A lot has been happening during the past few weeks on our little farm! Here are the highlights:
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• ​Bees. After our only top bar hive failed to survive the winter, we made a difficult decision to give beekeeping a break for the year. Then, we were pleasantly surprised when we were contacted by a local apiary to house some of their beehives on our property. The 24 NUCs were delivered today, and are nestled in the back corner of our property. Even though they aren't our bees, it is nice to know that we will still have plenty of honeybees pollinating our flowers and veggies this year, as well as the most local honey possible!

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• Ducks. The 8-week-old Pekin drakes were processed for meat last Friday. We decided to keep three female ducks as egg layers, but they won't actually start laying eggs until July or August. We are also brooding a handful of 2-week old female ducks to keep as layers.

• Geese. We successfully hatched 6 goslings from the incubator, and they are already 3 weeks old. We moved them out on pasture and they are happily mowing the lawn for us. The 4 goslings mow more grass in the same shelter as 25 chicks! We also have 2 more eggs in the incubator scheduled to hatch late next week. Also, Mama Goose FINALLY decided to go broody yesterday and she is setting on a clutch of eggs. We haven't checked, but there should be 6-7 eggs under her.

• Layer Chickens. Due to the late winter this year, the layers had to spend a few extra weeks in their winter coop. But they have finally been moved outside and are happily munching on grass and weeds, digging up worms, and chasing bugs. Yesterday, we also had at least one chicken decide to go broody (on the same day Anastasia the Goose went broody). We should have lots of baby birds wandering around in 3-4 weeks!

• Meat ​Chickens. The meat chickens are in the brooder and should be ready to be moved outside on Monday. These birds will be ready to be processed in late June. This is the only batch of meat chickens we plan to raise this year.

• ​Quail. We added quail to our bird mix a few weeks ago. Right now we are just eating the eggs, but once we are able to move them out of the garage and house them on pasture, we will have eggs available for purchase. At some point we will also have quail available to purchase for meat.

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• Turkeys. We will be raising traditional broad-breasted turkeys this year instead of heritage breeds (unless specifically requested). We will order the turkeys around Memorial Day, so there is still time to place an order.

Hello everyone, I know you all are still reeling from the Eggsperiment and its surprising findings. Okay, so maybe it was not that epic, but as we speak, egg prices continue to rise and backyard flocks continue to be protected (seemingly) from the flu epidemic. I say that is a success so far and our $4 a dozen eggs, which are the best around, don't seem so expensive now.

While we are lacking pictures on this one, I'll give you a little tour around the farm departments to see what is going on. UPDATE: PICTURES ADDED

Animals - well we bought three pigs - Mike, Todd and Emma - who are residing on a friend's farm. As a boarding agreement, they will get one of the pigs. We just could not put the infrastructure in place to make it work this year. They are doing well and doing what pigs do!  

Also, we are in the turkey business.  We have partnered with our oldest son, Xander, to raise turkeys. At this time we have six poults (i.e. turkey chicks) that are getting bigger every day. We got them out of the brooder and hope to get them on pasture soon. We had two casualties thus far, which is a learning lesson for all, especially Xander. Also, we are hoping we get a few to hatch out the of incubator as we took a gamble on some discounted eggs from a local hatchery. Fingers crossed.

On to chickens, the core of our operation. Egg production is down a bit, likely due to temperatures and feed restrictions. We are still getting 15+ eggs a day. We caught one egg eater and sent her to Stewpot University. We believe we still have another, but just have to catch her. We also had the flock turn on one of their own and beat her to submission. She is out of the flock and recovering, but will likely need another home after she recovers. There are thirteen birds waiting to graduate to the big leagues as they are getting acclimated to the flock in a temporary home in the fence. Eight of these are our first hatchlings, which we have an affinity to for sure. Blackbeard is a particularly handsome fella, but not sure how Charlie will like the competition. The other five are Cuckoo Maran pullets that we purchased to add some color to our egg rainbow. Of the thirteen, we have at least 3 cockerels and possibly 5. 

In the winter coop, we are growing out our second hatchlings. This group consists of 23 incubator chicks, 10 chicks from Momma Sally and 5 Welsummer chicks we purchased, again for color in the egg rainbow. They are still adjusting to the winter coop, but are loving getting out side to be chickens.

