Composting

Well, Rachel inspired me to try out vermiculture, or worm composting.

So I got some worms from a lady in my neighborhood that uses this method to compost the manure from her sheep pen.

Here are some pictures of me making a home for them:

Drilling air holes. Power tools are for women too.

Here, I’ve put in a bit of shredded paper.

Then, I added some bits of cardboard, and some broken twigs that I cut out of the Autumn Aster bed.

I had some helpers breaking up the aster stems. Don’t you love the “garden” gloves they found to use while helping me? My children are Adorable!

I mixed this all up added some water till it was nice and mushy, but not too sloppy (we don’t want our little fellas to drown now do we?) On top of all this I added a few big gobs of straw/manure from the chicken coup, more water. And then, I popped the lid on and set it in the sun so it’ll get nice and steamy and ready for the worms.

In the meantime, while they are waiting for their big farmhouse, they’ll have to settle for a small townhome under my kitchen sink. I’ve added a little bit of straw stuff, an apple core and a tea bag, just till the bin is ready. You can see one of the little guys on the far rim of the container. Woohoo.

Here are the worms. They are not regular nightcrawlers or earth worms you buy in a bait shop. These are composting worms called redworms, aka red wrigglers.

So that’s my fun Saturday project… yes still it counts as school.

The Boys and their Lambs

In the last entry, I mentioned the boys’ lambs, so here are some pictures.

We have been raising lambs for 4 years for the 4-h livestock program. I think that it’s been very beneficial for the development of character and diligence. I love to see my children growing out of the selfishness of babyhood and developing the skills of caring for something besides their own wants and needs. I have seen them becoming more consciously thoughtful. They also learn a lot about investing and money management, much much more than I ever did in public school.

It’s David’s first year. He’s still learning and struggling to train his lamb for the show ring. It is a difficult job. They both will have to enter the ring without any sort of halter and show their lambs using nothing but their hands. Andrew has a real knack for it after training three others. SO, the rest of this month will be the most important days in training. Then, off to market they go. It’s bitter-sweet for us to see them go. They are such a hassle, but we do love them so. We feel proud to be offering such good healthy clean meat to whomever will be the buyer.

The Lambs have just been sheered and in a post coming soon I’ll show you what we do with all that wool.

I just can’t get them to read. LOL!

I love this picture! Andrew and David are voracious readers, some would say bibliovores. Fyi: They both learned to read using Phyllis Schlaffley’s First Reader available through Eagle Forum.

The reason they have their jackets on is not because it’s cold in my house. It’s because they are required to feed the lambs before they eat themselves.Did I say I love homeschooling? I DO! I love seeing my sweet children love learning. I love seeing them seek out new things to learn, and soak it all up with near perfect comprehension. Here’s a little gushy momma love~ Ahhhh! My kids are are so smart.

Trebuchet

For those of you who have never studied ancient warfare and for those of you who may not have seen The Lord of the Rings, I present before you a wondrous machine with the ability to demonstrate the laws of physics in a very memorable fashion.

Here it is in action, though smaller. The larger picture wouldn’t fit. Wes and the boys have had a blast building this and trying it out. It’s currently for sale on eBay and Craig’s List- UT.

Every time they get it loaded up to shoot I think of the cave trolls in The Return of the King loading up the trebuchets to fire at the White City of Gondor. Ok, so now you know what kind of geek I am. But this truely is a blast, and figuring out velocity and the angle of the projectile, and using projectiles of different mass? Ahhh, the beauty of home schooling!