Farm Fragments - Spring Babies

We've anxiously been awaiting the day to bring home our new baby chicks. The first day of Spring seemed appropriate, even though it was about 20 degrees outside, frigid and snowing.

They each choose five new baby chickens.

It is still very, very cold outside even in the designated chickie room (AKA the mud room). We set up their brooding box in the basement. Fresh jammies and all, both kids climbed in with the babies and played and cuddled until we peeled them apart at 10:30 pm.  Addi named each one. Well, she renames them everyday. But on this first night they all had flower names (Lilly, Daffodil, Rosey, Violet, Buttercup ect!), except one, her favorite little yellow chick she calls 'Hatchling".

The kids welcomed chickens and Mama got a goose, Buttercup!

Landon –the goose whisperer

We've all become very partial to the goose. She follows us around, calling out to us not to leave her.  She plays on the carpet while the kids build her a house of blocks. Her and the chinchilla have become friends and explore the bathroom together. And yes, I have fallen asleep with her sound asleep on my chest, more than once! 

Chip, our chinchilla thinks Buttercup is very cool. He stands up and puts his little paws and her chest and smells her face! 

In our home, having a chinchilla on your back is normal –just the way we love it.

While we watch our baby chickens and goose grow, we look forward to our new baby goats who should be born late May!

Little Moments

…make life big.

Daddy to Landon: "Why are you wearing women's shoes buddy?"
Landon to Daddy: "These is tall shoes. You wear 'em?"

As the end of February rolls in, a huge powdery snow storm reminds us that that groundhog always lies. Winter isn't ready to release its hold, so embrace it and throw it at someone smaller than you!

He LOVES his favorite farm kitty so much it hurts, literally. Sweet, tender moments like this are usually taken just one pet too far and she reminds him that less is sometimes more. He is vey gentle, but she only tolerates little boys so long. She gives him fair warning, but he is too young to realize or notice her hints that she is getting annoyed. He doesn't hold a grudge and soon after his tears have dried and his broken heart heals he pleads to let "his favorite pretty kitty back inside."

We've been into watching Survivorman lately.  When we saw whole coconuts in our tiny town market, Addi said, "Can we buy one and punch a whole in it and drink its milk?" OF COURSE! We made an evening of it. First the milk through a tiny whole. We broke it open and ate the raw meat and then we baked some of the meat. Landon kept saying, "Coconut meat is really really yummy." We used the coconut shell to start a fire, Addi loved the coconut shell bikini idea and also used half for a cup. We love tiny discoveries. And a $3 coconut made a Sunday evening so much fun.

He preferred his through a straw. The coconut shell was too pokey on his face!

We typically don't condone drinking and driving!

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those little moments in my day when i feel like I have no air to breathe. like someone is standing on my chest not letting my lungs fill completely. it's those moments, usually tiny- minuscule to any other casual on-looker, but to me I am left overwhelmingly grateful. when I see their eyes sparkle and I'm reminded that they are happy and healthy and forever they are all mine. without them my life has no meaning. those little moments, the moments I cherish and often dedicate whole blog posts on (therefore automatically dubbed important!), it's those moments that mean the most to me. those little moments that make my life big. because of those moments my life has purpose and it's those moments that happen so fast there is no time to capture it with my camera. those moments that i quietly plead with myself to remember forever.
                            
                                ***

this evening was like most other early evenings. every little person and four-legged was buzzing around with excitement as daddy just walked in the door. two of the four cook tops on my stove and my crockpot are busy cooking our dinner. Addi's favorite dance music is blaring from two tiny kitchen speakers. she is at the island creating some sort of construction paper-glue 'mess' while her constant jabber of jumbled song lyrics and joyful tidbits from her day entertain me while I cook. tonight was just a little different. different in that, instead of Landon chasing Kya around on his car, screaming, "I chase you Kya, I chase you.", steering around me or through me, (I am the annoying clutter in his race track), he is standing tall and tippy-toed on his little chair, looking cute as ever in his hand-me-down baby carhartt bibs, the same jammie top he wore to bed last night and his favorite rain boots, (that he wears most of the day, just in case he comes in contact with a puddle that needs jumped in to)… in his little hands he holds his most prized possession - his red Cars fishing pole. for the several weeks he has owned it he has been a big part of most of his days and it has reeled in many pretend "fishes". tonight, surprisingly for the very first time, he goes after the only real specimen in our home that isn't covered in fur,  it occupies the book shelf in our dining room and he is the same pond-rescued goldfish the kids saved from imminent frozen death this fall. "Mama, I NEED HELP. I can't catched me goldfish." it's a tiny slice of time, a blurb in life that is gone without a second having passed, these seconds leave me breathless.

