It is December 31, 2009, time to look at our 2009 Farm Goals. We did complete some and didn’t
I’ll start with the 2009 Farm Goals: = COMPLETED = Started but not completed =No work done yet.
Put in a Garden – We had a great garden this year. The corn was delicious, the tomatoes did great, we had TOOOO much squash, we loved it. We have a lot of it canned in the pantry, and had some great veggies this summer. We have already started planning next years garden!
Build Layer Chicken Coop – We’re getting about 8 eggs a day now. LOVE IT!!!
Build Chicken Tractors – We built 2 chicken tractors and did almost 50 Cornish X on pasture and 4 turkeys. We have about 20 chickens still in the freezer and we canned a lot of the turkey and have many meals ready to go!
Attend/Enter 3 Alpaca Shows – Well, we didn’t go to any.
Visit 3 Fiber Mills – We didn’t go to any, maybe next year.
Neonatal Class
Get a Tractor – Yeah right! LOL
Build a Whizbang Garden Cart & Plucker – Well, we have the wood for the garden cart. I have started with some very handy friends getting what we need for the plucker. I’m sure with the help of Dan we’ll get this done soon!
Build Road to Back Pasture - Well, nope!
Run Water To Barn – Maybe this next year!!
Make Compost Bins –
Farm Days – Our farm day in September was wonderful. We had a lot of people stop by and had a great time. The news stopped by and we even made the 6:00 and 11:00 news!
Build a Fire Pit
Build a Skirting Table
Start a Monthly Movie Night- We’ve done pretty well with having a family movie night each month. It helped when we started getting Netflix!
CHICKEN & QUAIL UPDATE:
Our chickens are doing great. We have 8 laying hens & 3 three month olds out with Millie our rooster. We have 10 two month old chickens that we hatched out and 7 more chickens that just hatched out yesterday and today. So that gives us 29 chickens at this point.
We also started on quail this year. We have 6 laying hens with 2 male quail. We also have 13 three week old quail that are just about to start laying here in 2-3 weeks. That gives us 21 quail. We hope to start breeding and raising quail for meet.
ALPACA UPDATE:
We have 23 alpaca on property. 2 of them are being agisted here for our good friend Kim. We are so happy to have Brownie & Atom here with us. We also have 2 that will be leaving this week for their new home, Rogue and Zach. They were purchased by a great couple from Eugene a couple of months ago.
The rest of the alpacas are doing great. We had 5 babies this summer and we are looking forward to another great year. Thank you to all of our friends for the support they have given us this year. Look for our 2010 goals in just a few days!
Today was the Bohemia Elementary School Talent Show. Aislyn was chosen as one of 15 acts to perform in today’s talent show. She had auditions about 3 weeks ago and was so excited to be chosen. She has been practicing a lot since.
Here she is!
She does a great job.
Here are some more pictures from the day
Aislyn waiting to go on
Julia and Aislyn!
Lilian stayed home from school today (mental health day) and she helped Julia plant part of our garden and she enjoyed the talent show.
A little Dairy Queen after a talent show is always liked!
We are proud of Aislyn for wanting to be part of the talent show. She hasn’t been nervous at all about it, just was something she wanted to do, made up her mind to do it and did it.
Ok, it’s been a little while (a week) since I gave an update, and it’s been even longer since I gave an update on the chickens so I thought it was time to give an overall farm update!
I’ll start with the 2009 Farm Goals: = COMPLETED = Started but not completed =No work done yet.
Put in a Garden – The garden has been tilled. When Julia was in Orlando for a TSFL conference, I had a local farmer come over with his small tractor and till up the garden. It would have taken me ALL DAY to do it with a walk behind kind, it took him just a few minutes. No pictures at this time but I’m sure you know what dirt looks like!!!
Build Layer Chicken Coop - The layer coop is mostly done. It has walls, windows, doors, roosts, nest boxes, lights, and chickens. All that needs to be done to really finish it off is to put access doors on the back of the nest boxes so we won’t have to go in to the coop to collect eggs. Here are some pictures:
This first one is of the simple roosts that I built out of 2×4’s. I also had some leftover metal shelving that I hooked some large limbs to. The chickens really like the limbs.
