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!
Thanks for reading! Sign up on our Patreon to know when posts get published! I share these automagically to the Journey of the Wolf and Raven Facebook page if you prefer that. You can also follow me on the fediverse via alan@www.wolfandraven.blog
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.
Thanks for reading! Sign up on our Patreon to know when posts get published! I share these automagically to the Journey of the Wolf and Raven Facebook page if you prefer that. You can also follow me on the fediverse via alan@www.wolfandraven.blog
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!
Thanks for reading! Sign up on our Patreon to know when posts get published! I share these automagically to the Journey of the Wolf and Raven Facebook page if you prefer that. You can also follow me on the fediverse via alan@www.wolfandraven.blog
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!
Thanks for reading! Sign up on our Patreon to know when posts get published!
Just another day around the house today. It started off in the morning for me moving the chickens to their new spots. Afterwards, it was off to the pool. I’ve been battling mustard algae in the pool for the last couple weeks, but I think I have it under control now, or perhaps, at least for the moment.
This picture was a few days ago. Since then, I’ve had the chlorine up high, around 20 ppm to kill off the algae.
Last night, I left the pump off to get what I could to settle out, and I vacuumed this morning. It’s less green now, but still hazy. I’ll get a better picture tomorrow of where its at. Hopefully the kids can get back in it in a few days.
After dealing with the pool, it was off to unclog a toilet that Randal had backed up. He’s still getting the hang of the proper amount of toilet paper, so its a thing. I’ve come to really appreciate toilet closet augers. Much better than plungers and more effective.
We sold a couple baby geese that we hatched. We still have these for which are up for finding a new home, or possibly becoming guard geese for the other chicken pen. Geese are pretty good at keeping things at bay.
After the morning chores and tasks were done, I worked with Evan on his school work.
The kids had a smoothie for breakfast, which helps with the teeth pain from the recent braces adjustment.
We had rain off and on all day netting about 2 inches of rain, which was good as we are short on water for the year so far.
Meagan, Randal, and I spent a while on the porch enjoying the storm while Randal blew bubbles.
After school work was done, the kids watched Back to the Future to help distract from the braces pain. Jarek, in particular, and Arya as well, have been in a fair amount of pain and unable to focus on their usual school work. Hopefully it settles down over the next few days.
After that, it was back to work on my bookkeeping. I have added a media project to my list – reorganizing the music cds. I am also now going through the piles of family photos we have and digitizing them and adding them to the photo repository. The negative scanner and flatbed both showed up today, so I’ve been having fun playing with both of those.
The kids went off to swim practice, and then dinner, and that was pretty much it for the day!
Thanks for reading! Sign up on our Patreon to know when posts get published!
A couple of weekends ago, I took Jarek and Arya on a trip through the Old Jennings State Forest. This was a fairly aggressive trip planned, it had a 9 mile leg in it. I wanted to see if we were ready to take on a more aggressive longer multi-day trip that would have us doing ~10 miles a day or so. Spoiler – we were not!
Presently working on building chicken tractor # 2 with my little helpers.
A few stops and starts and a couple extra trips to the store, but progress has been made. Another trip to the store tomorrow. The hinges I ordered haven’t come in yet, so off to get some off the shelf. I made the initial parts order via online for pick up, but apparently I picked something that wasn’t available.
Randal helps me by holding the roosting bars up so I can secure the brace for the nesting boxes.
Another day or two, and it will be ready for prime time! Which will be great as the little chicks are growing up fast!
As we get ready to head out from Bryce Canyon, the kids help me check the torque on the lug nuts. A few years back, we had an incident with broken lug nuts when moving the trailer. Ever since then, I’ve made it part of my habit pattern to check them each time before we move the trailer.
While I proceeded to the next campground, Meagan and the kids went to the Escalante Petrified Forest State Park.
Jarek and Arya stand amongst the petrified logs.
They earned their Junior Ranger badges at the Interagency Visitor Center. Then it was off to the ‘Hole in the Rock.’
Hole in the Rock is the place where Mormon pioneers carved a passage through rock to a very steep descent.
Painting of the wagons going down through “the hole in the rock.”
“The Last Wagon”
Jarek and Evan pose for a picture with the Escalante Valley behind them.
A view of the Escalante Valley. You can see the road on the right.
Another view of the Escalante Valley.
Meanwhile, I arrived at our campsite outside of Capitol Reef National Park and set up. The views were not disappointing.
It was a little interesting getting situated, but I managed to get tucked in. The site was a bit narrower than I would have liked, but it was a quiet campground and the kids were happy to have lots of gravel to dig and play in. They are big on making roads and other vast construction projects at our sites!
Thanks for reading!
Sign up on Patreon as a free member to get notified of updates on our Journey! You can read about other stops on our adventure here on Patreon, or at our blog at https://www.wolfandraven.blog
We did the long drive out to the Glen Canyon Visitor Center. It was a bit of a hike from the campground, but it was about as close as we were going to get to it on our trip.
We had a nice lunch picnic on the grass outside the visitor center.
A view of the dam from the visitor center.
The kids were very interested in the dam and the bridge construction.
Garrett examines a relief terrain model of the area.
This was as close to the Rainbow Bridge. It was only accessible via boat, and while we looked into a tour, we were not keen on paying the redonculous sums required to get the family out there. The Rainbow Bridge NM Visitor Center is co-located with the Glen Canyon Dam Vvisitor Center.
In the Junior Ranger area, they had a mock up of a speed boat. Garrett and the other kids had a great time playing with it.
One of the other displays was an area where the kids could build with foam blocks. Randal was very interested in the foam blocks.
Evan joins some other kids at the area to see how tall of a tower they could build.
After they finished their Junior Ranger books, we drove out to Horseshoe Bend. This was a short hike from the parking area, about a mile or so. It was very hot and we took our time. It was a nice view of the river and the Bend. We were able to see some kayakers or rafters setting up camp on the beach below us.
Jarek and Evan came with me, and we swapped out with Meagan and Arya so the littles could stay in the car and the air conditioning.
A view of the trail. It was quite busy with a steady stream of people making the journey to check it out.
After Horseshoe Bend, we drove over to the Lake Powell Rec Area and found the swimming area. It was late by the time we got there, but the kids did enjoy putting their toes in the water and playing in the sand a little bit before a storm came in and we headed back for the 2 hour drive back to our campground.
Thanks for reading!
Sign up on Patreon as a free member to get notified of updates on our Journey! You can read about other stops on our adventure here on Patreon, or at our blog at https://www.wolfandraven.blog
We did one of Jarek’s Cub Scout adventures, cast iron cooking. The requirement for him was to cook a meal over a fire. We started the fire using a flint and steel. Jarek learned a lot about building a fire and having the fuel ready to go. It was a good introduction to fire basics.
We made an impromptu stove with a couple bricks.
While waiting for the wood to burn down, Garrett came over and, being super cute, asked “Can I join?”
Arya got in on the cooking as well.
Burger cooking underway.
Randal got the first part of his third tooth out! We will be very happy when it’s all the way out, as the teething process has been a bit frustrating for all involved. Randal has been sitting up and crawling about now. He’s working on pulling himself up to a standing position. He’s done that once or twice so far.
A happy Garrett at Fox Meadow park during a home school meet up play session.
Garrett went with Meagan and Arya to dance class. While waiting for Arya to finish her dance lesson, he picked up a book and said, “This is my book” and took it inside to read.
