Fun Classes in School Here at Home

I keep telling Wyatt Clay that home school can be fun, but he has to get the tough stuff done, too.   Lots of math these days. Strangely, I was pretty spot on with what I thought he couldn't line up in public school math, but was surprised by stuff he found easy, and especially by what he didn't know. After all of the years of driving on the rest of the world's schedule, having no time for being here at the house with the animals, and almost living in the car, we are enjoying our time here together and setting our priorities that aren't centered around standardized testing or what not.

One of the things that drives me nuts about public school is the lack of physical activity. I hadn't really thought I would push it much during football season, but when a child grows in the spurts that Wyatt does, coordination and fluidity of movement really suffer.  So he wanted extra training in the morning. I had already been building an obstacle course, this just pushed me along, and we will keep adding elements.

The tire is five feet across.  He thought it looked so easy when he helped me roll it from where it used to be a sandbox. Then he tried to flip it.  He quickly admitted that it is bigger than the ones he is used to at football, and we worked on how to work up. For now, he is flipping it up and push-rolling it down the field, then pushing a wheeled cart back with his hands flat, eventually with weight on it.

Shadow Paws rolled in the mud at the turnaround after Wyatt turned on a hose for her.  She is very happy to follow him and race him on sprints, and chase lizards when she has time.

Thursday, she was trying to help me decide whether I could work on painting the farm stand sign, or whether we thought weather would come in.

In the end, we decided the weather was far enough away to do one coat, then decide later if we could add more. Turned out to be a good choice. I used up a can of paint and knew what to buy on the way home from work Friday.

We are still getting into the swing of things, but the kids are trying new recipes regularly. With Bailey away, I found a neat recipe that involved red pepper gazpacho and pepperoni cheese toasts.  Of course, he was more interested in the pepperoni cheese toasts.  Essentially, it is a grilled cheese with pepperoni.  Wyatt did a great job learning to make them. Now if he threw as much energy into his writing assignments!

He even toasted extra pepperoni for garnish and a nice presentation!

And when his Dad got home from work, he made another one. He seems pretty proud of his accomplishments!  And he was fueled up and ready for football practice!

Just another day around here, right? 

Advice Please, in Tomatoes and Melons...

Good morning, world! So these are some issues in the food production I have been dealing with, and I am hoping for input from my fellow growers out there!

This first one is a funny one. I have been moving some plants around, especially some honeydew, cantaloupe and cucumber vines I started without enough expansion space. I put in a new tomato plant to replace one that didn't survive some intense heat (more on that int a bit) and literally overnight, the cantaloupe plant that I had laid in circles on a shelf wrapped itself around the plants and wrapped the little search vines around the stalk, not even the cage(I didn't have a cage for it yet)! Oops. Any ideas for getting it unwrapped tonight so I can replant it?

These are two of five yellow pear tomatoes that suddenly died during the lengthy period over 11 degrees. I was so excited to work with this heritage organic non-gmo variety this year, and the plants were doing well, producing beautifully and watered consistently.  Is this merely a less heat tolerant variety that I will need to use as an early season variety only? Has anyone else tried this one?

On to my next oops. I have this shallow box that I turned into a planter. I know there are some pack rats we are trying to deal with, so I figured I would cover with expanded metal, and keep lifting the metal to keep the lants underneath. Then one day we had a really good gully-washer, and the dirt rather moved to one side of the planter. A pack rat got up and ate the pumpkin seedlings in the other end of the planter, and overnight the plant grew through the expanded metal and when I try to pull it back through, I accidentally break off stems to thick or the like. If I give in and break some of them off, with the remainder of the plant survive, and does anyone know if there is a certain size where these don't seem to be lost to the little varmints anymore? I think I already know the answerm here, it looks like I will be welding a cage that functions as a box over and gives the plants more room, but a girl can hope, right?

This is the honeydew I have in a much deeper planter.  It really likes to attach itself to the expanded metal above, regardless of the depth. Will breaking the little vines cause trouble? I can't say that I have done this in other tha my garden before, and while I was dealing with the traditional garden out of commission, I thought I would try the boxes, and it has some strange side-effects!

Anyhow, I sure appreciate your thoughts on this increase in my container gardening . I miss having the regular garden! But it is back now, and I will keep getting things squared away, but container gardening is a great choice for water use!  So thank you in advance for your advice and input on this balance. Feel free to comment on the blog or the fb post, whichever is better for you. I sure hope anything learned can be helpful to other folks out there!

A Midsummer Night's Team

Yesterday, I set out to do the evening walk around with the kids before doing the watering. I had a camera in y pocket, since the monsoon season leads to the most amazing sunsets and skies.  As we went to the big pen, we stopped to look at the Brahma pen, where I am doing some preventive treatments. I floated a couple thoughts by the kids, and then kept walking to the big pen.

