A Family Visit: Ryan & Abigail

Myles loves peanut butter treats.

I wrote this post back in March, also, but couldn't find the time to edit images and post it until now. Time seems to be feast or famine, as many things are on the homestead. 

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Sean's brother, Ryan and niece, Abigail spent the last two weeks with us. Visiting from North Carolina, they needed to quarantine so there wasn't a whole lot they could do outside of the homestead. Thankfully, we had LOTS to keep them busy right here.

Interior boards repurposed from
pallets. Exterior boards and plastic
wrap will make the shelter draft-free.

Ryan was a god-send, helping Sean with finishing up the buck barn in the back woods. They installed the roof and finished the walls. All that is left to complete is the floor on one side before the boys can use it properly. In the meantime, the older wethers and young breeding bucks are fascinated with their new space, giving it lots of attention. Additionally, Ryan was invaluable helping with animal chores morning and evening, pitched in with tracking CD&T immunizations, assisting with picking up and stacking hay stores, and even put his hand to mucking out the barn along side Sean. When we began milking this week, Ryan strained the milk and recorded milk yields for us.

Cutting Feta curds

Miss Abigail tried her hand a making bread from scratch, helped make lotions for a Tiller & Rye restock, learned how to make soaps, and made our first batch of cheese for the season. She took on the responsibility of bottle feeding Jake's morning and evening supplementary bottles and helped with tracking copper bolus treatments for our herd. Abigail is staying on here at the homestead for a while longer and we are thrilled to have her with us. While her Dad's flight was in the air, she watched Honey give birth to a BIG, singleton doe who needed a helping hand to be born. 

Abigail and Jake

It hasn't been all work. We've played board games, watched movies together, stargazed and had a bonfire in the doe pasture. Once their quarantine time was past, Abigail and our daughter had an adventure hiking and browsing for treasures at the Big Chicken Barn. Since we share the same faith, we also enjoyed family worship times and meetings for worship via zoom. Snakes, crested geckos, ferrets, and goat kids joined us for snuggle-times.

I can see why having a large family was a blessing when more folks farmed for a living. The many hands made light work of necessary chores and gave us time to spend with one another each day. 

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Boy! Time has a way of flying! I meant to post this almost 3 weeks ago! Since then, Abigail has returned home to her parents and made plans to return for a visit soon. We are looking forward to that for sure. Maybe, we can even convince her hard-working Dad and Mom to come along for an extended stay this summer! Oh the projects we could tackle. I mean, how I look forward to relaxing time to chat and catch up. ;) 

Thanks for visiting with us today, Friends. We enjoy your company. 
Sean & Sonja