Empty house

We are sitting here in an entirely empty house! The movers got everything loaded today. We are sitting on the floor and will be sleeping on an air mattress tonight on the floor. We are getting the carpets cleaned tomorrow (a few pet stains that need to be taken care of) and then we are out of here! Our 8 days of homelessness starts tomorrow. Closing happens here on Monday. I'll post another picture of the new place Monday after closing is officially done in Delaware.

Logan said to tell you all he doesn't like being in an empty house. He is having trouble finding ways to entertain himself.

Amish animals

Here are the pictures of some of the animals we saw on our trip to the Amish.

Now these are my type of horses! The Amish have tons of these miniature horses. They sure are cute!
Logan loved this goat. He can't wait to get his Nigerian wether to train. Notice the guide book under his arm. He has always loved guide books of any type.

I was really taken with this beauty.

Wait! These aren't Llama! These are obnoxious, begging sheep.

Oh, here is the llama.

The packers are here today!

Political quizzes

I generally try to avoid getting political on my blog, but it seems that this election I've run into a lot of people who aren't happy with either of the 2 big candidates and are wishing they had another choice. So, I'm here to remind them that they do have another choice, there are many 3rd party candidates.

Don't let people tell you that voting 3rd party is wasting your vote, it just isn't true! With the electoral college system only votes from a few states really count anyway. I lived in Texas for 2 elections, Texas always votes republican, so my vote there didn't matter, which ever way I voted, the votes from Texas were going to the republican. I've now lived in Delaware for 2 elections, same story, other party. I've voted out of fear, I've voted for the lesser of 2 evils and must say it wasn't satisfying. This year I'm voting what I really believe and for once I feel like my vote will really matter.

Gore did not lose the election because of the 3rd party candidate. Gore lost the election because of how Florida voted. Someone's vote for Nader in Washington State, or Alabama, had no affect on the outcome. Don't let people scare you into not voting 3rd party if that is what you truly believe. The republican party started as a 3rd party and look at them now! If enough people agree with a 3rd party, they can be a viable alternative.

I also run into a lot of people who really aren't sure what party they agree with. They think they are democrat because their family was growing up but when you start telling them things the democrats believe in they don't agree. Same with republican. I think more people are 3rd party than they realize.

So, here are 2 political quizzes I found to be pretty good at helping you realize where you fall politically and what parties may agree with you. We have more than 2 choices and it is time for
Americans to really understand that. Of course, if you do really agree with one of the 2 main parties, that's great. By all means, vote what you believe. It is just that many of us don't.

You don't have to share your results, but I do encourage you to take the quizzes. You may realize you've been voting for the wrong guy all these years. I did....

http://www.3pc.net/matchmaker/index.html

http://politicalquiz.net/

Only 2 weeks!

We move into the new house in 2 weeks! We are taking care of all the final details here, it is our last week in this house. I'm finally really getting excited!

This week's pictures are of the pasture.

This is the start of the pasture, it is totally fenced and even has a pen set up for working the animals.

The middle of the pasture.
The end of the pasture. It has a few trees and a seasonal creek.
Looking back up at the house from the end of the pasture.

The Amish Thing

Logan and I went up to the Lancaster area last week to do the Amish tourist thing. I have a pretty healthy obsession with the Amish. I've read everything I can get my hands on about them, I know the whole history of how they got established, why the Menonites broke off, their rules etc. If it weren't for the religious part, I'd love to be Amish.

We have Menonites that live near us but the closest Amish are in the Lancaster area, we'll see them in their buggies when we are driving north but I've never talked to them or anything. So, I decided to change that before we move since their aren't any Amish in Georgia that I know of.

Even though it is totally touristy, we did a buggy ride. It was a lot of fun! Logan and I got to sit up front with the driver who was an honest to goodness Amish man. He was very nice and funny. He did talk in the Amish dialect and could be hard to understand at times.

Here's our view from the Amish buggy we rode in. The horses name was Bonnie and she was a good horse. It was very scary crossing some of the busy roads in a buggy. We were really wanting Bonnie to get a move on!

The Amish area is very beautiful. Here are some views of the farms around there.

Being a beautiful fall day, most of the Amish were out working in the fields. It was really interesting to see them using modern harvesting machines, only drawn by horses instead of a gas engine. We saw tons of people out harvesting.

I also got a bunch of animal pictures which I'll post in a few days. Another house picture coming up tomorrow!

