Fish Tank

Last year we were watching HGTV one day, and someone on the show had a fish tank in their wall. That got Jacob thinking, and before you knew it, he had found a cheap 125 gallon (6 feet long) fish tank on KSL, cut a hole in our wall, dug up a special sand out by the Great Salt Lake, and located a bunch of Lake Tanganyika fish. The front of the tank faces our living room. The back side of the tank butts out into our storage room, so Jacob was able to rig up an elaborate filtering system behind the scenes. It's been a lot of fun watching the fish, and some have even had babies. But last week the tank got a leak. Nothing catastrophic, but we decided the tank has run its course. We're hoping to put a cabinet in it's place, maybe a future place for toys. Anyhow, here are a few pictures to remember the fishies :)

Here's the tank in the wall. It was cloudy that day because Jacob had just put the sand in it. Since then he also framed it in.

Jacob put the lights on a timer. It looked pretty cool at night unless you were trying to sleep--which happened to a few of my family members who visited.

Here's one little couple. They're called cyprichromis utinta. This was when they first came to the tank, and over time their colors got much brighter. The male (in front) tail turned bright yellow and his body was a deeper blue. The female would store herfertilized eggs in their mouth. As the babies got bigger, her jaw would extend. The babies would even hatch in her mouth and she'd continue to hold onto them until she could find a safe place to spew them out.

Unfortunately, this handsome fish, a neolamprologus brichardi, would eat their babies as soon as they became available. But that was one blessing about the end of the tank. We were able to separate these fish from the others and see the mommas release their babies. The smaller striped fish is a juliachromis marleri. He could swim upside down.

And here's one of our "shellies." They like to live in the shells.

Ok, these aren't really from the tank. We took this picture when we went snorkeling in Cabo San Lucas last year. Isn't it cool!

Baby Girl!

It's been over a year, so there may be a few belated posts. First, and most important, is our baby girl. She arrived a little over two months ago, and we are so in love with her! It helps that she's a really good sleeper. The past couple of days she's gotten pretty good at holding her head up when she's on her tummy. Here's a few more photos.

The top photo and this photo were when she was about a week old.

This is proof that she isn't always a perfect angel. It's also proof that sometimes I actually let her cry. But we still think she's cute when she's mad. Check out those dimples! (They also appear when she smiles :)

But this is more like how she usually looks--bright-eyed and content.

Summer Developments

An update on the critters is well overdue. We're now one sheep down (that was on purpose), one rabbit down (that wasn't on purpose), the chickens are getting huge and will hopefully be laying in a month, and the bees are so busy--we've already harvested a couple of quarts!

The sheep are getting a little bigger. They're still as scared as ever of us. At one point this summer we were trying to doctor one of them, and she drug me through the dirt, etc. After that her days were definitely numbered. We're still not positive if the 2 ewes we have left are pregnant. Someone told us we should be able to tell by August. If any of you can tell from these pictures, you can let us know.

Since our last post, Jacob convinced me to get 3 silver fox rabbits. I was reluctant, but they really are beautiful rabbits. After a couple of weeks, we discovered that one of them was a male. Unfortunately, Mr. Rabbit died about a month ago in a sad accident. Let's just say that an animal covered in thick black fur doesn't do well in full sun.

Also since our last blog, we got chickens! We have 9 total, and they very fun and happy. Jacob worked really hard at getting a coop and a run set up for them. Hopefully this week we'll put in nesting boxes. I think it'd be fun to paint the coop red with white doors and trim, but I don't know if it'll actually get done. Here are the chickens when we first got them and were keeping them in the barn.

Here's the first stages of the chicken coop.

And here are the chickens as of yesterday, enjoying a treat Jacob brought them.

And lastly, on the animal front, are the bees. They are amazing! We've only harvested one and a half bars and have gotten at least 2 quarts of honey. Here's a few images of the inside of the hive.

In this picture you can see capped honey at the top, then the dark circles in the middle show almost capped honey, and the ones at the bottom are just starting to be filled. It's amazing what they can do...and amazing that Jacob's only been stung 3 times so far :)

The garden is growing, though not quite like we had hoped. We scored some more cinderblocks and so we're going to try some "pioneer crops." I mean, the pioneers didn't arrive until July 24th, and they put in lots of crops. We're going to try a few more green bean plants just for fun in the bare portions of our old grow beds. And we're going to plant buckwheat in the new box.

And here are a few fun pictures of the Fourth of July in Cody. What you can't see in this first one is the swarms of mosquitoes that were about to eat us alive. But it was beautiful!

Commemorating our first (blind) date by going back to the rodeo.

Running the Stampede 5K with family. Dan really did finish abou 7 minutes before me and Juleen, but then he came back to help us run in the last leg. Thanks Dan!

Jacob went up Heart Mountain for the first time.

And Jacob's parents came home from China. They brought cool birthday candles that have a huge flame, open up into a flower, and sing happy birthday, and sing, and sing... We finally had to "deconstruct" this candle after it was still singing 30 hours later.

