehouse area making a for. If you want to see the pictures go to my music website and click Pictures. My site is here.

Got to eat,

Peter

I've got some more music up now.

Hello,

I had a little free time this afternoon so I used Dad's computer and recorded some of my music. It is me on lead and me also on backup. You will probably notice a little timing mistake on most of them but it is hard to record backup without any other instruments. The songs: cripple creek, man of constant sorrow, and my home's across the blueridge mtns all came from tablature from a new book I borowed from a friend. The books are from a series of five books and I am only using the second book of the series. I made up the arrangement for Jesus is our friend (boiling cabbage down) because I got tired of the simple way I had played it before. You can listen to the music at www.musicaccord.net/Peterbartlett .

This afternoon Steve came over and we harvested oats by hand. Steve used our machete to cut it and then he stuck it in piles and I took some of the pile and tied another few stems around it to hold it together and that is called a bundle and after, Dad would come and stack the bundles together into a shock. Right now there is about 6 shocks (I think 6) out there.

Today mom did a whole bunch of presure canning, 49 quart jars to be exact. Those are mostly our green beans.

I'm getting a headache from looking at a computer too much so I'll talk later.

Peter

I'm still here!

Hello there!

Today it was around 70 degrees which was nice because for the last week it has been in the mid 90s. Today we moved our electric wire to a new spot for the goats because they had cleared out the previous area that we had set up. Yesterday it was David's 7th birthday! It doesn't seem like that long ago when he was only three.

Right now Mom is making raspberry jam and I can smell it from 25 feet away. The gardens are producing a lot. When our cousins were here we picked and shelled lots of peas. The total of shelled peas was 5 gallons. If any of you know how long it takes to shell any amount of peas you know how much work it is to shell 5 gallons of peas.

My brothers like taking pictures of their toy trucks.

A review of the week after the country living skills workshops.

The day after the country living skills day we played our music at the Bottineau Gospel Music Festival and that went really good just before it started my grandparents and cousins arrived from New Hampshire. We had a good time with them. They stayed a week and we went swimming with them, tought them to shoot, went to the Peace Gardens and had a real nice time. That was only the second time I had met my cousins.

I guess I'll go now. My brothers want me to ride bike over some of the jumps they made

Peter

Update

I haven't written for quite a while now so I thought I should write a little more to update everybody. We have a irrogation systom up and running. It is a 1 1/2 inch pipe running up the hill to our farthest garden and then off of that there is 1 inch branches that can reach to the whole garden. Steve let us use his rainbird sprinklers and it is so nice to have them pouring water over the garden and us not having to do any thing exept move them once in a while. A couple of nights ago Jonathan and I were sleeping in our army surplus two man tent and Selah who was tied up by the chicken tractor started barking wildly so I got up and went over there. At first I couldn't find anything wrong but then I saw somthing that I thought was a turtle. I went closer and it ran faster so I went in front of it and it stopped. That was when I got a good look at it. It was a muskrat! I wonder why it was by our chicken coop insted of in it's pond!

Right now I am sitting in our hot house with a little fan blowing on me and missing out on the first part of Steve's "Primitive Living Skills" workshop over at Paulette's in the woods. Last night I started getting a stomach ache and sickish and so this morning I took a shower and am feeling almost back to normal but a little tired. We might end up going over to Paulette's later on today if we (Jonathan is feeling about the same as me) feel better.

This morning the turkeys were out because the wind had blown the cover of the pen off and they were walking around peeping. The are about 8-10 inches tall now and have got their feathers. I did all the chores this morning because Jonathan wasn't feeling up to it.

The gardens have grown and we have been eating peas, carrots, little potatoes, a couple tomatoes, spinach, and a little lettuce. Dad got the semi wired up now and so there is a light switch that turnes on lights all the way to the back. Now we can have more of a real shop! Having lighting in there makes us want to have it more cleaned up and it makes it more shoplike. It's getting hotter.

Peter
(I feel like swimming)

Turkeys

Today we went to our friends the Scigliano's to pick up some turkeys that we bought from some other friends. We got 10 Bourbon Red turkeys. Right now they are about four inches tall and look like a brown spotted chicken chick. They are all cozy in their coop with the heat lamp on. We have bought two heat lamps this year because we only had one and that is not enough to heat 120 chickens and 10 turkeys. The turkeys are in a chicken tractor right now but I hope we can let them free range (if the dogs won't be a problem).

