Capitalism works!!

A couple of weeks ago, Michael issued a challenge to the boys....clean up the bookshelf in the school room. He offered to pay $25 for the job divided up by whoever decided to work. He told the boys that when he got back from Italy, if the job was done, money would flow. One super sweet thing was that cleaning this bookshelf was on my list of things I wanted to do this summer...which by the way, my list is still long and my summer is getting very short. How does that happen???!!!

Here's the bookshelf "before". Sorry the pic is so blurry.

Lots of stuff, every which way. I'm so thankful to have the built-ins, but it's gotten out of control. Though, I still knew mostly where to find things, no one else did.

So, Jonathan and Jeremy took the challenge! I added a $5 bonus for including the closet that is in the schoolroom. I ended up doing the closet myself, but that was all I had to do. J&J did the rest.

Here's the "storm before the calm".... Notice the ihome on the white desk....the boys turned on Adventures in Odyssey and let it play....

Scenes like these are (I think) the reason why Michael wanted this project tackled while he was away in Italy. Messes like this cause a serious lack of peace to my dear hubby! There were also 3-4 boxes of NEW school books to be unloaded and put somewhere on the shelf.

About 6 hours and 12 episodes of AIO later, the bookshelf now looks like this...

Yeah! Straight books, empty space...lovely! We had two boxes of books to take to HalfPrice Books to sell, a box of stuff for Goodwill and now a very organized closet in the schoolroom as well.

J&J actually got $20 each for doing such an excellent job. Michael admitted that he didn't know it would be such a big job when he asked them to do it. AND they finished the job before he even left for Italy....impressive!

Paying people for working....and paying them well for working well....now THAT'S a great idea!!

Dr. Jen, Medicine Woman

See this "cocky" guy? He's causin' some trouble around the farmily...Sure he looks regal, sure he looks like a protector, sure it's a great photo (way to go Jeremy!)...but he's been a little too aggressive around Goldie...

We noticed at the end of last week that because he's been so aggressive and getting on Goldie's back way too much, his toenails are pulling out the feathers and cutting down to the skin and even cutting the skin on her back. Yowchy!! In fact, last Friday, Jeffrey caught her to show me the wounds and under her wings it looked like a skinless chicken breast you would see in the store. No feathers, no skin, nothing but meat!

So, at this point, Jeffrey goes into full "bleeding heart" mode. "We MUST take her to the vet!" "She'll die, she'll die!" "Maybe we should just kill Hawkeye! It's the only way to keep Goldie safe!" Admittedly, my heart was beginning to bleed as well, though a trip to the vet was out of the question. I mean, we really like Goldie and all, but even if we could find a vet to treat chickens (which might not too hard here in Podunkville, I mean Castroville), BUT we don't really want to spend hundreds of dollars for the vet to give her some antibiotics (at best) or tell us to just go ahead and kill her (at worst).

So I went into "WWMID" mode. (What Would Ma Ingalls Do?) I had plans to pull out the liquid bandage and pull the skin back together, maybe a garlic poltice (a poultry poultice...that's clever!), some neosporin, an ace bandage??, all kinds of things were running through my brain. But we didn't do any of those things . I wasn't sure what to do so we did the best thing.....we waited until Michael got home and asked him what we should do. Know what he said....he said he wouldn't do anything. I think his words were "Well, I don't mean to sound harsh, but if an animal doesn't know how to take care of itself and keep another animal from killing it, then....what can you do". Wow! No bleeding heart there!! Maybe that's the WWPID answer! (Pa Ingalls) I dunno to me it sounds a little Darwinian! Survival of the fittest and all that....(I'd like to go on record at this point and say, my husband is NOT in any respects Darwinian!) However, later he did also say that if I felt like there was anything that I really needed to do, then do it. (Perhaps this was in response to the shocked look in my eyes while he was saying his piece! :-) )

He actually decided to let Goldie stay alone in the coop in the mornings when everyone else gets out. That time seems to be the time when Hawkeye seems the most aggressive, then letting her out a couple of hours later. The funny thing is watching all the other hens and roosters while Goldie is alone in the coop. They cluck and crow and hang around the coop while Goldie looks for a way out. It's like things just aren't right in the chicken world while Goldie is in there. Squanto (who used to be Pocahantas until we realized SHE was a HE) and Hawkeye strut around squaking and calling out to Goldie. The only one who doesn't get in the mix of all this is Pigeon. For whatever reason, she's fine to just hang on her own most of the time. She's not one of the "favorites", I guess.

Well, we looked on the internet as well, and this is not an uncommon problem. The suggestion was made to clip the roosters fingernails (Hmmm....THAT sounds easy!!) or make a covering for the hen's back made of denim and nylon strings. Now I could probably do that. I'm going to look at the library for the book that was recommended that showed how to do that.

In the mean time, yesterday I just HAD to take some action.

Step 1....catch Goldie. Jeffrey and Josiah lured her (and all her friends and the goats) over with Central Market corn chips....organic even! :-) Nothin' but the best for our farmily!
Step 2...Get the meds. I went for the least invasive, quickest option. Neosporin...it's fast, it's easy, it's effective (sounds like a commercial!)

