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.

Shush...It's a Cecret

Edie's friend Vickie was visiting from Logan for the weekend. Edie made some great crepes with fresh peaches, and then we went on a hike to Cecret lake. It was amazingly beautiful with the changing leaves. We're still a little early for the full color, but the range from green to red was pretty amazing. I decided to try out the photo merge functionality in photoshop, and I think the results were pretty good. The panoramic of the lake is a combo of 7 pictures. The other is a combo of three pictures.

after taking some large pictures, I decided to take a few pictures of smaller subjects.

This one was pretty difficult to get even the poor shot below. The green bug was tiny.

Fried Green Tomatoes

No, this doesn't have anything to do with the movie.  I stopped off at the garden today, and the tomatoes have pretty much stopped producing.  A coworker of mine has talked about making fried green tomatoes (she's from Georgia), so I decided to give it a shot.  I think they turned out pretty well, though I think the concensus is they were fun, but nothing to write home about...a blog's a totally different matter..  A warning here: A little goes a long way...we were having some friends over for monday night party and had some extras.

 

After washing the tomatoes we sliced them into a little thinner than 1/4 inch slices:

I did say there were left overs, right?

We covered them in milk for about a half hour in the fridge.

While we were waiting for them to soak I told Edie a joke and we put together the flour coating.  I underestimated the amount we'd need so we ended up mixing another two batches.  In this picture there is 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 cup corn meal (I like'd it crunchy, but most recipe's call for less), about a teaspoon of salt, about 2 teaspoons of taco seasoning, and about 1/2 teaspoon ground pepper.  I say about on those, because I really didn't measure.  So here is the Joke:  "What's brown and sticky?"  Edie: "Jacob, this doesn't have anything to do with dairy bees does it?"  Me: "No, a stick.  What were you thinking of?"

give them a good coating.  I like to coat them, put them back in the milk, and coat them again:

Fry them in enough oil to just coat one side.  (This is to convince your wife that they aren't as greasy).

After they are done, we patted them down with a paper towel and enjoyed.  Watch out, because they are HOT in there.  I almost liked them more when they had sat for a while, and were pretty cool.

Catching up

Over the past month, quite a few things have happened, so this might be a long post.  First we decided to take the privacy restrictions off the blog.  Maybe when we are famous, and everyone wants to know all about us we will put them back up.

With my parents teaching English in China, we are lucky to get to live in their house!  Back in July I put an add in KSL's classified to see how hard it would be to find a renter for our house.  we got over a dozen calls that night, and had a contract for it the next week.  The renters were going to move in on the 24th, but asked if they could move in a week early, which was great for us, but meant we needed to move out a week earlier.  after moving out, we took a few pictures of the CLEAN house: 

The next week we went camping with Sloan, Amy, and Dan at Christmas Meadows.  It was beautiful!

It was also Edie's first time fly fishing.  She did a great job, though we didn't catch anything.  The scenery was well worth it!

when we were packing up the camp, Sloan came over to tell us they had found a lamb in a hole.  I had backed into one of these holes earlier that day, so knew they were deep.  Sloan was on his way to a shepherd's camp up the road, and Edie and I went to take a look.  His back legs were STUCK!  It seemed he had struggled in the mud, and then when he stopped struggling it solidified around his legs.  after a few minutes of struggling the shepherd came back with Sloan.  The first thing he did was yank on the lamb's ears, but it wasn't budging.  Edie talked to him a bit about Peru, where he is from, while I tried freeing the lamb's back legs (the shepherd's arm's were too short).  after a few more minutes we were able to free the poor lamb, who the shepherd said must have been there for two to three days, since that is the last time they had been through there.  

Much to Edie's Chagrin I tried my hand at spanish (really just speaking Portuguese with an accent), and asked Quantas sheepes tenhes?  In my defense, when he first came up to us he said Sheepes two or three times, and I figured the word for sheep wouldn't be the same in Spanish as portugues.  To the suprise of Edie and Dan, he didn't miss a beat and said mil quinentos.  I guess that is how he didn't miss the one, and didn't seem like it would have been too great a loss if he hadn't got it back.  So much for the ninety and nine...

This weekend we went shooting for Sloan's birthday.  It was only the second time I had shot trap, but I think I did pretty well.  Edie got the best shot of all though when she caught this sequence of Sloan smoking a clay pidgeon...

Here is another picture Edie took while we were shooting.
Group Shot...No Edie wasn't shooting at the clay pidgeon with the 22, though she probably could have hit it.