Livin' my life on the farm

my arm...

So yesterday our lame ewe went into labor... beings she had been down and not walking for sevreal days she was weak so I had the lovely job of trying to pull the lambs. All we had was latex gloves sooo my arm got all full of her fluids when I was tryiin to pull the lambs. ewww. Anyways she ended up dieing before I got the lambs out... So we lost them all. Mom thinks she hemoraged cause there was alot of blood when I got out there... anyways now I have this huge rash on my arm. Not sure why cause I've never reacted to any other sheep when I've pulled lambs... strange...

Other then that not to much happenin... I went bowling later that night with my sister and some friends. I was horrible. :-p Last time I bowled I got a 143... this time my highest was like 108 and my next game was 75!! ahh. It was so bad. bllahhh. lol

Kate

Hey everyone been a while since I've been on here. =p I've been busy doing stuff.... Let's see what's been going on...

The 14th thru the 16 our family went on a church campout. It was lots of fun we met up with some friends that we hadn't seen since the begining of July. It was really really cold though. When we woke up in the morning there was frost on our blankets. ((((brrrr)))) 

We got our puppy the 18th. =D She's so cute! She's an English Shepherd and 8 weeks old.

Awwww look at those eyes! But don't let them decieve you. She chews on EVERYTHING! Ah, it's a chore watching her to make sure she doesn't get into anything.

The 20th mom cut my hair. It's so much easier to take care of shorter.

The 22 we went up to my grandpas.  His dad was being put into some baseball hall of fame so we went up cause mom was going to the baseball thing. Me and my sisters stayed at grandpas farm and messed around with his filly "Boo". We called her Dakota cause we didn't think boo really fit her. =p  Dakota is just over 2 months grandpa has been bottle feeding her since she was 2 weeks old. Her mama got into grass that got sprayed by pesticides from the farmers next door. It poisened her and she died. Dakota by the way is Rubie's (my horse) little sister. I fell in love with her the second I saw her. She's kinda small cause the other filly keeps pushing her out of her feed. Grandpa said he might bring her down to our place till she gets growed up enough to fend for herself.

Hehe she thought she was tough stuff nipping at the stallion.

Not to much else going on. I'm studying for my act's during my free time. I take that the 8th. We are going camping this weekend. We are leaving either tomorrow or firday morning. Depends if we get everything done arond the house. =) Well I'm gettng really hungry so I think I'm going to head off ffor now. Have a great day!  Oh and thanks to makayla for the...XD

Kate

My toes are cold

hmp. I'm not to good at keeping this blog up am I now? I think winter time I'm better cause I'm stuck in the house all day long. haha Not to much longer and it'll be winter agian.  =(  ---I don't like the winter... too cold--- ok so what's gone on in the past week....

Sept 1st- was my 18th birthday. We barbqued in the park with my grandparent, uncle, and gramma.

Me and my Mom

Me, Dad, and  Chelsea

My Uncle Lee and I

Gramma and I

Chels and I

Me,  Chelsea, Paige, and Megan

That Night I went bowling with some friends. The place was nearly empty the whole night so it was really nice. Afterwards we had a slumber party at my grammas.*thanks gramma!*

Us girls at the bowling alley, minus chelseas head. oops. lol

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September 2nd- Didn't do anything extrodinary. Stayed at grammas till 3ish went home and peeled  a busel of apples. =p I nicked my finger twice and caught 2 of my nails with the peeler.

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Septermer 3rd- Didn't do much of anything. Just random stuff around the house....

