Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways
acknowledge him,and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5-6

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

This Week on the Ranch

Lots's of things happened on the ranch this week.  I thought I would combine them all into one post in order to save a little time and actually get a blog post written.  :)

Of course, it's that time of year again, and I have been in school planning mode.  So that means, looking over the teacher manual, cutting, laminating, cutting again, copying, printing, and basically getting ready for our first day of school.  As of right now we will probably have a little bit of school this week and then slide right into our first day next week when all the Sinton kids go back to school.  I have a few items on order and library books to pick up and a few school supplies to buy.  I figure we ought to be good to go come Monday.
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I was excited to find this geography terms poster.  We'll be talking about these land formations as we go throughout the school year.  And cursive.  We never got around to it last year.  But, we're going to start this year.  And I found these wall decorations showing the cursive letters.  I thought it would be great to hang them up in the rafters of the ceiling for Caleb to look at and reference.
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I had a few extra kids on Monday and Tuesday.  It's still summer time and dad's have to work!  So, Adi, Hudson, and Sami spent a couple of days with Caleb.  The girls had fun helping Grandma Pam/Aunt Pam take care of the chickens twice a day.  I was pretty proud of Adi.  She went from being quite fearful, to letting them eat off of her boot.
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Unfortunately, the two days went by and I realized I didn't take one picture of the boys together.  Just imagine, two boys, with either a DS or a Wii U controller in their hands.  Yup, that's what they looked like for two days.

It was an incredibly hot week.  I mean incredibly hot.  Thus, it involved hauling frozen water bottles and ice packs out to the rabbits every afternoon.  Some of them were quite smart and utilized the coolness.  Other's?  Not so much.  But, all we could was try to make things better for them.

With LOTS of frozen water bottles!!
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What I've come to learn is that life on a ranch involves many of life's experiences to happen, all in one place.  Each day is a new day and you never know what you might have to deal with on any given day.  Most days, things are pretty normal.  And some days, situations happen that we have to deal with whether we want to or not.  While feeding one morning (Sun Aug 10th), I realized how cute this little bunny was.  It was so different than the others.  We either had all white rabbits, with bits of grey on the ears and feet,  or a couple all black rabbits.  This little fella had the darkest ears and the darkest nose.  I had decided this one would be a keeper.  It was 1/2 the size of the rest of its litter, so obviously it was the runt.   I took this picture so I could show John and say, "this one we need to keep for an adult."  Well, hot weather is very troublesome for rabbits (as I mentioned above regarding the frozen water bottles) and so, on this Sunday where we had a full day and didn't get home to put ice packs in the cages, this cutie succumbed to the heat.  I was so sad because literally the day I noticed how cute it was is the day it was gone.  God bless this little cutie for the short time it was around.
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A part of our week that is still a little hard for me is the very reason we had all these rabbits.  My husband is a fan of rabbit meat.  So, we raise rabbits to fill our freezer.  This was the first time we had a big haul to go through.  My brother Rick came over and helped John process 21 rabbits on a Saturday morning.  I, of course, took the Sami out for the day as that just isn't something we thought she was ready to deal with or comprehend.  Caleb has seen it before but he came with us as he needed some new jeans and I needed him to try them on.  

So, they processed them and bagged them into ziplocs.  And Sunday, we used the Foodsaver (a product I love by the way), and froze 32 lbs of meat.  I've only tried a bite or two of rabbit meat before, and it was okay.  I will keep you posted on what I think the first time I prepare it for myself.
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There were a lot going on this week and that included me ending up with a sinus infection and John getting one right after me.  It was a long week feeling so bad, but hoping things will be better this week.  :)

Here's me with a couple of our hens.  We took some selfies.  You can tell I'm a bit flushed and icky looking.  I said I didn't feel good, right?  Meet Frizzle our Black Cochin and Muffin our Buff Orpington.  Both are sweet hens.  We're getting from 9-11 eggs a day.  One day I had a dozen, but I'm still not convinced that one 1 wasn't from the day before.  LOL  I'm holding out hope that my twins, part Ameraucauna, are going to bring me blue or green eggs.  We shall see.  :)
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Well, God is good.  Let me close with wishing you all a blessed week.

In Christ,
Pam