Saturday, November 9, 2024

Enjoying Home

Two sleeping girls in the middle of the afternoon and I had to decide whether to take a nap with them, clean the house or try catch up on blogging, blogging won 😊I am very behind on my blog and am missing most of the summer, rather then try and sort though a whole summer with of pictures I decided get past my writers block and just continue from my last post. Hopefully I can get to all those missed memories soon!
Had Grandma Wendy over for a visit, which has been very special. We both don't have much family close by so it has been neat to be part of each others lives. 
Hazel and her beloved kittens. The whole story on that later on. 
Very much enjoying our big playpen, they both come in rather sandy, but they play so nice!
Having kitten friends are extra motivation for Hazel to play outside
We had a big Thanksgiving dinner at the Voorhorts on Monday evening with the church family, and a little Thanksgiving dinner with W&A on Tuesday evening. We have finally stopped being down in the valley at opposite times and were able to get together which was really lovely!
Went outside for a fire after dinner, burn bans are finally off and Jared was itching to get though the burn pile that had to wait all summer. The sparks with tails was so fun to watch.
Hazel can now crack, mix and scramble her own scrambled eggs. A good skill for a chicken farmers daughter 😊
Hazel's kittens. 
Pirate surprised us with having another litter early this fall! She ending up having them in the neighbors wood pile, I guess our was feeling a little over crowded.... When the neighbors found them they dug them out of their wood pile and returned them to us, we weren't sure what we were going to do with them as we already had lots of cats, but Hazel was instantly attached and Pirate has continued to let us play with them so they got to stick around. We put them in box Jared's shop for the first while hoping that Pirate wouldn't hid them from us in there, which worked great until they were able to get out of the box and explore and one of them fell into a oil pan 😬Jared ending up finding it soon enough and we got to see is dawn soap takes oil off of kittens as well as it get oil off of ducks. The kitten did survive, we named it Oliee, it is the fluffy kitten in the picture. The two other grey ones are Custard and Pudding, they look very similar beside have opposite long socks. The striped on with the white paw Jared name Tiger. 

Once Oliee was mostly dried off and moving around we return it back to Pirate who promptly moved all the kittens to our wood shed. I was thinking that was going to be the last we saw of the kittens, but the next morning Oliee was out and about and to Hazels delight was happy to follow any pair of boots around. (Hopefully in my catch up I can find the video of that). Oliee is now the most loved kitten and the first one Hazel goes looking for when we are outside. 
Hazel wanted two pig tails, so I tried it with all her hair this time, which I though looked cute. When I showed Hazel the finished product she happily announced "I look like a goat, meeehhh meeehh!" πŸ˜… After that I couldn't quite un see it. 
Enjoying the variety of the fall weather, we got a lot of hail one afternoon. Hazel had fun putting it in a bowl, bringing it into the house and making hail soup with her toy dishes. 
One of Hazel's favorite things is to match Jade. So when there was two owl toques in the winter clothes bin she was thrilled!
Found a new fridge! We had been looking since we got home from our late September trip as the freezer had stopped working when we were gone.... even though it did start working again when we got home I didn't quite trust it. In my mind we just needed to pick up a fridge, so a 6:00 pick up time was fine, but getting the fridge into the house, getting the old one empty and then out and then setting up the new one while trying to put two kids to bed and put the food back into the fridge before it thawed out turned out to be quite the task! But the new fridge has been working well and the old one is making its way to the barn as another egg fridge. 
Setting up the church basement for a potluck, our first once since the renos started last fall. Lots of TLC was added in the previous weeks which made for a very cozy environment. 

Home made tortillas, yum!!!

Our weekends worth of eggs to wash. We typically wash our eggs every day, but Sunday, and then end up washing Sundays (and sometimes Saturdays) eggs on Monday. Washing and packing eggs takes us about 15-20 minutes a day and about 30- 50 minutes on a Monday depending on how behind we are and how much Hazel likes to help. It has become quite the efficient task, and very rewarding! 

Flokstra enterprises also officially has a Facebook page to keep our regular customer notified. Not sure how many are actually on it... but that's the idea. 