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September 4th- Was farmers Market. Afterwards my sisters and I walked down to Goodwill and I found the cutest skirt. It's just knee lenght and it's really flowy( ?is that a word?lol) Light blue with orange and red flowers on it. Cute cute. I found a orange tee at target that matches, it was on clerence. Nifty!! I got the whole thing for under $10! We just won't tell anyone that. ;-D

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September 5th- We went up to our neighbors and brought home our little ram from up there, he's aboout 4 months now. We stuck him in the trailer and caught a few of our ewe lambs and stuck them in with him. Dad had the vet out to get health papers on them. He sold a 2 of them and he's taking a few to N.Dakota for some sheep sale so he needed them. I've been working hard at keeping in shape. I lost 10 pounds while I was down in Eucador and I lost 10 pounds before I went from excersicing. *yay!!*I was walking about 4 miles every other day or so. It took me about an hour-hour and 15 minutes when I started. Now I make the whole thing in 40 minutes. I jog about a mile of it now. I want to get to where I can jog the whole distance.

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September 6th- We picked over 200 pounds of apples. =O Yep we did. I picked up gramma to help us peel some. We watched Peter Pan while we peeled. haha "I do believe in faries I do I do!!" I peeled 50 apples. My fingers were all pruney looking.

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September 7th-  Dad went to the vet to pick up the health papers before he left he asked me for my cell. He said he'd was going to go in and see if company could "look" at it cause the buttons had been being dumb and not working right. And we didn't get new phones till March of next year.  Dad came home with his smirk that he gets when he has something good. lol He handed me a pair of ear buds. Failing to hide the glee in his eyes. And says "they said these are the best out there". A smile was trying so hard to excape his face but he fought to keep it hidden. I was like ok... thanks... And then he pulled out a Samsung Hue!!!!!!!!        

Ahh!! I love it. It has a 512mb mp3, 1.3mp camera, blue tooth(I don't know what it is but it has it! lol) I gasped and started laughing, he was grinning ear to ear. lol Aww I love my daddy.  This by the way was my b-day present from him.

We found out we are finally getting a new pastor. Our last pastor left in June and we havn't had one all summer. Our new one is coming end of October. He has a 17yo son and all the girls are freaking out. haha. We don't have any boys in our church over the age of 11. And there's 5 of us girls over 15.  yeah...

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September 8th- Went to church... Afterwards we went to the Nature Center and walked around there for a few hours.  We stopped at the Station and saw dad. He's been working so much latly. poor guy.  Paige was thrilled to go see dad at work. We let her out of the car and she ran up to dad and gave him a hug "daddy working!!"

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September 9th- One of my friends called and asked if I wanted to go to the park and try to take some senior shots.... Didn't work out very well. It got to windy. And there was this weird guy that kept following us arond the park. :-S We went to the mall afterwards bought some pretzels, pizza, cheesebread, cookies, slushies, smoothies. hehehe We are junk food junkies!

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September 10th- Dad brought home the two breeding rams we will be using. I was out helping him get all our ewes home from the neighbors then sorted them into two groups. One for the brown ram and one for Shrek, the white ram. Chels called him Shrek cause he's got such an ugly head he looks like an oger. lol.

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Septmeber 11th- 6 years ago I was sitting in the living room watching buildings burn. I didn't really understand why my mom was crying or why all the tv channels had the same program running. But I knew something was wrong. Why would someone want to fly planes full of people into buildings? I didn't get it then. I thank God for his protection over my family now that I am old enough to understand what happend that day. God Bless our fallen brothers and sisters.....

Mom and I went to market today. It was so windy and chilly! I was fine in the house with my tank top and zip up sweatshirt but out side in the wind and cold. brrrrr. I was cold the whole time, except when I went into Kmart to walk arond for a while. hehe Mom and my sister had to cover the tomato plants cause it's suppose to frost tonight. =p 

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September 12th- Hey that's today! - Our ferrier came out this morning to trim our horses hoofs. Tonno was good as usal. My sweet Rubie. haha Thats another story. She was good on 3 of her hoofs but she got impaticent on the 4th. She started rearing and pulling. The ferrier had to get out a chain to put over her nose so she would listen. She was a naughty naughty girl. Not much else for today so far. We're going on a church campout friday-sunday. So excided. I get to see my friends that went off to school!!! yay!!!   I'm getting hungry. I think mom said today was subs for lunch. I think I'll go make me one. =D

Enjoy your day!