We are five weeks into our second batch of meat birds and are looking to have 80+ meat birds ready the second week of July. Hit the SALES button in the upper right corner to order. We sold out of our first batch, which left our freezer a bit bare. We had quite a bit of attrition in our first batch--from 60 to 43 birds--and we haven't quite figured out what occurred.  This batch is doing MUCH better--from 90 to 84 birds--and none lost since put on pasture. Rock on! We will be doing one more batch to finish the third week of September. Let us know if you want to fill up the freezer with delicious chicken before the snow flies.

Apiary
Lots of disappointment here, but also some hope. Really only one hive survived the winter and it is the feral swarm we caught last year. They are doing well and we actually gambled and split them last weekend to get back to two hives. Why only two? Well the two packages of bees we drove all the way to Jackson, MI to pick up did not work out. The first absconded after only a few days and due to illness in our house, we missed their swarm. The other packaged did not thrive and left that hive as well. It is possible the queen did not make it or they did not accept her. We did collect some honey following winter. We are really thinking of getting a mentor to assist us with this.

Front Square Foot Garden
Peas are getting picked, radishes are weird this year, garlic scapes have been plucked, asparagus was delicious, and strawberries are in full flush. Beans are growing and things are looking good overall. Diana just harvested some herbs and has them drying in the house in numerous bunches.

Back Garden (new addition!)
This one has been a work in progress. THE CLAY HERE IS RIDICULOUS! Last year we let it go, seeded it with cowpea, daikon radish, clover and various other things and ran the chickens on it. Afterward, we covered it in degraded hardwood mulch. We tarped it over winter (see the Mark Bernstein post) and it worked great! However, there was no significant change in soil structure. I got out the broadfork, A.K.A. The Wolverine, and went to town on the rows aerating them. This loosened the soil and we planted in the 30 inch rows, similar to Jean Martin Fortier, the Market Gardener.  

Thus far, weeds are coming up, but slowly. The plants are beginning to get over transplant shock and direct seedings are growing well.  A sprinkling of worm castings and drip irrigation line were the final touches. I am adding old paper feed bags in the rows and covering them with mulch to block weeds. This carbonaceous weedblock should break down and add to the garden structure. I plan to add some humic acid to get soil biology going and then play with other amendments (i.e. epsom salt, more mulch, etc.). We are taking a no-till approach to the back garden and will focus our soil structure adjustments on using The Wolverine.

As far as what we have planted you ask? Well we have too many tomatoes for sure, but they are in. Copious amounts of peppers, two types of zucchini, patty pan squash, two types of bush beans, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, eggplant, dill, basil and also fennel. I have went hot and heavy on the squash this year. The pumpkin/melon patch should provide great pumpkins for the kids to carve and possibly sell, as well as watermelon and two types of cantaloupes. Then comes the random plantings. I have winter squash and other "viney" things all over the place. Using some of the edges of our property, I have planted a number of varieties to try: butternut, acorn, Sibley squash, long pie pumpkins and some others that I cannot remember the names. I'm sure if there is a bounty of squash, you will see pics in the fall.

Finally, we tried some potato towers.  While I don't intend on building them up, I made three fenced in mounds with straw and some soil and am trying to see if this works to make a good harvest of potatoes. It is an experiment, but we shall see.

Quite a bit going on as you can see. More chicken processing is happening in the near future as batch two comes to a close. Yes, we do process our own chickens. That is another blog post. Let's just say that Diana plays a mean chicken carcass trombone. Until next time everybody!

Trevor

The countdown had been on for about a year as we approached a goal that we had been working on since 2006 in Utah. It was at this time that we were introduced to a man and a methodology that would open our eyes to another way to live. This man is Dave Ramsey and this was when we were introduced to his Financial Peace University.

I have to admit that I was the hesitant one. Why would I pay money to learn how to manage money? This was the question I asked when confronted by Diana to take part in a work program. Her employer was offering Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University and would subsidize whoever completed it. I can't remember what it cost, but I had to be convinced to take part.  Obviously we completed it, but we were the only ones and they gave us our entire payment back! Great investment! I knew how to manage money. I had never been late on a credit card payment, my credit score was good and our debt was within reason. However, this was not living life to its fullest and I now know that. We learned this through his program and I have to say it has been life altering. At the time, we had furniture debt, Best Buy debt, random debt, and three educational debts. Well, one massage school debt, one business school debt and one school loan that was used to fund an engagement ring, honeymoon and trip to Italy (not too unhappy about that one).  