and other times this week …  out of the corner of my eye I see addi running out of landon's room wearing nothing but a diaper, cracking up with tears running down her face as her little brother runs behind her saying "you's a little baby, you's a little baby." for those days when bedtime seems like a lifetime away. when after a moment of them left alone in the bathtub leads to gleeful screams and a bathroom floor covered in water.  for those days when the mundane creeps in and tries to steal my joy. i's those little moments i sometime need to cling to, look forward to. those days when I wonder what it may be like out in the world with other adult humans. i know that no matter what my day may hold, it will surely gift to me a little moment that will take my breath away. leaving me utterly grateful and happy for the conscience and un-conscience choices in my life past that made me a mama to these two crazy wild animals.

and these brief moments too… on his back his red cape hung. I had just tied up the garbage bag and it sat ready to be taken out. I watched as he used every muscle in his little body to try and lift out the very full bag of garbage. He said while struggling to breathe because he is using all his tiny might to lift, "Mama, me superpowers cannot lift this." <love>

He just stumbled out of bed. His hair always stands straight up. He always drags his blankey behind him. He climbed up on the island chair next to his sleepy-eyed sister. He said, "Good morning sis, do you love me?" She smiles and says, "Yes, I love you." With all the early morning glee he can muster he said, "YOU DO! You do love me?!" <love love love>

I found Addi quiet (that never happens) and alone in her room. she lay on her back, leg crossed one over the other, she was reading her favorite horse poem book. above her a self-created, self-designed blanket lean-to attached to her bed posts with countless pony tails. I said, "You expecting rain?" "No, it's for shade."

late winter ramblings

The last few months have been a blur. Days and then weeks and then whole entire months are gone and it seems impossible. I look back over our first winter in our country home and it has gone by so fast. Some days it seems spring will never return to thaw out our tiny parcel of paradise and other days it feels that winter this year wasn't such a big deal. I can do this, even in the dead of winter on the Front.

The chill of winter took on a whole different meaning this year.  Before, venturing out in the early morning and during the dark cold of evening in the negative arctic wind would have never even been a thought on my mind. I just would have simply refused with a giggle.  Much like a hibernating bear I tend not to stray from the comfort and heat of my den. Now, it is daily routine. The negative fifteen degree wind often threatens to slice open my face. Once that same wind trapped me inside the barn. Too strong against the metal doors for me to open against its force. Luckily the other door on the opposite side was a slider and I could get out and drop hay as quickly as possible. My goats, horse and chickens need food and water whatever the temperature may be. Whether or not the wind tries it's hardest to blow me over they need to be cared for. Insulated carhart bibs and oversized mittens keep me warm and a headlamp guides my way from the house to the barn and chicken coop. The chicken water is always frozen and the horse's eyelashes covered in frost. Sammy, our baby goat nibbles frozen finger tips hoping for a milk soaked nipple or carrot. Even in the dead of cold my faithful hens leave for us several eggs, however many days they too are frozen. The length of three heavy hoses is hard to fully drain. They sit frozen nearly solid and unable to bring water to our trough. It can be a job starting a fire to heat the garage to defrost  the hose to fill the water trough. Daddy doesn't seem to mind this part of winter chore too much. He likes his man-space. Tinkering in a warm garage free from wife and kids, I think it would suit most husbands. When cold spells last more that four days and the trough is near empty and we do what you have to to get the animals water. Sometimes a 5 gallon bucket gets the job done.

All of this to say, every frozen minute has truly been a dream come true. New dreams I never knew I had are starting to brew and the next five years will be something entirely different than anything I've ever really imagined. And that is exciting. I pretty much survive winter. Every day, tending to the animals that I love or not, I am eager for warm summer days.  I am desperaetly looking forward to warm evenings on the porch swing, early mornings in the garden and new baby goats and chicks to cuddle this spring!

