The Adventures of the Reese's Pieces Gang

This week we put home school on hold to focus on packing. It has been a busy but productive week. We are organizing everything in the house according to where it will go in the new house. For example: Everything in the current school room will go to the school room or living room at the new house because those rooms are side by side. Everything in Samuels current room will go to the little boys room because his bed will be set up in their room at the new house. So we've put all the books and toys for the little in Sam's current closet. Everything that is in the living room will go into the storage closet in the new house.

We have several friends and at least 4 trucks each with a trailor (we think) to do the moving with. We'll assign a certain "room" to each team of friends. They will move the stuff for that room only on their rig. So there won't be any move it all from one house to the living room of the new house and take a month to find everything. Everything will be moved from room to room so it will be much less chaos during our settling weeks. That is a good thing since we will be having to learn how to milk 10+ Jerseys, while caring for 194 meat chickens, 50 laying hens, 2 sows, 1 boar, 2 bulls, several steers and several young heifers. Oh yea.... and we need to get the garden started.

We are very excited about the move. The kids are bursting with enthusiasm. I think one of their favorite topics of anticipation is the tree house which is nestled in a beautiful huge willow tree! I have a feeling that willow will be their favorite place to play over these next few years! I've always dreamed of living on a farm with a willow tree!! We also have 4 apple trees on the property and a cherry tree. There are red raspberries and rhubarb already established in the garden too! I'll be planting some black raspberries this summer.

This week we also transplanted 150-200 strawberry plants. I just moved them in large clumps to the new strawberry patch which is why I don't exactly know how many I moved. We've been giving away lots of plants too because i have over 1000 in my strawberry patch.... how sad to leave it! Yesterday Elizabeth and I went to the new house and planted 63 early red potato sets. I haven't checked the garden beds that we planted the lettuce, spinach, kohlrabi, peas, kale, Swiss chard, beets, and green onions. I'm sure some of it may be peeking out. We are supposed to get rain this weekend so if they haven't sprouted yet, and if the chickens didn't eat all the seeds, we should be seeing our salad garden flourishing soon.

I'll try to blog the week after the move and let you know if my moving system worked! :-)

Here is a fragmented update of the past couple months.... enjoy!

This morning we woke to a covering of snow. The kids were all disappointed. Thomas was the funniest of them all. He first cried then said, "Is it Christmas again, I need to write a letter." Then he was upset about the snow again and finally while he was waiting for the bus he said, "Mom, I guess this snow isn't so bad." What a kid!

I am excited about starting to plant hopefully this next week at our new house. Our moving date is set for May 1. We will be moving from 3 1/2 acres to 30 acres, 1 cow to 10 + bulls and steers, 1 sow to 2 sows and a boar + feeder pigs of course, 50 meat birds a year to 400 a year, 30 laying hens to 80, etc. It will be a bit of a change from our small hobby farm. We are looking forward to it though! The details seem to be all working out and we are excited about the move.

Our Home school program will go on hold the last week of April until the 2nd week of May for the move. We already have some packing done but will need those weeks to pack and resettle into the new house without trying to do school at the same time. The children in school will stick to their normal routine.

I'm enjoying teaching 7 piano students this year. Our piano will be delivered to the new house the first week of May. Once it arrives I will start to teach Elizabeth, Sam, and Caleb too along with working on trying to brush up on the many musical skills that I've lost since not playing consistently for almost 10 years. On May 27 we will have our annual spring recital. I think Phil is going to post it on our church website, I'll try to remember to link to it once it is loaded so those who may be interested in hearing it can.

It has been so long since I've blogged that I feel a bit fragmented in my thought process. Phil surprised me on my birthday in March with a night away. Elizabeth did a great job taking care of the boys, cooking all the meals, and keeping the house in fairly decent order. Phil and I enjoyed the night away and spent the following day researching washing machines because mine died the end of February. We finally decided on a Maytag front load professional series machine. It works great but my old dryer still cannot keep up. So I'm saving my piano teaching money in order to purchase a new dryer before winter. I like to line dry as much as possibles in up summer so I think I'll be able to keep up until the winter. I'm not as talented as my Amish neighbors when it comes to freeze drying my clothes.

One more nice thing about our upcoming move is that we might have internet access 24 hours a day for a reasonable cost! If so I won't have to wait 4-8 weeks to update everyone. Once we have the good internet access I'll have to post a picture of the new farm and lots of updated photos of the children. They are growing so fast! It is hard to believe that my baby will be 5 in just a couple weeks. When the weather turned nice he received his birthday present a little early... a new bike! He was VERY excited!

I hope you all had wonderful Celebration of Christs Resurrection! Our church choir sang three songs from the newest Hamilton cantata. They were songs that were difficult to sing without getting choked up because of the message of the songs. I was blessed to be able to sing instead of having to play because our Choir director decided to use the orchestrated accompaniment. I am so thankful for our church. Speaking of church, we are moved into our new building! It has been such a blessing to have a church building that meets the need of our congregation so much more efficiently!

Lastly the past couple months have been ones of great gains and losses on the farm. We butchered 5 pigs and 5 goats. Even though we shared the meet with others we have nice full freezers to get us through until the fall butchering season. This is the first time ever that I've had such a wide variety of meat in my freezer: pork, beef, venison, goat, chicken, and turkey. YUMMY!

That's all for now. Check back in May when hopefully my internet access will be more regular!Have a Blessed Spring!