Here are the nest boxes I built. Right now I have the 4 upper ones. On the middle shelf I am going to have a community nest box. There will be an opening at each end, and the chickens will be able to go in and lay eggs where they want.
Here are a couple of pictures of the chickens enjoying (except for me taking pictures of them) the limbs in the coop.
Build Chicken Tractors
Attend/Enter 3 Alpaca Shows – Just found out that the Alpaca show in Eugene is canceled this year. So we’ll have to find some more to go to!
Visit 3 Fiber Mills
Neonatal Class – We did attend the neonatal class at Northwest Alpacas. It was a good day and we did learn a lot. We now feel a little bit more prepared for our 4 cria this summer.
Get a Tractor – Yeah right! LOL
Build a Whizbang Garden Cart & Plucker – I’ve started collecting the wood I’ll need for this. Next thing I need to do is start getting the hardware.
Build Road to Back Pasture
Run Water To Barn
Make Compost Bins – We have a location and a lot of stuff to compost. Now we just need to put it all together.
Farm Days – We have dates!!! The first one is going to be June 27. This is just our Farm Day. The National Alpaca Farm day is going to be September 26th. We’re looking forward to these days!
Build a Fire Pit
Build a Skirting Table
Start a Monthly Movie Night- January & February Movie Nights went great. This has been harder than I thought it was going to be. We did have movie nights in March, April & May, but not all the kids were present at all nights, and we didn’t have friends at all nights but we did watch movies!!
CHICKEN UPDATE:
Well, at one point we had A LOT of chickens here on property. At one point we had 3 RIR, 3 Barred Rocks, 3 Welsummers, 3 Speckled Sussex, 3 Silver Laced Wyandottes, 1 Golden Laced Wyandotte, 6 Buff Orpingtons, 1 Cuckoo Maran, 1 Dominique, 1 Lemon Blue Game Bantam, 1 Barnyard Mutt. 26 chickens & 4 turkeys! I finally realized that we had too many. So I either gave away or sold a good number of chickens. At this point we have: 1 Barred Rock, 1 Speckled Sussex, 1 GLW, 1 SLW, 1 Welsummer, 1 Dominque & the Barnyard mutt. We also still have all the Buff Orps and the Cuckoo Maran & the 4 turkeys. Also in the incubator we have 15 eggs, so there is still a chance we’ll have TOO MANY chickens!!
We have named most of our chickens (except for the BO’s).
Goldie is our Golden Laced Wyandotte
Millie is our Dominique
Whitey is our barnyard mutt
Uncle Sam is the Barred Rock in back and Madge is the Speckled Sussex in front.
Wellie is our Welsummer
And Dott is our Silver Laced Wyandotte.
Like I said, we also have 6 Buff Orpingtons (no names yet) and one Cuckoo Maran. They are about 2 weeks old right now and are doing pretty good.
We also have 15 eggs in the incubator. 7 of them are Black Australorps. These will grow up to be beautiful irredescent black (large) chickens.
Image from Meyer Hatchery
The other 8 are Ameraucanas. I’m not sure what color they are going to be (there are multiple colors) but they will lay beautiful blue eggs. Here are some pictures from today!
We’re on day 18 with these, so no turning, and only a couple days left until they hatch!!
ALPACA UPDATE
All in all the alpacas have been doing great. No real issues with them. They are growing up wonderfully and getting along like they should. Like my last post said, we were getting ready for shearing day. It went great!!! We all had our jobs and we did them well, and we got them all sheared!
I was out getting ready for the day aroun 7:30. Kim (Brownie’s owner) showed up at 8:00 and started helping us get ready. We layed out plywood where we would be shearing and got the barn as clean as you can get a barn.
Eddie showed up right at 9:00 and started setting up his equipment (ropes & clippers). To shear the alpacas, we bring them in and lay them down on their side and then tie their feet and stretch them out so they can’t hurt themselves or us! All in all they are probably down for no more then 4-5 minutes. Most of them didn’t make much of a fuss.
