warm day

Well, I've had a productive day with finally getting to my "odds and ends" containers that had ended up accumulating to a ridiculous 4 large rubbermaid tubs full! I threw away a huge amount of things, have several pails of "to sort" screws, tacks, strings, coins, keys, pills and other things that ended up at the bottom of each tub, plus I think I have a couple more bowls full of stuff from the counter. I had no idea there were so many precious things around that I didn't need the past year :). The house is still a tad messy due to bags of garbage to be hauled to the pit, boxes of canning jars to take to the loft, boxes of girl clothes to pack and stuff to return to inlaws, but it is nice outside so now that the chickens are in the oven, the girls and I will head out to work on the pig stuff. With wheat over $10.00 bushel, I am re-evaluating how much of everything do we really need and it is time for extra roosters to be dealt with, chickens to be moved to where they can do a bit more foraging (away from straw bales where they can lay extra eggs in!) and I'm making sure of the #'s of chicken I really need to order for meat this fall. Extra eggs do not sell well around here even though they are priced less than storebought (something I swore I would NEVER do!), so I need to determine if the they could be fed to other things and cost less than purchased protein for pigs or dogs, or if we need to get rid of a few chickens also. I love being sentimental, but it does not make for saving money or otherwise and I can enjoy 20 chickens as much as 50.
Pigs can easily forage elsewhere, but not in the winter and so we may cut the fall litters out of the equation if we don't have a market for the meat or piglets. And although we may lose a lot more money by selling feeder piglets rather than finished piglets, it also means we have to put out a LOT less money in grain to feed out the pigs. I have 1/3 of a bin of wheat and barley left so I guess we'll just see how that goes but I don't want to be stuck in a game of losing money purchasing feed for the animals rather than selling them.
With rural areas lack of interest in sustainable food vs. cheap food it is frustrating for any animal raiser, and it seems that they are doing their best to promote the Walmarts and ultra cheap food at any cost. They talk big about supporting local farmers and agriculture, but when it comes down to it, it is about convenience and perceived cost, as many are willing to drive 70 miles to get milk .50c cheaper.
We are out to finish the farrowing pens and shoo Terrence into a new abode - this warm weather is turning him into an 8 month old frisky puppy that wants nothing but play and using everything as an excuse to get bouncy with the very pregnant gilts. After he squealed and shoved one girl all the way across the pen out of fun, I whacked him on the head with a shovel and told the girls I would kick him out the next day. Emily and Elise had so much fun helping yesterday that I'll take them again today and they can crawl in and out of each of the pens, testing everything I've made.
Oh, I also need to get my seeds started today if I want to get much of a headstart. I am still having a hard time getting used to planting into potting soil instead of home soil and compost - I can't seem to get things to grow quite right. But I wasn't very happy with my purchased tomatoes and peppers as they didn't grow right and I wonder if they weren't root bound (like all purchased starts), and suffered Miracle Grow withdrawal. :)
Gotta run!
Heather for the crew

alive and annoyed

I just got a soliciting call from a group that first had me verbally agreeing on just how important their role in communities was - how would you say no when somebody carefully words things like, "I'm sure you would agree that helping disaster victims and homeless people is very important".
Then he asked, "Ma'am after hearing this I am sure you would want to lend your support to us in this and let me tell you about our levels of support."
I butt in with a "I would have to discuss this with my husband."
The rude fellow on the other end had the audacity to say, "Ma'am I'm sure your husband trusts you enough to make a decision like this."
Whoa, that is NOT going to get a single penny out of me. Try to appeal to me with that line - right. . . .
"First, you know nothing about my husband to make a statement like that. But yes, my husband trusts me to make proper decisions, but we discuss all of our spending together, so I would like to discuss this with him."
"You mean your husband would object to your spending $25 on a good cause?"
I do not know who taught him these lines or if he actually gets anywhere with these guilt trips or manipulation ploys (you mean your husband doesn't trust you - you can't even spend $25 without asking his permission??), but he sure was n't getting anywhere with me!
"That is not the point, the point is that I said my husband and I discuss our spending with each other so I would have to talk to him." "Okay ma'am please keep us in mind." And I hung up first, because in a very juvenile way, it made me feel slightly better to hang up before he could hang up . .
And if I get one more call from the local newspaper about the spring/fall/winter/summer/patrick's day/easter sale of .33c a day newspapers INCLUDING Sunday and "If you'll just give us your information I can have you signed up and getting it in 3 days."
Heather

