Lost Things and Discoveries

For some reason my 4th Blessing finds it entertaining to take my things and hide them. Currently missing are my cell phone, which is a blessing "in disguise", in my opinion, as well as my wallet. Not such a blessing, or maybe it really is, I don't know yet.

My back is healing, but it is still uncomfortable to sleep on my sides. This is not fun, since I am a side sleeper. I can carry, Blessing #5, in my Beco and Blessing #4 on my hip without discomfort, again.

Today, we went down our trail and I was able to harvest a handful of blackberries. So yummy! Unfortunately, there aren't many out there and, honestly, I'm a little scared to climb in the chest length brush trying to reach most of the bushes. I wasn't always so unsure of adventure or cautious. Although, I suppose that goes without saying. I also gathered some mullein flowers while I was out there. I'm hoping to gather enough to make a tincture with it. we saw lots of interesting plants while we were on our trail, as well. I'm very interested in learning how to forage and about herbs and weeds and such, in general, since we have so many! Here are a few pictures of what we saw today.

This is mullein, above.

 

                                         Blessing #1 took this photo of a bee on a flower. We don't know what type of flower that is, though. Not sure what the rest of these are either.

 

The newest turkey hatches have been moved to a pen in the barn. We currently have 22 incubator hatched turkey babies and 9 hen hatched. One of hers is missing. We are also now missing almost all of our other hens. We thought we saw one today with a ton of poults, but then we saw 2 other hens and realized it was probably a group of wild turkeys. It can be hard to distinguish sometimes, because we have Narragansetts and they look a lot like wild turkeys. We also saw some Sandhill Cranes while we were out there.

 It's really hard to see, the turkey hen, but if you look above the pine branches, on the left, you might be able to see her head.

                                          These are the two Sandhill Cranes that we saw.

We moved our "shooting range" from the rams pen to another part of our little valley. Don't worry, the "range" was there before we put up the rams' fence and we haven't used it since. It's made of big old telephone poles. I was able to help out some, but not as much as I might've, due to my ribs. It was fun, though. I kept thinking about how much it looked like a HUGE bonfire pile. 

This week, I discovered, thanks to a friend, that we have a lot of Queen Anne's Lace on our property. I found this blog, New Life on a Homestead , very helpful in figuring it out, as well.

Queen Anne's Lace. Notice the purple dot.

I've also been working hard on our playroom. I don't remember if I mentioned or not, my dream for the playroom. Each wall is a different season and a different time of day. I plan to have toy box/benches under the windows and a small entertainment center and book cases. Hoping to have a couple of shelves on the wall dedicated to library books, so hopefully, we don't lose them anymore! Would also like to put up an art hanging system and a metallic chalk board. Eventually, my kids, would like glimpses of bible stories all over too. It is coming along a lot better than I thought it actually would. I'm not a professional artist, and am not too concerned with perfection, but I am impressed with how nice it does look, to me.Here are the pictures for fall and winter. I've actually done more on them, today. I took these this morning.

Also, this week, we've ditched the diapers with Blessing #4, during the day. He is doing fantastic with it. To some it may seem crazy that our almost 3 year old isn't in underwear full time yet, but we learned with our first two, especially Blessing #2, that it is best to wait until they actually want to use the toilet. A lot less frustration and headache that way.

Lastly, in honor of World Breastfeeding Week, Blessing #5 rocking his froggy hat and nursing, away.