We're getting some rain!

Hello,

We're finally getting some badly needed rain here. Someone said about 65 hundredths of an inch. We might be getting more tonight. In the fields our hay is only a couple of inches high so we have to move the goat pens twice a day instead of once.

This is our super inexpensive goat pasturing pen. It is four cattle panels put together with a pen on wheels that is detachable. I fits about four mothers + kids. We detach it with the goats in the cattle panel area and then move that and then move the shelter and re-attach it. In the picture is my fancy milking stand that folds up against the pen. It works really good!

Here's one of our kids.

Yesterday and today we practiced doing a little survival skills getting ready for an event coming up in New Salem called Prairie Days. Jonathan is going to help with a survival hike. Yesterday we made a water purification tripod (I don't know what it is really called) and drank lake water. Here's a couple of pictures:

You pour the water in the top through the grass, then it seeps through the sand, then it goes through charcoal.
The water on the right is pure lake water and the one on the left is water that was filtered. It made it a little bit clearer when we filtered it.
We poured it through another cloth to strain out any silt that got in there and Jonathan and I both tried it and thought it tasted pretty much like regular filtered water.

Since it rained last night we tried another way of gathering water today. You are supposed to tie a cloth to your leg and walk through tall grass, but we just dragged a rag around to the old cabin and back and along the way squeezed out the water when it got wet enough. The water from that wasn't as nice looking as the filtered lake water but we tried it and it tasted like distilled water. You're supposed to do it in the dew instead of after it rained but we thought it was close enough. Hopefully we won't ever have to depend on those types of getting water but it is good to know.

Peter

Today

Hello,

A lot of things have happened since I last wrote. We had the ND homeschool convention, Dad and Jonathan went to the State Republican convention, and yesterday we got back from Glendive Montana. And one of the most exiting things is spring is here! Here's some pictures of various things

This is me at a State park near there. We stayed at a family's ranch that had asked Dad to come and do a talk on the biblical concourse.
They use an airplane that they put together from a kit to check on their cattle. They have a lot of land to check on!
They flew us around on a ride for a while and then went and checked the water tanks for the cows and checked for cows that were having trouble calving.
This is some of the terrain they own. Pretty hard to get around without an airplane.
We saw this cow moose on our way to transplant seeds at Paulette's.
We also helped her put up her hoop house.

Peter

Eclipse of the Moon

Hello there,

Last night there was an eclipse of the moon. We watched it and I took these pictures through our telescope! The shadow is just starting to cover the moon.

It's about half covered in these pictures.
Almost gone here.
And this is it completely in the shadow. That is about as red as I saw it. I went to bed around 9:30.
This is as good a picture as I could get with our camera without looking through the telescope.
This is our telescope. Steve Schadler gave it to us when he was cleaning house! Thank you Steve!
While I was trying to find the moon through the telescope I found this planet. We're pretty sure it is Saturn. Through the telescope you could see the rings around it! It isn't as clear in the picture as it is just looking through the telescope.


This is a video through the telescope.

Peter

Bottineau Caucus

Hello,

The Bottineau caucus was a few days ago. We did some campaining for Ron Paul previous to the caucus and durring. The results at our caucus location were:

Huckabee 23 votes
Romney 23 votes
McCain 23 votes
Paul 33 votes

We stayed until it closed and they let us help count. That was kind of fun! We passed out Ron Paul slim-jims there to people as they came in. A lot of people said they were already planning on voting for him, but there was a lot of people not voting for him. We were the only people advertising a canidate there.

Here's a picture of me as you would come in (in the far back you can see a big 4x8' Ron Paul sign).
This is where they had you vote. We asked if we could put signs in the room where they vote and they said they didn't know why we couldn't.
Jonathan and Dad both gave a speech there. There was supposed to be speeches from 6 to 6:30 and then vote from 6:30 to 8 but they let people vote as people were talking. Jonathan and Dad were the only people to talk.
We got back late and checked the web as the caucus results state wide came in. I guess Ron Paul got third (21%), real close to John McCain (23%). Romney won. At least we did our part!

Peter

P.S. The caucus was at the Bottineau armory.

Neat Guitar Lick

Here's a neat lick that I learned off the computer.


Peter

Home Sweet Home

Here's an audio of me playing my version of the song "Home Sweet Home".



Peter

Salt Creek

Here's an audio of me playing "salt creek".


Peter

My little SWAT team

Today I made myself some wooden army men. Here's some pictures:




I cut them out on the scroll saw and then carved them with a knife. I painted them this afternoon.

Peter

January 18

Hello,

Today is supposed to be a high of -5 degrees. It was pretty cold this morning but thankfully all the animals survived. We have some chickens in our hoop house that don't have any insulation between them and the weather. Today we just did the usual... homeschool, chores, music, and everything else. Two days ago we went to the homeschool day at the capitol (that dad organized) and had a good time there. We had the lieutenant Governor speak, a Representative, Supreme Court judge, DPI officials and some other people there to talk. The reason for the homeschool day at the capitol was to get people to talk to legislators and get ready for next year when we plan to try to change some homeschooling laws in North Dakota. We got back home at about 10:00 p.m.

That's all for now,

Peter

January 13, 2007

Hello,

This morning Jonathan and I cut wood over by the old house. We are cutting for next year's supply. Since the snow is a couple of feet thick we just stack it in little piles where we cut it and we'll pick it up later in the year when there isn't so much snow.

After lunch I wired in an outlet and two switches upstairs. The two switches will go to the kitchen light, one on each side of the room. It is a little more complicated to wire a light with two switches. You have to use "3 wire" to connect from the first switch to the light and then down to the other switch. That lets power go to the other switch continually so you can turn it on at one switch and off at the other switch or the opposite. After I did the switches Jonathan put in a uses fan/light in the kitchen but it turned out that we have to replace a piece of it that broke. It is a lot colder today than it was yesterday. That's why I'm blogging!

Peter

We now have a sled dog!

Scroll down...

























Keep going...























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