Family

Sad day for the goslings

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4 June 2026

Arya starts out the day by moving the chickens and letting them out.

After chicken maintenance, the kids went over to check out Anya and her baby goats.

Meagan took a video of Arya doing a lap.

Jarek and Evan get some practice in.

After they got back from swimming, I went out and ran some errands. When I got back, I made a batch of spaghetti and meat sauce for the freeze dryer.

Loaded up and ready to go! I accidentally bumped the button twice, so I had to wait for it to reset.

While waiting, I snapped this picture of Garrett enjoying his best life playing on the trampoline.

I went by to check on the goslings and the baby chicks, and found them dead. We aren’t exactly sure what caused this, but our leading suspect is a possible rat. They are currently near the shed where the rats like to live. We will be relocating them away from that corner of the yard presently.

A little cute baby goat video!


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#swimteam

3 June – Chicken move and a surprise!

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3 June 2026

Today was a big move day for the waterfowl pen. We moved it across the street to our neighbor’s yard, who lets us use it for livestock. We got a good video today for you!

The nice thing about these chicken tractor designs is how portable they are. We like them much better than the traditional coop where the poop piles up.

After taking care of the animals, the kids were off to swim team practice.

After swim team, the kids came back and had lunch, then it was time for history with Mr. Richard! Today they learned about the French Revolution.

After history, they watched a video on the French Revolution, and then it was off to the pool with Grandma!

Garrett helped make dinner! He is quite the helper and I’d say he, but all the of the kids love to cook!

After that, it was Adult D&D night, and movie night for the kids with Grandma.

During the day, I was working on one of my main tasks – catching up on purchases from Amazon and Costco in my accounting system, GnuCash. I did finally make my first AI assisted program to take the data from those sites and turn it into something useful for GnuCash, which has saved me quite a bit of time. Now I just some processing to do on the file, and I can close out this task!

I’ve also been working with ChatGPT on hardening the server, and I think things are in a better place now. It is much faster than I am at figuring out regexp’s for fail2ban, one of the security suites I use, on the server. Every day people, but probably bots, scan and probe the server. Now, we should be catching more of that and blocking them from trying to mess up the server.

Of course, there was one more thing. As we were checking on the animals before bed, we made a little discovery in the goat pen.

Two little baby goats were born tonight! We got them situated a little better in their pen, and reinforced the fencing. They can get out of the normal goat fence, so I moved over one of our baby chick fences which has a much tighter mesh weave on it to keep them safe.

#babygoat


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alan@www.wolfandraven.blog

Catch up: Mon & Tues 1-2 June!

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1 Jun 2026

Monday was a busy day, and I didn’t get a post out. Let’s catch up!

Monday is typically our ‘worst’ day of the week, as it has the most activities on it.

We started of with swim team practice in the morning after animal chores.

Then, after swim team, it was back home and after a short break for lunch, and swim lessons for the littles, it was off to music lessons for the kids.

I checked on our pool, it is doing much better now!

I checked in on the pool – looking great1

Meagan captured this interesting creature, which, according to search seems to be some sort of case bearing moth larva.

Randal shows off his house that he built to Momma. He is very excited about it!

After music lessons, everyone went to the library!

While all of this was going on, I was working with our neighbor who is going to help us teach the kids history. I was also working on some more sourdough bread experimentation.

Randal helped give some treats to the goats while Jarek, Arya and Alan were at Scouts.

Bread, home school stuss

Tuesday, 2 June 2026

The kids all lined up at swim practice!

While they were out, I baked my Cheddar & Jalapeno loaf. I put it aside to cool and would try it later in the afternoon. I had several errands to run, followed by a Costco trip!

Garrett: “Randal and I are playing cook. I cook the food and he serves it to you!”

The chef and his waiter!

Randal helping clean up his play food!

Arya and her friend play “college.” This is one of their favorite games to play.

Here is the cross section of the sourdough loaf. The crumb was pretty good, but either I forgot the salt or it needed more with the addition of the jalapeno and cheddar. We all decided that it needed more of both jalapenos and cheddar.

I went out to check on the baby chicks and found they had run out of food, so I topped them up for dinner time!



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Lazy Sunday!

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31 May 2026

The usual start to the morning today, moving the birds and letting them out.

I had to help the goslings out again, they still haven’t figured out the ramp. One of them later got its foot stuck in the fence. It seemed to have pulled or strained it, it wasn’t working quite right. So we put that one in the baby pen to keep it away from the bigger birds while it recovers. Evan said it was doing a bit better. I’ll check on it tomorrow.

We had company over coffee in the morning, had a nice conversation with our neighbor. He’s going to help us teach the kids some subjects in the home school, which is pretty awesome.

