Elizabeth and Keziah came down with Erica to visit with the aunties and horsies. Keziah enjoyed the pony ride, but liked the HUGE sandbox even better.
Elizabeth loved the pony, too.
After a bit, however, she wanted to ride the bigger horse…
…who was apparently quite relaxed with a little rider!
Yawn!
She got so confident in the saddle, that she wanted to go trotting.
“Make the horsie run, please!” 🙂
After a rather odd winter of next to no snow, March hailed several “good” snowstorms and it kept coming even into April. We may have received much less snow that usual this year, but the amount left on the ground at present is certainly more than other years.
Many spring birds are returning and some winter ones have left for the north. I was excited to have an opportunity to photograph one of the Eastern Township’s winter sojourners not long before they left for the summer. Snow buntings are quite striking.
A recent snowfall created the perfect opportunity to do sugar on snow. Everyone enjoys this, but somehow the kids seem to love it most!
In the barn changes have occurred. We sold our faithful cow, Mocha, last month, and butchered Coffee Crisp not long after. With increased space in the barn, our thoughts began to go toward another farming enterprise. The rabbits moved into a larger, better pen at the far end of the barn, and a stall was constructed to contain… sheep! We bought three ewes two weeks ago. It was quite an adjustment for them to go from a big farm with lots of sheep and very little handling to our little “mini farm” with lots of people visiting. They are getting more friendly by the day, though, and have learned that people carry grain! Yum! The kids enjoyed meeting the sheep.
Chipit is the youngest and most inquisitive of the three and has only been through one lambing before. She’s supposed to be expecting for July or August.
Maple, according to the farmer from whom we bought her, is somewhere around 4 or 5 years old. She is hopefully due to lamb in May, but she isn’t showing it yet. Though very wild at first, she is becoming much less timid and loves back rubs.
Ice Cream is supposedly about the same age as Maple. She’s the shyest of our ewes, but being far along in her pregnancy may explain that a bit. She is due to lamb anytime now. Does anyone want to take a guess at how many lambs she’ll have and what gender it/they will be?
Oh, and while we on the topic of baby animals… Smokey had another batch of kittens last month – 11 this time, but one died. The 10 remaining ones are now weaned and for sale.
I’m looking forward to having lambs as photography subjects!
Since a picture is worth a thousands words, I shall just post 17,014 words. 🙂
Well, I guessed correctly that I wouldn’t have time for an update before Christmas. But I didn’t expect to leave this much time between posts!
Our Christmas chalk talk was presented several times. Evelyn joined the chalk artists this year which turned out to be very providential as she ended up having to take over on drawing David’s part in one presentation due to sick girls in his family.
Christmas this year was very unique. Since the 25th landed on Sunday, we decided to postpone our usual celebrations until the 26th and had our regular Sunday meeting and fellowship meal Christmas Day followed by a fun time of games in the afternoon.
Our own Christmas celebration was a quiet, pleasant day with our traditional turkey diner. New dining room tables called for elegant dishes to match.
The next event was a New Year’s Eve party with the M______ family. Skating, sliding, and Christian fellowship made for a wonderful afternoon.
Several of the S_____ family also joined the New Year’s Eve celebration and came to spend a day with us afterwards. We had an enjoyable time with more skating and pingpong.
The year had hardly begun when we undertook the HUGE project of cleaning up the house from top to bottom… or rather, from bottom to top. We started with the basement meeting room: sorting all the fabric and boxing them neatly, doing repairs that materialised as we organised, throwing out junk that had accumulated, and generally straightening everything up. As soon as that was done, we tackled the workroom. We call it the workroom, but the truth was that it had turned into a “catch all,” storage place. It hasn’t been thoroughly cleaned in a VERY long time. Usually we say that during cleaning, a place looks worse before it looks better, but I’m not sure that was the case this time! The end results were a radical improvement. We can actually do some woodworking now! Evelyn and I did some reupholstering on some broken chairs that had been awaiting repairs.
Other projects came up as things broke down. The faucet in the bathtub began leaking, necessitating not only a new faucet and shower, but also a new tub surround. We are glad for the pressure sensitive valve that was installed! The heater in the same bathroom needed changing not long afterwards.
And in all the busyness, the buttermaking kept on with an output of about 20lbs a week…
… until the mixer broke down!
Thankfully, it is fixed now. But it wasn’t the only thing to break down… We woke one Saturday morning to find that the fridge was “operating” at room temperature. Though the repairman managed to get it running again, he said it won’t last much longer. A new fridge was in order.
On the “mini farm” side of things, the rabbits are multiplying in leaps and bounds (pun intended 🙂 ), the calves are growing nicely and cows are giving lots of milk… too much, so we’re selling Mocha. It looks likes she’ll have a nice home on a beef farm where a little family cow is wanted for some milk. And while I was out taking pictures of Mocha for the “For Sale” sign, I shot a few of the other cows just because I like photographing animals!
Aren’t I cute?
Oh, and of course the cat. She had to sneak into the blog post somewhere!
So, that is what has been going on in the Frazer home!  Well, no, not quite all that has been going on…  An update wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the little ones! But photos of them would make this post rather long, so I’ll give them an entry all to themselves! 🙂
A precious new little one just arrived yesterday evening!
