Putting the 'Ranch' In Drunken Sailor Ranch

Well, another week in the books...  It was another good one.  We really love our life here and feel so content.  It's such a good feeling to have and we are grateful to be in this position.  

We have had a bunch of 'regular' stuff happening this week and a couple of big things.  

One big thing we did is invest in a whole-house water cleansing/filtration/purification system.  Our water leaves a lot to be desired and we do not drink it.  We were buying the big bottles for our dispenser for a long time and then we bought a reverse osmosis system for under the kitchen sink.  We use that for drinking and cooking water but that doesn't take care of the rest of our water for bathing, brushing teeth, washing hands, etc.  Our water is highly chlorinated and has a high level of mineral hardness.  Anyway, we've had a few people out to give us their presentation and today we picked one.  It's exciting for us to live even more 'clean' and natural.  This one has a laundry system (that is supposed to make it where I don't need laundry soap any longer) and whole-house air purification system as well.  We get to have it installed Monday.  

We are having some major thunderstorms which I am enjoying very much.  The deluge of rain I could do without but I am enjoying the thunder.  Our plants really love the rain and warmth creating the perfect amount of humidity for rapid growth.  

We were abruptly awoken this morning to some major thunder, probably the most we've had since moving here (and we've had a lot) and pouring rain.  I looked out the front door to check our bridge and even though it was still mostly dark, I could see we were flooded.  Plus, during the night we got three flash-flood warnings.  We didn't have plans to leave today anyway and by the time it was light enough to take pictures and video, the water had receded quite a bit.  At first it was all the way up to the burn pile.  

We had to go down to the basement really early because the dogs were terrified of the thunder.  So they all snuggled close to me and we hung out down there for a few hours.  

Eric finished filling in the trench where he broke the water pipe.  He fixed the pipe, filled in the trench, turned on the water and we had a flood.  He had to dig it up again and we discovered it was broken in a second spot.  So we fixed it again, tested it before covering it this time and buried it again.  He also ran water pipe to the shed and shop.  

We have had some lovely days and are enjoying the warmer weather quite a bit.  When it is really nice, I put a baby-gate up at the front door to keep the dogs from heading up to the road and protecting us from cars passing by.  The kids are loving their new sandbox and even made me sand drinks.  We are enjoying eating lunch outside on the regular and even had to use the patio umbrellas.  Nolan got a wicked sunburn on his shoulders and had blisters and is now peeling.  Of course we feel terrible and are using sunscreen now whenever he is outside.  Also, all of the kids were playing in the sandbox helping us move some bark and frame the sandbox in when Nolan got a little carried away with a shovel and hit Harlan in the eye with it.  Harlan is just fine but he was bleeding and we couldn't figure out where exactly the blood was coming from.  Once he calmed down, we could see it was from the corner of his eye and not inside his eye.  Anyway, he insisted on a bandaid.  Well, he is super attached to them and wouldn't let us take it off of his face.  About four days in, I noticed a lot of irritation around his eye and as it turns out, his skin was having a reaction to the adhesive in the bandage.  He also banged his nose and has a scab on it.  His poor face looks like he has been through a major battle.  

We got our dirt and gravel deliveries...  The twins think we had it delivered just for them and immediately jumped on and played.  We went to the preschool tour covered in gravel-dust.  

My flowers are incredible and every time I go to the store, I grab more bulbs.  

We have a broody hen who was laying on two eggs in an old flower pot on the front porch.  She lays her eggs there daily when she's not brooding.  We added 10 eggs and are hoping for a little clutch of chicks in about three weeks.  We lost a hen to a hawk this past week and I caught a red fox grabbing a hen a few days ago.  Luckily for this hen, I am a crazy person AND she's a huge brahma so she's heavy.  I jumped out of bed and ran outside in my pj's & slippers and watched as the fox was carrying her away.  I yelled at the fox and he dropped the hen who then ran off to hide beside the house.   I looked out toward the back yard and Eric was out there with his gun (the fox was already gone).  Then I looked at the front porch and Nico was standing there in disbelief (butt-naked, by the way).  Anyway, the hen ended up surviving and is almost back to herself again.  