I haven't had to water because it has been rainy and the gardens were moist and since the sun hasn't been showing it won't dry up and need to be watered. I'm sort of glad of that. We had a good time at the Scigliano's. We had lunch there and visited for a while. We might end up helping them weed their BIG patch of berries sometime soon. I'm sure Chris (Scigliano) would be glad to have us help. We have been getting along pretty good without Jonathan and Dad over here but it will be nice to have them back in a few days. Time for our late supper.

Peter

Only three Leeches!

Hello,

Yesterday and the day before we cleaned up a spot on the shore of our lake and went swimming. It wasn't that simple. We had to use hand pruners and clip a trail through thick brush to get there, cut down three trees to put across the four foot deep beaver canal in order to get across the span of about fifteen feet, pull up logs that were across the path, scrape weeds out of the water, and haul logs from the lake. Even though there was a lot of work we still had fun! On the edge of the lake there are a lot of dead diamond willow brush in the water so you have to swim around them and not step onto any of the sticks that are sticking upright. At about 30 feet out I can just feel the weeds with my feet on the bottom so I suppose that the water would be about 6' deep. I'm not a real good swimmer but good enough to keep my head out of the water and get where I want to go. When we see some duck droppings in the water we say that it looks like "wild apple sauce." It sort of does look like store bought apple sauce! When we were done swimming I got out and I had three leeches stuck on my ankle. It is hard to pull them off. They are very slippery and suck pretty hard. David had one that after it was pulled off wouldn't stop bleeding for quite a while but now it is fine. I have a lot of mosquito bites on my legs and arms and one really itchy one on my cheek. When I milk the goat there is a whole roof full of mosquitos just sitting (or standing, I can't quite tell) and they fly down and bzzzzzz and bother the goat. We have lost a lot of milk because the mosquitoes bother her and then she kicks and, ah! the milk spilled!

The gardens are doing good. The corn in the hoop house is almost knee high. Dad showed me how to get water in the tank at the lake. You have to: drive down to the lake, back up with the trailer (which I am not perfect at), unhook a hose, put a different one in the pump, pull the cord and play with the choke until it goes good, wait until it is filled enough, unhook, drive up and start watering. I've only done it once by myself.

I can't forget to write about our sheep being sheared. Our neighbor Mr. Pozarnski and his wife came over with a piece of ply wood and the electric shearers. The plywood was to put the sheep on when you shear. We caught one and he started shearing. He started on the belly and and sheared up to the neck and then sheared the half of the back that was facing up, turned it over and then did the other side. The sheep we have, have two years of wool on them so it made them more difficult to shear. He did nick their skin in some places so the sheep bled a little and it stained them so the don't look very good right now. I bet the sheep feel a lot cooler now without having about 4-6 inches of wool on them. How would you like to wear a winter coat in the middle of summer? I wouldn't like it. Almost lunch so I'll write again some other time.

Peter

Monday

Today it is kind of rainy. It's not really rainy but misty, cloudy, and windy. There is not a lot to do in this weather but be inside and find something useful to do. We had a good time with our friends yesterday. They came at about 11:00 a.m. and left at about 11:30 p.m. Not a lot of sleep time in between last night and this morning. I did get to sleep in until 9:20 p.m. this morning but I'm still tired. Maybe a nap before bed tonight would help.

I learned another song from a CD today. I don't know the name of it but the guitar flatpicking is pretty neat. The songs that I learn off from CDs are not exactly how the player played it (but it's pretty close). I have to make up my own parts for some of it when I can't follow along with what they are doing.

This morning we had two cats that fell into the used oil bucket by the semi. A BIG MESS! We had to bring them in and soap them up (which a cat does not like) and rinse them off and soap them up and rinse them off and over and over but we still didn't get all of it off. Right now they are a little greasy and where the white was it is now brown colored.

We have switched the milking chores from Jonathan to Andrew and I. I do it in the morning and then I hope Andrew will take his turn tonight. Jonathan's chores is taking care of the 50 baby chicks that we have and he will be taking care of fifty more after they come sometime this week. David's chores is feeding and watering the cats and dogs (that is pretty easy to do!).

