Feels Like Spring - Little Cabin Update

This past week we experienced many days of warm sun on our faces. What a joy after an unusually cold, snowy, wet winter. After such a dry summer (not a drop of rain for 9 weeks), we certainly welcomed the rain, but its continued presence for 3 months insured that we spent the winter caked in either mud or icy mud. Last week, it thawed, then dried up. Grass is beginning to grow around the little cabin, as are boys, both big and small.

The winter adaptations we made to the chicken coop worked well to keep the chickens warm. In fact, they seemed unaffected by the cold, even when it was in the 20's for days, even weeks at a time. The problem we had was that we simply draped tarps over a flat "roof" which did not shed rain, but instead allowed it to pool, causing our netting over the top of the coop to break. We will have to repair that before we can remove the tarp completely, in order to keep our flock safe. We are planning some modifications to the coop/ run in the coming weeks, including adding a pitched roof and outside access to the egg boxes, and their food/ water.

Our fall/ winter garden was destroyed by the neighborhood dogs (including our own, who love to "run with the pack"), as was our compost box. We are currently investigating some stronger option for fencing for the garden and stronger materials we might use to remake the compost. I am trying not to let these setbacks discourage me too much, though it does sometimes seem like between our animals, the neighbors animals and too much shade, I am destined to fail at gardening. You see, even with strong fencing, we still would not have a lot of success with a summer garden because of the trees that surround our house and cover almost every inch of our property. I am currently investigating options.

Things are slowly returning to normal since the baby arrived. My big boys are such a tremendous help, as is my wonderful husband. I have recovered well from the c-section, and feel great. The baby has a laid back personality and is pretty easy going, which helps, as well. We took a week off from school when he was born, then had a modified (just the basics) schedule for 4 weeks, plus co-op. Last week, we jumped back in full force and I think everyone was glad to get back to normal ( we all missed history and science). This week, I am trying to add menu planning and more cooking, as well as some additional work outside, on the property. I am also hoping to blog more, as I find that keeps me accountable. Even if no one else reads it, I still feel like if I commit here, I have to follow through.

And now, I'll wrap up with a picture of our littlest cutie. This is his default "serious" expression. He is extremely curious and spends most of his waking time looking around, taking in all of the sights and sounds of our little cabin.

He's Here

Our littlest munchkin made his arrival last week. Meet Evan Thomas:

He was 7 lbs, 10 oz and 20 inches long. He is a nice mix of his older brothers in both looks and personality and we are all positively smitten. I think it will be a while before I am back to posting regularly, but I will try to pop in and update every so often.

Happenings around the Little Cabin

Wow! It is COLD here! We've had several days of super cold weather and there is snow predicted for our area today. That's just crazy to me. We are not used to having snow in winter. Couple that with living almost an hour away from any major shopping, and we are having to think about winter preparations a little differently this year. I'm glad we took the time to cut some of our firewood this past summer. Next year, we will be more proactive and cut a lot more, I hope.

Our hens are really getting good at laying. In November, they laid 249 eggs! We were able to give away about 4 dozen a week, in addition to the eggs we kept and used for ourselves. What a blessing. So far, the winterizing we did for the coop/ run has been quite successful. We ended up adding a stronger tarp to the run and more hay around the outside (we had to use several bails inside the run, so had to make another hay buying run last week), but now it is toasty warm in there, even at night.

The rest of our food production has come to a grinding halt :( The neighborhood dogs have formed a "pack", led mostly by our pooch and they are all quite active BIG dogs. They get into everything and have torn down the small fences I had around my garden (every morning is an adventure as we discover what they played with/ destroyed in the night). The only garden item that has survived the assault is the parsley, though I am going to harvest it all today, as I noticed when I went out around 5:00 am to check on things, that they finally tore down that fence and have started smashing/ digging it up. I guess Tabbouleh is on the menu for tonight.

I am no longer really able to do any heavy lifting or much manual labor (less than 4 weeks to go before the baby arrives), so new fences will most likely have to wait until spring. My boys are a big help (doing almost all of the farm work plus taking care of all of the pets and a good deal of the house care as well), but I don't think they could handle building a strong fence by themselves and DH is working around the clock lately for his job (he gets calls at all hours lately, even when sleeping - as it is end of the year), so he really can't help now, either. In the mean time, we will try micro-greens indoors again, plus sprouted beans and seeds.

I think things are just about ready for the baby. This pregnancy has just flown by for me, and about 2 weeks ago, I was really hit over the head by the fact that we were not ready (we didn't even have a name for him, though, thank God, we do now). I think we are ready now, with the exception of cloth diapers, which we still need to get. I'm getting really excited about meeting this little guy and can't wait to see what he looks like.

I will probably not post much for a few months, though I do plan to post pics of baby boy when he is born (or have DH do it). I'm finding that I don't usually even have time to read my favorite blogs lately, much less post :( Menus have been very basic and not really worth posting. The focus for us has been stocking the freezer with meals and snacks to take us through about the first month with the baby. So far, we have lots of main dishes, a few side dishes that freeze well and lots of snacks (muffins, cookies, etc). We are trying to add at least one main dish and one snack per day for the rest of the month. We will see how that goes, because some days, it is really hard to motivate myself to cook instead of pulling something out of the freezer, lol. My hope is that once the baby is here, we will only have to take meals and snacks out of the freezer and add fresh veggies or fruit to round out the meals.

Its a . . . . . .

BOY!!!

We are so excited!! Its funny, I thought I really wanted a girl, but when he said boy, this sense of relief washed over me. He looks like he is growing great. All things appear to be as they should. We think he will be a big one, like boy #2, since he is measuring a little big for his age.

I am also doing well. Being over 40, we are concerned that I might have more problems than usual, and considering my history (pregnancy induced hypertension with #1 and borderline gestational diabetes with #2) we would not have been surprised with some issues. But we had a great check up - blood pressure fine, blood sugar great, weight gain minimal; all in all good news.

We are a little over the half way point, so I guess now is the time to get some of my projects completed. I'll post about things as we get them done.