Anyway, the nature of this thing seems to be, as I think I mentioned before, that when there's enough time to keep this up to date, it's yawningly boring. When I actually have news, I don't have time to update this site.
Here's the biggest reason for my being "too busy."
Meet Fieldstone Sam, born the first week of March this year (2009). He's a son of Christine Henry's Tweed and Bess. Sam has already seen sheep and has made it clear that he's going to like working a lot!We had Creek Ridge Corp clear two fields and a path through the woods to a third field, effectively making about nine acres available for future pasture. They have the coolest toys. They used a "forestry mulcher" which looks like a giant lawnmower set on a bobcat. It can take anything down to the ground and even below ground level, if you want that (and want to pay for the time it would take). We could only afford a couple of days, so we "only" had them "mulch" the four or five acres. :)
This is what it looks like when they are done, doing about one acre per hour of super-heavy five to ten year old trees and brush (notice the ground underneath and behind Ted):
They also fenced everything down near the house for us. Right now there's almost no grass because we are now in the dryest part of the summer, but the sheep are keeping it brush free until we can overseed this fall.
The kids are out of school for a few weeks. They did great on their year end CATs. They'll both be doing third to fourth grade work this summer, then I hope they'll both be in fourth grade by fall. PJ is a smidge behind in math, while Joey is a little ahead, but a bit behind in grammar and spelling. Summer work will be light and fun though - being able to cater to the kids' moods is part of the fun of home schooling! They've got so much around here that they "have" to do that learning is often a welcome break. :)
I'll be spending more time the rest of the summer really buckling down on learning to handle Ted in trials, my goal being to run him in Open in late fall. And I'm sure there will be more adventures with "Sam I Am" as he's known around here, AKA The Smidge.