I'll talk later,

Peter

An update from around here

Hello,

For the last few days it has been real nice out. About in the 75-80s. The gardens are shooting up and so are the weeds but we take care of that by tilling and weeding.

Today Steve came over and we got a bunch done. He used his hand roto-tiller and went in between the rows of the garden, Jonathan and I built the start of a chicken coop, Steve and I used a drag and leveled out the ridges in the garden spot beside the hoop house, we did a lot more watering in the North East field (I did two rows of beans that were about 15 feet long and in order to soak it I used half of a tank full of water, about 150 GALLONS), I did some obediance training with Samson, and picked up rocks out of around the house and out in the field for a couple of hours.

Our humming bird feeder has had activity recently. Tonight as we had popcorn on the patio with Steve we watched one fly in, take a sip, chirp a couple times, and then fly out. Bzzzzzzzzzzz. Earlier on we watched a bumble bee that looked about the same size as the humming bird. I like all the wildlife and birds that we have in the Turtle Mountains. One of my favorite things to do is watch and identify birds and try to see how many different types of ducks I can see on the way to town or on a trip somwhere. It's nice to see a bird and know exactly what type it is. My list of identified birds has grown to more than 100.

Ned (our billy goat) says hi!

Mamma and the kids.

As you see the kids like to play on the sheep's back and the sheep don't seem to mind.

This one is You-too. He is the spotty kid. :-) I didn't get a picture of our other goat that we are milking. Her name is Mustard Seed.

Time for bed, Goodnight

Peter

Tons to write about!!!

We have been keeping busy watering our ~acre garden. It takes about two afternoons to complete it all even with a 425 gallon tank and a heavy duty pump with two garden hoses on it! You only have to water about twice a week if you soak it down really heavy but with the strawberries and carrots that are close to the surface they need to be watered a lot more frequently so that it is still moist at the level where the seed it. Most all the seeds are peeking out of the soil now so it won't be long until everything is six inches tall!

Yesterday we had Chris Scigliano come over and till up another patch of ground so that we can till from now until next planting season so the weeds are deleted from that area. Our little twin kids are doing just fine! Jumping around and playing with each other. It is fun to watch them play and jump onto a sheep's back that is standing up and nibble on some wool and jump off again.

Today we went and took apart the beaver dam that is holding up water over the road. The beaver has built it up pretty good so it is harder to take apart than the first time we did it.

We are going to be playing music at a graduation near Bismark in a few days so we have been practicing and have got dad on the big upright bass so now he can play seven songs. Tonight mom took a try at milking and I didn't hear the story as to if it was successful or unsuccessful.

Oh yes, yesterday a lady came over from Rugby to help us take a look at our bees with dad and found out that one of our two hives was empty from most of the bees except for a bunch of dead ones so we are thinking that it got sick. Or possibly the queen moved or the queen died and all the other bees flew somewhere else but we don't know and at least we still have another hive. There's a bunch more to say but it's getting later so,

Good bye.

Peter

Planting

We are home! There has been a lot of things going on at our place since we left to Carlton MN.

We have (along with our three sheep) five goats, two of them are three or four day old kids, and Dad has been calling them "you" and "you too." They are real cute! You is mostly black on her back but You Too has the same design only with extra white spots on her back. One of the other goats, Ned (we didn't name him) is our Billy goat. He is the most friendly goat of them all! The other two are females and are Mustard Seed and I forgot the other one's name but we are milking Mustard Seed and the other one is the one that had kids so we are letting the kids take the milk from her for now.

Now for the planting part. We have planted: corn, beans, tomatoes, some peppers, lots of raspberries, onions, lots of potatoes, carrots, peas, red wheat as an experiment, white wheat as an experiment, oats as an experiment, and a bunch of trees scattered in the raspberry patch. Now that we have all that planted it takes about three or more hours to totally soak the plants as much as they need. Yesterday we watered using Steve's water tank and a gas pump on the bace of his pickup truck. Each tank full was about 350 gallons and we used at least five tank fulls. That is a lot!!! We will still be planting more this spring. Got to get going and ready to milk the goat.

Peter

Really high jump!

