Chores & Grafting

Ryan went out of town last weekend on a much-needed break, so that meant I covered farm chores for him. Contrary to popular belief, I don't usually do much with farm chores. Just when necessary. Ryan is Mr. Farm Chores. 

I realized we don't usually blog about the day-to-day, so here is "How to do farm chores," Janice style:

1. Get oats from the shop. A staple bucket is about the right size and handy. Keep an eye out for the skunk, he lives there and is currently too smart to be caught. But he stays on the other side of the building...

2. Get a sled of hay. If you're lucky and you're just covering one night, the hay fairy already got you a sled. If you're unlucky, pull apart a big round bale or a small square bale until you have a sled of hay. 

3. Offer the oats to the sheep. This is a distraction. They will try to knock you over to get to the oats. Be strong! Stand firm! This is the sheep version of the "feeder rage" we see in broiler chickens.

4. Pour the oats into an old chicken feeder. Deploy distraction!

5. Go get sled full of hay and dump it into the feeder. The feeder is a farrowing crate turned upside down, and it works really well. Lamb babies are already getting big!

6. Watch lambs eat. This year was much better than last year for lambs, we have around 20 and our mortality rate was closer to 10% instead of last year's 50%+. I'm not sure what happened last year, but either way this year was better. 

7. Roll eyes at the building chicken. All other chickens were moved to the new building, but this one stayed behind. She cleans up oats the sheep leave behind and generally has decided she doesn't want to leave. She doesn't like change. 

8. Get water for the sheep. Carry it back, cursing its weight, and try not to spill it on yourself. 

9. Fail.

10. Go up to the brooder and get the laying hen chicks some feed. Unfortunately, none came out so that you could coo at their cuteness. Laying hens stay cute MUCH longer than broilers. This year we have Black Australorps. We've shown this brooder hood design before, but I have to say it is AWESOME! We are not checking the brooder temperature every couple hours with this thing, they can regulate themselves. 

11. Close the door for the adult laying hens. 

12. Check on the adult laying hens. This is our new building in service, and it's been quite nice. Check that they have water and food, since we now collect eggs in the morning. 

13. Hello gals! We mostly have buff orpingtons right now, with some red stars and other miscellany mixed in. 

And then chores are done! Ryan worked very hard to make it easy for me; the cows have a hay bale in a bale ring and access to a waterer that is hooked to the well and manages itself. They'll be grazing soon, but spring has been late this year so they are still eating hay. 

Ryan also took a grafting class recently, which has been a new experiment. 

We have a couple of grafted apple trees hanging out in the bathroom where they can get light, but not direct light. That pretty, healthy growth you see on the one in the foreground? That's the root stock growing. Sigh. The graft does appear to be taking as well, though. Have you noticed I can't seem to take a picture of the interior of our house without a kid toy showing up somewhere? I have. 

I have been productive quilting-wise, but it is currently all for gifts that have yet to be given and so I can't share yet! I will share after I give the gifts.

As for the kidlets, little Z is growing well and as he should. In this picture, he has recently discovered the joy that is feet. I just LOVE the moment when babies find their feet; H did this too. It is the world's greatest toy! And it's right there, at the end of my leg! Whoa!!
Z can now reliably roll over front to back and back to front, his next step is crawling and he is determined to be mobile as soon as he can manage it.

H is still doing really well as a big sister, although she's trying to find ways to play with her little brother. Here, she is adorning him with post-it notes while he ignores her. She is almost three, and is full of all the drama and discovery that comes with being a three-year-old girl. 

And so, life goes on!

Lambs, Brown Green Baby Quilt, & Easter egg hunt

It appears I am on a once-a-month blogging schedule, but I guess that might just be the way it is right now! I like every two weeks when I can do it, but life's a little busy for that.

We have our first lambs of the season, I think the first was born on Wednesday. They are, as lambs always are, very sweet.

We have two single lambs out of two first-time mothers, which is the way it should be. First time mothers who twin frequently lose one or both, and so far we would rather have healthy singles. Yes, that is a Tidy Cats bucket in the background. A friend and customer of ours generously donated a bunch of them, and we use them quite a bit for various things (in this case, water for this lamb and ewe). Buckets wear out fast around here, and are kind of stupid expensive considering it is just a BUCKET!

