Project Appleseed shoot; 60th birthday party; fishing; and more sheep...

Before I start sharing pictures to update you all, I wanted to let you know that we're hosting another Project Appleseed shooting event at the farm here this Saturday and Sunday.  All are welcome to come!

Now, on to the updates:

On May 14th, my dad turned 60 years old!  Looks pretty good for 60, eh?

 My mom hosted a nice birthday party for him. I baked the cake...

...and made him a giant doughnut.

Mom had a full house (about 10 guests, not counting family).

Grandma came and stayed for parts of 3 days. She stayed with Michael and I.  Grandma even helped me weed in the garden, down on her hands and knees.  I hope I'm as hard working as she is when I'm her age.  

It was good to see Josephine and Thaddaeus again (we even played volleyball).

Michael and I have been having a lot of fun fishing together.

What a beautiful lake/dam/sunset...

My parents rode with us to church one day and we stopped to get our picture taken by the prairie dinosaurs.

Guess what we did to celebrate our 7 month-wedding-anniversary??  

Yep, bought more sheep.

These are Shetlands. We're in the process of shearing them still (Michael does the shearing), but needed to order a new blade and comb for the clipper.

Life is lovelier with flowers....

We put up a little fence around this flower bed to keep the chickens and dogs out, at least until the flowers put down good, long roots.

My favorite kind of flower...

Michael and I put up our hammock, so as to enjoy being lazy together from time to time. :)

The main garden a couple weeks back.

The new garden that Michael worked up (this picture is from a few weeks back). We planted potatoes, beans, sweet corn and lots of squash and pumpkins. We'll have vegetables coming out of our ears this Summer and Fall!

My family of origin agreed to do chores for us so we could get away. Michael and I went to MN...where the trees are many and very, very green.

Kathy (Michael's mom) sent us on a kitten hunt.  We found the 2 older ones, but Dale found the newest batch.

On Memorial Day, James and Jenny arrived at the farm too and we all rode down to Kathy's parent's place together.  It was quite a big family gathering, with lots of tasty food and many people to visit with.

On the way to MN, we stopped and looked at 2 fishing boats that were for sale. Then, when at the Dalquist farm, Dale mentioned a boat that was for sale right in Randall, so he went with us to talk to the owners and then we drove a ways to look at the boat. We liked it so well that--------yes, we bought it!  The couple who owned it were very nice, sincere Christians.  We ended up visiting with them for quite a while.

Oh, see that nice stripe on Michael's pickup? He and I worked quite a while at putting that on, making sure it was mostly straight. :)

More excitement:

The M. family from Illinois are letting me borrow their wool processing equipment.  The picker (on the right) helps a lot and the drum carder (left) makes a nice bat to work with.

They also found a spinning wheel for sale at a fiber festival, selling at a very reasonable price, so they picked it up for me and I now own my own wheel!!!  Spinning is definitely an art. I hope to be able to perfect it, someday.  It is harder than it looks.

Last Thursday, we took the boat out for it's maiden voyage...

...to see how it worked and to do some fishing.

It worked!

(An 8 lb Northern)

I caught 1 fish and Michael caught 4.

I asked my husband to open a coconut for me.....

He did.

The rose bush in front of the house is blooming now.

My little rock/perennial garden.

The main garden yesterday:

We've been eating lettuce and spinach salads and Michael's been eating radishes for quite a while already.

I've been keeping busy with babysitting still, at least 2 days a week. It's been a while since I posted pictures of the not-so-Littles, so here are a few.

Johanna loves to help with cooking in the kitchen. She especially loves making fruit salad, cutting the soft fruit with a butter knife....

Tracy Jo loves baking. We made this green doughnut together and she decorated it with sprinkles.

Vonn is in to EVERYTHING these days.  Here, he was reading the farm auction paper and making many motor sounds all the while. 

Yesterday, I babysat for Amelia, James and Michael. They spent the day here at the farm and loved every minute of it.  We put the puppies on leashes and the puppies pulled the children all around the yard. :)  We picked up my Michael from the hayfield and went to the Kintyre park for a picnic lunch.

Life is very busy here, but oh so good. :)  God has blessed me so abundantly.

I am so behind.....