Here is a picture of what it looked like just before we started. You can see the ropes stretched out ready to go. In the picture is Eddie the shearer, Kim, and Julia’s dad Terry filming.
So our jobs were as follows: Rebecca and I had the job of bringing in the alpacas, laying them down and tying them down. Georgia was in charge of sweeping between the alpacas and helping Bec and I separate the alpacas out and keep the others where they needed to go (she was a GREAT help!!!). Kim was in charge of helping Eddie with shearing and keeping the head where it needed to be during shearing. Robbin from Bailey Hill Alpacas was helping bag up the fiber. She was in charge of 2nds (fiber from the chest, belly, legs & neck). Julia was bagging up the blanket and clipping toenails while we had them down. Pattie was in charge of keeping all the bags and lables in order so we would know whos fiber was whos when we finished. Lilian was in charge of watching the kids in the house so we could all be out in the barn. She was also a great help! Without Georgia & Lilian, we could have never done this day so quickly!!
Here is a picture mid-shear! Over on the far side you can see them shearing Nola. Julia had just collected the blanket and Kim is holding the head while Eddie finishes up. Here close to the camera you can see Bec and I tying down Helena while Georgia brings us the ropes. (This was the only picture I got during shearing. I thought I had my camera to take one picture every 30 seconds, but it was really set to take one picture every 60 minutes. Next year I’ll get it set right!! Stupid camera!!)
This is the aftermath of shearing.
All in all it only took us about 75 minutes to shear all 16 alpacas. Pretty good for first timers! Julia and her mom had made a great lunch for all of us and we all went in and enjoyed a fun lunch, getting to know Eddie better and laughing about getting spit on or kicked (only Bec and I got kicked, so not too bad). I think we all had some sort of spit on us!
Here is what we are left with, 32 bags of beautiful fiber (only 30 bags are shown, Kim took Brownies fiber with her). I love all the different colors. One bag has their blanket and another bag with 2nds. We also collected a small sample to send off to get histograms (this will tell us the thickness of the fiber, the length, and all the fun stuff we want to know).
Terry was able to get some video. It didn’t upload that well, but here you can see I think Feline getting sheared.
We all had a great day. We’re looking forward to next year.
So, all in all we are having a great time on the farm! Keep watching for the update on the eggs that are getting ready to hatch!!
This last Saturday, April 11, Aislyn was baptized. She was excited to be baptized, and it was a wonderful day. The baptism was at 4:00 at the Stake Center in Eugene. We had a lot of family there for her baptism. Rusty gave the opening prayer, Grandpa Terry gave a talk on baptism, Julia gave a talk on the Holy Ghost, Nana led the music while Mary Clark (Aislyn’s piano teacher) played the piano for us, and Georgia gave the closing prayer. It was a great service.
Here are some pictures from the day.
Aislyn just before the service started
Aislyn and her sisters
Aislyn and I
Mom, Dad & Aislyn
The family!
Grandma, Grandpa & Aislyn
Grandma, Grandpa, Great-Grandma & Aislyn
Lilian being cute!!
Aislyn & her best friend in Cottage Grove, Miranda and her family.
Aislyn & Great-Grandma Leder
Aislyn & Grandma Leder
Four generations!
It was a great day. Aislyn loved being the center of attention but I think she really enjoyed being baptized. The dress Aislyn is wearing was made by her Nana Leder. She loves the dress.
One funny story during the day is with the temperature of the water. When we got there, the baptism coordinators, the Christensens let us know that the hot water heater was out so the water was going to be cold. I was thinking that was going to be fine. When Georgia was baptized, the water was right around 110º and both Georgia and I were burned!! Well, as we stepped down in to the water, cold was an UNDERSTATEMENT!!! IT WAS FREEZING!!! Aislyn was looking for the penguins and polar bears it was so cold! I felt terrible making her go down under the water. She just had a look of shock on her face when she came up!! My feet hurt for about 4 hours afterward. It was COLD!!
So now all of our children have been baptized. It’s a happy but sad day. We’re getting old, our baby is now baptized.