Cuantas sheepies tienes?

Ocho! That's right, Jacob and I just got ourselves a flock of 8 sheep! Jacob is so like the story of that camel who slowly worms his way into the tent. I was open to the idea of two lambs that would be "processed" in the fall. But Friday Jacob came home with a great idea--we could visit Grandma Goodrich for Mothers Day and then bring back 8 sheep! I was reluctant, but now I'm very excited! 

They are Katahdin Hair Sheep, so instead of giving wool, they shed in the summer. You'll see that the three ewes are still in the process of shedding, so they look a little straggly. And because they're hair sheep, they're not white, and it doesn't really matter. They're maybe not as cute as woolly lambs, but they grow on you. 

Anyhow, we ended up with three ewes and five babies. The ewes could possibly be pregnant. If so, we could have up to 6 more babies in September or October. 

One issue was how to transport 8 sheep from Duchesne to Riverton. We were able to use Jacob's dad's truck. His brother-in-law had built some sides for the truck, and then we tied in a few bales of hay in the back. Finally we tied the sheep in so that they couldn't jump out. Jacob did some excellent wrangling, and no one was seriously injured. 

This last picture was my view of them from the cab of the pickup. 

After only 2 and a half hours, we arrived in Riverton and unloaded the lambs. They quickly got to work on our weeds, just as we had hoped. 

We're thinking that our pasture probably can't support 8 sheep, even little ones, so we're not sure yet if we'll try to keep all 8 or sell some off or pasture them elsewhere. So stay tuned for more sheep news! 

New House!

Jacob and I have been very excited about our new house. On Thursday we finally got the keys. It's a little overwhelming, but very fun. 

One thing we really like about the house is that it's on a half acre, so we'd be able to keep chickens and sheep and potentially other animals. It seems like whenever we tell people in Wyoming they say something like, "Really? A half acre is enough space for animals?" Ok, so it's no Wyoming, but it is set up with a little pasture that we're hoping to put two sheep on. And we even have a barn. We're not sure what we'll put in there besides our wheelbarrow, but it's got potential. 

Another thing we were really excited about was putting in a huge garden. The former owners kept horses along the back of the property. So it's basically a dirt pad that's been stomped down pretty well. No fear, we figured we'd rent the biggest tiller we could find and make it work. Unfortunately, we discovered that under the inch or so of top soil is about 6 to 8 inches of gravel. Great for a horse pad, not great for a garden. 

We were disappointed. But we went home, and before long Jacob had located free dirt, cheap manure, and cheap cinderblocks (and lots of backwork :) on the internet. The manure was a lot more wood chip than we had planned, so we added a little ammonium sulfate. So far we have made one and a half raised garden boxes, and as soon as our backs mend, we may go get more cinderblocks and finish off the second bed. 

We figure that over the years we can add more raised beds as we get more materials. It will be another fun experiment, so stay tuned for more photos . 

And in case you were at all curious about the inside of the house, here are a few more photos. So far we only have a table, chairs, bed, dresser, couch, a couple of bookshelves, and piano. So it may look a little sparce for a while, but it will be fun to slowly furnish the place. And of course, if you're in town, we would love to have you come visit our new place! 

Bees!

I promised Jacob I would write a blog some day. I can't promise that I'll be as witty, but I'll at least explain the pictures. 

Jacob has been fascinated with bees since he was a little boy, and I've loved to eat honey since I was a little girl, so we were both excited with the idea of getting bees. Jacob researched it out and built a beehive, called a top bar beehive. Basically, the box is hollow inside, and you lay bars across the top. The bars have a thin strip of beeswax inlaid facing down. So when the bees are deposited, they know to start building from that beeswax. They build a file of comb that tapers down. They'll do that with each bar. So far they're building on about 5 of the bars. The biggest comb is about 10 inches wide and 10 inches long. It's really fascinating to see. 

In the picture below you'll see a little tiny box with one bee inside. That's the queen. She successfully ate her way out and is now reigning quite well in the hive. 

It's a fun experiment. Jacob looks great in the bee suit. And so far no stings--except for one that Jacob got on his pinky finger at his friend's house. In the picture below is the first bee we spotted returning to the hive with pollen. 

Nine Mile Canyon

After reading our friends and family's blogs I have decided I should probably put a little more wit into what I write, but I am afraid this is just another quick note and pictures.  Maybe I can con Edie into writing one of these.

Edie and I decided to go camping this weekend.  It was kind of a spur of the moment decision, so it was very much car camping.  I hadn't been through nine mile canyon since I was in grade school, so that's where we headed.  After spending most of our day in the canyon we stopped by Altamont on the way home to visit Grandma Goodrich.

Here are some of the pictures we took:

This is one of the MANY petroglyphs in the canyon.  I just like the image of Daffy Duck Shooting an arrow.