Recently I followed the children around the farm with my camera.  It was more like I ran after them all over the place.  I can’t believe how much they do before breakfast and then during the day and evening chores.  No wonder they are in great shape:)  I acutally missed a bunch of the regular chores like feeding the pigs, milking and feeding the ewes.  The best part is that they don’t have to be told what needs to be done.   I couldn’t help but grin when I saw a very long list that was titled, Things to Do, hanging on the fridge the other day.  It was very long, written by my daughter and for most it would have been overwhelming to think of.  A couple of days later, there are already 7 projects  checked off as having been finished. 

For the first many years it was Fred and I doing all the chores and then as the years went by I found many of my old jobs had been divided out to the kids.  Now that my youngest is almost seven, I am finally able to be back out there again.  There is so much to look forward to this year.  Some of the photos that I will post are of chores and odd jobs being accomplished very recently.  The top two photos are of the girls banding tails and of Mario and Caleb working on the new fence for the apple orchard and new hops field.  Others are of farm animals, chores, fence building etc. This is just a small sample of what goes on here.  If you hold your mouse over the photo it shows what we were up to.

I also took some photos of the bees which were out a couple of days ago when it was warm.  They were all over my Maple tree in our yard.  They seemed to be finding something on the buds  that they liked.  Snow and rain with freezing temps are in our forecast again so it should be interesting how our onions will be affected.  As I write, it is starting to sleet.  Thank God for a good supply of wood for our stove and for a kitchen filled with the smell of fresh Ciabatta baking and home-made soup. 

At the end of a long work day we still had time for a family bon fire at one of our daughters farm.  Below is Dad and Mario, two of the many loves of my life.  Fred’s favorite saying around our home is “Life is good, by golly”.   I totally agree with him:)