We spent Easter at home this year, our first on the farm. It was a good day. We had a wonderful morning at church (I even got to sleep in, I didn’t have to be to my meetings until 7:00 a.m. this week!!)
That afternoon we had a lot of family over, and we had a great time.
Here’s a list of who was here:
Rusty, Ryan & Jessica (my brother and his kids)
Julie (my sister)
Evelena, Matt, Taylor & Blake (Julia’s sister and her family minus one child)
Rebecca, Andrew, Savannah, Samuel, TJ & Tristan (Julia’s sister and her family)
Micaela (our niece, she came with Evelena since her mom just had a baby and was still in the hospital)
James, Emma, Amanda & Scott (Our nephew, nieces and their dad)
Erin & Kaya (Lilian’s friend and her mom)
We had some wonderful food, spent time just talking, walking around the farm, taking care of the animals, etc. The kids had a great time playing outside most of the day. It didn’t start to rain until just about as everybody was getting ready to leave.
We did do an Easter Egg Hunt. The little kids had a great time doing this, here are some pictures:
Checking out their LOOT!!
The flowers were so beautiful I just had to take a picture!
Everybody was back on the road around 6:00 and we rested (well Julia cleaned up some) most of the rest of the evening. It was a great Easter!
I’ve never been in to making New Years Resolutions, but this year we have decided to make some goals for the farm for this year. Julia and I went to the temple with our ward today so on our drive up, we wrote down some of our goals for this year. Will we get them all done? I hope so!! We’ll be working towards these, and in a year we’ll check back and see how we did.
Put in a Garden – We are looking forward to finally having a garden. Since we were first married we have wanted to have a garden. While I was going to school, this was not possible living in Married Student Housing. In Corvallis, we had about 3 sqft of ground to plant, didn’t happen. In Phoenix, well, it’s Phoenix, not much gardening for us going on there. Back in Eugene, the deer were not very helpful, but we did container garden on our deck. We have already started getting the garden area ready. We have been starting to compost the alpaca beans in the garden. We’ll start figuring out what we want to plant soon and get our seed from Territorial Seed here in Cottage Grove. We’ll then start planting in our green house, and we’ll be on our way.
Build Layer Chicken Coop – I’ve decided where I am going to build the chicken coop, in the old shed, in the back. That way the chickens will have a large protected run, and still have access to the pastures when I want them to. I have ordered the chickens and will be getting them as day old chicks in February. I’ll need to get the coop finished by the time they are around 5-6 weeks old so I have about 2 months to get this done. I have ordered 3 Buff Orpingtons , 3 Silver Laced Wyandottes , 3 Golden Laced Wyandottes & 3 Welsummers . I’ve ordered them (and borrowed the pictures) from Lazy 54 Farm in Hubbard, OR. Great hatchery, good people. Use them if you are wanting chickens!! We should start getting brown eggs (from light brown to very dark brown) around July. I’m looking forward to farm fresh free range pasture raised sustainable cage-free eggs!
Build Chicken Tractors – We are looking to have pasture raised chickens and turkeys this year. My goal is to have at least 50 broilers, and 10 turkeys. We’ll get the Turkeys in May to raise for Thanksgiving and Christmas. We’ll get the chickens in June or July and raise them for about 7 weeks on pasture in chickens tractors (so I have until about July to build them). I’ve thought about Salatin style tractors, but I think I like hoop houses better kind of like Robert Palmondon does at Norton Creek Farm near here in Blodgett, OR.
Attend/Enter 3 Alpaca Shows – We want to attend at least 3 alpaca shows this year. The ones we are thinking about are the EVAA Alpaca Marketplace & Fleece Show in Eugene, OR, Alpacalooza in Puyallup, WA, the CABA Classic Halter & Fleece Show in Portland, OR, or AlpacaMania in Medford, OR. We also want to enter our fleece in to at least three shows. We don’t know what shows yet, but with Spin Off’s, we can enter across the country. So we are now working on deciding what ones we are going to do.
Visit 3 Fiber Mills – Julia would like to visit at least three fiber mills to see where we would like to send our fiber this year, and to learn more about the process.
Neonatal Class – We want to attend one alpaca neonatal class this year before our babies are born. We have about 6 months to get this one done!
