Spiderman...

...or woman, I suppose. Either way, here's a cool photo of a black and yellow spider (Argiope aurantia) I took in our front prairie a couple weeks ago. That morning, I looked out the bedroom window to see huge spider webs covered in dew all over the prairie. I'm not a good enough photographer to be able to capture those images well, but this one was pretty cool, I thought. This spider's body was probably a little bigger than a quarter -- a bit too big for my comfort, but they must have some important job in the prairie or they wouldn't be there, right?

The Great Minnesota Get-Together

We had another fun day at the State Fair a couple of weeks ago. It was a long one, from 10:30am to past 9pm. That's plenty of walking and eating and walking and seeing animals and walking and visiting the 4H building and walking and eating. Here are some photos:

Max at the all-you-can-drink milk bar -- the pipes overhead carry cold milk (regular or chocolate) straight down like a tap at a bar.

Mmmm -- chocolate milk!


Ben on the Sky Ride with Ted

Noelle on the Sky Ride in the rain

An action shot of Ellie, Max and Noelle on the River Ride

Back outside!

We received and installed the electrified poultry netting over the weekend, and now the birds are finally back outside. Yay! It's not exactly "free-range" anymore, but their new range is big enough to at least let them have some freedom to roam, scratch and do other chicken-y things.



One fun side effect of the chickens' relative captivity is that the goats can now share space with the birds. Birds hang out in the goat yard and goats can wander and browse through the chicken "paddock". It took a few zaps for the goats to learn to respect the fence (what the kids attest feels like a "playground shock"), but now Moose and Lily happily co-mingle with the poultry gang. Of course, Moose promptly scooted through the chicken door in the coop and started munching on chicken feed, so now we have to make sure that's closed before any mingling can occur. ;-)

Ben's a kindergartner now!

Ben started kindergarten this week! His teacher is Mrs. Moen, and the class is with both kindergartners and first graders. He seems to love things so far, with his usual favorites of the morning being recess and snack. ;-)

Ben "signing in" in his classroom on the first day

Here is Ben with Ellie and Max in front of the peace pole at their school.
This was day 2 for Max and Ellie. That little girl on the left doesn't look too happy about starting kindergarten, does she?

Chicken Joe's a-crowin'

At 6am this morning, we wondered what in the world was that strange, low, sort of gargling noise outside. Wild turkeys? A crow? The young cows down the street? No, it was our very own Chicken Joe, finally really going for a bonafide crow from inside the coop. I realized it was the same pattern I had heard coming from the coop last week (in the middle of the day), only today he was repeating himself several times. True, he sounded a bit strangled and like he didn't quite know what he was doing (he is a chicken teenager, after all, about 4 1/2 months old), but he's finally found his voice.

A few minutes later, we heard another rooster from a neighbor (don't know who has chickens by us!), and that one was the traditional high-pitched number. Chicken Joe's not the most macho of cockerels so far (for which we are grateful!), and I really hope his crow stays this nice, low, soft version. Unlikely, I know, but a girl can dream. Continuing to crow after 6am would be nice, too, but again, unlikely. ;-)

Sad week around here

Well, we have some sad news to report from Fat Beagle Farm. On Tuesday, we lost over half of our chickens. :-( When we went out near dusk to close in the chickens for the night, there were only 7 of the 15 chickens hanging out on their roosts. We beat the bushes and looked and looked, and all we found were 4 or 5 different piles of feathers at various places all over the back forty. We had just talked to our neighbor, who told us she saw a dog (that looked "like a wolf", whatever that means) hanging around our pens a bit earlier in the day. We figure this dog (or possibly more than one?) got as many chickens as it could catch or carry.

It's hard to believe over half the flock could be gone just like that (the survivors are in the picture at right), but after consulting other chicken folks online, it seems that neighboring and/or stray dogs are one of the biggest threats to a free-ranging flock, especially during the day. Many people also said finding just feathers (and no other parts) sounds right for dogs, especially a big, hungry dog. Who knows what dog did the crimes -- people around here let their dogs roam unfenced and unleashed as a matter of course. I doubt we'll ever find who did it.