Hello


We got the hoop house up and done a couple of days ago and have some trans-plants and seeds in it. We planted lots of corn and some peas in the hoop house so far but outside we have: two rows of potatoes, five rows of carrots, four and a quarter rows of peas, and just a couple of days ago got two rows of onions planted. We have a pump hooked up to a little pond across the field and use that to water with the garden hose. We have our bikes out and running now and have had fun doing jumps. Here is yesterday's record jump. We couldn't measure exactly how high I went but it was fun!


We like using the digital camera to take pictures because you don't have to buy film and you can delete the ones that don't turn out. How do you think I went so high? Here's a good picture of our growing German Shepherd. He is getting bigger:

Peter

Hoop house

Hello,

We got the hoop house (green house) almost finished in the last couple days. Pretty much all that is left is the plastic sheet over the top. We have a door on the northern end of the hoop house and got it tilled inside. Also, in the last couple of days we put up some cattle panels for fencing and wired them to metal stakes for a pen for our sheep and maybe goats this summer. I took these pictures this afternoon of the hoop house and other things:


The hoop house.
Dad putting the washer and hose clamp on the end of the re-bar to hold it from shifting in the wind.

Jonathan putting the wire into the 2x4 to wire the board to the pipes I filled with cement.

Steve, David and Andrew spreading the manure farther from the pile.

Jonathan admiring the hoop house.

Looking through the door at Steve and the tiller.

Dad is having a good time :-)

Our tilled garden spot without any plants.Our garden spot with plants.

A good picture of Mom.

Later in the evening we went to our neighbors to look at their sheep and lambs. The pictures:

Us bottle feeding the lambs.

As you can see, they have lots of sheep!

A cute picture of one out of about 120 lambs that they have.

Our sheep that need to be sheared. I'll have to put some pictures of the fences that we put up. Now it is time to got to bed. Goodnight!

Peter

Rain rain rain = mud mud mud

Rain rain rain = Mud mud mud = mess mess mess. It is pretty dreary out today. I only went outside a couple times and don't feel like going out any more than I have to. Samson is kind of lonely because we had Selah inside all night. The thunder scares her pretty bad. We did indoor stuff today like: math, reading, music... Not a lot to write about. Dad went to sawmill lumber to pick up an aproxamate price ammount for building supplies.

Peter

Our day of trans planting little seeds

Hello,

There has just been so much going on around our place that I haven't had time to do any blogging. I like blogging but sometimes I just can't get myself to do it.

Today we headed over to Paulette's at 10:00 a.m. and trans-planted A LOT (almost 5,000) of little tiny plants. The snap-dragons were the worst. They were about an inch tall and the stem was about a 32nd of an inch wide (very hard to work with but at least you didn't have to plant them singly like some others that we did, you could plant three in each one of the sections of the six pack plant cariers). After doing trans-planting for the morning we went outside and worked on some weeding, cleaning out dead flowers from last year, and planting seeds in and out of the green house. We planted a bunch of rows of vegtables: potatoes, peas, corn, tomatos, and I don't think we planted any beans.

After a while we got a break and had a few cookies and then we used the scooter we brought with us. We got it free from a friend when we helped her clean her garage. It is not motorized but we would like to put a little motor on it. If you started on the hill near the heath center you could give yourself a push and glide down to around the bend where Mom got stuck, about 200 yards.

We had supper there and I'm full! When we got home Dad pulled off the straps that held on the tarp for the roof and so we took the roof off. I'm tired. Time to go to bed.

Peter

The green is showing!!! and more...

Hi there,

The weather is now very nice (about 65-70 degrees) except for last night when it thundered and stormed with rain but now it is all dry. We went to Paulette's today and helped transplant little baby plants into other containers to be farther apart from each other. We (Andrew and I) had a good time and got a pretty good amount done and Andrew helped Steve bring them down to the attached green house by his cabin. A few days ago we came over and put the plastic sheeting on the hoop house (a green house that is about 40 feet long and gets VERY hot in the sun) and so that is all done and ready after the ground is tilled inside to plant the little plants in it. I have been seeing little shoots of grass coming up in the open places and it is nice to see some green again after the winter/mud.