Kate

friday... the day before I turn 18...

It's crazy to think 24 hours from now I will be 18 years old. An "adult" to the world. Weird. hahaha But I am oh so looking forward to be able to say I'm 18. haha I'm going out with some friends bowling tomorrow night to celebrate. =D Afterwards we are going over to my granmas place to watch movies and sleep over. She's also making jello cake and getting icecream for us. *yay granma!!*

Today I got to sleepin till 9am. =D But that was because poor daddy is down with the flu. He's usally the one that gets the rest of the house up... not intentionaly it's just we'll hear dad making noise down stairs and we get up from that. Beings he was sick he slept in and so did we. hehehe

Mom and 2 of my sisters went to market today. We made alot of stuff cause there's usally more bussiness on the holiday weekends.  I made 10 loaves of lemon poppyseed bread and a pan of ricecrispy bars. Chels made orange zucchini bread and banana bread and Meg made pumpkin bread and sugar cookies. Mom had all her jellys, eggs, granola, and veggies. I stayed home and baby sat the youngest of my sisters so dad wouldn't have to keep after her. We went to the library for an hour then we came home and she watched a little bear tape. I was hoping she would have gone down for her nap watching that. Not so much luck. I took her up to my room, beings dad was in the living room watching tv, and read her a book, Happy birthday moon. She still wouldn't go down. arg! She kept jumping off my bed and messing around. I told her to take her nap and she laid down on my bed and cried for about 15 minutes and finally fell asleep. She slept for about an hour and 45 minutes. I watched a movie while she was down, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. I got it while we were at the library.

Pagie is fussing for something to eat so I'm off for now. Have a great weekend!!

Kate

it's about me!

Well, I havn't really been writting much about my life now since I've gotten back from Ecuador now have I? Sorry about that. I've been slow getting back into the crazy thing we call life here in the states. haha So here we go....

School. I am nearly done! I have about a week of Spanish left and I'm a little over 1/2 way through my Grammer.  I'm taking my ACT's on October 4th and if I do really really well I'm good, but if I could do better I'm taking them agian in December. eekkk. Kinda nervous. Mom's going to get me the study book...*hint hint mom!*... . haha she's been busy lately.

Farmers Market. Will be done the end of October. I'm telling you it can't come soon enough. *sigh* I am so tired of baking. I have 10 loaves of lemon poppyseed bread in the oven right now. It's just so tiring to have to bake twice a week and sit in the hot sun for nearly 4 hours 2 days a week.

Around the farm. We are about ready to put the rams in with the ewes. We were actually going to do that today but dad came down with the flu. So we'll have to wait till next week to get the all sorted out and put together. We should be getting lambs begining of Feburary.  I havn't been on Rue all summer. ugg. I'm so bad!! First I was was gone half the summer and now it's way to hot to ride. I'm sure she'll be fighting real hard we I try to get back up on her.

Job?? Yeah I'm really thinking of getting a job after I finish up my school. Pretty boring around the house with my sisters busy with school and all my friends are of to college or live hours away. *sniffsniff* I miss you guys!

Arg... I was writting so much some of my bread burned. akkk!!  My fault I know.

I'm off for now.

Kate

I'm so happy and here's the reason why...

We are leaving in 3 days for our camping trip! I am so excieded!  I'm going to meet up with a few friends while we are on vacation too. It'll be so fun!!! 3 days is nearly torcher to wait!! lol 

other news...