As you might expect, we were all extremely sad. This remaining flock seemed rather stunned that first evening, but now they're just itching to get back outside. We let them out for a few hours one afternoon, but only because one of them escaped out the front door and we didn't want her by herself. Too bad for them, but since then, they've been in their coop. We've ordered some electrified poultry netting so we can at least set up a small area where they can at least be outside. Fully fencing a good area for them to roam is too big and expensive a project for us this season. It really bums us out since they really enjoyed free-ranging so much, but for now, the risk feels too high.

Plus, I don't think Ellie would stand for them out there without protection, at least for a while. We have spent time talking about how at least the hens led a great free life before the dog came, which is more than you can say for chickens at Tyson!

A few recent pictures...

So serious.....

....but now they're all having some fun.

Friends at the 'farm'

Recently we had a fun day and evening (and even a sleepover for some) with good friends at the homestead-lite. Four families were represented, with 13 children in attendance (not counting the soon-to-be-born baby boy in Megan's belly!) Here are a few cute photos from that day:

Max just loves babies! Here he is with 1-month-old Soleil.

Costumed fun was had by all!
From left to right, Jossy, Keian, Solveig, Peri, Ellie and Eva

Three families represented by some of their girls.

From left to right, Eva, Solveig holding Soleil, and Ellie

Bridge collapse in Minneapolis -- We're fine

Just a quick note to say we're all fine and were nowhere near the bridge collapse tonight in Minneapolis. I'm still trying to get in touch with friends, but the cell phone networks are overwhelmed right now, so I'm hoping all is well.

Take care!
Noelle

The Halands love Harry!

Can you tell what Max and Ted have been doing for the last couple of days??? Actually, the kids and I went swimming with friends yesterday and Ted worked in the ER, so both of them had to take their noses out of the books and neither could finish the final "Harry Potter" just yet, though through no lack of trying. (What fast readers and what a great book, apparently! I'll get my chance later, after I'm done re-reading #6.)


Ted took all three kids to a Harry Potter book release party at the Jackson Street Roundhouse (a great train spot in St. Paul) Friday night. The party started at 9 3/4, and they did fun stuff like ride the Hogwarts Express (not too "express" as it went about 3 miles per hour), get sorted into houses (Gryffindor for Ben and Ellie, and Ravenclaw for Max), and eat chocolate frogs & Bertie Botts' Every Flavour Beans, until midnight, when the load of books came steaming in on a freight car into the roundhouse. Fun was had by all, I hear. :-)

Jailbreak!

Someone forgot to fully latch the barnyard gate a couple nights ago, and Moose and Lily promptly raced straight to the house. I'm sure they wonder why that other very strange brown, black and white goat (Dixie) gets to go in the house and they don't. ;-) Here they are at the front door, demanding their evening bottle of water. (Too bad for them, since they are now weaned from those and they get to drink water from a bucket just like other barnyard animals.) I had to nudge the escapees out of the way with the screen door just to get outside.




Here is Ben trying to wrangle Lily to get her back towards their yard, but she was having none of it!

Fun on Lake Superior

Here are some pictures during our camping trip up north in mid-June. This day was absolutely perfect, and we enjoyed a picnic lunch where the Knife River meets Lake Superior, on the North Shore. We stopped for some delicious smoked fish, beef sticks, and beef jerky on the way, and then we spent a long time enjoying the sunny day and cool breezes. We did loads of agate-hunting, finding pocketfuls of mostly tiny jewel-like agates.



Don't let the towel in Max's hands fool you -- the water was ice cold, so we certainly didn't swim!




Ellie and Ben worked diligently to create their Beach People:




Ben and Ellie weren't quite as into the smoked fish we got from Russ Kendall's Smokehouse nearby, but Ted, Noelle and Max LOVED it, as evidenced below:

NEWS FLASH: Noelle Finally Allows Sparklers!

