Stumps

Ever since we got an acre of trees cleared there has always been the stumps. We didn’t remove the stumps because the county didn’t allow us to do that many, so instead we just ground them down. But finally we decided to rent a stump grinder because the stumps prohibited us from planting grass and also make for a very bumpy bike ride. So on the 28th of September Dad took the day off so he could operate the machine. Mom let me (Philip) off of school so I could mark the stumps with flags that came with our invisible electric fence for Lily. Without it she would run off chasing some squirrel or something. Dad let me grind a couple of stumps down. When Dad was done with one side of the clearing he let me smooth it out with our little box blade on the end of our tractor. Because when you grind a stump down it makes a hole where the stumps was but leaves a big mound of wood chips next to it. So there were tons of holes and mounds of chips all over the clearing.Some of the mounds
Also notice all of the wood chips covering the ground.

A ground down stump

After thirty minutes or so, the machine would run out of gas, so we would have to go through the whole process of driving to the gas stations and refueling our tanks two or three times. But luckily we discovered a gas station that carried diesel that was much closer to us. But eventually the machine shut down and not because it was out of gas. So we called the rental place and they sent a guy over to see if he could fix it, but it turned out that something had gotten clogged. So they swapped out our machine for one that was slightly smaller.An armie of flags.
(This is the second machine at the top)







Here's a video of the actual grinding part.
When grinding you had to lower the arm a little bit, swing it to the side and lower again and continue "sweeping" the stump until it was to your desired height. But if you lowered it too much it would stall when you would try to sweep it to the side.

We were hoping we could grind all the stumps in one day but it ended up taking two. So the next day we finished the other half of the clearing in the afternoon. We got most of them except for two or three that we missed.

As always I hope that I did not bore you with this post.
--Philip

The cube

This has been my recent occupation. I had seen several people do it, and determined to learn how to solve the cube. So after a couple weeks of looking at online guides I finally committed the sequences to memory. Once I had done that I started working on speed, with a goal of solving the cube under a minute. Now I need a new goal. :D I will never need a gameboy again (not that I used them much anyway), and take it with me everywhere I go.



Here I solved it in 57 seconds, today on the way home from church I was able to set a personal record of 52 seconds. I have also gotten several people from church into rubik's cubes. Here is the site I used to learn how to solve the rubik's cube.

I’m really behind on my posting, but I've had a lot of homework and big things just keep happening before I can post about the big thing that happened before that, so settle in for a catcher upper post=) Firstly I started candling Buffy’s eggs with a flashlight almost every day from day 3 of incubation. At first all I could see was a speck, then a spot with gossamer like veins branching from it, then a pulsing blob with veins over most of the egg, then… you get the picture till the entire egg was black. We removed 2 eggs that never developed specks, spots , or blobs, which left 6 potential hatchers. On the evening of the 20^th day we apprehensively called our house-sitter and found that all 6 eggs had hatched. I was very excited, and thankful, because on day 15 Buffy tired of her maternal duty got off her nest, jumped the divider, and mingled with the rest of the flock for an hour or so before I came in and found a motherless moving box full of COLD eggs. Luckily she resumed her maternal duties after I threw her back with her eggs and thankfully all the blobs survived their chilly experience.

They are truly adorable little balls of fluff, now 3 weeks old, and getting big. We let them out to range with the rest of the flock, and enjoy watching momma hen unleash her fury on any hen unfortunate enough to get too close to her brood. This is her fluffed up like a bowling ball warning me to back off, she has since gotten used to me and doesn't mind when I cuddle the chicks.They are a cute mix, 1 speckled Sussex x Buff Orp , 2 Rhode Island Red x Buff Orp and 3 pure Buff Orps.

If you counted the little heads in the above pic you may have noticed that there are in fact 7 little chicks under momma. On the day of our return our neighbor offered me a lone americauna chick from her own flock. How could I say no? The Americauna breed is known for it's tinted eggs, green, blue, pink, or just plain old brown. She is the same age as our own chicks so I thought I could smuggle her in with momma's babies, so I wouldn't have to brood her inside. But the momma bird knew that something was amiss, and chased the poor thing from her own babies. So what do I do, but brood her inside. She was lonely so I gave her a stuffed animal and a mirror to keep her company.

A few days later was the day of the biannual livestock sale. I had been looking forward to this for a while. So I got up early on a Saturday morning, now that is sacrifice, with both my parents to peruse the hundreds of cages full of critters. Chicks, chickens, bantams, ducks, quail, doves, puppies, turkeys, geese, guineas, llamas, donkeys, miniature horseys, sheep, goats, piglets, etc. We did not come home empty handed. I bought 4 light brahmas and 5 welsummers both breeds I've been interested in for a while. These are all in the bathroom, and have been for a whole week. the younger welys have taken over the mirror's job of keeping the americauna company. On a warm afternoon I took them outside to run around and eat some grass and bugsthe big whitish ones are the brahmas, the browny ones are welsummers, and the bluish one is the americaunaIsn't this one adorable.
Unfortunately that is not all that's new. We lost one of our ducks to a predator =( We suspect a fox. It was in the middle of the day, when we heard the roosters sounding the alarm like crazy, we ran outside and the female rouen , mallard looking one, was missing. We never found any trace.
I've been much more carefully about when I let them out now.
--Anna

The Beach

Last week we went to Delaware for our beach trip. Sunday even though the weather was nice we didn’t go to the beach because it was way too crowded. Monday it was overcast and windy which made the rip currents (when the water pulls you out to the ocean) bad, instead of going to the beach we went to the pool, but throughout the week it was freeeeeeeeezzzzzing. Every time we get together with our relatives we work on a big puzzle, so that kept us busy. Also since our house had a pool and ping pong table my Uncle Bernie organized a double elimination tournament. My dad ended up winning pool and my Uncle Richard ended up beating dad at the ping pong championship. On Tuesday we went to the beach but the sky was again overcast and the waves were rough so dad and I ended up getting pummeled by the big waves which was not a very pleasant experience , yet I was able to body board the rough waves. Wednesday through Friday the weather was bad so we played pool, ping pong, and worked on the puzzle inside and toughing out the swimming pool outside, shiver. Until Saturday we saw, could it be SUNSHINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We then put on our bathing suits jumped in the car and went to the beach and it wasn’t even windy.A jelly fish had washed up on the beach.