I also had a friend of ours have a baby in the last week or so, and I decided he needed a quilt of his own. So I whipped up a quick stash-busting Anita's Arrowhead for him; many of these fabrics I am thrilled to finally give a home to. My stash is small, but it's still too full of fabrics that aren't actually big enough to do much with. I secretly dream of working toward a stash made up of decent quality fabrics with a balanced color scale.I also find that I reach for my tone-on-tone colors the most, like Moda Marbles and other blenders. I think that a little bit of print goes a long way, and I like the look of more pure colors best. Anyway, here's the quilt I made!

I've also started putting blessings on the labels of my baby quilts, and I really like what it adds. This one says, "May you have the hindsight to know where you've been, the foresight to know where you are going, and the insight to know when you have gone to far." 
And yes, those are my toes in the bottom of this picture. I should have stopped long enough to crop it, but I didn't. Lazy me.

Since today is the Saturday before Palm Sunday, Pella had its Easter Egg Hunt for kids. Now, not to be a fuddy-duddy, but in my day they still bothered to put candy into plastic eggs for the kids. Each one was a discovery: "Did I get good candy, or is this one a tootsie roll?" Alas, now they just scatter the candy on the ground and let the kids go at it when they say "go!" I guess this way is a lot less effort, and as a parent I don't have to figure out what to do with all the plastic eggs or feel bad throwing them away.

H enjoyed it anyway, and thought the whole process was pretty neat. And yes, I was That Mom. You know, the mom who doesn't have a cute Easter basket that's just the right size for gathering candy? The mom who totally spaced the whole concept that an Easter basket might be needed for this activity and emptied a grocery bag that happened to also be in the truck to serve as a makeshift basket? Yeah. That was me. Good thing she's 2 and won't realize that I was That Mom this year. I'll try to do better next year!

Z is growing well, and I snapped this picture this morning of a onesie my sister-in-law made for him

It has a bunch of stats for a Level 1 Human, and it's very Geek Chic. He's growing well, though has a cough (we all do, I'm on week number six of this thing) and is still a very calm baby. In this picture he just had his diaper changed, which is his absolute FAVORITE activity in the whole world. This kid just loves his diaper changes.

On a last note, this is my plea to the universe to decide it is spring already here in the Midwest. As I type this on the 23rd of March, it is the warmest it will get today at 37 degrees F, cloudy, gray, and nothing at all is green. Please spring, we need you!! Last year we know you were too early, but now you are too late!

Calf, Mikasa Pure Red, Snow, and Rolling Over

Winter on the farm is not a terribly active time, although there has been a little bit of news. One of our youngest heifers apparently took a little longer to "catch" than the others, so she just had a calf a couple of weeks ago. Ryan and I together got her into the lean-to, she was fairly cantankerous about it. It was the right decision, though, because she had her calf about 2 days after we got her into the barn, and the nights were definitely typical January cold! Ryan thinks it is a bull calf, but it's hard to get close enough to tell. Neither of these cows have the characteristic belts of the Belted Galloway, which we were told would breed true (liars!). Genetics is a funny thing.

Other than that, the farm has been quiet. We don't have chicks yet; we don't usually get them until late March. 

In quilting news, I think I told you we went to a friend's wedding in October when I was 8 months pregnant. Well, being 8 months pregnant and with a toddler, I did a terrible job of bringing a gift (as in, I didn't). So while I was on maternity leave, I went and looked up their china pattern, which is a pattern called Pure Red by Mikasa:

Then I made a small wall hanging to match it for their dining room. I used fusible applique with satin stitching on the edges, and I hand embroidered the stem. 

I'm happy with how it turned out, and I hope they like it. It's about 18x24 inches or so, and it's in the mail as of last Wednesday. 

With winter comes snow, and with snow comes sledding! So H got to go sledding for the first time, and we have a very hilly farm. 

Ryan called me out to capture a little video.

At our next snow, H and Ryan did it again, and he recruited a little help with the sled.