After years of Noelle prohibiting kids' sparkler use, the Haland kids finally got to enjoy the fun of 1500 degree heat and burning bits of paper on the 4th of July.

Actually, I'll come clean and admit that this is the second year in a row I've caved and allowed sparklers but only the first with photographic evidence. Notice the looks of intense concentration -- the kids had suffered my repeated lecturing about sparkler safety, which was probably more than Ellie and Max needed but was for Ben's benefit. We have no picture of Ben with the burning fun (not sure what happened to them, since I did take some), but he did pretty well in not burning himself or others. We did have to move quickly once when he started running towards somebody else in his excitement, arm and sparkler outstretched, but all was fine.

The long ones you see in the first picture had tons of colored paper that burned on the end, then they would sparkle and pop, then appear to die down, only to re-ignite and sparkle and pop again. Ellie and I were both rather surprised by that before we figured it out. Exciting, but probably not the safest thing in the world.

By the way, I especially enjoy two things in the picture below: (1) Ellie's expression, and (2) her socks with her red, white and blue flip-flops. :-)

More fun with the goats!

Here, the goats are intrigued by Ellie's 4th of July flip-flops. You can really see how little these goats are. They're both still young (Moose is 2 1/2 months old and Lily is 3 1/2 months), but they are a miniature dairy breed called Nigerian Dwarves. They will only get maybe twice their current size. We chose them because of their small size -- I never realized how gigantic full-size goat breeds were until I met some up close!! Nigerian Dwarves also have proven to be good milkers, and I'm looking forward to the day when we can milk Lily. She'll have to be bred and give birth before of course, which may happen next spring or may be even another year from then, depending on how big she is come late fall. (You don't want to breed a young goat too early or she may have troubles giving birth. By the way, Moose will not be the daddy goat since he is now a castrated fella. We'll probably take Lily to breed with one of our breeders' bucks when it's time.) I'm eager to try my hand at making goat cheese and other goat milk goodies, but that's still way in the future. For now, we're enjoying how baby-like these two little ones still are.




Lily really loves grain-feeding time! In fact, at dinnertime, she climbs all over and even tries to get inside the grain bins. I went out this morning, and there were goat berries (a.k.a. poop) all over one of the grain bins and on the ledge next to it, implying *someone* had probably *slept* there at some point last night. Today, those bins are being put into the barn room where the goats can't get to them, and so we won't have to fend off their eagerness at mealtime!



Moose and Lily both love playing on these old cable spools we got from someone on Freecycle.org. We had to nail plywood over the holes in the spools so their small hooves wouldn't fall through. We also have an old galvanized metal watering trough (which used to house baby chicks before their coop was complete) turned upside down for them to play on next to the spools. Goats love to climb and crave variety and fun, and we aim to please. ;-)


Can you tell we think these guys are awesome?? ;-)

More pics of the kids

Click on any of the photos in the blog to see them a bit larger. :-)

Max and Dixie

Ben the goofball

Ellie, taken yesterday

Max and Ellie in action (a few weeks ago)

Ben's DIY Haircut

It was bound to happen, at one time or another, with one child or another.....

BEFORE (two weeks ago on our camping trip):




AND AFTER (day before yesterday):



He also gave his stuffed horse a haircut at the same time, but, alas, I have no photo of that. Oh, to be five again.

Fun with chickens

The chickens have turned out to be a lot of fun. Who knew? They're about 10 weeks old and they basically look like miniature chickens still and no longer little puff balls. We have 15 of them, and all but one are female. It turned out one is a cockerel (young rooster), whom we'd named Chicken Joe. So far he's nice and not aggressive, so we hope he stays that way. They were all supposed to be female, but we just figure we're lucky if only one is a rooster, considering how tricky sexing one-day-old chicks is. We intend to eat their eggs and not them. :-)

The birds actually have real personality, something I had never really expected. Here's a picture of their first day in the new coop, Ted's masterpiece. We had two old, "charming" (read: delapidated) chicken coops where Ted's family housed their chickens back in the day, but both buildings are so old and ramshackle from years of neglect that we figured it would be easier just to build from scratch.