we're alive

I think I will just give up completely on ever posting photos and just simply post meaningless drivel about our day to day existence. Ben could never figure out how to post his pictures last fall and then we kind of let this die. . . good thing not logging in every 3 months doesn't shut down your website.
We have had nothing but cold, snow, cold, cold, snow and a bit more cold. I realized that pipes freeze easily when there are holes in the bladder under your house, sewer pipes freeze in trailer houses when you let the water drip so the pipes don't freeze, and sewer pipes once frozen are not that easy to thaw until about March . . . Whoever plumbed this place had a bit too much pipe and not enough to do besides run pipelines everywhere. I spent a lot of my winter under the house and Elise and Emily quickly learned that I was either doing chores or going under the house . In January we took our 5 pigs to the butcher and I learned why the phrase "pigheaded" is so appropriately named so. Due to the run around the property 2 days before butchering, the meat may not be quite as tender as it could have been, especially where one pig was concerned. He took the in-laws on a run around the pasture when he showed them I was not lying when I regaled them with stories of his running over panels (with me under the panel), taking off down the driveway, and doing his best to go through anything that had a crack in it. I don't know how we could have done it without their help as three pigs loaded great, but the last two were rascals. Thankfully they are gone and I did not miss hauling extra feed and water from the house to the pigs when the water lines froze outside. Unfortunately 3 days before their butcher appointment, they realized that their electric fence was not electrified and so we had wandering pigs that I couldn't catch and I learned a great deal about how NOT to herd pigs.
Recently the weather went from thirty below to 30 above and I am enjoying the gloriously warm weather without toque or coat. Our Berkshires are due to farrow March 21,22, 23 and as it has been unseasonably cold I have been stressing about how they will do and how their piglets will be crushed, frozen or trampled. I'm sure it will be allright, but I will blame myself for everything that goes wrong as I'm not used to animals that typically just have a 2-10% death loss. I still have a bit of work to do on their farrowing pens (they have stalls that are 6x8 with creep area and then a run outside. I also need to get Terrence's new area fenced as he is truly a "boar" in every sense of the word. He loves to shove the girls around, pig out on the food, fight when he wants all of the water, bounce around when the pregnant girls just want him to go away and so on and so forth. He drives me bonkers and I'm sure the girls think so too, but I have felt sorry for him being alone when I separate him from his group so I put it off. But with the warmer weather he is just too playful and it's time for him to work off his energy alone.
I can only imagine what this post will look like as I can't remember how to do paragraphs either. . .
Ben has been ridiculously busy at work and on call and I've seen enough c-sections to do one myself now. Emily is grossed out by it all and prefers to sit with Rattatoile (clinic cat), but Elise likes to watch as long as I am willing to carry her around. Elise is walking by herself now - started on her 1st birthday - and as adorable as a screaming teething child can be (which is not too adorable!).
We are in North Dakota - for those who didn't know what state we were living in - and have not yet acclimated to the 8 months of winter they get *G*. I need to put a bubble over our property next year so that I can pretend I don't get 2 months of -30. Although I do believe automatic waterers and pipes that don't freeze would actually brighten my outlook on winter wonderlands.
I don't have time to type much to anybody these days (It is bad when your own mother asks if you are mad at her because you haven't written in ages!), so I'll sign off. Heather, Ben, Emily, Elise, Tia, Becky, Isabelle, Franklet, Mochaccino, Terrence, Wilma, Mattie, Gwen, Dan, and 53 unnamed chickens.

Pictures

Happy Pigs... update coming soon.

Oh MY!

