Crazy hair do's

About a month ago, Samuel started this weird habit of crawling into the corner of his crib when he sleeps.  Almost like he's shielding his eyes from light or trying to use the bumper as a pillow.  When he wakes up from his naps now, he often has some crazy hair! 

This particular day, he must have really had his head smashed into the corner because he also had a diamond patterned imprint from the bumper on his forehead!

The silly grin is 'typical Samuel'. He is the happiest kid I've ever seen when he wakes up from his naps - almost slap happy.  The only time this isn't the case is if we have to wake him up, which fortunately, isn't very often.

Another baby chick

Blackie, our mother-hen, hatched another baby after having sat on a batch of eggs for about two weeks.  Here are mama and baby soaking up some sun.

Mama and her babies

Dan's been taking more and more of the outside pictures and he happened to get a few of me.  Dan was on his way back up to the house from taking some pictures and he caught Samuel and I watching him from the family room window...



 

And although you can't "see" the baby in this picture, she's there.  Here, I'm 22 weeks pregnant with Samuel's little sister...

Happy sheep

The sheep have full run of the property now.  Dan used to enclose them in a large area via electric fencing to protect them.  He was especially afraid of stray dogs and coyotes while the lambs were small.  The electric fencing provided a jolt if any creatures tried to get in to bother the sheep. 

The lamb are almost as big as their mama's now though, so Dan thought it was time to let them roam more freely in one of the enclosed pastures, which is about 10 acres, at the far back of the property.  The only downfall to the new location is that we couldn't see them from the house.  They were there for a week or so, then one day we saw them up at the fence line behind the house.  Oh no!  I'm not exactly sure how, but they escaped.  The fence isn't down anywhere, so we can only guess that they got under it somehow.  Sheep aren't particularly smart, but they are apparently wily.  Just look at the picture below... doesn't this lamb look like he's devising some clever trick to deceive us?

Dan was going to line the perimeter of the enclosed pasture with electric fencing as a safeguard, but the ground is so hard he can't get the stakes in.  So, we've letting them roam free.  It's been about a month now and no harm yet.  They seem to be very happy running free.  They love running up to us when we enter the pasture.  They even like to play peek-a-boo behind trees...

And the ewe's like to show off their pretty eyelashes...

 But most of all, just like us, they like to hang out and be together...

Cruising

Samuel's officially a "cruiser".  He jets around the house holding onto furniture, walls and anything to help himself get around.  Unfortunately, he doesn't understand that some items move or are too light to help him - like empty boxes and rolling office chairs.  He's had two face plants so far, one resulting in a bloody mouth.  He seems to get over his woes pretty quickly though and gets back to cruising.

I place toys in the middle of the floor to entice him.  I figure one of these days, he'll want the toy badly enough that he'll let go to get to it.  So far this hasn't worked, but it shouldn't be too long!

Summer Vacation - Day 5 - Final Day

The whole reason we vacationed to Virginia was to attend Polyface Farm's Farm Field Day.  It's a day long event they do once every 3 years. The day consists of guided tours, topical discussions, and vendors to see hands-on how a pasture-based, organic farm operates.  Their mission is to leave the land in better condition year after year and feed people clean, healthy food in the process.

Although the day's activities didn't officially start until 8am, we arrived at 6am to watch morning chores and have free time to roam around before the set schedule started.  Since we're most interested in poultry, we headed out to the fields to get a close look at their chicken tractors, feed and water setup.

The chicken tractors and watering system are nearly identical to ours, but each morning Dan drags and I push our tractors.  Polyface has this cool, custom-made dolly that goes under one end so one person can pull from the other side.  We need to get out hands on plans to make a few of these!

Next we moved onto the butchering area.  They have a really nice covered area to work and a good equipment layout.  Dan and Samuel are checking it out...

At 8am, a whole-farm tour started.  Our first stop was at the FeatherNet - a portable hen house on skids that can be moved from paddock to paddock.

Then we saw their combined broiler and turkey tractors...




Not pictured on the whole-farm tour were also cows and pigs.  They had several discussion topics throughout the morning that we attended:

Interns, Apprentices, and Young Farmer Germination
Hay Shed, Deep Bedding and Pigaerator Composting... (and boy, do they have a lot of hay!)




Then they had quite the spread for lunch.  Grilled Polyface meats - chicken, pork and beef, tomatoes, cucumbers, peaches and chocolate cake.

After lunch we had more discussions:
Metropolitan Buying Clubs and Online Software
Chick Brooding...

We had about an hour before our final discussion. We wandered around the main hub of the farm trying to see everything we hadn't gotten to yet.  Some of the vendors that we purchase supplies from were there, so it was nice to meet and chat with them in person.

Our last topic was a Q & A session with farm owner, Joel Salatin.  It was an open forum where you could ask anything you wanted.  A lot of great questions were asked and Joel always has an interesting answer.  Usually a very long answer, but a good one.



Samuel started wearing down a little after 5pm, so he and I headed back to the car so Dan could finish the Q & A session.  At 6pm, we departed Polyface and started heading Missouri-bound.  We stopped around 10:30 for a good night sleep.  We woke up bright and early and continued our drive home, finally arriving around 5pm.  Fortunately, we had the good sense to take the following day off work too, so we could lounge around the house and recuperate!