This afternoon we had a little scary adventure with the burn barrel and fire extinguisher. I was the one that noticed that the smoke from the burn barrel was spreading farther out into the field. Earlier in the afternoon Jonathan had brought the garbage over across the field and burned it all but it must have been before it was completely burned a piece of burning garbage fell out and started the dry grass on fire. We have a metal screen that we put over the barrel when it gets going and all the garbage is in and then the burning pieces can't fly out in the wind. Today it was windy and the rain that had fallen the night before was dry by the afternoon so the piece of burning garbage that fell out started a fire that spread about 25 yards and had spread side ways about 10 feet. I was the first one to run over there and I started trying to stamp out the worst parts and then when Dad and Jonathan came and helped but it wasn't doing much and that is when Jonathan mentioned "fire extinguisher" and then ran to get one. He got the one from near the wood stove and on the way told Mom about the fire and she got buckets of water in the van and drove out to help. When she got there Dad had used the extinguisher and gotten most of the fire out and the buckets were just used to make sure the fire wasn't going to start up on us again. I had gotten the metal rake and was beating out the flame and scratching up the ground and the little flame that was left was out. I'm glad it didn't spread any farther than what it did! Lots of exiting things happen around here.

I've been doing Samson's training sessions regularly now and he is improving. I have got him to do heel really good with the leash and without the leash he kind of moves away when I turn to the right. We are all still recovering from being sick. It is mostly the cough now and a little of the runny noses. It has been staying light now about until 9:00 p.m. which is nice to have more time outside in the evening. This morning we went to sawmill lumber to think out our house plans and look at lumber, siding, roofs... The man there will be giving us an approximate price list for when we order lumber. Glad spring is here!

Peter

A few pictures of the fire:

The burn barrel and a few buckets included.Part of the area burned.

This was the direction the wind was blowing and the fire was spreading. If we didn't stop it it could have burned down those trees and everything behind it. Glad it didn't happen!

The winter is not over yet!

Hi there,

Last night Samson didn't bark (I'm glad) so we all slept pretty good and woke up to a sunny day outside. I was cleaning up the front part of our house (we call it that because our house is all one room with the bathroom closed off with a curtain)this morning and there was a pile of garbage there so I took it out and noticed that all the barrels were full (we only have two barrels for burning and the other two go to the dump in town) and since they were full I decided to burn it. The burn barrel is across the field to the NE and there was more garbage than what was in the barrels so I used the sled to haul the stuff over. That was at 9:00 a.m. and I after I burned the garbage I looked at the clock inside and it said 9:54 a.m. it might not be exactly right but it does take time to burn the garbage.

Last night as I wrote last post it was storming out and the rain was coming down pretty hard and what I didn't write was that we had heard thunder. At first we weren't sure and thought that it was our tarp flapping in the wind but then we heard it more and louder and were soon sure that it was thunder. We brought in Selah (because she is always scared of loud bangs like a rifle and when she was a puppy the first night that it stormed with thunder she was really scared and wanted to come in but we didn't let her in so she must have thought that something was out to get her and ran away and we couldn't find her until our neighbor called and said she had seen her) until the storm gone down and the thunder quit and then let her outside again. The rain turned to snow and then this morning there was about a half an inch of snow and a few 6 inch deep drifts. That soon melted away and created more mud and slush. It sounds like the dogs will bark tonight because we can hear the coyotes and when the dogs hear them they start to howl. A German Shepherd howl sounds kind of funny and Selah can howl almost like a coyote.

This afternoon I started making a wooden box but the problem is we don't have many scrap boards or even good boards but we did have a few left over scrap ash boards so I used those. I hope I'll sleep good tonight!

Peter

Thursday

Hello,

It is another dreary day today. I woke up and looked outside and it was foggy, misting, muddy, and windy. Sometimes when it has been warm and is windy the puddles of water that are on the roof splash off and gets the front area all wet. Our roof is a ~30' x 40' tarp, that is why the water blows off when the wind makes the tarp rise. We have square bales of hay for insulation in the roof so we just covered them with the tarp. Last winter we had fiberglass insulation inside in the floor joists and the roof leaked (because there wasn't enough hot weather for the tar to seal the rolled roofing properly) and the insulation got wet and we had to take it outside and then it got all messy so we couldn't use it. In case your wondering we (Dad, Jonathan, Andrew, David, Uncle Mark and I) built our house by ourselves except for the cement. We had a contractor do that part. Later on we met Steve (mountain fire keeper) and he has a skid steer (bobcat is the company) so he helped us a lot like clearing trees for firewood, leveling our yard, making rock retaining walls, lending us his log splitter, helping us stack square bales, and a lot more! We are very thankful to have his help around when we need it. He has been a very helpful neighbor to have near.


