August 18th

We heard back from the hosts in Belgium, and they said we could come any time. But we are actually going to arrive later than we planned rather than earlier. Harri and Mona had made mention of wanting to take a little holiday, so we said that if they wanted to go while we were here, we would be happy to keep an eye on the farm for them. So the whole family left this morning to go camping til Monday. After all their hospitality, we were glad that we could help them get away for a few days…it’s not an easy thing to do when you have so many animals depending on you.

We took a nice walk this afternoon after the kids were up from their nap to check on the ponies, and we picked wild blackberries along the way. I took care of most of the animals this evening while Carter was getting the kids ready for bed: milked the goats, put the turkeys up, checked the hen and chicks, put the rest of the chickens away, put the ducks up, fed the dog, etc…

Evan got to see a baby chick hatch two days ago! There’s a hen that just hatched 10 chicks and another one whose chicks should start hatching in the next couple of days. The chicks were especially welcome because they had just lost all but two of their last set of chicks to a fox. There was confusion one day because the door to the chicks house was closed in the evening, and no one checked to find out that the chicks weren’t inside. The next morning there were only 2 of 20 left.

We finished painting the little house that we’ve been staying in today, and tomorrow Carter is going to finish putting the floor down on the second loft in the barn. Then we’ll have most of the afternoon free to relax. Today was beautiful, so we can only hope that tomorrow will be as well.