Toad on a Tractor

Not much to say other than the toad is on the tractor~

More pictures

The kids at Uncle Gary's model railroad open house.

Swimming in the "cool"

Some recent pictures

Nora swinging at "Grandma's Park"









Benny swinging too. (Not too high Grandma!)









Eating dirt cake.









Kristin's chore-mobile.









Ben fully outfitted for his bike. Training wheels, helmet and all.

Gardening...almost

The man at the equipment rental store assured me that cutting the sod for a 30'x30' garden would only take about 15 minutes. True...but rolling it and removing it took an extra 8 hours. Good thing I had some help from the kids. Finally, when all the sod was gone, I was excited to take the tiller to the soil and get started only to find the soil so hard and clay-like that the tiller just bounced around on top of the earth. SO, I called up a farmer friend of mine...






Grandpa with the plow.










Thanks, Grandpa!

Heifer Calves

Since our last update, a new opportunity has come our way! We will be raising "replacement heifers" for a local dairy farmer. We will pick up calves from his farm when they are two days old, bring them to our farm and feed and care for them until they are 6 months of age. At that point we will take and sell them back to the farmer we got them from. This allows him to free his facilities and his time to concentrate on the milking herd.

We picked up our first two calves on Wednesday night. We will be bottle feeding them twice a day for a few weeks before we start the weening process. Also, we'll start taking all newborns from now on. When we are fully "up and running" we will have somewhere between 10-16 calves and up to 40 cows here at a time! We will also raise 1-2 bull calves per month to sell to a friend who will raise them for meat.

We are very excited and learning a lot! They kids were skeptical at first and were fearful of getting bit, but are now comfortable and very excited to see the "baby cows".

Get ready for a garden

We got a start on our "starts" today with a little help from the kids. Planted broccoli, 2 tomato varieties, eggplant, hot peppers, and onions.

Eric also took down an arbor-vitae tree that was taking up all the sun from the sun room. We also think this tree was how the racoon got access to the roof and, more importantly, access to the house last summer. The amount of sunlight our kitchen gets now is dramatically different. The plastic insulation around the windows came off today too! We finished the day off with spring cleaning in the garage and a family trip in the truck to the rock quarry. A great day!

Free Range Kids

Winter is slowly winding down here in Iowa. As you can see, much of the snow is gone now and we have even been able to enjoy a few sunny afternoons outdoors. Check out the videos of the kids free ranging with the hens! We enjoyed a quiet week of spring break together including a visit to Madison to see some friends, a trip to Fort Atkinson to see Grandpa Dean and Grandma Mary. Later in the week, we had a nice Easter Sunday at my Mom's new house here in Clinton. She hosted 13 of us including Aunt Linda all the way from Maine.

Hope you all had a nice Easter and are enjoying spring wherever you may be!