Yesterday I made a wooden knife out in the semi (we use the semi as our shop/storage place) and it has a hand guard so I might be able to get some pictures of it some time other than this. It is about 10 inches long and I drew on our symbol with the crossed swords. The wind seems to be picking up and the rain is getting harder. I would like if it would clear up and get nicer out.

Peter

Thursday

Hello,

It is another dreary day today. I woke up and looked outside and it was foggy, misting, muddy, and windy. Sometimes when it has been warm and is windy the puddles of water that are on the roof splash off and gets the front area all wet. Our roof is a ~30' x 40' tarp, that is why the water blows off when the wind makes the tarp rise. We have square bales of hay for insulation in the roof so we just covered them with the tarp. Last winter we had fiberglass insulation inside in the floor joists and the roof leaked (because there wasn't enough hot weather for the tar to seal the rolled roofing properly) and the insulation got wet and we had to take it outside and then it got all messy so we couldn't use it. In case your wondering we (Dad, Jonathan, Andrew, David, Uncle Mark and I) built our house by ourselves except for the cement. We had a contractor do that part. Later on we met Steve (mountain fire keeper) and he has a skid steer (bobcat is the company) so he helped us a lot like clearing trees for firewood, leveling our yard, making rock retaining walls, lending us his log splitter, helping us stack square bales, and a lot more! We are very thankful to have his help around when we need it. He has been a very helpful neighbor to have near.


Yesterday I made a wooden knife out in the semi (we use the semi as our shop/storage place) and it has a hand guard so I might be able to get some pictures of it some time other than this. It is about 10 inches long and I drew on our symbol with the crossed swords. The wind seems to be picking up and the rain is getting harder. I would like if it would clear up and get nicer out.

Peter

The pictures from last post

Here is the pictures that I couldn't get to work last night:

This is the first stamp that I made out of an eraser. One of the crossed swords broke off but it doesn't show until you stamp it. I added some pen to outline what was missing in the picture below. Here is what it looks like when you stamp it:

This is the second stamp I made. Here's what it looks like when it is stamped:

This is my third stamp, and this is what it looks like when it is stamped:

This one doesn't look the best but it works!

Today we went to Paulette's to work on her van. It was pretty muddy underneath the van, so we layed in a sled and worked that way. Most of the time was spent looking at the repair manual and trying to figure out what was wrong. We finally gave up after a lot of trying and put every thing back the same as when we started and are going to have Paulette bring it into town and have a "professional" look at it. Jonathan was at Metigoshe vacuuming so it was just me and Dad working at Paulette's.

Today I made David and I holders for our swords out of cans. I took a can and cut out the bottom and the top, crushed it into an oval shape and used duct tape (the tape that works for everything) to hold on a rope for a loop to put your belt through. Now David has it on his belt all the time and says if any robbers come he will take care of them with his sword!

It is another nice day today. The snow is almost gone :-) But the mud has gotten worse :-( Mom is not feeling real good and Andrew is kind of sick feeling too. I have gotten over it (the cold/flu pretty much. I am glad that you can't get pass germs through the computer and through the phone! If you could I probably wouldn't blog or call anybody, and nobody would read my blog! It is nice having the sun coming in the windows like this while I am at the computer. It is a lot nicer than last winter when we didn't have any windows at all except for the door. That was not so nice. I hope that the nice weather continues and the mud dries up! I'm looking forward to spring! Also, I saw my first geese this morning when I was feeding the dogs!!!

