WINTER ON THE HOMESTEAD

OK, I know winter does not officially start until day after tomorrow, but look at the pictures, it is here now. Hard to believe Christmas is less that a week away.
I was thinking that since it has been about three months since we posted, it would be nice to get an update done. I went out and started taking pictures, and this is an example of the pictures I was getting.

I had to take the camera back into the house and explore what someone had set my camera to, in order to change things so drastically. Someone had set the camera to effects, OK turned off and go re-take my pictures.

As can be seen we have a lot of water in the pond at present. I suppose that isn't a surprise since we have had continual rain for the last few weeks.

 Today is a partly rainy day and continual over cast.

 The critters come out when it stops raining long enough.

 Time to start pruning the fruit trees, this is an Asian Pear that has two varieties grafted to one tree. Of course one of these out grows the other a lot.

 This Bosc Pear also needs pruning very badly.

 The farthest tree in this picture is a Brooks Plum, also horribly overgrown.

The filberts are bare of leaves at present but loaded with Catkins, this is their time of year to be pollinated.

 Ghost is being retired this year. She has given us milk and babies for about seven years now, time to let the younger girls take up the slack.

Oh, I almost forgot we had the top of an Alder tree come down in a storm, you can see it laying in the pasture. We also had a fairly large cedar tree come down behind the shop on the neighbor's property. It fell down across the electric right of way, and onto the boy goats pasture fence. I forgot to retake these picture so you will have to be amazed with the weird pics I took first.

 In this picture you can not see the fence very well, and I have most of the stuff bucked u into rounds except the smaller stuff and the very bottom of the trunk which is still attached to the root wad.

This picture is of the root wad up the hill and still attached to about fifteen feet of log.

WHAT TO DO WITH A RAW GOAT HIDE

This weekend we needed to butcher our little billy goat, so because of this we ended up with a raw hide to do something with. Natasha helped me gut and skin the goat and voiced her desire to work the hide to keep, so we made a Fleshing beam. We had some Tan Oak logs at the back of the property, so we selected a short one, and used a draw knife to shave most of the bark off and smooth it as much as we thought we needed.

Then We hung the hide loosely over the fleshing beam and I explained to Natasha what we were trying to do, as far as removing any left over meat or fat from that side of the hide. We didn't have a fleshing knife, so we had to use a Machete with rags wrapped around the handle and blade, so no injuries would happen.

It took most of the day but Natasha was persistent and got it fleshed out. I have to say I was very proud of her persistence and work cleaning the hide for tanning.

And needless to say she was very proud of what she had accomplished. When the fleshing was done we submerged the hide in some tanning solution for seven days. At the end of the tanning period, Robert Hausmann, our grandson assisted me in stretching the hide on a wood frame I had made.

The hide was drying on the frame for about a week and actually tightened enough that some of the strings used for stretching, broke.

The hide at this point is pretty stiff, and Natasha happened to be back for the weekend, so we proceeded to build a scrapper for her to take home and finish the hide.

 In these two pictures the scraper is not complete, I need to clean the weathered surface of the antler, remove sharp edges and smooth out, and make the scraper edge curved so as to not cut through the hide, and maybe sew on some buckskin on the handle.

My grandchildren are absolutely beautiful! Even in a home tanned goat hide.

Hey pretty girls are always concerned about some fashion.

Maybe a hairy mini-dress?



Or could it turn into a coat for Scooby? 

OK, I finally got the scraper done, cool.

A LOT LESS WOOD IN THE POND

This weekend our eldest son and his wife and two of our grandchildren came over to the coast. While here our son got the bug to work on removing wood from the pond, which he worked very hard at all day.

It's a little funny, but we had all of the visible wood removed by the end of last summer, then winter filled the pond and a whole other batch of wood showed up on the surface of the dry pond bed. 

This was only one of the many loads he hauled out and onto the burn pile.

Sorry about the platform bird feeder at the bottom of the picture.

Some of these loads were quite a bit of wood at once.

When looking at this picture remember that the hill is steeper just above the burn pile, so about only half the pile is showing.

So when I took these picture and when D.J. quit pulling wood, many more loads of wood made it out of the pond. 

PROPERTY BOARDER BED ALMOST COMPLETE

Well we have been building garden bed again. This was a continuation of the bed, we showed in an earlier post, along the rear property line of our place. We used some Tan Oak logs from trees we had to have removed anyway, for the sides of the bed and the step up in back.

This picture you will recognize as the first part of this bed we were working on before. We do have another log added to make the transition step down from the high bank in back. You can reference the pile of wood chips at the back of the top picture.



And as you can see the chip pile is barely in the foreground in this picture. Pretty much all that is left is to plant trees, shrubs, and flowers lots and lots of flowers.

COLLEGE GRADUATE

Janice and I drove up to Eugene yesterday, for the very happy occasion of our youngest son's graduation from Lane Community College with an Associate of Science Degree in Computer Networking.

 I could not believe just how many people were there, made me a bit nervous!

 Congratulations Jon, your future will be brighter because of your perseverance.

You showed your children how it is done, I think they are pretty proud of their dad.

Saying Goodbye

Well today was one of the hardest I have had in a long time. Don and I had decided that we needed to fined new homes for our kids.

 Dancer and Flash are spending the last few minutes in the paddock while we are getting their stuff together. Saddles, tack and of course their toys.

 

 Flash was the brave one and went first. He was a little bit hesitant at first but only for a few seconds. He wasn't sure what was going on.

It didn't take very long and he went right in. He is such a brave boy.

 Next it was Dancer's turn. She too didn't know what was going on.

 I, of course, had to give her one last hug before getting her loaded.

 I think you can see the sadness in her eyes below. That is why you can't see my face.

 Dancer was such a good girl. She jumped right in the trailer with no hesitation at all.
Below you can see the sadness in Flashes eyes. It was a sad day for all of us except the people who got them. They were very happy and they should be, they got two very good horses.

 Here we were just tying up Dancer and Don was giving her a pat on the butt goodbye.

 Of course I couldn't get the lead tied so Don had to do it for me. I think it was a brain fart, didn't want to really let her go. We had built such a good bond with each other.

 But we got them loaded and the people also got the cart that we were going to have Flash trained to pull. The people who got the horses were interested in the cart also and she has six kids that can help with the training.

I had to take this last picture for a goodbye. Will miss them terribly, but I think it is for the best for them, although you couldn't tell by me right now.

ENJOYABLE DAY

Today was a very nice day here, sun shining, helped the neighbor move a tree for him to use as a side on a garden bed, a little on the cool side with a slight breeze blowing, but all in all a very enjoyable day. This first picture is of some flowers from bulbs that came out of my deceased mother's yard. They are related to the hyacinth, but I find the way they bloom interesting, They send up a spear, and then the blooms open from the bottom to the top over a span of time.

 This second is of some of the Allium blooms from bulbs my cousin sent me. I love these things the ball of flowers is as high as my head.

 I had to take this one to show my cousin that indeed there are six not just four blooms.

 I also liked this photo as it has the Calla Lilly's to the forefront, then on the lattice some Jasmine, going down to an azalea in bloom, and at the bottom of what I wanted to capture, a Viburnum Meta-file. 

 I strolled down the upper drive and the Torch Lilly's caught my eye. In this shot I tried to line up the Red Hot pokers, then some red flowering currents in back and farther along.

 This shot is still on the upper drive, I liked it because the Filberts framed the Viburnum Mete-file very well.



This last shot I came closer for, shows an Azalea about to burst bloom in front of the Mete-file.