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

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!

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