Peter

My rubber stamps

Hello,

It was another nice day today and it snowed a little in the morning but then it cleared up into a really nice day in the afternoon. In the morning I was thinking that it would be nice to have a stamp out of rubber for our army when we use our swords and use our symbol for the design, so I started out by trying to cut some rubber off an old tire to use but I was starting from the inside of the ring out. It didn't cut very well with a jack knife because there is a metal ring around that area. I tried using a electric recipricating saw with the hack saw bit in it but I couldn't get it to cut! After several trips to the semi for other tools, I just stabbed the tire with my jack knife and cut out a square of rubber about an inch and a half square. After drawing the design that I wanted onto the piece of rubber I found out that I couldn't carve on that type of rubber very well. We studyed on the computer and found that a website said to use an eraser insted of using rubber. I found an eraser that was big enough and worked at it until I had carved out a stamp. I will have to post again later with the pictures because the computer is not letting me put any pictures onto my blog (sorry). It might have to be tomarrow some time. I made two other stamps after I had more practice and I will put pictures of them onto the blog when the computer lets me later.

Also today I got Jonathan to make a sword out of wood and so we have been playing sword fights. We mostly do it slow motion because we don't want anybody to get hurt. I made a shield out of wood but it is pretty rough looking and it seems like it is about to break all the time when I use it. I also have some pictures of it but since the computer won't let me put them on I guess you will have to wait untill tomarrow for those.

I'll write later.


Peter

Our adventure today

Hello,

I think the blogging has worn off. It's not new to me any more. I just haven't been feeling like doing any posting on my blog. Yesterday Dad and Jonathan came home from being in Jamestown ND at a big conference there. It is nice to have Dad home again. I don't know what we would have done this morning with out him when Samson got pricked full of porcupine quills.

I was outside and called for the dogs and they came running from the back of the house near the semi, I praised them a lot and then noticed that Samson's nose and mouth were full of pocupine quills. I got his collar and brought him to the door (that always blows open when it is windy and it was windy today so I didn't have to open that door because it was open already) and then opened the door and let him into the house and called for Dad. He was on the phone talking to one of the Grandparents and so he hung up and came to see what he could do. Mom got her nice sewing scissors (pretty much the only scissors we own that are sharp) and Dad cut off the ends of the quills. I don't know if that is what we should have done or not, but we did it! By then Samson was licking and waving his head trying (hard) to get the quills out by himself but of couse he couldn't so we had to. We got a pair of pliers and, holding Samson's head, began pulling the quills out, one by one until all there was was about 10 or so quills in his mouth, and only one stuck in his nose. We finally after trying a bunch of different ways to get him to stay still, had to tackle him down onto his side and hold him there while we pulled them out. He didn't like it very much! Now he seems to be fine. He is playing just as rough with Selah as before he got pricked and she is just as tired of him as before.

I made me and my two other brothers swords. My sword is the biggest but most ugly looking. I made it out of an old board that I tore off a rotten board. It is not as bad as it sounds:

We also kind of made up a symbol that we put on our swords. It looks like this:

Here is a thing that I carved out of wood this afternoon:

Those are Andrew's and David's swords in the picture. Here's some better pictures:



This is Andrew's sword.

This one is David's one. He wanted his smooth so he sanded his more than the one I made for Andrew.

The last three days have been pretty windy but the wind is from the south and it is warm. May be I will still get back into blogging.

Peter

P.S. Here is a better picture of what I carved:

! ! ! ! ! !

I forgot to say (I remembered just as I was leaving the computer) Jonathan turned 15 today!

Just had to tell you.

Peter

Quite a lot happened!

Hello,

I haven't written for quite a while because I wasn't feeling good. I started out with the flu (throwing up, tired...) and then it turned into a cold (not fun at all) and I am still recovering from sickness and all the fun we had at the homeschool convention. The Kenneys came a few days before it started and we played around and did some snowmobiling with them. We took them to the big steep hill and played some king of the mountain and then after we got cold and tired went back to the house (then we went to Metigoshe Ministries for supper and to visit with them.

The next day (the 7th of March) the Kenneys left for Minot in the afternoon. Dad, Andrew and I left the left the day after and we went to the hotel (Holiday Inn) where the convention was to be held and where the Kenneys were staying. Andrew and I helped with some stuffing of bags for the convention the next day (we did about 500-550 bags!). Mom and my two other brothers came the next day (the 9th) and so we helped them unload. We take a lot when we go, at least it fills a whole vehicle! The keynote speaker spoke that night at about 8:00 and so we didn't get to bed untill late.

