We started the week with the idea of getting all 2000 of the yerba seedlings that Dane had moved here from the neighbor's nursery planted. In order to do this, starting last Monday, the children and I took off from schoolwork to help Dane; however, it is so cold here in the morning now and there is a heavy dew on everything, so Wednesday we decided to go ahead and have the childrens' classes and save the planting for the afternoons. By Wednesday evening, we had planted a little over 200 trees. Thursday and Friday we busied ourselves with other projects. The remaining seedlings we have decided will be planted only as time allows. Dane got the plow fixed up so that he can plow the rows which will make the planting go a little faster for us.
Dane has never been real enthusiastic about being a yerba farmer. Cash cropping just isn't very appealing to us. However, if we need a little extra income, harvesting the yerba will be an option, Lord willing. In the big scheme, we would like more to sell our honey and animal products if the Lord sees fit to allow us.
Other projects of the week included:
1) We worked on the house. Dane taught me how to sand the wood with his electric sander and the children and I have been painting while he has worked on putting the first wall up.
This is a picture of our little painting crew. The children love their job and we can't provide the wood fast enough for them to get tired of it.
This is the first exterior wall that Dane worked on this week. As the wood gets sanded, the children paint it, and when it drys, Dane puts it up. Plank by plank the wall is growing!
This is an inside view of the wall.
2) On Tuesday we harvested all the dry corn from our corn field so that Dane could clear rows for the yerba. Tomorrow the children and I plan to take it all off the cobs and bag it for later use.
3) Dane planted twenty-three citrus trees (nine tangerines, nine navel oranges, three blood oranges, one kumquat, and one lemon) and three banana plants.
These are some pictures of the citrus trees and Dane planting them.
This is one of the banana plants.
Dane planted the banana plants up on a hill at the tree line to protect them from frost. I took this picture from there overlooking the homesite and surrounding area. It is fall now, so things are starting to look a little browner.
This was the week for eye injuries here - at least for the boys. On Monday morning, Joseph fell while he was walking and hit his left eye on a wooden crate. He scraped his lower and upper eye lids pretty good, but thank the Lord, they were just surface wounds. Monday afternoon, David had a much scarier eye injury. Sarah accidently hit him in the left eye with a tree branch. The branch scratched his cornea to the point that I thought he would be blinded. I quickly ran to read up on such an injury on the internet and apparently corneal scratches are pretty common and the treatment is just the removel of any foreign objects and antibiotic oinment. The next morning he couldn't open his eye because mucus had dried around it and sealed it shut. His eye has looked better each day and his vision does not seem to be affected either. Tuesday morning, Elijah got stung by a wasp in his left eye and his face and eye swelled a lot. It is now Saturday and all three boys look like themselves again. Praise the Lord!
We lost four of our chicks this week. The first one we think died from health related causes, and we believe the other three got too cold in the night. The remaining eight chicks are doing really well and are starting to get their wing feathers.
Here is a picture of a snake that one of the chickens found the other day. We tried to identify it on the internet and we think it is a calico snake which is not venomous. It is hard to tell from the picture, but it is red, black, and white.
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