I decided to trust my business school graduate bride, for once, and embark on the journey. We saved the $1000 Emergency Fund, as directed in Step 1 of his Baby Steps, and then began on the debt snowball, as directed in Step 2. We developed allocated spending plans that detailed where our money went and we "told" our money where to go. All extra funds attacked debt and we took care of the small ones relatively quickly. 

Then we had babies. While things slowed down on the debt payoff front, we always paid more than the minimum and we have done an allocated spending plan every month since 2006 to tell our money where to go. It is now on Microsoft Excel and details where all of our pennies are allocated. We also got on the other side of payments. What does this mean? With Diana's diligence we stopped finding money to pay car insurance and saved up the money to pay it off in full when it was due. What a wonderful feeling because I can still remember the gut dropping feeling of February and August when I realized six months of car insurance was due and no money was set aside for it. This is not an issue anymore. My car insurance is due very soon, the bill is right here in front of me, and the money is in our account waiting to be transferred to AAA.

It took some time and some hiccups. I think our original payoff date was sometime in 2013 when Diana originally amortized it all out for us. We were not perfect. We bought a time share, which is one of the worst things you can do with your money per some list I read a while ago, right up there with playing the lottery and buying a new car. We also moved back to Michigan. A great decision, but one that inevitably cost us almost five figures of lost income and expenses. With the move, we also had to adjust to supporting the family with only one income so that Diana could stay home. We also decided to get going quickly with Dandelion Hills. The smart thing would have been to kill the debt first, but this endeavor had other payoffs: better food, better health, and better life skills, so we began this process too.

We also made some great decisions. In 2007, we sold a compact car for $750 to buy a sedan for $1000. I drove that sedan every day and hauled it from Utah to Michigan to drive it every day here. I sold that sedan in 2013 for . . . you guessed it, $1000. We sold a very beautiful 2001 S-10 crew cab pickup (I miss this truck) to pay off debt and buy another family sedan for $3000. I now drive this vehicle to work every day almost five years later. With the money from the $1000 sedan and some saved money we upgraded to a very nice minivan for the family. Grand total, $2700. Kudos to Diana and Norm for this huge score.  

Recommendations.  DO THIS NOW!  YOU OWE IT TO YOURSELF AND YOUR FAMILY TO GET OUT OF DEBT!  You don't need new vehicles or car payments, you do not need half the crap that we buy to "fit in."  Sure, the occasional impulse purchase is fine and can be planned into an allocated spending plan. One cannot build wealth and have freedom while someone else is managing their life through debt. It does not require two incomes. At times we have had two, but for the past five years it has been a team effort on one income. 

To do it, first agree with your partner to make a change. Then agree whom to follow. You or your partner is not the correct answer here. Follow the wisdom of someone else. I don't care if it is Dave Ramsey or Suze Orman or anybody else who makes money off of common sense ideas. Just agree to follow that plan together. The Clinical Psychologist and the International Business/Massage Therapist are smart enough to know how to budget . . . but we didn't. It took us agreeing to follow Dave's plan to make a difference. That way we could tell each other that "Dave would not agree" or "That is not what Dave says." It stopped being me vs. Diana and became Us vs. Debt by following Dave Ramsey like he was a Himalayan Sherpa - life or death! 

We followed the plan as he detailed for about a year. As time went on we hybridized the plan for ourselves. Diana was never okay with saving zero dollars and putting it all to debt. We maximized retirement matches at companies because the match is essentially "free money." We altered the debt snowball to pay off higher interest rate debts first instead of the smaller ones because we felt we could trust ourselves. We found what worked for us with Dave's help and we still, every two weeks, do an allocated spending plan and "spend" every penny of our paycheck.  We just spend it on things like food, car insurance and debt . . . well not anymore.

Overall, I have worked a lot on a number of things and I have worked a long time on a few things. Seven and a half years to marry Diana (still a great choice), ten years in college to get a doctorate in clinical psychology (still a good choice because I can make people call me Dr.)

and now 8-9 years to get debt free in all areas outside of our mortgage. This one is very satisfying. While we had recently gotten back on track and targeted December 2014. February 3, 2015 is not too bad.  

As mentioned above, Dave Ramsey has a list of baby steps to follow, which is listed here.  It sounds simple, but is actually quite complicated to do.  Step 1 took us a few months.  Step 2 took us 8-9 years.  Hopefully Step 3 takes us a few months and then it's on to bigger and better things by focusing on retirement and getting the mortgage to disappear.