I just spent half of an hour looking through Ben's old links, trying to figure out his password and username and finally an old link signed me in automatically. I've tried a few other times to sign in - obviously unsuccessfully - and had come to the conclusion that I'd need to start up a new website. :) I guess not, but I fear people will probably drop dead of shock when they see something has been posted a mere 8 months since the last post.
I don't even know where to begin because it has been so long. I can't post pictures as it is now a complicated process that Ben started to explain to me once and I ended up deciding I'd just ask him to post pictures if I wanted to. But I will post pictures of the past 8 months (in progression even) once I figure out how to do it.
I think it may be a tad arrogant to assume you are all dying to know what has been going on for this long, but because I enjoy to type I will pretend the world has been on tiptoe and bated breath the whole time. :)
This past week has been busy with my Mom visiting and helping with the girls and chores. Unfortunately it has been raining the past 3 days so we weren't able to get as much done as we wanted to and the world here is a soggy, muddy mess. The up side is that I don't have to haul water to the pigs and the down side is that I have to use the dryer to dry clothes as the house is too cold to dry clothes. We haven't lit the pilot light in the furnace yet as it requires going on the roof to cover vents and such (and it still costs to run the pilot light and I'm being as frugal as possible these days).
We do have a wood stove sitting in the living room, but have to connect it. Ben was going to do it Saturday, but we had fun with unexpected company (unexpected til they phoned LOL), and then on Sunday every time he'd open stuff to get at the chimney, he would get a call and have to go to the clinic to sew up a dog or something similar. So I cut a hole in the roof and got covered in dust and found the joists in just the wrong place for the chimney, so we three had to analyse how we could remedy the situation without moving the stove out another foot and hogging up the middle of the living room. It is raining like crazy so I will just get the hole in the ceiling done and hope that it is only rafters, wood and shingles so I can use the support box instead of the other more complicated methods to installing a chimney. It will sure be nice to have heat as it can get awfully cold at this time of year without supplemental heating. It has gotten as low as 48F in the house but then I just roast a chicken or something to warm the house up.
Elise is crying as her sister just bumped a chair into her. . . I am convinced that she is either crying or laughing at something her sister does to her. She is pulling herself up on things and crawls at lightning speed to follow us around the house. We only have 2 rocking chairs for furniture in our living room, so when my Mom was asking me the other day if Elise pulled herself up on furniture, I said I was sure she would be doing it if we had furniture. She takes a few steps if you hold her fingers and has just decided that oatmeal is a delicious breakfast food instead of toast. Yesterday she got to taste Indian food for the first time and spent 20 minutes licking dahl off a huge wooden spoon. Emily didn't like the food initially, but when I gave her a bit of chapati to scoop up some dahl and rice, she lit into it with much gusto for anything tastes good when you get to eat it with your fingers. Well, the girls are hungry and even if it is raining there is lots to do and animals to feed, so I'll sign off for now.
Heather for Ben working way too hard these days, Emily sitting on the floor eating last night's cold popcorn, Elise crying for oatmeal, Franklet and Mocha curled up in a comforter because it is soo cold, Bobby, Inky and General looking miserable in the rain (they are supposed to be barn cats . . . .), Tia, Becky and Isabelle sleeping under the house skirting to stay warm (the dogs all turned into outside dogs and won't be lured into the house), Dan missing Tilly who is at the neighbor's but not bred and will inevitably end up being pretty hamburger, Terrence who is on his own in the barn and missing his lovely girls Wilma, Mattie, and Gwen who are not enjoying the rain, and the 5 Hutterite pigs sleeping in a pile in the rain and dreaming of getting out and "hogging" down on tomatoes. . . .

Rain, sleet, hail, ice, and snow

I looked at the forecast on Friday, and found that we were in for quite a storm. On Saturday it started to rain, and then the temperature began to drop. Soon, the entire landscape was covered by a quarter inch of ice. This morning when we got up we were met with a lovely wintry wonderland. I'm not sure the men responsible for removing all the snow were as excited as we were, and indeed my zeal was dampened quite a bit after digging us out from under the wet and sloppy blanket covering our van, sidewalk, deck, and driveway. Nonetheless, this did not keep Emily and I from thoroughly enjoying tramping around, taking pictures, walking the dogs, and freezing our fingers. Heather has a bit of a cold, so she couldn't join us, but Elise didn't seem to mind the company :^).

Here's a view down one of the streets with the beautiful snow laden branches forming a sort of archway.

Nothing like iced fruit... har har

I thought this was interesting, a tennis court chain link fence was turned into a privacy screen overnight.

There were a lot of downed branches

These icicles made a neat fringe all around our deck railing

These are our wind chimes, covered in ice

These buds had just begun to form, it will be interesting if this little coat of ice will be enough to protect them. I've heard of fruit farmers purposely spraying water on their plants when frost is predicted for this purpose.

Pictures

Sisters getting to know each other Emily loves to hold Elise and give her kisses The proud papa Elise all cozy in her blanket from Grandma Nila