Falling out of a tree

Logan fell out of a tree last night, the branch he was on broke. I was sitting in the living room on the computer when I heard him scream. He was 4 houses down, across the street, in a neighbors backyard. At first my husband didn't believe it was Logan, but I knew instantly. A mom knows her kid's scream. He screamed again and I went running. He was pretty shaken up and it took a few minutes to get him to tell us that he was hurt.

Turns out he is ok, just scraped up.

His neck:


His back: His side:

3 to go

We move into the new house in 3 weeks! This week's pictures are of the awesome run-in that come with the place. This is in addition to an attached 2 car garage. The run-in is by the garden. It is not currently fenced into the pasture, but we plan to make it part of the pasture so the animals can use it.




Back view of the run-in. I'm doubly excited about it because it already has a metal roof and full gutters so it is set up for the cistern we plan to get. Got to have water stores, especially in drought prone GA. Luckily, the cistern will be pretty close to the garden so we can use it for watering.

We close here 2 weeks from today and then start our week of homelessness.

Biscuits

I finally did it! I made biscuits that we like!! It has been quite a quest. I've tried many, many recipes over the last year, including the one from Better Homes and Garden, Alton Brown's, Paula Dean's, Farm Mom's, and even the one on the back of the bag of self-rising flour. I've had varying success, some were edible, some not. But none were what we were looking for. We were looking for light, flaky biscuits, like the Pillsbury Grands biscuits. What I was making were denser, like the ones you get at Cracker Barrel. Maybe that is how southern biscuits are?

Anyway, I find a recipe that said it made flaky biscuits, so I tried it this morning and it worked! Here is the recipe: http://blog.kitchenmage.com/2008/01/simple-flaky-bi.html

Now I can be a real farm mom and wife. One can't be a real farm women if they can't make good biscuits. I'm excited. I've mastered a whole wheat sandwich bread we all like and now biscuits. Look out world.

Wild horses

We went to Assateague Island Wednesday to see the wild horses. But first we walked on the beach. Logan found some great shells, many horseshoe crab skeletons, and 2 jellyfish that had washed up on the beach. It was a very exciting walk for him!


While walking through the marshy area, Logan found a cactus. He loves cacti!! He also loves field guides that let him identify things, you can see him holding one in this picture.

Horses! We finally saw horses! It was almost 2 hours into our trip before we saw our first wild horses. We were starting to give up hope. Logan loves to climb trees! Notice the field guide still in his hand. This is 3 hours after the cactus picture.

The highlight of the trip:

Look at the horse eating. We are so close to it.

Oh, he's looking at us, how cute.
Oh shit, he's coming closer!
AHHHHHH!

This horse put his head right into the car window, my car window. He's face was centimeters from my face. Have I ever mentioned that horses freak me out? No? Well, they do. I was trying to remain calm as Logan was laughing hysterically in the back. The horse proceeded to scratch the side of his face on the inside of my window. I was trying to convince the horse to leave without touching it. It was quite a scene!

I'm a real farmer now!

If you missed the satellite picture of the new place, see the last post.

4 Weeks and counting

We move into our new house in 4 weeks. This is the satellite view of the new house and surrounding area. As you can see it is a VERY rural area! The house is on a 3/4 mile dirt road, it is the second to last house on the road. We can't see any neighbors from our house. However, it is only 10 miles from Athens, which is where the university is.

For comparisons sake, here is our current house at the same view level. This is about 5 years ago, they've built more subdivisons since then!

My sister's blog

My sister just started a blog: http://spoonful-maile.blogspot.com/

So far it is a political blog, her search to find the truth behind everything we're hearing during this election period.

I will warn you that she, like myself, has libertarian leanings. We are both planning on voting 3rd party, either libertarian or constitution party. If you aren't happy with the Mcbama choice like so many I've talked to, please consider voting 3rd party. We'll never get legitimate choices if we don't start demanding them.

Farm naming scheme

Not the name of the actual farm, we haven't decided on that yet although we are creating a short list. This is our scheme for naming animals on the farm.

We've fostered many kittens over the years and have found that we really don't enjoy coming up with names so we thought having a system would make things easier for us. So, here is the agreed upon naming system for the farm:

Pets (dogs, cats) - named after mountains, both of our current cats are named after mountains so we will stick to that for pets

Poultry - named after plants

Livestock - named after things in space (planets, moons, constellations etc.)

Any animals being raised for food - not named, or named things like bacon, T-bone etc.



Another picture of the new house will be coming Monday.