Birds, and a few of Ezra’s Projects

robin hood, of course!

doggie

soap carving

As you can see the older boys are exploring birds. I never knew you could create Lego birds but, as you can see, you can! Etty bitty pieces, of all colors, are being collected for bills, crests, wings, bodies, tails etc., from these pieces Noah and Ezra build their birds. They take care to be accurate in their portrayals paying special attention to what color the crests are in comparison to the body and wings. We have quite the range of species represented: a cardinal, a pigeon, a crow, a duck, a penguin, just to name a few. They have made a few other types of animals too, like the dog, also pictured, but birds are where it’s at right now. You can even snip them on to branches!

Ezra has been getting into carving. I got him started on a few bars of soap but he’s moved onto wood. You can see the start to a few of his skewers (next to the crochet hook I made). I was lucky enough to be gifted one and it works great to check baked goods coming out of the oven. He’s currently working on a wooden duck and a barn. Up next, campfire sticks?!

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Fred’s Campa

Meet our two newest additions to Fried Farm: Mercedes (the all white one) and Lexus.

We’re very happy to have pigs again! We miss Rosalie (our previous sow) and especially  Sanchez (our big red boar- see photo below) and all the subsequent little piglets. Of course there were many hours of frustrated pig chasing/fence fixing with the little ones in tow or as in the case of our youngest, strapped in the baby wrap and I sincerely hope not to repeat those adventures.

So far we seem to be off to a great start. Since the big barn will be coming down in the spring we needed a different place to shelter the animals- ideally mobile so we can move their housing about to new pastures. Struggling_along found just the thing: a pull behind camper.

He stripped it out (saving the stove for a future outdoor kitchen!!) and partitioned an area for the chickens on one end:

The hatch struggling_along is looking thru is for easy cleaning out the coop. The Freds also  have a small door for access to an outdoor run and the old storage cabinets are now laying boxes. The Freds are laying very well! I don’t know if it’s the breed (Gold star sex-links) but compared to other chicks we have gotten in the years prior these have started laying sooner and are very consistent. Right now we have 11 freds and we usually gather 9 eggs everyday. All the boys LOVE the chickens but I think Ishmael does most of all. He just can’t wait to go feed them in the morning or visit them any chance he gets to wander over there. Give him 30 seconds and he’ll have one in his arms.

On the other side of the camper- after leaving a spot for grain and shaving storage-is an L-shape stall for, right now, the piglets but struggling-along built the walls high enough we could but the goats in there too.

Just have to slap a little tin on the roof and we’ll be ready for winter. The best part is that this campa project only cost us 150 dollars. Scratch that- the best part is that we’ll be having Fried eggs and bacon.

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frugally sustainable, homestead barn hop, down home blog hop, simple lives thursday, farm girl friday