Homestead Happenings

I thought I would share a bit of what has been going on since my last post a couple weeks ago.  This will be a hodgepodge overview of a post.  On one hand it feels like nothing much has been happening around here, but after I think about it I can come up with quite a few small things.  A few small things tend to add up to a rather large post!

Spring and Winter have been battling it out as we've had some freezing nights and snow as well as some sunny days in the 60s. 

Based on these Daffodils, I think that Spring is going to win!

Christina has been enjoying working with her rabbits. 

 Here is some of the angora wool she has gotten.

It is softer than kitty cats!

We were told that the tan rabbit and white one in the same cage were both girls, but it turns out that the dark one is a boy!  We were planning on saving any breeding activity for a later time, but since they have already been together we wonder if the female could be pregnant?  If she is it will take only about 21 days for kits to be born! 

Earlier today the rabbits were again enjoying some time in the sun!  Christina has been putting them in our garden spot that has a fence around it.  Pretty soon I will need to till it up, but for now it is a nice safe rabbit run!

This tan one has recently discovered his masculinity! 
Christina has named him Wilely.

Here is Snowflake, the female. 

Her twin brother is named Big Guy, but we did not get a picture of him today.

I think Wiley is the cutest, even though he is a boy!

Augusta was keeping her eyes on them through the fence! 

Speaking of our canine friends, the original owner of that little beagle dog came by and claimed her.  We miss her, but not as much as Gusta misses her.  They were such pals!  Little Dog wandered up back in December with no tags and we had been taking care of her ever since, but her owner acted like he thought we were wrong for keeping her!  He was not nice at all.  Some people are just naturally rude!

Lisa and Christina have started some tomato, egg plant, and jelly melon seeds over the past couple of weeks.  We already have plants coming up!

Matthew has also found a few more days to work on the house at Lawrence County.  There is much that needs to be done with that project and I am amazed at how proficient Matthew's carpentry skills are becoming.  So far he has done everything with only Simon, Christina and Timothy's help.

Timothy liked helping with the flooring removal.

Here is what it looked like soon after Matthew had removed the wall separating the kitchen from the "long room".  It really opened the area up!

Matthew is also going to re-do the ceiling.

Here is a piece of the ceiling removed showing the higher rafters. 

We're toying with the idea of taking out the whole plywood false ceiling and working with the rafters to make sort of a cathedral ceiling effect.  We would loose some attic space with that plan, but it would really look and feel nice!

On another day, Matthew made some advancement on raising the floor in the long room to match the kitchen floor.  He's using 2 x 4s covered with rough cut lumber.  He's going to put smooth ply-wood over the rough lumber sub-floor.

The fireplace could not be moved, but I think that I like the way Matt fixed it.

Since the floor is being raised, the outside doors also need to be raised. Tonight Matthew was working on raising the door going out to the carport.  You can also see the 2x4s for the subfloor.  Before too long, those windows next to the door are going to be replaced with a wall and a regular window.

Meanwhile, we were enjoying the beautiful day.  It was sunny and 65 degrees!

Lisa and Christina were working on cleaning out some of the flower beds around the yard.

The Hyacinaths are pretty.



We're not sure what type of flower these are, but we were happy to see them coming up in the flower bed!

I like the way Christina got the blue sky behind the daffodils in this picture.

The only other things I can think of to note is the other stock:  chickens, pigs, a horse, and cows. 

The chicken flock is doing good even though that little beagle dog probably killed one of my hens when she was playing with it.  Currently we have 16 hens and have been getting between 3 and 8 eggs a day.  When all the young hens start laying regularly we should get plenty of eggs every day! 

Our two hogs have really grown and we think they may have bred.  If so, we really don't know when exactly it happened, so we could be having piglets within the next month. 

Gracie is doing fine, but no one has ridden her in a while.  Maybe the children will get back to riding her some as the weather continues to improve.

The Jersey bull calves are getting bigger and bigger and Violet is doing well.  We still hope she will calve this summer.

And then there is our expectant 2 year old Jersey milk cow, Dandelion.  It's been two weeks now that she has had milk!  We used to think milk was a sure sign of an impending calving at any moment, but now we've read that they can have full milk for up to a month before they calve!  She has been put up in the barn for the past 2 weeks now.  Tonight her udder was so full that her teats were protruding at angles instead of hanging loosly down!  I really think it will be any time now.  Instead of a December calf, we should have a March calf!

Well, that's a glimpse into some of the happenings around Purewater Hollow Homestead as we finished up February and started into March.  We're looking forward to the Spring and Summer that's soon coming up and all the adventures they will bring!