Working Solo

This past week our hired helpers, the Sosa's, have gone on to other things. We are very thankful to have had their help as we adjusted to our new environment and we pray they seek the Lord as they go on their way. Though things will be different without them here, we are very excited about our family's newfound freedom. We will now have to pull together more as we work on the homestead projects and the extra cash that is available will allow us to purchase some things that we could not before.


Our first week solo went great. We found that we can get just as much, or nearly as much, done without our helpers as we can with them, which is very encouraging.


Here are some pictures of the house. Dane worked on it all week and got the beams up for the second story ceiling/attic floor up.

Dane still hasn't been able to find a ladder he is willing to pay money for. Every time he goes to the store to buy a good one, they tell him they will have some next week. So he has spent some time balancing precariously on a chair and even told me, "If I die, just tell them I fell off a chair." In this picture, you can see him standing on a board, which thankfully, is a little safer.

In this picture, Dane is sanding some of the wood that will make up the outside walls of the house.

Here is a picture of Elijah painting wood with varnish and having a very good time doing so.

We finished making beds and planting the garden this week. When we planted last Spring, we didn't get the entire garden planted because we had so many sun loving plants planted outside of it; however, the winter crops all like the partial shade and we easily used up all the space available. We already have some lettuce, cabbage, spinach, peas, and broccoli growing. Our tomatoes are still doing well too, despite the colder weather.

We finished all the tangerines we brought home from the Sosa's(we thought they were mandarin oranges because they call them "mandarinas," but we have since decided that they are more like tangarines); however, some of our tangerines are getting ripe too. This is a picture of the fruit in one our trees.

We got a dozen new chicks this past week. They call them "ponedoras," or "putters," but we think they are Rhode Island Reds based on their color. They were only a day or two old when we bought them, so we are keeping them in a plastic tote with a kerosene lantern. We read that when you use a lantern to warm your chicks that you should use one with a guard around it so that the chicks don't burn themselves. But as you can see from the picture, our chicks sit up on the tank and wrap their bodies around the glass to keep warm.

Here is a picture of Joseph peeking into the tote to see them.

We always encourage the children to use their heads. Here is a picture of Sarah doing just that, literally, with some of the day's laundry on her head.

Today the children made their own table out of some old scrap wood and some bent nails. They ate their lunch outside on it when they were done.