This is our broody Buff Orphington hen.

Our weekly dinner menu: 

The boys ALL got new haircuts.  Eric wanted them to all have mohawks, so that's what I did for them all.  Nico hates haircuts (that was new info as of yesterday) so he wants to grow his hair out.  We told him when he is older and takes better care of his body he can do that.  For now, they're all getting it short.  

Aunt Leslie and Uncle Brian sent an Easter goodie box to the kids and they LOVED the treats and Easter gifts.  Each of them got a swimsuit and Leslie made some incredible treats.  

Our little garden is going crazy!  It is thriving and growing so quickly.  I am impressed with our little baby plants.  Many already have their second set of leaves.  

Shortly after moving here, Eric and I decided to donate to the Arbor Day Foundation.  We love trees and we love what they do for the Earth but we also did it for selfish reasons.  They were offering 12 flowering trees for our donation.  We got them a few days ago and planted them according to the directions.  So, in about 10-12 years, we should see some pretty blooms and decent sized trees.  They ended up accidentally sending us an extra Red Bud tree and told us to keep it so we planted 13 trees.  A couple of months ago, we made another donation and are expecting some butterfly bushes to plant as well.  

 The guest bathroom (Lily's bathroom) is about done.  We have like two or three little things left to do.  Eric installed the shower door and we are just waiting on the major silicone under it to dry.  He had to put like a 1/4 inch of it under the bottom track.  

Here are a few random pictures of some animals and Nico as well as Gramps' new seeder/spreader and a picture of Nolan cleaning: 

Oscar

Bear, Nico, Rosie and Missy

Ok, so here is the BIG news!  We have decided to jump into this farm life whole-heartedly.  We already try to do so much on our own and in the past we had dairy cows that we basically just had as pets and paid their food bill.  

Well, we decided to invest in our future and the health of our family by getting a couple of milk cows AND a bull to breed them with for meat.  

So, we did a bunch of research and in order to get a quality cow for an affordable price, we hopped in the truck and drove up to Virginia and picked up Maybelle.  She is just about the sweetest thing.  We wanted a dry cow but we ended up falling in love with her.  She is in milk now and is a month pregnant.  Eric hand milks her two-times-a-day right now and we are just letting the dogs and cats drink the milk for now because we were not set up for the sanitation, etc.  

Everyone, meet Maybelle Tilford:  

Maybelle is a Jersey heifer and is about two years old.  She is calm, sweet and follows me around.  She is quite lonely right now, coming from a dairy with hundreds of other cows.  

When we started this process, I wanted another Dexter heifer but Eric thought she'd be too small for our needs.  He wanted another Guernsey heifer.  We sat and talked about all of the things we wanted to do with her milk and how we wanted to proceed and we came to the conclusion that a larger breed like a Guernsey or Jersey would be best.  Well, try to find a Guernsey cow out here...  Good Lord, we couldn't find one anywhere close.  Plus, good heifers go for a LOT of money here so we started looking outside of Tennessee.  When we weren't having success finding a good Guernsey, we started looking at Jersey heifers.  We found Maybelle in Virginia and asked if we could come see her the next day.  We loaded up the horse trailer just in case (it was a three-hour drive and we didn't want to have to do it again to pick her up if we decided to buy her).  We came home with Maybelle on Friday.  

Backing up a little bit...  

Eric and I have talked about raising our own meat since moving here.  We have tons of green grass and land for one.  We wanted to buy a little steer or two to raise and process but after we talked about getting a milk cow, we thought "why don't we buy a beef breed bull and cross them?"  So, Monday night we called a local rancher that gramps had come across on one of his outings and he had three Hereford bulls left.  Eric went the next morning and came home with Ferdinand.  He is about 16-18 months old and will still grow.  He is also lonely and he is much less personable.  He is still scared.  But he's so cute and Hereford bulls are supposed to be the most docile of all the breeds.  

