Kids – Journey of the Wolf and Raven

Lazy Sunday!

June 1, 2026 by alan

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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#life #moments #chickens #homestead #pool #geese #kids

Swim meet, birthday party!

May 31, 2026 by alan

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!