While we were in town the other day Hy-vee had some flowers on sale for a buck so mom said we could pick out some to plant at home. We ran out of pots so we got creative. :-)  I got some flowers called "Margarita Mix" and thought they were pretty cool so I was going to go looking for a pot to match. :-)  I went out looking in our woods and found the old junk pile that the older people that had the house before us threw all their metal. I found some old rusty paint pails and thought they would do the trick. Clever me went tromping through this metal pile in flip flops. A big no-no. I stepped on a piece of tin and it sliced threw my shoe the heel of my foot and left about a 3 inch gash on the side of my leg. OUCH!!  There was blood every where. But I got my pails!!! lol

The one on the left is flowerless thanks to my little sister. She insists on picking every flower.

Here's a picture of most of the flowers we planted. We have some in hanging baskets around the deck but I didn't take a picture of them.

The chalk on the deck would also be from my little sister. :-)

So remember to stop and smell the flowers(roses)!!!

Kate

wow

Well I havn't been on for like eons now have I! So sorry about that! I have been so so so busy!  This is just a mushed together note about everything that's been going on as of late!

Farmers maket has been going well. Chels and I have made about $200.00 now. yay!  It's been alot of fun. Fridays are busier then Tuesdays, about double the customers.  I sell about 11 loafs of bread on Fridays and so does Chels. :-)

I'm upto about $1500.00 on my fundraiser for my trip to Ecuador. :-D  I'm so excided! And it's only 6 1/2 weeks till I go!!!! I'm getting kinda nervous. :-p  Not so much about the being there but the whole getting there part. lol  I've never been on a plane or in an airport. eekk

Our bottle lambs are all weaned now. YAY!!!  But, we've lost 4 bottle lambs in the last 2 weeks, Teddy, Red, Moe, and Bubbles. :'-(  We lost them to bloat. 2 of them were my favorite lambs, Moe and Red. I was going to keep one of them for my own, Red. It was so sad. They musta got into something and ate so much of it and it streched their stomachs so much that it blocked the path. Eventualy they all suffacated. Poor Moe lived 3 days before he finally died. And we tried every thing to unplug them. Gave them mineral oil, charcole slurry, massaged thier tummies, walked them. Nothing worked.

Our adult ewes are all done lambing or so we think. We have two very kind people that allow us to take our sheep to thier pastures to eat their grass down for no charge. So we have about 15 ewes at our neighbors, about a 1/2 mile away, and about 20 ewes up and a friends place, about 10 miles away.  And we have about 150 lambs and 30 ewes here at our place.  Dad got a call yesterday from our neighbor saying that we had a lamb at their place. We were like "What!?"  Ended up a yearling that we thought didn't get breed did infact get breed and had a lovely white ram. Which dad is pleased about because we can sell him for breeding because he is "RR".

You are probably thinking what one earth does "RR" mean? lol I don't blame you I didn't get it at first either. Sheep can get a diesese that is called Scrapies. It's like Mad Cow in sheep. Sheep can have either RR, QR, or QQ genes. If a sheep has a R in their genes it can NOT get Scrapie. So if he is RR then what ever off spring he has will get one of his R's and can NOT get Scrapie. A QQ and a QQ will always have a QQ lamb. A RR and a RR will aways have a RR lamb. A RR and a QQ will always have a QR. A QR and a QR could either a QQ, QR, or a RR lamb. Get it?? It's like 10th grade Biololgy all over agian. lol Always wondered when I'd ever use it and here is it right here on the farm. Gosh, mom was right. ;-)

I'm nealy done with my school. YIP-EE!!! I'll be going into June maybe July with my english, but I didn't start that till a month ago. So that is to be expected! lol My friends are making me jelous though!  My cousin,Misty, graduated 3 weeks ago, and my friend Allison graduated last week, and my other two friends, John and Dustin, graduated Sunday! Arg!  I went to the boys graduation, it was about 3.5 hours away, they went to an academy. It was fun I got to meet up with some old friends and see the boys again. I don't see them too often. John moved 2 years ago so I only see him every third blue moon or so. lol And Dustin lives a bit away to I only see him when he comes to visit our church every so often. But he's moving about 6 hours away to live with his brother and go to a college down there. He wants to be a youth pastor. Very cool. :-)