Everyone, meet Ferdinand Tilford: 

Now, we have made the decision to STILL get a Guernsey heifer and we found one in Iowa.  It's a little farther than we wanted to go but Eric thought he'd call on her anyway.  Well, he called and spoke with the most helpful, kind man who owns this ranch in Northern Iowa.  He said he'd send pictures and info on one of his Guernsey heifers that evening.  He did and we liked her.  Amazingly enough, he is shipping a load of cows to Louisville, Kentucky very soon and could possibly add her to the load for a small shipping fee.  So our drive would be about three hours.  We decided to go for it.  She is also recently bred and due to calf right around the time that Maybelle does.  So, very soon you'll meet the next member of the Drunken Sailor Ranch and Tilford Family.  

Here are a few pictures of our trip to Virginia.  Lily and the twins went with us and Tristan and Nico stayed with Gramps and ran errands with him.  

At the dairy, we got to see a one-hour-old cow that the mom was still cleaning.  She let us walk up to them and Nolan got to pet the baby.  We also got to see two baby cows that had been born the day before.   Harlan was hugging them and loving them and one just fell in love with Harlan and was leaning on him and soaking up all the love.  They were all so precious.  

Virginia was so pretty.  I wish I would have taken more pictures but I get car sick really easily in Eric's truck so I tried to just keep looking forward.  I also had to wrangle the twins and Missy at the dairy (she goes everywhere with us) so I couldn't manage my phone. 

I almost forgot to mention that our other big news is we decided to enroll the twins in the preschool we toured.  Harlan was in his element talking to every person, introducing us and playing with any kid or toy he saw.  Nolan was very reserved but played and I could tell liked it a lot.  We really liked the security and the class sizes.  It's like five kids per classroom.  The catch is that they have to be potty trained- so we have our work cut out for us over the next few months.  We are excited though and sad at the same time.  They start in August.  

That is pretty much all of our big news and daily life this past week...  

We hope you all are enjoying some good weather and looking forward to Easter.  We are really excited to have family coming from Iowa and have decided to throw Nico's birthday party while they are here since last years was during the height of the pandemic.  He turns 8 on April 19th and it can't come soon enough for him.  

We now have clear skies and I am headed out to do some farm chores.  Eric was just on the roof because during this storm, I discovered a leak in the ceiling of the guest room.  Luckily it is very minor and can (hopefully) be fixed with minor effort.  For now it is just a small stain on the sheetrock and after Eric climbed up into the attic and on the roof, it looks to be caused from some lifting of the roof shingles near our chimney façade.  So, we are adding another project to our list.  

Take care! 

Happy Spring and More Celebrating

 March in East Tennessee -so far- is amazingly beautiful and we love it.  Things are getting really pretty and green here.  My flower garden is in full bloom and we added another 200 bulbs.  I think we're up to about 1,600 now.  I plan to double that in the next year.  We are building the garden beds this week and working on the kids' playground.  

I don't have a lot to say this week but I do have a bunch of pictures...  

Here are some highlights of our week: 

Lily got a slime kit for her birthday two years ago.  I hate slime so she hasn't gotten to create her blobs of goo.  A few days ago, she asked if she could make it and I surprised the heck out of her and said yes.  She shared with her brothers which I thought was super generous.  The deal with making it was that it has to live in the garage but they can play with it outside.  Nolan was sleeping when they first made their slime so he made his a little later.  

We got the call from the preschool and they have two spots available for the twins so we scheduled a tour on Tuesday.  They'll start in August if we like it.  Two days-a-week for 4 hours-a-day.  