If you want help in any way, do not hesitate to contact us on how to get started. Just remember, the path to financial freedom is not by following the path that everyone else is on, it is the path that only a few people are on. It may seem uncertain, it may seem a bit scary or uncomfortable, but it is definitely heading in the "right" direction.

-Trevor

Hello Everybody!  Sorry for the three month delay, but now that the holidays are over it's time to catch up on some blog posts--that is if people are still paying attention. As we approach 2015 it is time to plan for the new year, fine tune what we did, and add new aspects. It is time to organize the house and do some indoor projects and shop for seeds!  

The holidays brought us Drax the Mouse Destroyer! We are getting him acclimated to the indoor portion of his life, but we hope he will help control some of our outdoor rodent issues. We also got Roxie the Betta and Gary the Snail, who reside in a 3-gallon aquaponics aquarium that we may use to grow some microgreens or herbs.  

Indoor projects will include general home repairs; restructuring the pantry to be more user-friendly and acceptable to mason jars; rendering lard; seed and plant shopping; and general planning for the homestead for 2015. Do we add rabbits? Ducks? Quail? Giraffes? Okay, maybe not giraffes, but stay tuned and look forward to upcoming posts on our shed build, impromptu chicken coop, sprouting system for chicken fodder and other goings on around the farm.

As we say goodbye to 2014 and anxiously await 2015, we would like to thank all of you who have read and shared our posts. Happy New Year to each and every one of you and please continue to share what we do. Our goal is to inspire even the tiniest bit of hope that many homestead/farm projects can be done for low cost, but make a dramatic impact in one's life. I can safely say that 2014 has been one of our busiest and HAPPIEST years. I don't think this is a coincidence.  Is it the food? Is it the work? Most likely, it is a bit of everything, so we shall continue onward down this path.

Happy New Year!
Trevor

Like most of you, I was anxiously awaiting the epic conclusion of the Polyface Farms Field Day saga. Unfortunately for me, I was tasked with writing it rather than just waiting to read it. Nonetheless, I believe Diana left off on our quest toward lunch. The picture above demonstrates this as we finished our tour with Joel and headed with the crowd. As you can see, I am on the left side of the picture still in a walking boot. This definitely added to the complexity of the field day. I got good with the boot in the previous six weeks, when on flat ground. However, rolling pasture is a different story. Because of this, we were one of the last to get food. That was not a problem as there was plenty to go around for everyone, but was a problem for us as the two farm-fresh eggs that were consumed at 6 a.m. that morning had been absorbed hours before this picture. 
NOTE: The older gentleman in the orange hat just in front of me is packing an iPad. I thought that was pretty cool!

More drone pics of the Field Day from Darren Doherty.  The first two are of the last stop on the morning tour at the pig glen and the last one is a high overhead view of the lunch lines.

This picture is awesome, again from Darren Doherty. This is the primary 100 acres of Polyface Farms, give or take a few acres.  If we start at the pool in the middle area, that is the Salatin house. Directly left is their new store and chicken processing shed with the large pond behind it. The three grey rectangles are hoop houses where they over-winter their chickens and pigs. The four lines of white boxes are the broiler chicken shelters. Notice immediately behind them it's brown from chicken droppings, but if you follow it back you notice the tracks disappear and the grass gets greener. Another strip of chicken shelters is below them and to the left. In the lower left-hand corner is where we stopped to see the cows. The Eggmobiles and the Millennium Feathernet are all in that area. That grass looks different because of it being grazed. Turkeys were in the very bottom left corner and we continued the counterclockwise walk to the food tents. It looks like the tour was with the chickens at this time. The "parking lot" is usually a grazing area and the cows were in that area up until about two days prior to the event. This is why it is not as green, but I'm sure the 2000 people didn't help either.

After lunch we had a protein coma and viewed some of the vendors that were there.  Not just any vendors, only Salatin approved vendors.  We noticed their "Carbon Shed" which is an area where they dump all of their chicken offal for composting with as much carbon (i.e. wood chips) as they can.  We walked by it and while there were a few flies, no odor was noticed.

The afternoon started with Daniel Salatin talking about his experience with rabbits. Daniel has raised rabbits for meat since he was nine years old and all of his rabbits today are direct descendants of the ones he first received from some family friends. This is called line breeding and essentially, he "ruthlessly" culled rabbits in his first few years to select for the "best" rabbits. Many would think the "best" would be the larger rabbits with more meat, but that does you no good if they don't eat the "free" food (i.e. grass/pasture) and if they aren't hardy. So Daniel selected for ease of transition to pasture and healthy rabbits that had good litters. Good litters means more rabbits. Any rabbits that had teeth problems, sniffles, health issues, poor transition to pasture and a variety of other things were culled out. Now, he has rabbits that do not have teeth problems, do not have sniffles, eat grass the moment they can and have great litters.  