Step 3....put it on her ouchies. I was actually glad to see that the "boneless chicken" look has now turned into a "Roasted turkey leg" look. It's getting scabby, which hopefully means it's healing. The bad news was that we noticed she had a big scab under her other wing as well. It was about the size of a quarter, while the first one was about the size of Josiah's palm.

Get it goopy!

That's meds NOT worms in the picture, BTW!

Live and learn, folks, live and learn! We're living and learning lots out here with the farmily!Here's hopin' this will be enough to keep her well, happy and layin' more and more of those fabulous eggs! Any former farm dwellers feel free to chime in with tips!

Happy Birthday, Josiah....Part 2

Our internet has been very sketchy the last three days, so while I have a signal...I'm gonna hurry and post pics of Josiah's very happy 8th birthday! It was big fun...all day long!



It started about 6:30 when Birthday Boy got up ready to open presents. It's what we do around here. Decorate the table w/ all the presents and open them up before daddy goes off to work.

Notice those planes...he hasn't let them out of his sight since he got them the day before.

What a cutie!

He was a LITTLE excited about the gift that Jeffrey got him...a Webkinz. Sneaky Jeffrey wrapped the Webkinz in a gerbil ball so Josiah couldn't guess what it was. The trick worked, and Josiah was thrilled!

Here's the Webkinz...it's name is now Rosebud.

Tony and Gin-Gin sent this awesome necklace. (Very awesome, Gin!!) that is mini candy bars wrapped up. Well, we thought it was just candy. Imagine Josiah's shock and even greater delight when we found later that T&G-G had wrapped $5 bills up in some of the necklace. He would have been great w/ just the candy, but candy AND money....brilliant combo!

Pop and Granna sent great Aggie shirts and Boxcar children books. Josiah has had the Aggie shirt on for the last two days...and has the book by his bed ready to read. Who has time to read on a birthday???!!

J&J got him a Lego. They all have spent hours since then building and playing Legos. Love it!

So after a breakfast of homemade donuts......

A lunch of Mexican Meal......It was time for birthday cake. Again, ice cream sandwich cake got the nod. Couldn't be easier!! Josiah chose Kit Kat and M&Ms for his candy for the cake. The big boys helped me make it. I think they just wanted to snag some candy during the process, but I welcomed the help anyway! :-)

He didn't want to wait until the evening for cake, so we had it after lunch. Yum!!

For dinner we headed off to Carrabba's. We ate dinner early enough that it was pretty quiet (or at least until we got there!)

Yummy fettucini alfredo!

AND a free dessert!!

Happy Birthday Josiah!! We love you!

*And thanks lots to everyone who called and sent presents that aren't pictured (He LOVES the Charcoal cat, Lauren!) He really really really loves it when people call!

Happy Birthday, Josiah...Part 1

So, Thursday is officially Josiah's birthday, but who wants to wait until THE DAY to celebrate??!! So, Michael took the afternoon off and we headed off to Schlitterbahn for some great waterpark fun!
Aren't they so cute!!!!

Jonathan and Jeffrey floating on the alligator..one of their favorite things to do. That's Jeffrey floating in the alligator's mouth.

Michael told Josiah that he could choose anything in the park for a birthday treat. He chose these planes. (Michael was hoping he would choose Dippin'Dots!)

One great thing about the day was that we found a PRIMO place to sit. It's actually the place that Michael always wants to get, but has never been open in all the times we've been to Schlitterbahn. It's in the shade and has a great view of where the boys like to play. Perfect! Here we are lounging (except Jeffrey, he was playing the water)....

Then afterward, we did what we almost always do after Schlitterbahn...go eat at Rudy's BBQ. It

was great as always. Stay tuned later for "Happy Birthday, Josiah"...part 2!

Goin' Green....our garden update

Look how she's a'growin'!!
Our green space is certainly growing! Even with very little rain, it's growing well. It's at least getting very "leafy". Lemme tell ya', cukes and watermelons are SURE VINEY!! They kinda take over the place.

Here's tomatoes...yeah! Can you see 'em growing? Still green, but well on their way to greatness!

But some of our tomato plants look like this one....like something has just come up and taken a bite right off the stem. I haven't seen any of those big nasty green worms, or any other bugs or worms for that matter, but something's going on there.

We have a couple of strawberries! This is all the fruit we've seen on the plant this year, but I think you have to wait until year #2 on strawberries.

A watermelon!! It's small, but well on its way.

There's another one!

Here's our less than fabulous green beans. Still nothing but leaves here. No blooms even. I'm wondering if they don't need to be in a larger pot.

Some of our (hundreds of) cucumber leaves look like this. Anyone have any ideas about what this white stuff is? Or more importantly what to do about it?

And some of our cuke leaves look like this.
We're also wondering if something is eating at our cukes as well. Again, we haven't seen anything, but we have tons of blooms that get about as far as this one....

with a little cuke on the end and then just vanish. Out of all the vines and blossoms on the cukes, we've only been able to harvest 4 cukes. I'm thinking I may have to pull out the Sevin Dust and abandon the completely organic garden idea. It's wierd 'cuz I don't even see anything around, but something's there.

But even w/ no fruit, I love seeing all the leaves and everything growing. If worse comes to worse, we'll just eat the leaves!! :-)