Don't send a girl to do a boy's job

Because she might just show that boy up.

We left a little late Sunday morning. We were a little selfish and wanted to sleep in. Running a working homestead and trying to rebuild a farmstead is exhausting. Then throw in my husband has a full time job, I care for 3 active boys and well, once in awhile it is nice to sleep in past 530 am.

Off to the farmstead!

Zombie has stopped nursing in the middle of the day, so I took this opportunity to take Sprocket, our 2 year old hound/ German Shepard mix. Sprocket has never been on a lead, and has only rode in the car once before. This of course was not a pretty sight. She refused to get into the car. Large tried using a lead. I warned him, and she flopped around lie a fish. All of us just stood there watching in amusement.

Once she was in the car, she laid down on the floor board for about half the ride, then found Small and Medium's laps to spread out on. Small got the raw end of the deal.

Once there it was back out to work on the trees again. But I faked them out and started pulling hemlock. That's when husband noticed half buried fencing, and he too pulled hemlock, and sticks and locks, and compost. We spent a good chunk of the morning doing this. Some of the wood isn't burnable, it is, but would go up like paper, so we created a dam to keep soil erosion down a bit. As I bent down to tie my shoe, I heard a very odd noise. I looked around a bit, trying to find the area where the new born puppies were. Turns out I was standing next to one of those hue rats nests that I showed you before. Inside was rat pups. They were making the noise. Wonderful. Nothing makes you feel bad about killing rats then see and hearing the pups.

I then had the brilliant idea to ask husband about the lean-to shelter. It was decided to go ahead and tear part of it down. Between the claw hammer, sledge hammer, bow saw, pry bar n brute strength, we got the north side of the shelter roof down. Arms up and WOOHOO!

We pushed it up aginst the other side, hopeful that it would colopse under the weight, no go. Now we had to tear down the one side of the roof, separating the tin from the wood. Turns out it isn't that easy. We had to flip that roof back and forth 3 times. With nail pulling, jumping and kicking, the roof was torn down and stacked up. Then to the next side, and the same thing. Loud crash, arms up and WOOHOO! Roof down, separated and stacked.

As a reward for all our hard work and to scout for down lumber that can be used as fence posts, we walked down to the creek. I gathered some of those unbroken bottles from the junkyard, and kept feeling something burn under my right armpit. I kept wipping it, like one does when set on fire. It finally got to the point that I hollered at husband "What is it!?!" He looked and pulled out a freckle tick. It burned just like a fire ant bit. Took a while before the un-comfort subsided.

Husband and I watched the boys build a dam, skip rocks, and Small showing off his muck boots in the water, and talked about our future. It is times like these, when we are away from the normal world that we feel everything will be wonderful. I so love my husband. Even when he does things that might deserve my anger, I still feel as passionate about him as I did 14 years ago, and was filled with teen lust. Our future is bright, he even says so.

On the walk back, husband and I stumbled upon a large piece of hog panel. As the boys ran back to the house to see if dinner was ready, husband and I started to dig the buried panel up. Took time, there was at least 10 years of compost and grass covering it. But every piece of fencing we can savage is less money we have to spend. Arms up and WOOHOO!

Sprocket killed and ate a rat.

We got back to the house, my mother had supplied a feast for dinner that night. We ate and discussed the future of the farmstead. Moter asked what we were doing as she kept hearing loud crashes and then WOOHOOs.

Arms up and. . . .