Get a Tractor – A real tractor, one with a bucket and a brush hog. We need to get a tractor. This will be one of the hardest this year because it is financial, and not just something we need to do. We at least need to get a riding lawn mower so we can mow quicker and use it to tow our wagon around the farm. We don’t need a big tractor, just one that will turn compost, clean out the barn, haul stuff, pull stuff, and load stuff. We’re not picky!
Build a Whizbang Garden Cart & Plucker – I have gotten plans to build a Whizbang Garden Cart and a Whizbang Chicken Plucker from Herrick Kimball of The Deliberate Agrarian. I should be getting the plans in the next little while. I’ll be blogging about building these, so watch for this.
Build Road to Back Pasture – I sort of talked about doing this in my blog post It’s Getting Cold. I want to build a road from the front of the property to the back of the property so we can drive down the side and get vehicles to the back of the property to pick-up and take animals back there, and whatever else is needed.
Run Water To Barn – I want to get water IN the barn. Currently, there is water in the backyard NEAR the barn, and we have to run a hose in to the barn to get water to the alpacas. I want to run water down the back of the barn and have a water spigot in each stall in the barn. This shouldn’t be too hard, just manual labor of digging the trench down the back of the barn and then running pipes down and putting in some no-freeze spigots or in the future automatic waterers.
Make Compost Bins – We have started our compost piles, but they are out in the open getting too much water and not composing. We have some bins we need to build and get using. We are going to put them by the greenhouse so the compost is more useful. Julia has some easy plans that I’ll get building soon!! (I hope!)
Farm Days – We want to hold 2 Farm Days this year. Last year we participated in the National Alpaca Farm Day and had a great time. We would like to do this again this year in September. We would also like to hold one early on in the summer maybe when we have new babies to show off. So be watching for our Early Summer Farm Day and come out and visit the farm. (Ok, you can come out whenever you like so just let us know when you want to come out!!!)
Build a Fire Pit – We want to have a fire pit this summer so we can sit out back in the evenings and have a fire to cook hot dogs and roast marshmallows. Nothing fancy, just some rocks, logs and a fire. This is something the girls have been asking for, and it is something we could use year round (not daily in the winter, but on dry days!)
Build a Skirting Table – This should be easy! We need a skirting table to skirt (clean and prepare) the fleece to be sent off to be processed at the fiber mills. I’ve thought about building my own, but I think I’ll just build this Skirting Table from Quality Llama Products in Lebanon, OR.
Start a Monthly Movie Night – Ok this one really isn’t farm related, but it will happen on the farm!! Last night Georgia had some friends over to watch movies, and we all had a great time. Julia and I were talking on our drive today how much fun it was, and that we would like to do it monthly. We’ll let each girls choose the movie they want on their month. The girls will be able to invite their friends over, and we’ll just have some snacks and enjoy a good movie! I’m looking forward to this!
There are our goals. We hope to get all of them done, and we’ll work towards all of them, but if we can get most of them done, we’ll be very happy!!
It’s 11:40 p.m. on December 24th. We’re just about ready!!
We want to wish all our friends, family and people we don’t even know a Merry Chirstmas!!
I was tracking Santa as he went by Cottage Grove on Norad Santa. It is fun to watch his progress. I found it really interesting after he left Cottage Grove he stopped in Medford. I found it interesting what building they show for Medford!!
What a great day! We guess we had around 75+ people attend, and we just had a wonderful time talking with old friends, and meeting new.
We started out early this morning setting up the tents, getting the signs out and doing final clean up around the yard.
Rusty (my brother) and his kids got here at 9:00 and we were ready to go. Kim Sheehan, a friend from work, and owner of Brownie, came and brought her spinning wheel and spent most of the day showing people how to spin yarn, and brought some drop spindles so the kids could spin. Aislyn and Ryan were PRO’s at it. Kim was a GREAT addition to the day. She even showed Julia and Ryan how to knit, and Ryan was doing very well.
