Homesteading

Attic Adventures!

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30 July 2026

Morning time, Chore time!

Checking on the mama turkey who is still sitting on an egg. She’s been pretty dedicated and made a nest in the tall grass. It was rather difficult to find her, you would not know she was there unless you walked up on her!

Garrett wanted a chess lesson. I gave him a good lesson in the basics. We used his new set that Granny sent.

I sucked it up and went back up into the attic to make some progress on the bathroom project. I found the vent for the downstairs hall bathroom, venting directly to the attic. I’ll add that to the list of things to fix.

I had left an A/C duct disconnected, so I went up to fix that. I also cleared out some insulation around the existing fan and made a hole in the ceiling, so I can access the area from the bottom. I need to rewire the fan and light on to their own circuit. Also, as you can see, it also vents directly to the attic space, so that’s my next trick, to install a roof vent and properly escape the humid air.

The heat has been crazy, but its cooled off a bit and both Meagan and I were in a bit of a funk. But we’ve been getting out of that, and now back at it with the projects!


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Turkey-napping Monday!

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27 July 2026

I managed to grab the other two turkey poults that were finally out and about. Here they are, chilling in a pot until I got their new living area set up in the chicken tractor.

We have another hen who is sitting on a clutch, hiding behind our A/C compressor. We will keep an eye on her, I expect they should be hatching any time now!

Light Brown mama hen is on patrol. She isn’t very happy with us at the moment, and will rush the kids if they get too close to her.

Garrett is all packed up and ready for one of his journeys!

Arya was at volleyball tryouts, so I dragged the littles to Scouts with me. Garrett and Randal had a great time in the play kitchen area. Evan was less than thrilled, but he got to play chess, so partial win for him.

Goats gonna goat. Baby goats hanging out in their play house because they can.


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Randal and his bubble blower!

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29 July 2026

Randal got to try out his awesome new bubble blower! (Also, I needed a video to test a plugin!) So win-win!




Thanks for reading! Sign up here on the blog or 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, or on Friendica at @alan

July Catch up! and a Dear Diary post

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14 18 July 2026

My, how time flies. With all the excitement that happened with the Forth of July, posting things seems to have fallen by the wayside in the crush of life.

Notable events over the last two weeks is that the kids have continued their swimming program. This weekend, they are having the meet that finishes up their program. You can see the photos Meagan has taken here:
https://photos.argentwolf.org/index.php?/category/79

We completed our home school evaluation for the year, which checks off that administrative box for this school year. We are looking into the Unique Abilities scholarship for Arya, so we have a series of medical appointments and evaluations for her to do. We should have that wrapped up in September and the application in.

I got the taxes done, finally! I had to make a couple tools to catch up on all the data entry. If you use GnuCash, you may find them useful. One is a tool that processes online purchase data so you can import it. The other creates invoices and statements for customers. You can find them both at these links below:

https://github.com/thystra/gnucash-invoice-importer-tool

https://github.com/thystra/gnucash-invoice-batch-creator

I have found ChatGPT to be helpful in server management. I continue to tune the websites and other parts of the server. Nextcloud has been set up and is very useful for file management and collaboration. I’ve been using the video conferencing part as a replacement for Zoom, and am quite happy with it. I set up Paperless and that has been good for document management. The photo projects are still waiting for me to get to them. I’ve got a couple other projects to do, such as improving documentation for my server and web hosting.

At times we’ve been battling the feeling of being ‘whelmed’ or ‘overwhelmed’ – can you just be ‘whelmed’? The swimming and other sports activities keep us busy. I’m glad the kids have had a good time at swimming, but it does take a big part of the day away for them to do that and they are pretty wiped out at the end of it.

We are battling the piles of stuff we have, we are slowly getting rid of excess child clothes, which is a big deal for Meagan due to emotional attachment. I’m working through some other stuff that we were given to sell; I need my shop back. It has also been Florida in the Summer, and the bathroom remodel project has stalled out. I need to get back to that.

We are also trying to get a couple of our small business ventures off the ground. I have the bounce house one about ready to go. I need to make some phone calls next week on some insurance questions. Then I need to push forward on our chicken rental plan.

I’ve also been playing with member programs/plugins here on the site. I set up an event management plugin which allows me to send out E-vites for birthday parties and manage RSVPs without using a third party. I’d like to set up one where folks can join/subscribe directly on the site, instead of having to use Patreon. Currently, though, that’s not a big concern.

After Scout Camp, I took a break from bread. I got back into it recently, changing a few things up. I’m going to try a rye sourdough bread next. We’ll see how that goes.

We continue to look ahead at a future homestead property, but the biggest thing we’ve seen so far is the prices are way out of whack and beyond what we can afford. So, we continue to search and watch, learning about various areas and their peculiarities.

Along with this, is personal health.

My handy dandy weight chart. I was doing good going into December 2025, but then after the New Year, we got into goats and I started to help out by drinking milk and other things, and put on a few pounds. So now, I’m back on the wagon, so to speak, and working to shed those extra pounds. Once it cools off again, I’ll get back to hiking with Jarek and Arya.

We have fundraising to do for Scouts as well this coming year, so be on the look out for that!

So, I’ll be catching up with some pictures and other events here in a few separate posts, but for now it’s kid feeding time (again!)


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