30 June 2026 (13 June – 30 June 2026)
It’s funny how time flies. I went with Jarek and Arya to Scout Camp at Camp Shands this year, from the 14th to the 20th of June. After we got back, it took us a little bit to recover, and of course keeping up with all the usual activities the blogging fell of. Well, no time like the present to catch up!
A gosling that hatched on 13 June.
10 June 2026
We started off this morning with a new gosling! It had got itself out of the shell overnight. With this batch of eggs, I tried a different technique, keeping the humidity lower, and it has been working out much better. The last several egg batches had very poor hatch rates (12%), so we gotta find a way to get these numbers up!
9 June 2026
Today was largely a recovery day for Jarek. He was in the throws of the cold, and skipped swimming. Evan was off to Soccer practice instead of swimming for a three hour camp. Arya came back from swimming, then headed out to a Grandma day with Grandma!
I cut open my rosemary loaf this morning, and it came out quite well. My harshest critic, Meagan, who told me she didn’t like rosemary in bread, said that she did, in fact like it! Highest complement indeed!
8 June 2026
Baby goats playing with mama!
A busy day today, Swim practice in the morning, music lessons in the afternoon, and Scouts in the evening, with plenty in between!
7 June 2026
Our Sunday morning (really Saturday night) started with with a cheep! A random turkey egg that we found stashed among our animal things hatched, and hatched much earlier than we were expecting.
The last two poults that we had managed to sneak out of their containment, so we are going to have to come up with another solution for this poult.
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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#video #goat #gosling #swimteam
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.
#video #goat #babygoat #chickens #ducks #geese #homestead #homeschool
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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!
#chickens #homeschool #geese #goats #bread #sourdough #insect #video
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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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#video #life #moments #chickens #homestead #pool #party #kids #bread #sourdough
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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#video #life #moments #geese #homestead #pool #homeschool #chickens