The rabbits are housed in cages that are installed several feet up off the floor in the Raken (rabbit/chicken) House. Chickens are kept at ground level for the purpose of utilizing their handy rakes (feet) to scratch the rabbit poo, which falls from the cages above, into the bedding. Therefore, there is no build-up of rabbit droppings and the bedding is aerated and easily transformed into usable compost.

What we did not know was that he had some breeding pairs for sale.  There was no way we could get some as we had a 12-hour drive home and weren't leaving for two days. However, it would have been fantastic to start our rabbit venture with Daniel's rabbits. 

Diana attended a seminar on their chick brooding.  They have a giant shed that broods their chickens and the pictures show how they send feed on a pulley system and separate out the chickens into batches so as not to have too many together.  This avoids piling up and suffocation. She learned a few pointers from their brooding operation. First, she noticed that the wood shavings used for bedding were of a much finer grade than what we use. Even though the chicks pictured were only a couple days away from going to pasture, the bedding was still clean and there was very little odor, and no new shavings had been added. This led Diana to conclude that we needed to switch to fine-grade shavings for our brooder, since we were constantly having to add fresh bedding to our brooder. She also took note of the clean, convenient method of offering water to the chicks through the use of a nipple waterer and learned about a simple schedule to use for offering grit to the chickens.

We also received a tour of their chicken processing station. Past movies have shown the Salatins processing out in a field, but now they have an open air processing structure that is connected to the Polyface store. Not surprisingly, the processing area is well designed and when all interns and apprentices are there, they can process up to 500 chickens in 120-150 minutes. 

We also learned a bit about the use of their hoophouses throughout the year, follThen the day ended with a Q&A event with Joel Salatin, which was both informative and entertaining.

An exhausting day ended with us buying some Polyface bacon to go with the farm-fresh eggs at our rental house.  It was a fantastic day and one that I hope all of you can experience at some point. While the Field Days will not be offered again, Polyface Farms is open 24/7, 365 days a year to visitors.  As Joel states, he desires to be fully transparent and in order to do this, you have to be willing to see people whenever. We plan on going back to a smaller event or just to visit the farm again some day with the kids. 

When we do, we plan on staying at the same rental house again. Breezy Hill was a fantastic place to stay and only a mile or so from Polyface Farms. We felt very lucky to be one of the first families to stay there and to be so close to the farm. 

I could go on longer about what it "felt" like to be at Polyface, or for the Shenandoah Valley for that matter. However, that becomes hard to explain when you talk about "good energy" and stuff.  Just experience it for yourself. While Polyface is a long way away (for us, at least), my guess is that you can get that feeling by visiting any farm that is focused on doing things the "right way" and working to maintain happy animals, happy people, and happy plants.

Trevor
+ Diana

Originally, Trevor and I were planning to celebrate our 10-year anniversary in Las Vegas, but instead decided to take a short trip to Virginia and attend the 2014 Polyface Farms Field Day. Polyface Farms, a multi-generational farm run by the Salatin family, is a self-described "non-industrial food production oasis" that is known for its holistic animal husbandry practices and its use of perennial polycultures. Polyface Farms has been featured in documentaries such as Food, Inc., Farmageddon, and Fresh, the Movie. Joel Salatin has written nine books including The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer and Folks, This Ain't Normal: A Farmer's Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World.

We arrived at the farm at 6:30 a.m. prepared for a long day of touring and  workshops. Since none of the scheduled activities took place until 8:00 we had some time to wander around the farm and peek at the buildings, gardens, and animals. It took me all of 30 seconds to get cow poo smeared on my leg.

At 8:00 a.m. we started the walking tour with Joel Salatin and about 900 other guests.

First we visited the pastured broiler shelters. These shelters are also currently housing pullets that just started laying eggs and will soon be replacing old layers in the Eggmobile.

We have studied extensively the Polyface model of raising pastured poultry and were already very familiar with this operation, though it was interesting to witness the perfectly staggered pattern of all the shelters on pasture. We currently have one shelter that is nearly identical to those shown here, only 60% the size.