We had a pretty steady crowd from 10:00 until 3:00. Lots of friends from work & church (both Eugene & Cottage Grove). We also had a number of people from the community that saw our ad on Craigslist, newspaper & on signs we put up around town that stopped by. We also had the editor from the local newspaper (Cottage Grove Sentinel) stop by and take some pictures, and ask some questions, so if we get a story in this next weeks paper, I’ll let you know. We also were able to meet another local alpaca ranch owner. I have talked to them through email a couple of times, and they were able to stop by and it was great to meet them.
We were giving out Kettle Corn but we were asking for donations for the Cottage Grove High School theater department. We raised $83.50!! We are so surprised, and so happy! We want to thank all our friends and visitors that donated. The school needs it!
We also had a raffle for alpaca yarn and an alpaca activity book. We pulled 4 names, and we’ll be letting them know soon!
All in all it was a GREAT day. FUN! The weather was PERFECT. It was around 75 degrees and sunny all day.
We are looking forward to next years National Alpaca Farm Day.
Here are some pictures from today (we were so busy most of the day, that we didn’t take any pictures).
Well, tonight was a night of firsts, and not a night of good firsts. While I was in here working on the blog, Julia and her sister were out with the alpacas talking with our neighbor. She has 2 dogs, and are fairly well trained dogs. Well, her oldest dog got away from her, went down to the ditch, and came over to our property and started chasing the three boys. She was able to separate the boys, and started chasing Rogue. Julia, Becca and our neighbor tried to catch the dog but she was too fast. She was able to bite Rogue on the back leg, and caused Rogue to run in to a fence. Well, our neighbor got the dog and Julia and Becca got the alpacas in the barn. The girls came in and told me they needed help, and I went out to help Julia look at Rogue and see if he was ok.
I caught him, and Julia started checking him out. He seemes to be doing ok. They are all nervous now, and really don’t want to eat right now.
The 2nd first tonight is while Julia and I were checking out Rogue, Rogue turned his head and spit at Julia right in the face. A direct hit!!! BULLSEYE!! 9 A WINNER!!! BINGO!!! SPOT ON!!! DEAD CENTER!!! Just to let you know, alpaca spit STINKS!!! Thank goodness that Julia closed her eyes and mouth.
We got everybody calmed down, and Julia went in to take a LONG shower, and everybody seems to be doing ok. I’m going to go check on the boys later to see how they are doing.
It’s time for a long update!! This will be a mixture of pictures and words (maybe more pictures).
Items to be covered: 1. Arrival of Endeavour
A few weeks ago, our herdsire, Endeavour arrived from Alpacas of Shepherd’s Pasture. He is a handsome 2 year old male. We are looking forward to using him to breed with Milkyway this year, and maybe all of our female alpacas next year. We paid a little more with him than we wanted too, but this was our reasoning. On average, breedings cost around $2500. If we use him this year on Milkyway and then next year on our 4 girls, we have saved $12,500. MORE than made back our money by purchasing him. His is a nice boy as well. He is one of the only ones that likes to have his neck and back rubbed!
Being led to the pasture:
Meeting the boys:
Meeting the NEIGHbors:
Checking out the barn:
He has done well, and gets along really well with Rogue & Zach. We are very happy with him!
2. Arrival of Milkyway & Brownie
Milkyway & Brownie came a week or so after Endeavour. Marcia & Cheryl from Silver Falls Alpacas brought them down. Milkyway is a beautiful alpaca, and a great mother. Brownie is a very cute black little girl. They have been getting used to the new pastures, and enjoy teasing the boys in the next pasture.
Checking out the pasture:
Hiding behind mom:
Flirting with the boys:
I’ll go this way, you go that way!
Brownie & Mom
Brownie and her pet fly:
3. Fence Building
To get ready for all our girls to be delivered, we had to split the back pasture in to two different pastures. This was going to be our first BIG fence building project. It is around 300′ long, and we think we did a good job. The only thing we did not do well was take pictures of the fence building. I don’t think I really have any pictures of just the fences. Here is one picture where you can see one end of the fence:
We are trying a new system (to us) to make the fence stronger (instead of digging post holes). So far so good.
