crunch crunch

Here are the happenings around the Hopper Farm right now.
We've planted several garden spots over the last couple weeks, here is Sophia helping out with the planting of the biggest plot.


Kole spends lots of time in this backpack, on the day I was working the most, he finally gave up and fell asleep in it, which was good cause then I could lay him down and be able to actually bend over and plant seeds.

Ari helped out a little too.
Whenever we found grubs in the garden Xander would dig them up and then take them to the Chickens for a delightful snack. Matthew Cuthbert would be proud.


Here are the Chickens Grandma and Grandpa got the kids, they have grown full size now and enjoy their little home. We got two adult Guinea fowl recently, which will soon free range in our yard to eat up all our ticks. We hope to also be getting some baby guineas to raise. One of our guineas has started laying eggs, so we've gotten to eat some guinea eggs!

We also got 25 baby chicks several weeks ago to add to our little flock. We will keep some hens for laying eggs and the rest...well, lets just say I told the kids they can only name them if they name them things like Chicken Nugget, Chicken Noodle Soup, Fried Chicken, etc. :) Our fruit trees are starting to grow too, we have several apple trees that have babies on them.

and a couple peach, we have some others that are too young to produce yet.



The littles got to help me water our green bean section, any chance to play in the hose!


The kids planted a sunflower forest, which is starting to grow, the sunflowers are several inches tall now, soon they should be over 6 feet!
We have an herb garden that is sprouting, and lots of veggies going, oh and TONS of blackberries which will be ready next month.

Lots of fun produce going on around here!

Playing in the mud

We have about 4 acres down the hill from our front yard, we call it the field. So far we don't use it for anything except walking. We keep a path mowed around it and walk the 1/3 mile around it. During the spring it floods pretty good, lots of standing water. We had a lot lot of rain last week, so when we went down to do a lap around the field Sunday, the water was knee high on the kids in some spots.
Yesterday we went to walk again and the water was not nearly as deep, but it formed a good mud puddle in one spot that the kids played in. They played for about 15 minutes before I got my camera, but here are the pictures I got from the second half.


Sophia got a little taste of mud.


Before I had my camera, Xander was doing belly flops in the mud, his whole face was covered and the girls were calling him an Indian. He wouldn't do it for me again when I had the camera, he said "oh no, you had your dives, no more".









We had to hose the kids off before they came into the house, then head them straight up to the bath. Isabella was dumping hand fulls of mud on people's heads. They had lots of fun and are looking forward to the next big rain!

baby eating and other hopper happenings

We have been playing outside as much as possible these days, which is really quite an accomplishment for my inside self. Once it warmed up enough to play outside Alexander knew that was where he was supposed to be and he literally laid on the floor saying "can we go outside now?" until we finished up enough school to go out and play. :) Now we go out first thing in the morning and play and jump on the trampoline, and work in our gardens or whatever we find to do, then we do school after lunch when it's starting to get hot.


Isabella organized this picture, lined everybody's bikes and all. I think this was the time she even told me to go in and get the camera to take the picture. Look at Sophia's cute hair!Nikolas started eating baby cereal recently, so here are the messy baby first food pictures.

The littles were already asleep when we fed him the first time, but the bigs were still up so they got to take turns helping too.





Messily triumphant.