The next two days were fun looking at other vendors booths and we helped with passing out the baskets for the offering. We played music at the Friday music time and that went good. At least I didn't make any big mistakes with the guitar :-) ! Saturday was just plain because I had seen all the booths and I was really tired from the day before but I stayed up long enough to enjoy the day as much as I could. There was a fellowship time in the evening and I would have rather gone to bed than to that but I survived!

The next morning I got up with a sore throat and then it turned into the flu. We had gone with the Kenneys to the restaurant in the hotel and I had some bacon and eggs and yogurt, and when we got back to our house and that is when I started throwing up and getting really tired. So now I have been just resting and taking it easy waiting for the sickness to pass. I forgot to say that the old archtop guitar that I had been playing, broke. We can fix it but on one of the tuning peg gears the tooth is wore down so it couldn't grip well. We kind of traded and got a new guitar from our friend who had the guitar at the homeschool convention and so I am using that right now. It is nice having a guitar that you can tune! Write more later.

Peter

Sunday

The Kenneys didn't come today. The weather put them off for another day. It was really snowy and on the melting point, not a good combination.

This afternoon we had to go to Paulette's to pull out her friend who had to pick up her cat. It took quite a bit to pull a car up a icy hill. After we tried going faster and that did it (thankfully). We went slow on the way back to keep track of the lady that had gotten stuck, but we got out to the highway okay. I'm still looking forward to seeing the Kenneys and going to the homeschool convention. Samson hasn't been sniffing Selah any more. I don't know if it is because he has already mated or if it is just because Selah is not in heat. I'll might write but I might be too busy to write before the homeschool convention. We'll see!

Peter

Here's some pictures of my battle ship game that you print out and draw the ships on.

Saturday

Hello,

I woke up this morning to a bright bedroom. It was sunny out and we hadn't shut the shade (we don't usually do it any way). It is kind of fun sleeping in my bunk. I have the top bunk and Jonathan has the bottom bunk. We went to the old house and fixed the pull cord. We had to take off the recoil and unwind it. There was a short piece of cord that we had to get out but that wasn't a problem. Dad lit a fire in the woodstove and we warmed up our hands near it. It seemed like it warmed up faster in the cabin, but may be it was because it wasn't as cold outside as other days. After the snowmobile got going (which didn't take much because we had covered it up really good) we had some rides and brought our stuff back with it.

It was warm today with a south east wind. The weather must have blown from Florida where our Grand parents are visiting. They say it is pretty warm down there in Florida! I made a battle ship game for on paper on the computer and then printed it out. I haven't tried it yet but I think it would work. It seems like the week flew by and is gone!!! The Kenneys are supposed to come tomorrow if the weather is good, and the homeschooll convention is in five days. I hope the Kenneys will make it!

Peter

Thursday

Today it snowed a bunch and so we had to shovel and snowblow. Mom went to town with Paulette, and Paulette didn't want to come up the driveway to get her so Mom and Jonathan (Jonathan had to vacuum) went down our ~1/4 mile driveway to her. David (6) really wanted to use the snowblower and so Dad said he could if somebody was watching him. I was the one to watch him. He didn't get much done but he enjoyed it! Then I took a turn snowblowing to the semi trailer after him.

When Mom came home she was going to walk back up to the house but she had some groceries and Paulette didn't want to drive her car up our hill, so Dad took the van down there with us pulled behind in the big blue sled. You had to shift back and forth to keep upright when the sled was going fast but it was fun. When Paulette left going back to her place she was going up the last hill near highway 43 and slid into the ditch. The grader was right behind her and tried to help dig her out with a spade until we came. Five of us got out and pushed and she backed out into the road again. The grader had turned around to try to help her and then in order to get back on track he had to turn around. It's amazing how long graders are but are still able to turn around on a small dirt road!

After all that I had to go to the old house to get the pull cord that broke on the snowmobile and give it to dad to find another one or look at the prices in town. When I came back I helped Jonathan with grain grinding. We have a grain mill that the Hendersons gave us but the only thing that isn't the best is that it shoots some grain dust around. We fixed that problem by putting a rubbermade container behind were the dust flies. We got two bags of grain done. Each bag was a one gallon bag. Quite a lot happens in one day! More happens in some than others.

Peter