Next week we are going on vacation for 11 days. Gramps is coming out to man the farm. He always has a good time out here. Sometimes he gets alittle prune happy though. He worked for the park department for many many years and they had a standard for every thing that that kinda comes out sometimes on our poor trees.  In the park they had said that tree branches under about 5 feet need to be cut off the tree. So they could moe around the tree with out hitting their heads on the low branches. Well we like natural looking trees so we just let ours grow. Last couple times we've gone on vaction gramps has started cutting our tree braches off. So we have some kinda ugly looking trees out there now. :-p

Rue and Tonno are doing well. I havn't rode Rue for over a month now. *blushes* I really need to get back up on her so she doesn't "forget" whos boss and all.  Last week we had some friends come over ,their my sisters ages, and they wanted to ride Tonno.  I was like "OK if you really want to"  Tonno is a good pony that likes to eat and be brushed. But if you try to ride him the pony in him flares up. He paws and kicks and side steps and rears and bucks and nips. All that good stuff. He's so small though you just might get a good bruise from falling off.  They were sure they wanted to ride so I got a lead rope and tied it to his halter, that's all we ever used on him bareback with just his halter. They hopped on him and rode him around. He was troting alot, trying to make them fall off. Which that happened alot but they just laughed all the harder. lol It was fun stuff.

Well I need to go. This got ooberly long! Guess that makes up for me not posting much ai!!  I have to make my bread and get everything ready today for market tomorrow. I usally do it in the morning but dad needs help in the barn tomorrow morning with the sheep. We have 4 people comeing in the next week to buy sheep so we need to get them all sorted and such.

Have a great day!

Kate

Farmers Market....tomorrow....ekkk!

Round here we have spring for like 2 days and then it's summer. lol  We had nasty 30-40 degree temps that wouldn't break then finally it got up into the 60's for a few days and now this week it's been in the 80's. But I love it. I've been getting nice and tan from working out side all the time.

Tomorrow is the first day of Farmers Maket!! So excided! This year me and my younger sister Chelsea are going to have a booth together, no mom she has her own, to sell our baked goods and produce from our grampas garden. It's nerve racking.  Chels has been helping out alot tho.  I had to leave this afternoon to clean our church and she made me lables for my poppyseed bread. *Thank you Cha-Che!!* Today Chelsea got  sevreal dozen chocolate chip cookies baked, packaged, and tagged, and also sevreal loafs of banana bread made. I got 8 loafs of lemon poppyseed bread made and tomorrow I'll make up some rice crispy bars right before we leave. So their nice and fresh, it's the only way to have them!  Grampa said he has lots of rhubarb ready to pick so we'll have to stop by his house tomorrow to pick some to sell. We're going to have to put it in a cooler beings the weather is so warm it'll just wilt and be a bendy.  It's such a change from last year, in a good way!  The first market last year we were in winter coats and it was raining. We were freezing! Now we're going to have our brains baked out. lol 

My other grampa is coming down tomorrow, he lives like 2-3 hours away. He's staying the night at our place then he's taking me and maybe chels to our cousins graduation.  We met our cousin for the first time about 4 years ago and havn't seen her since. So we're kinda nervous going cause we don't really know her, That's what's up for tomorrow!

Kate

At schools end

So now I just have English, Grammer, Spanish, and The Story of the Constitution to finish. Just, if it were only that.

English: I have to write a research paper, a Friendly Letter, and a Business Letter.

yesterday...

We did school most of the day. Then when we finished up me and my younger sister Meg ( Pink Girl ) biked around the mile. So we biked 4 miles, 1 on black top and three on wet gravel. Remind me to never go out biking the day after it rains! My legs were SO tired! Around 4 dad went to the grainery and picked up 1000 pounds of grower chick feed. I then helped grampa haul it in the chicken coop in 5 gallon pails, dad was the one filling the pails.  I hauld the better part of 500 pounds, I was a little quicker then grampa, but he is 72!  :-)  And he had been working in the woods all day.