Almost nightly, the sun puts itself to bed with the most impressive light and color show. Photographing the sunset over the same mountains will never get old, because every night it is different and somehow a little better than the night before.

On the inside the dust on the logs glistens and the wood stove crackles and warms us from the inside out. Our wood pile is holding out and we love, love, love our wood heat stove. Several times the wind blew out the pilot light on our furnace and we were thankful to have the back up heat source.

My two tiny humans we wrangle are wild animals that we daily try to tame! They love the freedom of country life. When trapped indoors for long periods of time their energy explodes and teases the integrity and stregnth of the logs.  Addi's favorite indoor activity is "log climbing" our walls and railings. If she isn't practicing hand holds she is practicing gymnastics on some indoor surface. Landon loves the wood floors and drives his bat mobile as fast as his little legs can propel him. Often stopping only when he slams into a wall or a dog.

It has been a wild, wonderful experience, our first winter here on our farm. Truly I am just a city-slicker, hippy, country-wannabe from the liberal land of Missoula. I am wild with fresh ideas of being self-sufficient on self-sustaining land growing and raising my family on fresh vegetables, eggs and meat. Farming is as foreign to me as raising a basket of cobras. Every day is a new chance. And these past several months have gotten me closer to those dreams that in a million years I could have never expected for Dylan and I. This path called life …. who would have known!

Cookie Rally

It's Girl Scout cookie time and our troop kicked off the season with several other local Daisy and Scout troops with a cookie rally. The girls made and exchanged SWAPS, played games, sang songs, reviewed safe cookie selling techniques and taste-tested this years' cookies. It was Addi and I's first Girl Scout outing and we had a great time. 

Our Daisy Troop - Morgan, Peyton, Jessi, Addi & Arionna. (We missed Olivia, who was home sick. )

Salt Dough

I only recently discovered salt dough and we love it. A quick, easy dough that is fun to cut shapes into, bake and then paint. I always have flour, water and table salt on hand and the dough is never sticky and bakes hard, but not breakable.

Today Landon and I made Valentine hearts.

His favorite part, punching in the hole. 

When sis got home from school we painted our hearts and then strung them on to yarn.

The Secret Garden

After-school on a Monday she tried out for her first Missoula Children's Theatre play, The Secret Garden. After only a week of daily intense practices and rehearsals they performed two shows the following Saturday.

Along with other kindergarteners and first graders, Addi made up the secret garden. At the beginning of the play they start our dead and brown. At end, the garden comes to life and they blossom into healthy plants who like to 'boogie down' with the fireflies and garden animals.

The best part of the show was how proud and happy Addi was with herself. It was a big accomplishment in her little life. I was overwhelmed to watch her figuretivly and non-figuretivly blossom on stage.  At the end of the last show she asked when she got to perform again. There really are no words to express how proud I was of her for facing something that initially scared her. She ended up having a blast.

'me do me self'

We are here –at the "I can do anything and everything myself" stage. About 300 times a day I hear his little voice proclaim, "me do me self." We try, hard. Some things he does very well "his self" and other things, not so much. Those not-so-much moments often end it a tiny ball of Landon rolling, screaming and thrashing on the ground, shrieking in self-let down and frustration.  Whatever we set out to do I have to be sure to leave at least 10 extra prep minutes to allow for "me do me selfs". I love watching him try and I often bite-my-tongue to keep from saying 'hurry-up'. I feel so bad after hurrying a "me-do-me-self" moment. I love watching him learn and try new things, even when it takes twice as long. 'Me-do-me-self moments include, but are certainly not limited to –climbing into his car seat and buckling it, gathering eggs (breaking at least one every time!), making mac 'n cheese, riding his four-wheeler,  driving the tractor, climbing into the Jeep, driving the snowmobile (are you sensing a motor-theme), choosing and zipping his coat, measuring the flour (onto the floor!), putting on his shoes and socks, pouring his cereal, and the list is never-ending. His little independent self is developing and quickly he is changing from little boy Landon into a very strong-willed, determined, big-kid Landon.