Then it was out to the pool. I think the battle with the mustard algae has turned the corner. I’d left the pump off for a day and a half, and the water was pretty clear, although not crystal clear. I had previously added clarifier to help the particulates settle/filter. There was a good layer on the bottom of the pool when I started.

You can see the line here where I’ve vacuumed and have not yet. I got it all done, and adjusted the water chemistry a bit and told the kids they could swim. They were very excited!

Upon the recommendation of a neighbor, I got a PoolRX mineral algicide and installed that in the pump body. That is supposed to help keep the algae down, so we’ll see how that goes!

After pool clean up time, the kids helped out by cleaning up the house for our Family Dinner night, where we host a number of guests for dinner. Then they went swimming and had fun. Garrett worked on his swimming with Meagan. Jarek performed the Star Spangled Banner on the violin for us, and Evan played the Mysterious Casbah for us on Piano.

While the kids did that, I took some time to nerd out and move Jellyfin to a postgresql database. Hopefully that will stop it from crashing as much. Nothing more irritating than being gone and getting a text from Meagan that the movies won’t play!

After dinner, it was coloring time for a bit before bedtime!

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Swim meet, birthday party!

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30 May 2026

Today started early. We were up around 0530 to get the big three ready for a swim meet. I took the kids and dropped them off. I went back home to help with the animal chores and take over for the littles. Meagan had finished up with the goats at that point, and left to go watch the events.

The kids did well and had fun. It was a good experience for them!

Meagan got some photos of them on the big camera. I will have to get those and process them later.

Arya and Evan wait for their events.

Meagan got a nice video of the boy goats.

Randal was helping out, but had a little trouble with the hose.

We got some rain overnight. The goats were not amused.

Here I’m moving the small chickens to a new spot.

After the animal chores, I had a couple kitchen/baking chores to attend to.

I had started some sourdough the night prior and had it in the fridge overnight, so I got it into the oven.

The near loves are the new recipe I’m testing. The far loves are my usual recipe, but with a different technique. I had adjusted the baking times on this trial, but they need to be adjusted again as well. These got a little more done than I like.

New loaf crumb. Needed some more fermentation time.

Usual recipe. Came out just about perfect!

I also processed the four trays of beef stew that I was freeze drying for camp. One of the trays unfortunately was not fully dry, so I ended up just reconstituting it and having it for lunch!

I packed up the freeze dried stew into individual mylar bags for upcoming camping trips. Next, I need to make a batch of spaghetti and meat sauce.

Shortly after I finished up with all that, Meagan and the big three got back from the swim meet. Then, it was time for me to take Randal and Garrett to a birthday party for a friend’s daughter. They had a large water slide there where the boys had a great time playing in and on it!

Randal playing in the pool.

Garrett comes down the slide!

Much fun was had by all!

Randal demonstrates the proper way to eat a birthday cupcake!

After the party, it was back home for our D&D evening and movie night with Grandma!

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Friday fun day!

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29 May 2026

Today started out like most other days, with the animal chores.

I took a video of the geese, ducks, and chickens being let out of their tractor this morning. They were very excited to be free!

Radnal of course was my helper.

Evan and Meagan were busy with the goats.

We then checked the mail, because that’s what you do.

After the animals were tended to it was off to the pool to check on it.

Clarity is improving, lots of particulates/dead algae in the water still. I added some more chlorine and some algicide and clarifier.

Tomorrow I will do another vacuum pass. I have some other things coming to assist with the pool, but it’s probably ‘good enough’ for the kids by Sunday.

One of our neighbors had some trees cut down. We arranged for them to drop off the branches. The goats really enjoy them. Then we grind up the branches with a chipper to add organic matter to the soil.

After that, it was off to the homeschool meet up for Meagan and the kids.

I was having a look at one of the trees that is having some issues. Looks like this one will be coming down sooner than later. Another fun project, yay! The one on the other side of the house has a similar issue, so maybe I will try to tackle them both together.

In the afternoon, we did a family DnD session with Jarek and our neighbor.

Then it was time to do evening animal chores. Zanzi, the white goat, prefers to have treehouse dining.

The goose was giving me the hairy eyeball when I went to check on them. They don’t really like being locked up for the evening, but better safe than sorry with the fox on the loose around us.

Saturday we will be up early as the big three kids have a swim meet starting at 7!

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26-27 May 2026

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Tuesday was a pretty easy day. Jarek and Arya are recovering from their recent adjustment. Jarek had his braces put on his upper teeth on Tuesday.

So the pain was new to him and was a bit uncomfortable.

Smolder says the laundry left on the homeschool tables makes a great bed.

Then it was off to Swim Team practice. Arya, blue swim suit, jumps off while Jarek watches from the back.