Dad and grampa cut down between 20 and 30 trees yesterday out of our grove.  We are going to try to cut out all of them, other then the living few. 90 percent of them are Elms. They grow like weeds for 20-30 years and then die. At least ours did. So we have lots and lots and lots of trees to cut, stack, and burn twigs and small braches. Which isn't very fun right now because our entire grove is covered with cocker burrs. If you ever find one at your place DON"T leave it be. Kill it, get rid of it. We had 1 one year and then the next year we had about 20 and last year our entire grove floor was covered. No kidding. Once they bloomed out they were about bellybutton height and they all touched. So you couldn't even go in the woods. Dad said he'll pay us a penny for every plant we pull. lol  We're hoping once we get all the trees cut down we can find some way to kill them.

The lady that was going to buy Blizz and Benny fell thru. She decided that she didn't want them. Atleast that what her husband told us.... She bought sheep from us a few years ago and kept every thing. So she was up to around 70 head and then decieded she didn't want that many. So she sold  down the the original 2 that dad sold her. We're thinking that maybe the husband didn't want her buying more... maybe not, but dad talked to her the day be for and she was all excieded then her husband called the next day and said they didn't want them... hmm...

Here's a pic of Blizz and Benny all growen up. Well not really but they are weaned now. Benny's the brown one and Blizz is the white one. Notice they both have white speckled faces. :-) They are so tight. See the picture, that's how they always are never leave each other. If they do happen to loose each other they go bonkers. I don't know if they will live if they get sold seperatly. :-( I'm sure they'd live they'd just miss each other alot the first couple weeks.

Today it looking pretty dreary. Supposed to rain on and off today. Wish it would wait till we can get the pine trees in the ground!

Kate

Life is Good

Hey all!

I've noticed that it's been a while since I last posted.  Getting kinda lazy I am! lol So what's been going on around here lately hasn't been too terriably much. Last week my Grampa came down to visit for a few days, he had surgery so he was resting up at our place. Not really. He can't keep himself still for 2 minutes. Honestly. He was out to the barn with us every time we had chores and he was doing what he could to help my other Grampa clean out the chicken coop.lol  It was really nice to have him down though. He said he might come down for Easter dinner. We usally don't do nothing too big for Easter but if Grampas coming we might do something a little more special. Also while Grampa was down I noticed one of Rue's(my horse that Grampa gave me) front upper teeth was real dark and loose. Grampa took a look at it and said her tooth had died and to watch her real close to make sure she don't get an abcess. Ahh! My baby with an abcess in her mouth, that would be awful! He went back home and talked to one of his horse friends about it and this fella reminded him that horses loose thier first set of teeth between the ages of 1 and 3 years old. *sigh* So my Rubie will be just fine.

We have only 3 more ewes to lamb and then we will be done lambing for the year!! Yay!!! They arn't due for another week or so. So we have time to rest up agian. Our bottle lambs are down to 4 feedings a day. It still takes a long time to feed them though. About 30min to make all of the milk and then 30-45 min to feed them all. But we are down to 25 bottle lambs. Big improvement from 27 huh?! lol Our two oldest are now weaned. Which they are none to happy about. They now jump the fence and come up to the house looking for their bottles.

Mom was reading blogs last night and came across queenofquitealot's entry Do You Have Heart Room? . It just breaks your heart seeing children in such distress.  We've been interested in adopting but honestly don't have the money to go thru the paper work. Maybe when I move out and mom and dad don't have my expences then they could afford it.

Tonight we(me and my 2 sisters) are going in to practice our song that we have to sing for Easter. Getting pretty nervous! But I'm sure after some more practice we'll get thru it fine.

Well I need to get going. I havn't eaten breakfast yet and my tummy is sure letting me know about it!

Kate