Breaking Up the Day

I spent the morning at Immanuel reading to the 7-8th graders and the afternoon at Mt. Olive... reading to 5th graders. 

ILS 

I had wanted to finish reading the last 90 pages of the read-aloud I'd started with them the first time I subbed this year. We did it! They were satisfied with the ending and want there to be a movie version. Partway through the morning, someone had the idea to read in the outside classroom. Fantastic! It was my first time out there with a class. 

Some of the boys had gone mushroom hunting over the weekend, so mushrooms were on the brain. Believe it or not, they found about 15 morels! Some were quite big, some were quite dry. The boys have plans to cook them at home. Makes me want to poke around the woods!

Mt. Olive

Pretty simple afternoon. One class had a spelling worksheet; I read aloud stories from Bloopers, Botches, and Blunders: Life's Hall of Shame. The only other 'big' subject was reading. We read from Mr. Lemoncello's Library. One class asked if they could sit under their desks while we read. Sure! The other class asked if we could read outside for class. Sure! 

Fun day, but whew! My voice is tired!

Mother's Day

I've been dreading Mothers Day, more than Bekhor's actual due date. But the day was not as horrible as I thought it would be. Sad, but not horrible. 

My grandparents planted a tree for each grandchild when they were born, and my dad decided to carry on that tradition. He picked out three swamp oaks from G's garden center and we planted them Sunday afternoon. 

Lil and Miri each helped dig the hole for their tree, fill dirt in, and water them. Lil had a blast and got very possessive of her shovel.

When Dad asked Lil what she wanted to name her tree, she said, "Beer" 😂 or maybe it was "Deer". Too windy to tell. Maybe we'll wait to name them until they're older.

Bekhor's tree:

The rest of the afternoon, I scrounged around the farm looking for supplies for my future ducks. They'll hatch in a little over a week! I found most of what I need for them. My walkabout gave me lots of nostalgia of chore time as a kid: the smell of lilacs, walking through puddles, the duck tree...

There's even a duck in it!

Supper saw us at Grandma's house with an aunt and a few cousins. We had a "tea party" with cucumber sandwiches and at least seven varieties of tea! I only got to one unfortunately, but they sent me home with envelopes of the kinds I didn't get to try. We had to leave shortly after supper to go to the hospital to visit Grandpa before visiting hours were over. He seemed in much better spirits than he had been earlier in the week and it was good to see him with more energy. Keep praying for a speedy recovery and regain of strength!

Surprise Strawberries

We found wild strawberries growing north of our lilacs! Some even have flowers and little berries started. I dug some up and transplanted them so the goats don't eat them all. 

While I was at it, I planted some old bare root asparagus that G had brought back from the garden center. The ground back there must hold a lot of moisture because there is moss growing in a nice mat among the grass and dandelions. The shovelfuls stuck together, so I just set them back, settled in my asparagus (see below) and then laid them back down.

As I was digging, a lot of dandelions came up and I threw them off to the side in a pile. As I worked it suddenly occurred to me that some people specifically save dandelion root for herbal remedies. How could I let them go to waste?! 

I bundled them up and now they are in our fridge waiting for me to figure out what to do with them. 😜

New Fence

The goats were traumatized enough by the two tie out sessions, G and I made it a priority to put up more goat pasture. Again, another session of night homesteading after G got home from work. 

We didn't have time to finish the whole thing, but we couldn't leave the goats locked in the shed for a whole day, so we rigged the fence to be upright even though it's not completely attached. You can guess that the goats would try to take advantage of the weak spots in the fence, and you would be right.

Here's their original pasture with the grass eaten down to the nub: 

They like to stay close to their old pasture and gradually eat their way further into the new stuff. They've very much enjoyed browsing among the lilac bushes. I put up some netting fence around the new windbreak we planted so they couldn't eat them all, and they've stayed out of it for the most part, but every once in a while Gerda will stick her head through, get her horns stuck, and try to pull back getting even more tangled. Thankfully I've noticed each time. Today's to-do list is to swap out the fence for some with tinier holes. 

Here are the two weak areas in our fence: 

That little section in the top picture blew over once pretty soon after we had set it up and the goats got out. G noticed them before they caused any damage and we reinforced that area so it won't blow over anymore. 

I got home from school one day and noticed two of the plants we had just planted in our planter by the garage had been pulled out and were lying on the driveway. It looked similar to deer damage, but deer don't come up onto our yard during the day. My goat senses were tingling. 

I checked the front gate and all was secure there. The goats came out of the goat shed to see what I was doing, so obviously they hadn't gotten out, right? Just in case, I walked around the fence to see if there were any places they could have gotten out. Bingo. The whole wooden fence had blown over making a very easy pathway out of the enclosure.

Upon later inspection, I discovered more goat damage to plants. They had eaten a bunch of leaves off my pomegranate bush and the fig tree. Ugh! Guess we better make reinforcing the fence a higher priority...