Feeding the kittens some warm soft food on a crisp morning. 
I hung some lights on the clothes line so we could see the food table when we hosted a Pineview families fire one evening. They looked stunning in the sunshine and blue sky. 
A frosted plant the caught my eye. 
Set up this crate for a few chickens who were getting pecked at to much, hopefully they will heal up and we can put them back with the rest. 
Climbing on the tires with Hazel. 
Breakfast Pizza for dinner as we celebrated a whole month of eggs sales at full production, 200+ dozen sold in a month.  
Hazel and Oliee
We got a little bit of snow on Saturday night and Hazel was outside right away on Sunday morning!
 

Thursday, October 10, 2024

Jade, 8 Months

 Jade is having a blast! She is army crawling, pulling herself up to her feet, standing at the coffee table, furniture cruising along the couch and Mommy is struggling to keep up! I had to adjust the crib height three times in a week and half, it is now as low as it goes... the playpen has been set up in the living room, the gates are permanently closed around the wood stove and sometimes I have time to clean up the toys and sweep and vacuum the floor.... Jade finally seems to be out of her "phase" and is napping a regular amount of time in the day and the nights are getting a bit better.


Hazel admiring Jade's outfit. "It's so beautiful!" she said when I finished dressing Jade. 
Jade is very very fond of her big sister, and Hazel would be very lonely without Jade to play with!
Can you guess who Jade is smiling at? Hazel often gets the biggest smiles from Jade. 
Month Highlights:
Jade discovering she can reach new heights.


Sunday best. One of my favorite dresses on Hazel, it was suppose to be much to big when I tried it on, but Jade is definitely bigger then Hazel was at this age. 
Exploring the outdoors, and not limited to a play pen. 
Hanging out with the big kids, this girl does not like being left out of the action!

These giggly girls just melt your heart! 😍 (Video below)

Friday, September 20, 2024

Egg Business

 Our first egg showed up much earlier then expected, on Aug 10 when we were away on holidays and had our friends watching the place for us. It was a slow start and more eggs came in waves, a month and a half later we are at 80-90 eggs a day (6-7 Dozen) and still have a little bit more room to grow till we are at full production. It's been a really fun setting up the business side of things to labels, expense and income tracking, and marketing. I was so thrilled when I came across this logo, cast iron pans and chickens are both favorites of Jared so it seemed quite fitting😊

You know your a chicken farmer's wife we you get a egg bubbler installed in your kitchen 😊

Egg washing and packing has become the norm every evening now. It is quite a relaxing task, and has given me extra motivation to have the kitchen more tidy after dinner. 
Our pallet of egg cartons that thankfully survived the trip up from the valley, the last hour or so of the trip was very wet! 
A nice full egg basket! Two days worth at that stage in the game. 
Packing up a few dozen for egg deliveries in town.
Packaged flats for our large order egg customers. 
Egg sizes have been taking their time balancing out, some are extra large while we are still getting the occasional peewee.
Cracked out to be a double-yoke and a no-yokeπŸ˜„

Excited to see where this egg business takes us, 92 dozen sold and counting! 😊😲

















Friday, September 13, 2024

Jade, 7 Months

She's moving! Jade first forward motion was the evening we came back from the Fraser Valley, since then she has moved around a bit, getting a toy here and there.  As of yesterday she started following us around the house with with her army crawl! It has definitely changed the play dynamics a bit, Jade can now reach toys that Hazel is playing with which isn't always appreciated, or I can hear Hazel calling "come and get me Jade" and giggling away as they play this all over the living room, down the hall way and into our room 😍.

Jade is able to sit for a few minutes and if she does tip over does so gracefully and can keep on playing. She enjoys playing and mashing food, lots goes in, but not much goes down and she is not really interested in spoon feeding. Jade still loves watching what's going on, especially Hazel, is super nosey and doesn't like being left alone in a room. Jade is overall happy and content despite having no regular nap times or length and still waking up at night, she makes lots of happy noises and giggles away when she is over tired. 

Maybe its just a mommy thing, but I think their faces looks so similar in this picture!!!
My two giggly wiggly girlies... very hard to get clear picture when your whole body needs to smile 😊
Just can't get enough of this grin 😊😍