4. Gate moving
Along with the new fence we have had to move some gates around. We added a gate between the two back pastures (you can see it in the picture above). We also have added a new gate in the barn. We have 4 more gates to add, and then we will be done for the time being with gates.
5. Pregnancies (alpacas, not human!)
All four of our adult female alpacas are pregnant!!! WOO HOO!!!
Feline & Alsea are up at Northwest Alpacas, and have been confirmed pregnant by Dr. Paul Jones with internal ultrasound. Both are about 50 days pregnant.
Aurora is up at Chappell’s Alpaca Junction, and has been spit tested, and is currently having her blood tested for progesterone.
We bred Milkyway with Endeavour 2 weeks ago, and he got her down and bred with her for about 23 minutes. We then spit tested a week later, and Milky wanted NOTHING to do with Ende. We are not 100% sure that Milky is pregnant, but we are going to do one more spit test, and then test her progesterone. I know you want to see some pictures, so here you go:
DUE DATES:
Feline: 6/14/2009
Alsea: 6/18/2009
Aurora: 8/1/09
Milkyway: 8/9/09
6. Visits from family
We were very happy to have my mom visit us, but unfortunately, it wasn’t for very fun reasons. My mom and dad are living in Brazil, and my mom had a bad fall, and broke her front three teeth. Instead of having the dental work done in Brazil, the Church paid for my mom to fly home, and have my brother do the work. I picked her up at the airport, and she looked a lot better than I thought she would. My brother did the work, and he was very happy that there wasn’t really much damage. He replaced the crowns, and she is doing good. My mom was able to spend a week with us here in Cottage Grove. It wasn’t near long enough, but it was great to have her!! She is down at my sisters house, and is flying home (to Brazil) tomorrow.
7. Horses
Well, as some of you know, Julia bought some horses with her sister this last spring. Well, we have been boarding them up in Eugene since then, but it was getting expensive. We brought Jackie down here so we could take care of her. She is a great horse for Georgia to take care of and ride. I also enjoy riding her.
8. Rabbits
Well, Lilian and Aislyn have wanted rabbits since we moved here. Andrea, Rusty’s hygienist, let us know that she had some extra bunnies that we could have. We went up there when we took mom back up to Rusty’s and picked them up. They are very cute!!
9. Arrival of remaining alpacas
This weekend, Julia and I will be heading to Portland to pick up Alsea, Sunshine and Feline from Northwest Alpacas in Hillsboro. On our way back south, we’ll go through Junction City and pick up Helena and Aurora from Chapell’s Alpaca Junction.
We are excited to have all of our animals finally on our property. This is going to double the amount of work, but it is worth it!!
10. Life in general!!
Life in general is that we have a full life outside of the farm.
The girls have all started back in school. Aislyn is in 2nd grade, and really enjoys her new teacher. She has made some new friends, and is really enjoying be back in school. Lilian started middle school this year. She is making friends and having fun. She is taking band this year, and is trying out the instruments. At this time, she is looking at either the flute or percussion. Georgia started high school this year. YIKES!! When did I get old enough to have a daughter in high school? She also started early morning seminary. She is enjoying seminary, just not the early morning part. We leave the house around 6:45 am every morning now. She really like high school. She is trying to figure out how to raise money to go to New York over spring break with the drama club.
Julia and I are busy in church. I was called to be the Sunday School President. LOVE this calling!! Julia is the Mia Maid advisor and gets to teach Georgia’s class almost every Sunday.
A few weeks ago, as a family we cooked kettle corn at a local fair. Maybe I should say LITTLE local fair. It was fun, but very slow. Here are some pictures from that weekend.
Our booth at night:
Our booth during the day:
Ready to go:
Want some?
What we did most of the weekend:
All in all, we have been busy. It’s been fun, and we look forward to more fun!!
Thanks for sticking through to the end. I’ll try and update more often so they won’ be as long!!
= COMPLETED
= Started but not completed
=No work done yet.
Next year I’ll get it set right!! Stupid camera!!)
, 3 Silver Laced Wyandottes 
, 3 Golden Laced Wyandottes 
& 3 Welsummers 
. I’ve ordered them (and borrowed the pictures) from 