We also brought a little snow inside for her to play with without getting so cold and having to be bundled up.

Little Z is also growing well, and rolled over for the first time today!

I went back and looked, and H rolled over at 4 months, almost exactly. Z is 3 months old two days ago. I might have a mover and a shaker on my hands!

Hawk, Quiet Book, Grow Chart, etc

A couple of weeks ago, Ryan came in from chores with a "You'll never guess what I caught in the raccoon trap." After many guesses, I was unable to come up with this guy:

Yes, that is an angry hawk. We were using a dead chicken as bait, and apparently this guy walked right in. It is illegal to shoot these in Iowa (possibly in the U.S.?), so we took him up to Ames with us and let him go. Hopefully 50 miles away is far enough that he won't find his way back! 

I've also been getting back to crafting and quilting some, so for a recent trip to California to visit my dad I made Hazel a Quiet Book. Some of these pages are more applicable when she's older, but I thought I'd take a shot at it nonetheless.

This page is for weaving

This one is for tying shoes and fastening overalls

This one is for counting beads (her current favorite page) and lacing

The back of the lacing page and braiding

Shape matching (her second favorite page) and a maze. The small pocket on the jeans holds the shapes when they aren't matched up. It's hard to see the maze, but there is path stitched in two pieces of fabric that a glass bead can travel through.

Close up of the maze so you can see the path.

I used almost all materials that I had on hand (I bought a lace for the lacing page, that's it), and the cover is from a leg of Ryan's jeans. The tan pages are also old jeans of his, actually. When I buy that man jeans, I'm really just choosing fabric for future projects. I've also made a slip cover from them and a couple of quilts. 

But back to recent quilt completion. I bought a Goodnight Moon panel online a few months ago because I couldn't resist it. I love that book! All I did with it was quilt it, no piecing or applique or anything. 

Yes, that is a green paint stain on my carpet that I forgot to photograph around. Toddler.

Close up of quilting.

I also finished Hazel's grow chart. This is custom fabric I designed on Spoonflower, and I really feel the quilting added something to it (but that's hard to see from this pic). 

Lastly, I made some tutus for my nieces for Christmas, so of course Hazel needed one. Here Nermal has found the tutu and is happily nested in it.

Lastly, some kidlet pictures. Here Hazel is decorating our Christmas tree with Daddy. Again, Ryan pulled a seedy looking cedar tree out of the pasture. When he first pulled it in, it was 12 feet tall and we decided it was a little big for us. So we hacked the bottom off it until we had something more like 7 or 8 feet tall. 

And Zane before we gave him a haircut. Yes, we cut off his hair at about 4.5 weeks because it was already threatening to become a mullet!

Since we had our first snow of the season today, Hazel had to try on Mommy's boots. Is it just me, or does this really make her look like a manga or anime character?

I think it makes her look like the main character from Final Fantasy 9. She even currently has the right hair!

Death Star & Baby Boy

I'm going to go out of chronological order here, because my suspicion is that my latest news is the most interesting to people. My baby boy, Zane, was born on Wednesday at 2:49 in the afternoon. Considering I left work at 11 to go to the hospital, that's pretty darn good!

So far we're still adjusting, and he is not the sleeper Hazel was. This one is more of an... eater. Big time. He was 8 lbs and 10 oz, so he was a pretty big boy and is so far showing himself to be a true Marquardt. He actually looks a lot like his namesake (middle name), Ryan's grandpa Harlan. I'm not sure how much of that is that in my opinion baby boys look like old men. There is a picture of Harlan on Ryan's blog here.

Hazel is fairly well infatuated with Baby Zane and wants to hold him all the time. She is so far adjusting well, but we're really only on day one of him being home!

On to other topics, while I still had a massive belly we had Halloween. My workplace really doesn't do Halloween at all (I'm the only person I saw with even a nod to a costume), but it's my favorite holiday and how often am I going to be wickedly pregnant on Halloween?

A $7 shirt from Wal-Mart and some silver puff paint later, I had a death star. For a more subtle costume that was comfortable and wearable, I was very happy with it. Ryan did think I should have put a price tag on it that said "SOLD: $4 Billion" since that happened the day before. 