....but thankfully, I'm behind here because I've been so busy staying mostly caught up with life elsewhere. :)

SOOOOOO, to update you:

Ruger & Beretta are growing so fast. Beretta is an escape artist so she now has to stay tied up in their pen, until she gets fat enough to not be able to squeeze through the cattle panel fence. Of course, they get to run around the farm with Michael and I when we're out there to watch them and keep them out of trouble.

 A few weeks ago, Michael and I (mostly Michael did it and I was his assistant) sheared our llama, Oscar.

 He looks so much smaller now.

 Michael planted oats in the north alfalfa field to help fill in the places where it was thin. That ground will get broken up next year.  I got to drive all over the field with a drag pulled behind a 4-wheeler to smooth out the gopher mounds.  Speaking of gophers, the count on gophers we've trapped in the 2 hay fields is now well over 120!

 We went to Kist's Livestock Auction in Mandan about 3 weeks ago to buy calves.

 We did NOT buy this guy. 

*sigh of relief*

 We did get 3 calves. They are pictured later in this post.

 The puppy pen:

They are dragging around and chewing on everything they can find. 

 Puppies are like that, you know.

 We also bought 4 Guineas! :) They have to stay locked up for a few weeks so that they know that this is their home, but we did build a small pen in front of their door so that they can go outside. So far, they haven't been brave enough to do so.

 The bottle lambs are really getting big now too and are not glad that they're weaned. Michael and I gave them some pretty green ear-tags a couple days ago.

 Our calves:

Sunflower... (a heifer)

 Safflower.... (a heifer)

 Spelt... (a spunky bull calf)

 Of course, the calves are all bigger by now, as I took those pictures 3 weeks ago.

James & Jenny did come and see us a few weeks ago. :)  We had a very nice visit. 

They went to church with us and we visited the neighbors too for a while.

 It was pretty cold and wet when they were here, but we were able to show them around the farm anyway.

 Brothers...

 The next weekend, Anna U. came to visit us! :) We had fun gopher trapping together and just visiting and doing chores and everything. Michael and I finished shearing our sheep that morning.

Oh, and my dad bought that yellow car in the background.  We'll be celebrating his 60th birthday this weekend.

Michael trapped a badger!!

On our 6-month-wedding-anniversary, we went up and spent part of the day with the C. family and sheared Heather's sheep. It was good to see their family again.  Michael bought me supper on the way home too. :)

 Some of our chicks came.  They spent the first 10 or so days in the house, but they now reside in the stock-tank in the barn.  I give them honey, onions, brewers yeast, and apple cider vinegar in their water and also feed them kefir to keep them healthy. In July, we'll be getting more chicks and turkey poults.

Michael went on the annual fishing trip to Devils Lake with his Uncle, cousins, and James & Jenny. He was gone for most of 2 days and brought home his limit of Northerns and a Walleye. He smoked some of the fish and we froze or ate the rest.

 My dear husband and I went to an auction sale together last week.  We found lots of treasures....a garden tiller (which Michael is trying to get working well now); garden tools and other tools; mineral feeders; bricks and cement blocks for projects; and a grapple manure bucket for our skidsteer.

 The vet came last Thursday and tranquilized Oscar and then made him an "It".  He's not impressed.

We've been pretty busy in the garden and I just saw a potato plant poking up out of the ground this morning. The onions are greening up. The radishes, lettuce, peas, spinach....are coming up. We transplanted rhubarb over here from across the road. On Mother's Day, we went over and helped my mom with transplanting rhubarb, raspberries and strawberries into her new garden spot across the road, near her house.  Michael also dug up a new, fairly large garden spot down by the barn and we planted more potatoes in there 2 nights ago. We'll have sweet corn and squash down in that garden as well.  Things in the greenhouse are coming up pretty well now too, especially the weeds.

Michael has been a resident in ND for 6 months, so he was able to get a fishing license and I did also, so we've been having fun several evenings going out exploring at different fishing spots in the area.  Saturday afternoon, we went to the Long Lake Refuge and Michael snagged a huge carp by the tail, but it got away.

 We then drove over to Fresh Lake/Alkaline Lake NE of Napoleon and tried fishing there by some culverts, but didn't have any bites.  We went back to fishing on a little creek to the West of us and caught some Northerns, most of which were too small to keep.

I feel so abundantly blessed to share so many interests with my dear husband. We both love animals, and growing plants/trees, and now we're having fun fishing together....  God sure knew what He was doing when He brought the two of us together! :)