Merging blogs!

Hello family and friends!

In an effort to save time spent blogging, I am merging blogs.  For some time I've kept up two blogs - one farm related and one for everything else. Since the farm is such a huge part of who we are now it makes sense to have all of the info together in one spot.  So, I've exported all of the posts on this blog to The Thayer Life (www.thethayerlife.blogspot.com).  Here you'll find everything related to the farm as well as everything else that goes on with our family.

Happy reading!

Environmentally friendly

We try to be as environmentally friendly as we can.  We like to purchase locally, watch our heat and water consumption.  About a year ago, Dan disconnected our dryer in lieu of a clothes line - year round.  I'm not always a fan of hanging clothes in the winter, in fact I often balk at it.  But it really is an easy way to do our small part to conserve the Earth.  When Samuel came along, we decided to use cloth diapers, due to cost savings and the environmental impact.  We figure that if he potty trains at 3 years old, we will have kept about 5000 diapers out of a landfill.  Guess that really is nothing to balk at after all!

Bluebirds

Our real estate agent gave us a bird bath as a housewarming gift shortly after we closed on the farm.  It didn't take long for it to get some use!  Birds love splashing around in it.  Here is a pic of two bluebirds in it at the same time.  There were up to four at one point, but I couldn't get a good picture of them.

Take a hike!

Here are pics from a walk Dan, Samuel and I took recently through our property:

Our pond behind the barn...

The side of our house from the pasture right behind the yard...

Leaves turning red during fall...

A funny looking tree and our closest neighbor.  This is about half way back of our property...

Dan and Samuel in front of a fall tree...

One of the prettiest fall trees I've ever seen!...

The "lower" pasture...

An inquisitive cow as we were walking though the pasture...

Cows on pasture...

Building a coop

One of the first building projects here on the farm was to get a new chicken coop set up. Dan decided to build a lean-to attached to the existing barn. He and Danny completed the structure, but it still had no roof and the coop still needed to be painted. While his Mom and Dad were visiting at the end of September/beginning of October, they got the roof structure mostly done and the coop painted.

Here's Dan giving his dad a ride in the hay wagon. The reason for the tractor ride was to go to the back of the property where the previous owners left a pile of metal roofing sheets. Dan, being the Yankee he is, reused these old metal sheets for the coop roof.

More cows...

Cows

Our "neighbor" has about 30+ head of cattle and about 100 acres.  Since we don't have sheep yet, he runs his cattle on our property to help keep the grass down.  Our pasture comes pretty close up to the house... here are his cattle from our back window.