As Wyatt and I discussed the dirt I had added to fill in the dirt bath holes while the kids were away at camp, we tag teamed to pull the eggs from under Poofy the blue Cochin. I stood up and noticed and egg int he rafters off to the side. and pointed it out to Wyatt. As I looked further across, I found this hen, sitting on a clutch of eggs in the loft where we are storing straw for next winter. Wyatt tracked my line of sight immediately.

Neither Wyatt nor I had any real clue whether she had been there the day before, so we chose to leave the eggs with her for now. We counted and marked them, and let the broody be broody.

Since we cannot use the eggs fro the Brahma pen for another week, we decided to let her keep hers as well. I wanted to clean the pen, but it was still really muddy from the rain, and since I pulled the eggs long enough to mark them, I decided that was enough messing with the temperamental broody for the day. Her pen can be cleaned in the morning.  So instead I got a little more of the roof reinforcement done.

I did get a little video of her regathering her eggs, though.

In the end, I managed to order the new thermometers for the bator, so hopefully I can get that back in balance tonight to start hatching out the fall babies, Especially since the Javas are almost ready to move out of the baby area!  Always more to do than time to do it, right? Well, out of these eggs, I have no idea how many will hatch, but if I do get the incubator balanced, it will be nice to see how many of the eggs with the hen hatch, versus some in the bator later in the week.  In the meantime, this little team of silly broody hens can take on the rest of summer as mamas to be... or prospective ones, anyway!

First Good Gully-washer of the Season

Yesterday we got our first good gully-washer of the season. Half of the rainfall in our area comes in the Winter rains, the other half in the Summer monsoons.  The monsoons started a bit late this year, then opened up and dumped on areas of the county, but we managed to just acquire a few little sprinkles here and there.

Then, Thursday morning, As I was out working on transplanting some plants, and talking with Wyatt about the Buckeyes, we looked at the skies darkening in the East. We figured it couldn't be much, since the weather forecast was supposed to be a lower chance of rain than the forecasters had said the night before, and it wasn't supposed to increase until the afternoon.  We got a good laugh out of Miss Shadow Paws.  She knows that owls and hawks want to eat the chickens, so this owl, which has set atop the clothesline since has now suddenly become suspect.

We thought you might enjoy this video. She is very sure-footed, and jumps from the shorter spool to the larger one, then barks like crazy without understanding why the owl won't fly away.  What a goofball!

Just as I told Wyatt to get in gear and go clean the Buckeye pen, the sky opened up.  In no time at all, the buckets were overflowing, and the puddles had appeared and were growing.

The troughs, a temporary catchment though improper long term water harvesting solution, were not keeping up!

The chickens were worrying Wyatt, and the goats were worrying Bailey, and the lightening hadn't arrived, so they took off to check on everyone and gather any last unused buckets to catch more water.  As the property saw water standing everywhere, Wyatt wanted to run back out in the rain to make sure everyone had and could get to a dry spot out of the rain.  I looked over at the soaked boy when he returned and Bailey and I laughed at the shirt- had we called in the National Guard? =)  Nah, just the chicken guard.

Here is some water pouring down...

 And Shadow got back at it any time we let her... but we had to be careful of the lightening, because normally there is lots of it, though yesterday almost none by comparison!

It was much later when we managed to get video of the geese, and they only want to play when the video is no where close!  They were often up to their mid legs, and diving in the puddles, rolling and playing like it was a party!

Certainly the happiest animals here during the storm!

The kids rather anjoyed a smoothie break, but Wyatt was accidentally left unsupervised with the whip cream - OOPS!  He does make some excellent smoothies, but Bailey and I are hiding the whip!

Hope you all have plenty of rain!  How are your animals fairing in the monsoons?  How is it where you live?

My magazine, you may not read it!

Busy day yesterday.  I subbed a yoga class with a great group of folks, then went to visit the friendly vampires at the Red Cross/  OK, just kidding, I donated blood, but I am sure they are used to folks calling them that, especially when roly poly veins take several sticks (ugh).  But then I ran errands and finally made it home in time to unload feed between storms, and Bailey and I headed off to bring home one last new addition to the herd for the year.

Sure, I know it is a tease to say that, and then go to a photo of a monsoon sunset, but a mama has to have a little fun in this life!

Anyhow, once the new addition came home, Bailey got busy with updating shots and preventive health stuff, since she had held off a bit so they could all be on the same schedule.  The new little one is really friendly, and isn't happy about the mandatory quarantine, but Bailey spent a good bit of time with her =).

The sky was beautiful, and while the storm was pretty much over by the time I got home, there was enough water to water the garden plants, with a little left over.  YAY!!!!

As we were working our way through chores inside, I looked down to see Vegas with a magazine open. I laughed and showed Bailey, and when we asked him about it, he used his paw to flip the page back, as though he had a neat story in there that he didn't want to share.