School this past week was fun and busy.  We are learning about the Sea Otter (and River Otter) in our Sea Life Unit and we started testing on Math and Grammar.  The kids actually came to me and said that they were sad they couldn't do the standardized testing so, when I suggested doing some testing they all wanted to.  Anyway, it's going well and I have about 75,746 pages of testing material.  We also did a lot of writing this week.  When the kids have writing assignments or poetry, they share it at the dinner table to keep Eric and Gramps involved.  

The bathroom is ALMOST complete and so is the new wall in Lily's room with the barn door.  We just need to case the wall in, stain the door, add hardware and it's DONE!  Lily has decided that she is done with the orange (except in her closet) because she thinks the colors won't look good together so we agreed to buy her wall decals and I'll make some on my Cricut.  Just to be clear, we did not make her change the orange, she decided that on her own.  Both Eric and I are also okay with painting the little wall another color if she wants but she's undecided.  I think we've also decided to put the prep work into it and use our sprayer to paint the room.  It's huge and I DO NOT have it in me to paint that large space 6 times.  

These are the pipes we painted for the shelf hardware.

Gramps went to the local saw-mill (where we get saw-dust for the horse stalls) and bought a unit of red & white oak and a unit of cherry wood for starting off Eric's wood shop and for Gramps to build his own gun cabinet.  Even though the wood is "green" we used it for the shelves in the bathroom.  Since it is "green", we didn't attach it to the pipes.  I wiped a little bit of gray paint around the edges to make it look a little rustic and the wood is raw so it really does the trick.  We still have to install the retractable shower door, replace the cabinet pulls with something matching, I have a sign I made to hang and we need to replace baseboard that had gotten wet from the floor being flooded (during our little princesses hour-long showers)....  I will also put a little rustic/country wall decor in the space above the toilet by the shelves and then we're done.  I love it's simplicity and how pretty it is.  

The kids worked SO hard and stacked all of the wood for it to season. 

We got our banana trees and coffee plants in the mail.  For now, they are with our little garden veggies in the bunker under the grow lights to acclimate.  

The kids' playground has been in progress since about August...  Eric is wanting to build a lot of it.  We have the lumber to move forward and are planning on making big progress over the next couple of months.  We want the whole yard ready for summer.  The twins dig in EVERYTHING so yesterday while Eric was gone, I decided to make them a sandbox.  The only reason it hasn't happened until now is because we wanted it in a specific location under the future catwalk of the play structure that isn't built yet...  So, we revised the plan and Eric and I framed in the sandbox last night and he's off buying a truckload of play sand now.  I went yesterday but all of the places were closed.  I am still not used to everything being closed on Sundays here.  

We're like 3 days into spring and we cannot keep clothes or socks and shoes on the twins (or Nico).  I am hoping this builds immunity to all things and helps raise strong, healthy kids.  

Tristan mowed the entire back yard over the past two days.  It was long in tufts and was no easy task.  He persevered and it looks great.  I love freshly mowed grass. 

The kids are loving playing outside in the sunshine once again.  They are using the hammock to play Little Einsteins and doing push-ups and stretches in the yard.  

We have a load of gravel coming to cover the trench beside the wood shop (it's a drainage trench and drain pipe will be in there)...  We also have a load of garden soil coming to build and fill all of the garden beds.  

The animals are loving the weather as well.  Callie and Harlan made a little nest in the top of the horse manure pile.  Yes, I said manure.  My kid and dog are playing in a pile of poop.  That's my life.  Lol.  

I cleaned out all of my pots and flower beds and am prepping them for their triumphant return or new plants to go in.  The boys helped me and Nico carried all of the debris down to the burn pile.  

Eric took the boys on a tractor ride to check out the lower part of our property where all of the water drains.  We are thinking of growing rice there as it is basically a swamp until late summer.  Lol.  

I built the little stainless steel shelf that we are using for our bar-b-q tools and housing the fryer and it looks great on the back porch next to the grill.  

We decorated for Easter...  