I use the royal "we" of course since I was only a lackey, Home Depot fetcher, and now-and-again assistant. This was Ted's project and he worked long and hard on it. Every available free hour was spent on the thing for probably three months. Of course, it took more time and money than we anticipated, but the result is quite awesome, we think. It's got mesh in the floor and on the windows to keep out critters, as well as insulated walls. It also has perhaps the nicest windows of any chook house -- we used new Anderson double-paned windows from Michele's kitchen remodel 8 or 9 years ago that were unused because of a sizing mistake. They'd been sitting in the back chicken coop since then, gathering dust, so Ted built his plan around them. Now the birds have plenty of light and cross-breezes.

Ted also built a great roost for them to sleep at night. It's three levels of 2x4s, but all fifteen of them jockey for position every night on the top roost. It will be interesting to see how they manage and who gets booted to the lower levels once they're full-grown.




I'm so impressed by Ted's carpentry abilities. He really is a jack-of-all-trades! I've taken to calling him Dr. MacGyver!

Summer at Fat Beagle Farm!

Well, I think I may be finally getting the hang of this blogging business, months after actually setting it up then promptly neglecting it. But not anymore! Forward!

Summer is in full swing here at the homestead-lite! The exciting news this week is that our goats are here! We have two adorable goat kids, a girl named Lily and a boy named Moose. (Lily's the white one with tan patches, and Moose is brown, black and white.) They really are stinkin' cute, don't you think? We all just LOVE them. They seem to be settling in very nicely into their barnyard. They are very personable, really, and they wail like human babies as we walk away from their yard. They sound so pitiful, but luckily the wailing stops once we're out of view. ;-)

We ended up getting chickens after all, and they're quite a bit of fun. They're thrilled to be free-ranging during the day now, though they still don't go terribly far from their coop. (More on Ted's made-from-scratch chicken palace in another post!) Who knew that chickens would have such funny personalities?

Spring on Fat Beagle Farm

Well, we've been here in Afton for over 10 months - enough time to feel 'moved in' but for the remaining boxes on the porch and who-knows-how-many unpacked kitchen boxes in the basement. We're headed into our first full year living "country life", after a fun summer getting settled, a gorgeous autumn, and a strange but fun winter here on the homestead-lite. Now it really feels like HOME. The amazing springtime weather has done wonders for all five of us. We had birds all winter at our feeders, but now we can HEAR them singing every day. Real, bona fide green grass is starting to poke through, and yesterday I spied some bulbs coming up in the garden! And don't forget the truest, time-honored sign of spring in Minnesota - MUD. And dirt. All over everything, all the time. Ahhh, yes. 'Tis the season of Minnesota Mud.

Our biggest project right now is readying the barnyard for baby goats. The fencing is more than halfway done, and I've spent time tidying the barn stalls to get ready. There's still PLENTY to do, but I feel like we're making a dent, especially compared to the barn's junk-holding status all winter. Things are really starting to shape up, so that it really does appear those little caprines will indeed join us in June. We've decided to start with two, one doeling (a young female) and one young wether (castrated male), with plans to breed the doe in the fall. We're getting Nigerian Dwarves, a miniature dairy breed that are ridiculously cute and easier to deal with than larger goats due to their small size. We'll keep you posted!

We've decided to wait until next season for chickens. We have two great, old coops, and by "great" I mean somewhat charming but throughly delapidated. The work involved is too much for now. We figure one new species (and the associated prep work in fencing and housing) is enough this spring.

There's a thunderstorm south of us, so Ted and I are off to try to get a bit more of that fence done in case we get slammed. It's even fun, which shocks me more than anyone. I'm no great shakes, but who knew this city girl could manage to wield a hammer properly and actually enjoy it?? Maybe there's a hidden farmwife in me yet....