When we got there it was cloudy again but every now and then the sun broke through.

When we (Anna, dad, and I) got in the water we got past were the waves were breaking so we could jump over them, when a huge wave broke way deeper then the other ones and right on top of us (that’s how dad and I got pummeled Tuesday) but luckily we were able to dive under it at the last second. After that I wasn’t going to take a chance of reliving Tuesday so I went closer to shore a safe distance away from the pummeling and surprisingly consistent huge waves. Dad and I were still able to however, body board the waves without getting pummeled.





LOL, we just missed that big wave.

After surfing for awhile we took a break and played frisbee on the beach.I got a neat picture of this wave curling. I like this picture because I got the wave breaking in the back.


After that we left.

I was sad that we only got one good day at the beach, but grateful at the same time that we did get one day at the beach and that God had a reason for it. So the next day we took our group pictures, said goodbye and were on the road. When we got home me and Anna sprinted out of the car and into the coop and saw our mama hen walking around with six little baby “chickis” :D.

Anna will post about them later.
So that's all for this post.
--Philip

This year for science I studied about plants and how butterflies and bees pollinate them. So for an experiment I (Philip) planted a butterfly garden. We got our plants from Lavender Fields Herb Farm. We got Parsley, Bee Balm, Hyssop, and Bronze Fennel.Here is a chrysalis on the fennel.A visitor



. We are leaving for the beach (at Delaware) tomorrow YAY :D, we got a house that has a ping pong, and a pool table so we’re going to have a little family tournament ;). So we’re busy packing and taking care of the animals before we go ,but I was able to squeeze this post in, phew.

--Philip

Teen Camp

Greetings people of the Internet, last week all three of us kids went to our church’s teen camp. This was probably Thomas' last year to go before he would be too old. So we decided we should all go with him. We got there Sunday afternoon and left Saturday morning.

7:00 am was rise and shine then we had our morning devotions.(At the waterfront they had some benches so that's where I did my devotions most of the time)

After devotions we had breakfast which was always delicious.After breakfast we would clean our cabins. Then we would have our first Bible study. After our first Bible study we had an hour of free time to play ping-pong, air hockey, phoos ball, basketball (which I did most of the time), volley ball, soccer, football, or fishing.

(You can click on the picture to enlarge it)

After free time we’d have our second Bible study, then lunch.

After lunch we would go and have activities for about three or four hours. Like a giant swing, Archery, rock wall climbing, kayaking, sailing, and a high ropes course including a tight wire and a big zip line,

Me (Philip) shooting a bow and arrow.

Thomas on the rock wall.

They had two sides, a easy side and a hard side. The hard side (shown here) had a bulge at the top so you had to do a pull up to reach the top.

The giant "V-Swing" they called it because it looks like a V.

People on the ground had to pull you up with a rope. After pulling on the rope all day everybody's hands were red and blistered.

Anna in a harness.

Here is a video of me on the V-Swing.

Me about to step on the high wire thinking "This is crazy."

"This is still crazy" 8-O.

Here is a video of Thomas on the zipline.

After activities we had an hour and a half of more free time then dinner. After dinner we had an hour of swim time. Then our third Bible study, night devotions were we talked about the day and what we learned about it, an hour of free time to get ready for bed then lights out at 11:00 pm. After lights out there was always talking, but the councilors hushed us, so then we came up with the idea to get in bed at 10:30 so we could talk till 11:00 then at lights out we had gotten all of our talking out.

the last couple days it thundered during swim time so we couldn’t swim, instead we played a lot of fun games inside, and lots of great fellowship with one another and making new friends.

It was raining so much that it made these huge puddle you could wade in :D.

I thought this cedar tree looked cool with all it's knots.

Group photo.

--Philip

Broody Buffy

A lot has happened since our first egg. We're getting over a dozen eggs a day now and having a hard time keeping up with the supply. I bake with them often, and Dad has started selling dozens of them at his work. Something else exciting has happened though, one of our "Buffingtons" has decided she wants to be a mother =) She just made up her little birdy mind to hatch some chicks. Staying in her favorite box even while the others went outside to forage and up to roost for the night. Since our eggs seem to be fertile we're letting her have a go at hatching a clutch of hybrid chicks. She's separated from the others sitting on 8 eggs in an old moving box. She seems very determined and has been sitting for four days straight now sixteen more to go. Because this is everyones first time, chances are high that the eggs will not develop or something will go wrong, like the hen reconsidering her committment to motherhood, getting off the nest, and leaving the eggs to die. Even if everything goes according to plan we are going on vacation the day before the "due date" =( Tonight we're going to candle the eggs, that is shine a bright light through the shell to see if there's development. Here are pics of a few of our male ducks who are now sporting their shiny green feathers.
--Anna