Everything is in full bloom right now.  The trees are gorgeous and all budded out with bundles of white flowers and little baby green leaves.  Our property is becoming more of the private oasis we love.  During winter we are visible from our road but only for those three months.  The rest of the year, our house and property are very private.  Luckily our road is not busy at all and just a residential street.  This is the view from our classroom window.  

Eric snuggled with Otis the other night and this is how I found him:  

Carl curls up almost anywhere and found this wooden bowl to nap in:  

Lily had her final gymnastics meet on Sunday and did very well.  It was the Tennessee State Meet.  It was probably her best meet this season.  She ended up getting the following scores:  

8.75 on Floor.  

9.250 on Vault and came in 3rd for her age group for the state of TN.  

7.1 on Bars.  

8.95 on Beam.  

34.075 All Around.  

We are very proud of her and feel like she ended her season strong.  She is taking the next (at least) 5 months off of gym and we are likely starting at home riding and horse training lessons.  

Dinner Menu: 

Nolan is addicted to vacuuming.  Unfortunately, we had to end his love affair with our vacuum because he sucked up the cord down to the wires and we figured "let's not let our 2 1/2 year old electrocute himself"...  

On Saturday, Eric and Gramps went to a farm auction to buy equipment to help us with our plan to grow and bale our own hay.  They ended up getting one of the pieces we needed.  We are waiting on one more 50lb bag of seed but we have most of our seed that we needed to plant our hay!  Now we have our first piece of equipment- the Seeder.  We will continue to watch for the rake and baler and hopefully get them before it's time to use them.  Otherwise we may hire it out this year.  Hopefully not as we like to do it all ourselves but it is an option.  

Eric just drove in with a load of sand, the kids just finished school for the day and we are expecting two, ten yard deliveries of gravel and dirt.  

Eric and I got to have a zoom happy hour with one of our favorite people and pretty much greatest human ever on Thursday night.  She invited us and we are so thankful it worked out.  BUT, let me tell you, seeing her face dang near made the dam burst!  We adore you, Jen!  

💙💜💚The best and most important thing that happened over the past week was, on the 16th, we celebrated the 6 year anniversary of the adoption of the older three kiddos!!  Eric bought them shamrock shakes and we had a special lunch and dinner together.  

We both remember their adoption process with a combo of emotions.  It was such an easy adoption in retrospect but was our first experience in that "world" so our anxiety was on level 937,457 out of 10.  These are the little people that made us parents.  I am so grateful for the life that led us to them and thankful that we get to spend the rest of ours as their parents.  The life and circumstances that led us to adoption felt so hard and ugly at times but looking back, it is like it never even happened and was always supposed to be this way.  

When the kids were matched with us, just a year prior to finalizing their adoption, Tristan was 5, Lily was 3 and Nico was 11 months old.  

As frustrating as parenting can be at times and (ok, here is where I am going to say something hard and raw and it may sound bad to some ears but bear with me) as hard as parenting a child with past trauma and some level of 'special needs' can be, I wouldn't change our life or our world for anything.  I mean it.  We also realize all of the rewards too.  We are right where we need to be with the people we need to be with.  Let me tell you, every day is an adventure with all of the kids and I think back on some of our times with the three before we added the twins to the mix and I laugh at some of our fears (Leslie; the first time we went to a restaurant) and some of the choices we made and how private and guarded we were.  Oh, and signing Tristan up for kindergarten!!!  That was such an adventure and I am still so appreciative of the school for helping me navigate that new milestone.  Tristan ran into his Kindergarten class the day after he was adopted and shouted "I was adopted yesterday!" (Kathleen, you probably remember that)...  

Anyway, unfortunately, our older computer is still being a turd and we can't access all of our older photos BUT I do have a few to share with you all of one of the best days of our lives....  

Adoption Day! 

These are from years later but I found them and thought I'd share...  

I guess I lied about not having a lot to say...  Sorry ???  Lol.  

Have a great week!!