Announcing... Elise Ruth Stegman

Ah yes, at long last, the information you've all been vying for... Elise Ruth was born at 1:35AM on Wednesday, the 14th of February, 2007 weighing 9.8lbs, and measuring 20.5 inches long. The labor was a difficult one, lasting about 35 hours due to Elise being occiput posterior in presentation (as was Emily). Thankfully in answer to prayer, Elise rotated to occiput anterior about a half hour prior to birth which hastened progress and greatly decreased Heather's pain level. We were surprised to find that Elise was coming posterior, since she had been anterior for the entire pregnancy. Just prior to labor beginning I had ausculted Elise's heart and was surprised to find that I could no longer hear the sounds in the location I had been able to for the last trimester. I could however detect the heart tones lower in the abdomen, but they seemed very far away compared to our experience. At the time I attributed this to the baby dropping further and her head engaging more firmly in the pelvic canal, but in retrospect I and the midwife realized that Elise had surreptitiously rotated just prior to labor beginning. We had a brief scare at the point of birth since Elise was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. But thanks to fervent prayers and a wonderfully skillful midwife we were able to slip the cord from around Elise's head, it had however been constricted long enough to make her quite blue about the gills. We had about a 20 second period (seemed like an eternity) where Elise was having difficulty establishing a normal respiratory pattern, but we are so thankful to our Heavenly Father overseeing everything with such infinite care- Elise was fine after we suctioned the mucus from her air ways and continues to breath well. I don't know that I ever had realized what a beautiful color pink is- lol. We are adjusting slowly to life with two children, I think the transition has been more difficult for Emily than for Heather and I. Emily really isn't the type to want to be held and carried all the time, but I think just realizing that the option is no longer readily available has had quite an impact. Things were going quite well, but about two days ago we noticed Elise's left eye was "glued" shut in the morning- I realized after further examination that we had a good old fashioned case of pinkeye on our hands- before long Emily also had the symptoms- and soon we had the report from our concerned family that one of theirs had come down with a case soon after visiting us. So we are working through a milieu of eye drops, warm compresses, tearful mornings, and grumpy little girls (and yes parents too)... pray for us (weak smile). Don't worry, it's not quite as bad as that sounds. I know all of you are waiting anxiously for pictures so I won't blather further. Ben

It all started last week Wednesday... or "How I had a year of my life hacked off in three days"...

It all started last week Wednesday when a rumor tore through the school that the board results were in... then we all received a cryptic email from one of the administrators at our school- he said that the results for the national board exam had been received in Des Moines and we should be receiving our letters within the next several days. This of course plunged the entire student body into a frenzy of speculation and general misery... what it meant if you got a large packet vs a small envelope, whether it came certified or first class, whether it was a good thing to get your letter early or late... on and on ad nauseum went the discussion... the dull ache of uncertainty only alleviated temporarily each day at 5pm, that sickeningly wonderful moment when all vet students would race for their mail boxes to see if today was "the day". Ok, you may be thinking that we were all acting a little silly, and we probably were- but keep in mind that most of us had been waiting for almost 2 months to hear the verdict... and a worried vet student can do an almost interminable amount of second guessing in that great a period of time. After all, for all the NAVLE's (north American veterinary licencing examination) faults, it does have the rather unique authority to render all your aspirations of becoming a practitioner mere pipe dreams if the fateful number doesn't clear the hurdle. So anyway, I of course was not altogether immune to this stress, and like everyone else, I too was only to glad to rush home to my mailbox each day. But Wednesday came and went with no word, the same was true of Thursday... and Friday... by this time I was getting nervous, since heather and I were due to head north on Saturday to await the impending arrival of our second child. Saturday morning came and we faced the decision... should we wait until noon to see if the letter would come? No, we finally forced ourselves into the van and tried to put the issue from our minds. That evening, we were tooling along an almost deserted interstate 29, the moon casting stark shadows of our mirrors on the cement whizzing below us... suddenly the phone rang- it was my friend and colleague, an able fellow whom I had entrusted with the responsibility of getting my mail in our absence. He told me that my letter had come, as had his- and his was the same size as mine (generally regarded as being a good omen, or so went the local buzz). Did I want to just wait, he wanted to know, or should he open it, or what did I want to do?? This of course presented me with a quandary... what if I didn't pass? Did I want anyone to know? Should I just wait until we returned to Ames? I'm sure my pupils were about twice their normal aperture as the sweat beaded up on my forehead as my poor overwrought sympathetic nervous system attempted vainly to support the colossal weight my emotions were bestowing... finally I decided to just wait. Arrrrgh. Suffice to say within five minutes I had heather call him back, to listen to a mirthful Dean relating how he had just predicted to his wife that we would be back on the line within a very short time... oh well, he'd have known anyway if I'd failed (or so I finally rationalized). I drove along grimly, waiting for heather to show some sign of emotion that would belie the gist of what my friend was saying... aaaaaaaaaaaah... I was truly dying. Suddenly the darkness of the passenger seat was vanquished with the light of a triumphent relieved grin from my mate... the news had to be good. And so it was- I had passed the NAVLE, and my suffering was all for nought. Such stress simply cannot be good for the constitution. We found a Chinese restaurant at which to celebrate... after I called everyone I could think of to relate the good news- after all, you only pass boards once. Ben