Everybody Loves Russell

Here are the long awaited photos of Dad and Mom's new place. As you can see, the boys did a great job building it, and Mom's done a fabulous turning it into a home.

This is a view of the kitchen, as you walk in the front door:

From the kitchen, you walk around the corner into the dining room:

Next you enter the living room:

The living room opens into Dad's little office (note the draft horse and farm paraphanelia). The black thing in the middle of the photo below is the spiral staircase that leads to the guest room/half bath in the loft:

Finally, the bedroom is at the back of the house:

Dad & Mom are settling in and are thrilled to have their own place again. I am desperately missing all of the things that my folks did for us around the house, and Annabel isn't so sure that she is happy with the new set up either - she sure relished being spoiled all of the time. While Jordan enjoyed having Dad and Mom around, he's happy to have his family to himself after living with other people for the past 15+ months. In the end, we'll all be just fine. After all, Dad & Mom are right next door. It's kind of like "Everybody Loves Raymond," except that Mom is a wonderful mother-in-law (as both Jordan and Jon will readily attest). Dad does, however, remind us of Frank sometimes...

Gains and Losses

It's been an eventful month at Stonehouse Farm. It all started several weeks ago, when we awoke to find that something (or several somethings) had gotten into one of the chicken coops and had taken almost 40 of our new laying hens and our largest goose. It could have been any number of predators, but the consensus of friends and neighbors is that it was a cougar (or two) and/or a pack of coyotes. The bizarre thing is that we, who were sleeping with our windows wide open at the time, never heard a thing. Jordan did catch a glimpse of a few coyotes while conducting subsequent late night perimeter searches, but we haven't lost any more birds with the exception of one - a mature chicken that got nabbed by an owl. The following night, Jordan spied the owl eyeing our remaining flock (which were safely stowed away), and he said it was a huge bird with at least a 3 1/2 - 4 foot wing span. Ah, life in the wild, wild west!

Given our somewhat predator-prevalent location and our desire to raise even more livestock in the future, we decided it was time to get something that could help guard our animals. Thus, Angus, our 13 week old English Shepherd puppy, joined our family earlier this week.
English Shepherds are great dogs - they aren't bred to be show dogs, just good, old-fashioned hard working farm animals. They can be taught to herd livestock, and will guard their charges diligently. At the same time, they are gentle and are often used as therapy dogs, which makes them excellent companions for small children. Angus and Annabel are quickly bonding, and both seem to be thrilled with each other's company.

In the our loss/their gain department, Jon and Jordan finished my parent's place, and Dad and Mom moved out of our place and into their new home this weekend. The boys did an amazing job, and my parents are thrilled to have their own little house on the prairie. Once they've settled in a bit, I'll post some pictures of their place. It looks really, really great.

In addition, Jordan has kept busy in the evenings training the puppy and installing our new windows (not necessarily at the same time!) We love european windows that can open out or into the house, but these are very expensive and hard to find in the States. So, we compromised and bought energy efficient windows that look french. It sure is nice to finally have matching windows, all of which can open! He even built me some very cool windows with arched trim for our bedroom (see the second photo below). I love them!


Lastly, a quick update on Annabel. She definitely falls into the gain category. At 18 months, she is almost 3 feet tall. She is also starting to talk. Her first words, besides "Momma" and "Dadda", were "Uh-oh, where is it?" As she is still in that klutzy, drop everything toddler stage, we hear this phrase quite a bit. She is slowly adding to her vocabulary, and babbles on and on all day long. Oh, the things we'll hear when she starts speaking our language! Here's a photo of her at the annual rodeo held in town a few weeks ago. She LOVED the rodeo, especially seeing all of the horses and cows. Despite a few setbacks, life in the wild, wild west suits us just fine.