36 week belly & Fall goings on

I'm not really one for belly pictures. But we went to a wedding last weekend so I had Ryan take one since I was moderately dolled up. 

I'm definitely getting to the point where I would be perfectly happy to be done. I have about 3 weeks to go, we will see if he waits that long to come out or not.

In so many ways, this is my favorite time of year. The chickens and turkeys have all been processed, and Ryan's not feeding hay yet. So I actually see a little more of him than normal. We only had 25 turkeys manage to finish out the season from the original 160 (sigh), but they did come in a nice range of sizes from 8 to 21 lbs. The other turkey producers we know had trouble too, we think it was because all the eggs were laid in very warm weather and all of us had developmental problems in the turkeys. I keep telling people it's just like the reason that pregnant women aren't supposed to get into a hot tub! I would prefer this scenario, however, because most of them died early so we didn't pay to feed them and then we didn't pay to process them either. It's preferable to last year when they were so small because we fed and paid to process those right up until the end but then they were all only 8 lbs.

The cows are calving, so we have two new calves on the farm. We have a very hands-off approach to calving, so Ryan just makes sure to check them a little more frequently than usual. It's colder out, but generally we have good mothers and so far so good. 

The little girl in this picture has one white hoof, which is pretty cute. We also have a black-brown bull calf without a belt (the white stripe that is a mark of a belted galloway). We were told the belt breeds true, but we now have two instances where it hasn't. 

Being fall, I brought home a pumpkin for the munchkin and Ryan to carve, which she found to be great fun.

He came up with a good solution to the whole toddler-and-knives-for-pumpkin-carving issue by drawing her three different faces on paper and letting her pick what she wanted the pumpkin to look like. 

I have some maternity sweaters with big cowl necks that I wear a lot (I have three and they are long enough to cover the bump). Our little one has discovered that she can play peek-a-boo with me with these sweaters, no other equipment required. So if I pick her up with one of these sweaters on, she immediately follows a predictable sequence of events. 

Peek a boo!

Dusty, State Fair, & Other Goings-on

It appears it has been over a month since my last blog post, for that I apologize. I think I'll still blame pregnancy. It makes a good scapegoat. 

It is State Fair season, so we went and the biggest purchase we made was a cowboy hat for the munchkin. We've been wanting to get her one (like Daddy's!) for some time, but the state fair is really the place to get it. She didn't want a purple one, or a pink one, or a white one. She liked the black one!

After I took this picture I realized that I've taken this picture every year of the fair. This is on the sales grounds near the Varied Industries building, and Ryan is always carrying Hazel. Here she is at her first state fair, 3 months old:

And here she is at her second, 1 year and 3 months old:

Different carry methods, same general idea. Here she is again this year, 2 years and 3 months old:

I think when she's too big to be carried, these pictures will be replaced with her showing animals at the fair. Ryan is also not actually wearing the same shirt in all of these, but it does kind of look like he is. Apparently gray is a common color in his wardrobe. 

Our daughter is starting to figure out how farm chores work a little bit, which is still more adorable and annoying than helpful. She wanted to water the cows, so here she is tending the hose on the cattle water tank.

It actually makes a pretty good task for her, and she didn't get all wet or anything. 

Also about a week ago, we adopted another dog. Someone came too fast on the gravel road and Solo got hit. This was really disappointing because Solo was just starting to figure out life on the farm! We had only had him for a few months.

So this is Dusty, he is a 6 year old beagle. His given name was Destin, which was weird. He doesn't respond to it anyway, so we're still working on that. So far he's doing OK, he's adjusting to farm life. He also does well with a toddler, he comes from a household with other young children. 

In miscellaneous news, our plants are somewhat confused by the weather. We have been receiving steadier rain, so our french lilac and crabapple decided to bloom. Not like spring blooms, but definite blooms.

I took this picture on August 27th. Not this spring, just now. Crazy.

Yesterday we did our first foray into making cookies. This is using a Betty Crocker mix, but I did make the frosting from scratch. The little one thoroughly enjoyed it. 

We just used a heart shaped cookie cutter, and we ended up with some very misshapen hearts. They tasted great!!