Goat Tethering

The goats had eaten down most of the grass in their pasture and were getting hungry, so G and I decided to tether them in our front lawn until we could get a fence put up in the backyard. 

This is a bit risky because they haven't been trained to be tied up and we didn't want them to wrap around each other, get tangled, or get hurt. I tried to think through all possible negatives before we tied them out, and I think it went as well as can be expected. 

I bought a 150 lb dog tie out steak and a cable / tether for a dog of similar weight for Ilsa (the mom) and a second set for Gerda (the baby). Before tying them out, I tried to get them used to stepping over a rope by having them wear a sheep halter I found back at the farm from our sheep raising days. It worked quickly. A few hours after I put it on they were already stepping around it or holding their heads so the rope wouldn't be in their travel path. Smart goats! 

I finally quit putting it off and tethered them in the front yard with the help/moral support of my dad (he'd come up to pick up some trees). 

The goats were NOT fans. They really did not like being separated from each other. I actually moved one tether a few feet closer to the other one so they could overlap just a little bit, but not enough to wrap around each other. Still didn't like it. They wouldn't let me come near them without frantically bleating. I guess G continues to be their favorite, haha. 

But they did enjoy eating the new grass. 

I left them alone for a while and kept and eye on them from the house. Gerda would lay down from time to time, which indicates that she was feeling relaxed and not scared.

The second time I tethered them, I tied them out by myself and lured them out with "seven layer salad" aka veggie scraps. It worked better than I expected. I swapped which goat was tied further away and put Gerda down closer by the pond. 

There must be something about that spot that freaks them out, because Gerda was quite frantic and tried really hard to get up to where her mom was tied. Ilsa had done the same thing when she had been tied down there. She would run and try to break her collar, but it would hold and jerk her completely off her feet and onto her back. Cue the frantic bleating. Actually, it broke the first time and I had to put a different one on her. Thankfully I had one in the garage! It was a metal chain halter from the farm, one previously used by our very first goat Easter Lily. That one hasn't broken yet. Gerda's hand braided twine collar still holds strong!

K&3

"Are you rich?" 

Believe it or not, two kindergarteners separately asked me that today. It was all because I wore a necklace (a Christmas present given to me by a student years ago, one he picked out himself) and a shiny bracelet watch bought on clearance from Maurices. That's all it took!

My normal watch is out of commission for the time being; the watchband broke. My alternatives are fancier (and their batteries had been robbed to keep my regular watch afloat), so I save them for special occasions. I had been carrying the watch face in my pocket, but I got sick of that and finally replaced their batteries so I could wear a watch on my wrist. The metallic shine makes it look expensive I guess. 

I must say, kindergarten is not my favorite. Lots of silliness and wiggly bodies today. The teacher I subbed for only teaches kindergarten in the morning; she moves to 3rd grade in the afternoon.

As of today, I've taught every grade level at Mt. Olive except 2nd grade. The 3rd graders have heard about me from brothers and sisters and friends, so they were pumped I was the sub. "You get Mrs. H today? She's awesome!" I overheard a 5th grader say in the hall. One 5th grader saying hi to me at lunch told me her 3rd grade sister has had a countdown going for 11 days. I hope I lived up to expectations. 😆

My afternoon in 3rd grade consisted of religion (David and Goliath), memory work practice/quiz, and art. I brought a few read-aloud options with me just in case we had time, so during art I read them a few stories from Smiffy Blue: Ace Crime Detective. Pretty sure my character voices lived up to the hype. 

Mrs. M had some teacher appreciation gifts for me from students. Earlier in the year the principal had had me fill out a favorites survey. Today I got: a box of goldfish crackers, cookie m&ms (must not have had any pretzel-filled ones), dried apples, Pringles, and a couple of very sweet notes (one from the mom and one from the student).

Make Your Own Calcium

What do you do with a whole bucket of egg shells? The Internet says to turn it into calcium for your garden (specifically tomatoes) and for your chickens as an oyster shell substitute. I bet I could even sprinkle some on Joe's lettuce! 

I thought it would be a lot more work than it actually was. 

First, I collected eggshells in an ice cream pail until I had plenty to work with. Some sources said it was important to bake the eggshells to kill any salmonella that might be on them, and I decided to try that method. So I baked the eggshells at 400° for 10 minutes. That's what all that golden brown coloring is on the shells in the bucket, baked egg whites.

Once they were baked, they sat in the ice cream pail for quite a while because I wasn't sure if I wanted to just crush them up or try to pulverize them. Eventually I decided to do the pulverizing method. We have a spice and nut grinder that I bought for G to grind his coffee beans. He doesn't use it much so I don't think he'll mind that I borrowed it. 😉 

Pulverizing sounded messy and loud and hard on the equipment, which is why I was hesitant in the first place, but it wasn't too bad on all of the above. It didn't take long to grind up the entire batch of egg shells. The only downside of pulverizing was the very fine dust that flew up whenever I took the lid off after grinding, but that's easy enough to clean up.

And here's the end result!