THE END!

Bread

After about 13 years of service, our trusty bread machine died on us. One day it made perfect loaves, the next they started exploding and then imploding. It wasn't pretty...

This might not be as dire of a situation for some as it is in our house. Except for some herb focaccia buns I buy at Costco, we don't buy bread. We make all of the bread we eat, so this was not good! My inclination was to hop on Amazon, find a new machine and have it overnighted. But, since my mother-in-law was diagnosed with Celiac's disease years ago, the only thing she's been able to do with her bread machine is make yeast door stops. So, she graciously gave it to us. Unfortunately, they weren't due to visit us for a month and a half. I could have made bread the old fashioned way, but instead I chose to support the cute little old lady that brings baked goods to our Farmers Market.

We had a good visit with the family, and the day after they left we fired up the new bread machine. Dan made the first loaf - whole wheat bread. It turned out beautiful...it neither exploded nor imploded. We let it cool for a bit then tried to slide it out of pan. It wasn't budging. We tried pulling. Nothing. We tried loosening the crust from the sides. Nothing. I stepped away and then Dan announced he got the bread out.



I'm not sure if you call this male or Yankee ingenuity, or both. It wasn't pretty and we weren't eating any sandwiches on it, but it sure was tasty!

Next was my turn. I had some very ripe bananas so I decided to try banana bread. One cool thing about this machine is that it has a 2 inch extension that can attach to the pan to make extra large loaves. I figure if I'm going to take the time to bake bread, I might as well throw a little more in and get a bigger loaf. I dumped everything in and 4 hours later I heard the wonderful beep indicating my bread was done. I opened the top slowly, still having residual fears of exploded bread, and not only was it beautiful, it was large. When the recipe stated 'extra large' they weren't kidding!



Here is my "It's bigger than my head" pose. And best of all, it slid right out! I can't help but crack up every time I look at this bread. It reminds me of those tall chef hats. Who knew bread machines could be comical too?

Summer Vacation - Day 4

We spent most of day four of our vacation at Thomas Jefferson's home - Monticello in Charleston, VA.  Its set back down a two lane road on top of a large hill.  We learned that he spent years leveling the top of the hill for his home and spent decades building the house, revising plans three times until he got it just right. 

We arrived around lunch time, so we stopped just before Monticello on that same two lane road at Miche's Tavern.




It was a country style buffet.  You went through the buffet line to get whatever you wanted, then grabbed a seat.  Then you had a waitress to get seconds, refills, dessert, etc.  The inside of the restaurant was nearly all original and had a really neat atmosphere.

 After lunch we continued on another 5 minutes to Monticello.  When you pull in, you're greeted by a large building that consists of a theater, museum, gift shop and cafe.  We made our way to the ticket counter and got our tickets for the house tour.  We had about an hour and a half to kill prior to our tour, so we watched the 'Jefferson's Monticello' movie, perused the gift shop and museum.  We hopped on the shuttle that took us down a winding road to the house.

But, we still had time to kill, so we looked around the grounds first.  There were outbuildings, a gift shop, Jefferson's grave, gardens, etc.  We started at the gardens.




You can tell why Jefferson picked this spot - it's absolutely gorgeous!  And since he excavated and flattened the top of the hill, it has views like this all the way around the house.  Originally, there were small sleeping quarters and shops along the garden, but they were built out of wood and have completely deteriorated.  Only plaques remain to tell us what was there.

 I love this picture of Samuel.  I have no idea what he was doing or thinking, but he wasn't nearly as bored as he looks in this picture.  He had a good time the whole day.  It was really hot this day, about 95, so we all took a break at the gift shop to get a drink.

 Time for the house tour!  Unfortunately, they don't allow pictures inside the house, so you'll have to venture there one day to see it.  Jefferson definitely had a creative mind.  He had unique features and ideas throughout the whole house - some were very grand and others were very modest.  He was very conscious of space and made sure the house was as efficient as it could be.

 It might be hard to see, but see the white railing and small brick buildings on either side of the lawn?  They attach to the house.  Above ground, it's a large deck that leads to those buildings.  But what's unique is under.  It's a basement area with many small rooms all the way around the house - much bigger than the footprint of the house itself.  Jefferson put anything that generated heat (kitchen and smoke house) in the basement to keep the heat out of the house, anything that needed to stay cool (wine) or just otherwise wasn't fitting to have in the main house (privy's for slaves and staff).  He also had a dumbwaiter that went from the basement to the dining room to get food, wine, etc to the house.



 Monticello was unique because it had 6 privy's - 3 of which were indoors.  One in the house and two in the basement area.  This was unheard of in Jefferson's time because indoor facilities were not considered a necessity.  If you look at the bottom left of the sign above, you can see the house in the middle and the basement 'tunnels' that extend out from the house.

This concluded our tour of Monticello.  Our hotel was about an hour away, so we headed back and found a local restaurant for dinner.  We had to get a good night sleep for our long day at the farm that followed!