Randal shows off his current favorite ‘magic trick’ of hanging onto, then sliding down the fireman’s pole on our playset.

Garrett and Randal love their ice pops. We send them out to the swing so there is less mess to clean up. Randal, of course, is quite happy to help himself to extra pops now and then.

We were going through some bins of our old SCA fighting gear, and Garrett thought it was great. He got himself all dressed up and is ready to go!

One last video:

Garrett and Randal found themselves a piece of bubble wrap, and it is the best thing ever!

I have another project I want to do, adding video cameras to the chicken tractors for streaming, but that will have to wait a bit!

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Feb update – AOL Crossover, Computers, and more!

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3 Feb 2026

Last weekend, we had Arya’s Arrow of Light (AOL) Crossover ceremony to what I call “big” Scouts, to distinguish Cub Scouts from what used to be known as Boy Scouts, now Scouting America BSA.

Meagan brought Randal and Garrett along for a visit, and for the ceremony later that night. We were given some camp chairs that fit them just perfectly and they loved them!.

I was playing with some of my toys you can see in the background, solar panels. It was of course a cloudy day, so I wasn’t able to recharge my battery pack that I brought to power the CPAP machine. I have a couple different ways I’ve been playing with for portable power, and these camp out have been a good time to experiment with them. I also set up the Starlink for its monthly exercise and updates.

Evan having fun with his fell Cub Scouts. They were running around finding pokemon stuffed animals earlier. That afternoon, before the ceremony, there was a flag retirement ceremony that the kids were able to participate in.

The rest of the camp out photos are here: https://photos.argentwolf.org/index.php?/category/67

The cross over ceremony was that night. I will put a couple of photos below, the rest I have on the gallery here: https://photos.argentwolf.org/index.php?/category/68

Here, she has had all of her Cub Scout things removed, ready to cross the bridge into Scouting.

The Scouts of the troop have received her and now dress her in the regalia of ‘big’ Scouts.

Jarek is not pictured, but he did have a speaking role in the ceremony.

It was a good ceremony, much better than last year. Nighttime photography is always challenging, and even more so when everyone is moving and lots of things are going on. Overall, I think most of the pictures came out pretty good, I only had a few that were not usable.

Year in review post

The Year in review is coming soon ™, largely due to a couple things:

1) bathroom remodel. The upstairs bathroom needs to be fixed, so that is starting now.

2) Tax time. yay

3) Data errors in the storage pool that holds the photos.

#3 has been the big booger that I’ve been somewhat avoiding dealing with, but as of today it seems to have resolved finally. I have a file system check in progress, (a zfs scrub), and if that comes back clean, then I will proceed. Otherwise I will need to rebuild the pool which will take a few days due to its size (27 Terabytes).

In other fun, I had two other spinning disks fail and need to be replaced. I had some shenanigans with a seller who sold me a non-Americas region drive, and thus had no warranty. So back it went and I ordered another disk replacement. Apparently the AI push is causing drive and memory prices to spike, so that isn’t fun.

Social Networks

At the request of Meagan, I set up a couple social networks, a Friendica (similar to the older Facebook) instance, https://friendica.argentwolf.org and a Mastodon instance (Twitter / X), https://mastodon.argentwolf.org to play with. These are federated social media servers, called nodes, that are run independently, but can talk and share across the network to each other. That way, you can follow someone and get their feed (or block them), and not be bothered by Big Social Media’s algorithm.

The blog (https://www.wolfandraven.blog) is also set up with this protocol, called ActivityPub. So now you can find and follow me at these places:

alan@friendica.argentwolf.org

alan@mastodon.argentwolf.org

alan@www.wolfandraven.blog (this will notify you of blog posts there)

I’ve dabbled in these before, but they didn’t seem to be ready. After Musk bought Twitter, a large number of folks left Twitter and went to the ‘fediverse’ so there has been some maturing of the platforms in the mean time.

Along with my server project, hosting isn’t free and the Social Media companies make money by selling you to advertisers. So, all in all, I don’t mind hosting these instances as it takes back control of the feed and what happens with your data.

We also had some sadness with one of our goats, Chali, who lost her baby kid over the weekend during Evan’s birthday party on Saturday.

She started having signs of giving birth, but there was a bad smell. She was a couple weeks early as well. It turned out that the baby had died some time ago, but we weren’t able to determine when that was, other than the pregnancy terminated itself.

Of course, it was on a weekend, but we were able to have a helpful goat person come out and assist us with delivering the dead kid and make sure Chali was doing ok. Thus far, no signs of any further distress.

We are expecting several of the other goats to kid in the next few weeks. Also, we will be getting in more baby chicks, likely this weekend. Hopefully the cold weather will have passed us on by and we can resume our regularly scheduled Florida weather!