One helpful bit of information we gathered is that these shelters are held together by a wire that runs across the ground, halfway through the length of the shelter connecting the two sides. We use a 2'x2' for this same purpose but have had problems getting chicks stuck under the 2'x2' when we are trying to move the shelter. The wire also has the added benefit of cutting down on the overall weight of the structure.

The next stop on the walking tour was a scenic 15-minute hike across a walking bridge and up the hill to visit the cattle. The cattle are contained by 2 strands of electric wire in a long, narrow paddock. They are moved to a new paddock every day. It sounds like a fairly simple operation of moving the stakes, running the wires, moving the basic shade structure, and calling over the cattle (who are eager to move to a fresh "salad bar").

Joel Salatin considers himself to be a grass farmer. His goal at Polyface is to properly manage the pasture by introducing cattle to pasture when the length of the grass is in its "teenage" stage--not too short and not too long, and where grazing results in rapid regrowth. The paddock size should be just right so as to graze every bit of pasture once. If there are lots of areas that are left ungrazed, the paddock size is too large, and if there are areas that are grazed a second time and are too short, then the area is too small.

The "Eggmobile" always follows behind the cattle. Layers in this system are free-ranging birds that earn their keep on the farm by working as the pasture sanitation crew. They scratch out the cow patties to help even out the manure load on the pasture and they gobble up bugs, worms, and fly larvae (maggots). The Eggmobile is always three days behind the cattle specifically because fly larvae turn into flies in four days. Eggs from these birds are just a bonus.

For some reason it just really tickled me to watch the free-ranging layers out amongst us, scratching for bugs and totally oblivious to the 900 people standing around.

The Millennium Feathernet is a large structure at Polyface that houses chicken layers whose purpose is to produce eggs. The large structure is surrounded by a very large electric poultry net and the entire paddock is moved every three days. We use a scaled-down version of this same model for our layers.

Next, we visited the turkeys on pasture, which are raised in a similar system as the chicken layers. They have a very simple shelter for roosting and an electric poultry net for "free-ranging" that is moved every few days. We learned that turkeys are very sensitive and prone to illness and death while in the brooder during the first several weeks of life, but after seven weeks of age they are hardy birds that can tolerate a wide range of weather conditions on pasture.

Right next to the turkeys is the simple barn that houses cows in the winter and pigs in the spring. The barn is completely open on one side and has many open areas to allow great ventilation for the animals. The cattle are fed hay in the harshest winter months and are kept on a deep straw bedding. As the cattle add manure, more layers of straw and corn are added to the bedding. The deep carbon bedding keeps the cattle dry and healthy, and the corn slowly ferments in the anaerobic bedding. As soon as the cattle are put out to pasture in the spring, pigs are moved in. They root through the bedding digging for the fermented corn, aerating the litter in the process. The bedding is then turned into a nice compost which increases the farm's fertility. Polyface originally acquired pigs with the intention of using their "pigaerator" qualities. Pork was just a delicious bonus.

Pigs are also kept in wooded paddocks and are rotated every 5-10 days. In order to consistently monitor the amount of animal pressure on this land, the determination of when to move the pigs is simply based on when their feeder runs out.

As the pigs have rooted around in the paddocks they have cleared areas in the previously-forested land, which has naturally filled in with grasses, herbs, and weeds. Joel Salatin referred to this area as a pig savannah. What really impressed us was the complete lack of pig smell; it was a beautiful area that had no odor whatsoever.

The tour ended right before lunch. The rest of our day spent at the Polyface Farms Field Day will be included in Part 2.

- Diana

Apologies from Dandelion Hills as we have been working our tails off out here with all of our projects.  Thankfully, we took pictures, but we have not had time to post it on the blog. Unfortunately, one of us now has a lot more down time.  We had a non-farm casualty which occurred in between youth soccer games as I was showing off my mad soccer skills to my two boys.  I was successfully keeping the ball from the boys until I landed on said ball, rolled over it and seriously messed up my foot.  There was snapping and popping sounds that occurred, major swelling and and hopefully a diagnosis on Monday.  Nonetheless, now there is time to do more blogs so get ready as here they come.  The plans calls for a bee post, chicken post/update, garden updates, pics of all the builds we have done to get ready and possibly an update of what our summer has in store for us . . . that is as long as one us can get mobile again.  By the way, crutches suck!         

UPDATE:  Today is Monday and I officially have a broken foot.  Walking cast for eight weeks,  which for those of you calculating temperatures are two of the three hottest months!  ARGH!  Anyway, nothing I can do about it, but take it easy for a few more days and then get back at it.

- Trevor