Bailey thought it was funny, and he liked the extra attention, so he wagged at her like he was getting neat little recipes tricks out of mam's magazine.

Despite staying up much of the night- again- with a puppy barking at the lightning, and than falling asleep n the sofa without getting Charlie's uniform in the dryer- BIG oops- the rain gauge was only barely wet this morning.

Wyatt thinks it is because the ocotillo has gotten so big that it may be getting in the way if the rain isn't coming down in a favorable direction, so I suppose I will let him and his buddy Shadow the lightning barker set up the extra rain gauge today.

Well, he is to hoping for more rain, and I do have a lot to do today, so I had best get to it!  Have a great day!

Experiment for this morning- Liquid Prickly Pear Soap

As the summer monsoon goes, we still have not registered anything in the rain gauge.  Wyatt thinks the location of the rain gauge is an issue, since the ocotillo located a couple feet from it has grown measurably in the last couple of years.  We might put out a second rain gauge for comparison today.

This morning before I head in to teach yoga, I decided to try an experiment that has been in development for the last month or so: liquid prickly pear soap.  The recipe I had originally found to start from in development contained polysorbate 20.  While polysorbate 20 is considered perfectly safe, I have my own theories as to what is considered safe, and it is derived from a known carcinogen, so I choose not to use it.  I am not pointing fingers at anyone, just making my own choices in how I approach this.

In researching alternatives, it seemed a good stable oil might be an alternative, though could be an issue with fresh prickly pear joice for shelf life, so I added some vitamin E and thought it could stay here for six months to a year to see what the shelf life is and what I really think of this new product.  This is how product development often goes- trying it on me first, so this won't be something you will see at the market anytime soon!  But if it works out, it will be fun!

Since it was to be a small batch, I tried the blender first, big mistake!  So out came the stick blender, with these results once I added all the ingredients, and it is presently resting on the counter for me to watch the stability of the mixture as the days goes before I decide whether to bottle it and try it myself.

SO these are the first photos from the product development stage.  Why prickly pear?  It is a local nutritious fruit that is good for your skin, and the cool factor of the prickly pear is fun for a lot of folks who like the desert southwest. Prickly pear acts a lot like honey or glycerin in how it interacts with your skin in soaps, so mild but cleansing and good for those with dry skin or the like.

Well, thirty minutes post photo, and the mixture is still mixed.  We shall see!  If you have any requests or experience to share, comment away!  I will keep you posted on the experiment over time.  Have a great day!

First Monsoon Storm

Here we go- the annual monsoon rainfall tracker.  Wyatt swears this gauge reads 1 millimeter.  I says it shows nothing but random junk that blew in.  Still, last night we had our first storm of the season, 

and this rain barrel (aka livestock tank) is all I have to show for it.  I had others set out, as I have not yet taken on the water harvesting project I had hoped to, but they blew around the yard instead of collecting and holding water, which meant that Bailey and I collected them last last night when we went out to check on everyone.

Oh, look! Dirt!  Aren't you excited I shared this, too?  OK, I really need more sleep!  But we tend to be up really late when the storms hit looking after everyone!  The rain makes this neat pattern in the Arizona clay when it rains really hard and violently, and you can even look out there now and see our footprints where we flattened out all of that neat patterning.

So I guess- no rain in the gauge means that I will record 1 July as trace.  Hope these number come up soon!

Happy Friday!

Last night, after teaching in town, I got bust on round three with the animals for the day- they need a lot of fresh, cool water this time of year, especially since they are pretty indiscriminate about which to use for drinking and which to use for a standing pool (they use both for both.)  

Since Wyatt was still at football, I double checked his, too, and gathered his eggs with mine, and guess what I found? WE HAVE  ANEW LAYER IN THE BRAHMA PEN!!! Those new Brahmas that did so well for Wyatt at fair this year are growing up!  We cannot wait to see what we get from them!  For now, the hens are learning, and this little egg is barely larger than the d'Uccle egg it is sitting with!

Shadow ran around with Bailey and I, trying to be a good farm dog (outside of getting in the garbage once before I caught her).  She was helping me water when the boys got home from football.  We had stepped inside for a moment, and when she heard Charlie's car she went CRAZY!  I am glad those two have each other.  They are quite the duo together, even if he does spend training time on log rolling instead of long sits and stays sometimes.

You know me and those beautiful sunsets!  I cannot help myself.  But there is a special reason for a photo of this one.  Those clouds, which make the colors streak so beautifully across the sky- do you know what those mean?

Moisture! The humidity is finally arriving.With historic temperature highs in the forecast the rest of this week and into the weekend, I am so glad to see the first glimmer of hope for our monsoon season.  The first the isolated showers appear int he forecast is Monday, and usually the East side gets the rain long before we do.  I am so thankful to see the hope!!!

Well, happy Friday to you all!  This is the best time of day to work outside, so I had best get back out there.  Have a greet day!