Born: 6:45 p.m. Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Weight: 8 lbs 4 oz
Length: 20 inches
Congratuations, David and Erica, on the birth of your little daughter! May God give you wisdom as you raise another girl for Him!
The Frazer Family blog has been silent a long time. Life is so busy, it’s hard to keep up with everything!
Since recounting all our activities from September until present would take far too long, I’ll just blitz through a few highlights, hope I don’t miss anything important, and let the pictures do the rest of the telling.
As usual, Daddy took Mommy hiking for her birthday. They had beautiful weather and scenery. And they actually finished hiking all the 4,000’ers in the White Moutains!
A baptism took place this fall, too. It is wonderful to see a young man publicly professing his faith in his Lord. Since we have no pool, pond, or other body of water, an old syrup pan from a sugar shack was brought over for the event. They kids enjoyed playing with it afterwards!
With more little ones added to our family this past year, a new family photo was in order. It can be a challenge to get so many people posing together, but with some planning beforehand and a little help from GIMP afterwards, a beautiful photo resulted from our efforts.
Though late in coming, the fall colours were spectacular this year. We had several opportunities to go out to photograph.
And of course, with the fall, comes raking leaves and harvesting. Evelyn’s pumpkins did remarkably well this year, with her largest weighing 145 lbs!
The poultry are in the freezer now, but the rest of the farm animals continue on through the winter. Our rabbit doe had a litter of kits in September, eight of which survived. These have grown up and she now has another litter of which 10 have survived so far.
And there is the wildlife… and the wildlife hunter!
The Virginia FEW conference took place mid-November. It was a good time of fellowship with other Christians.
The kids are growing up quickly. Brayden is beginning to “talk” and eat cereal; Keziah can now walk (if she doesn’t think about it!), and the Elizabeth and Caleb are rapidly becoming invaluable helpers!
An early Christmas gift for the whole family arrived in a big truck. It is a vast improvement over the electric that was functioning less and less well! Certainly it is a terrific enhancement for practising Christmas music.
Oh, and speaking of Christmas, we also prepared a new chalk talk for the occasion. Actually, it was an old one that was reworked, however it changed so dramatically, that it could be considered new. We have already presented it twice and will go to another nursing home with it this coming Saturday.
And in case I don’t post again before Christmas, I’ll say, “Merry Christmas!” right away! 🙂
As usual with one-day-old calves, we took Sausage out on the lawn on Wednesday. She is much less energetic than some of our calves and stood still beautifully to pose for the camera!
She does have some energy, and like all calves, enjoys running. Her “high speed” is more of a lope than an out-and-out run, making her the easiest calf yet to get in focus even when in motion. Well… the photographer has learned a few things too… 🙂
Oh, and of course, the inspector had to come by again! What is farm life without cats around? 🙂
And one final photo:
Actually Sausage was already made, but she was just born today! At 6:00 this morning, I thought Mocha might calve that evening, but she was still looking pretty much like her normal self. So I was taken quite by surprise to find that at 10:00 she had her calf!
And of course, the inspector had to drop by to check out the situation!:)
Sausage is the first calf we’ve had that is such a light colour. And she is even lighter now that she’s dried off! We’ll try to post more pictures later.
How time flies! The little ones are growing up so quickly.
Little Brayden
Caleb is learning how to use this machine!
Keziah isn’t so little anymore!
A happy uncle
I missed getting a good one of Elizabeth this Sunday. I’ll have to try again next time!
This past weekend, a few of us drove down to West Virginia to attend a Family Encouragement Weekend Conference there. The weather was gorgeous for travelling down and the scenery was beautiful, especially as we got further south.
We’ve often commented that American freeways are much better than Canadian ones. However, when we arrived in WV, we discovered West Virginian country roads differ from Quebec ones in a very different way! These roads are very narrow (so narrow in places that if two cars meet, one needs to back up to the nearest driveway!) and twist back and forth along the mountain sides. It was very picturesque, but also nerve wracking for some (not me 🙂 ). Unfortunately, I didn’t get any photos of the WV countryside, though.
The conference was very encouraging. The theme this year was that of staying the course with joy. Many of the sessions were exactly along the lines of what the Lord has been teaching me over the past year or two. Walking in the joy of the Lord at all times stems from truly trusting God – being fully confident that all He is allowing and doing in our lives is for His glory. And when we believe that, we can go forth with joy! Or as Mr. Neely put it: “What are we going to do when the events in our lives aren’t going the way we want? We”re going to love God; we going to trust God; we’re going to obey God; we’re going to serve God; no matter what.” And in this we find the depth of joy that the world does not know or understand.
And now for a few pictures… It may be observed that the place was well decorated!
Leading the singing
The orchestra playing
Watching the musicians
During the children’s hour, there was a skit illustrating the need for keeping our eyes in the right place in order to be able to “sail on” with joy and not be “shipwrecked.”
And then the young people went outdoors for some games…
At the end of the day on Saturday, there were some specials.
Dressed for the 4th!
And a few other shots…
A couple getting married in two weeks!
Fireworks we saw Friday evening
“The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot. The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage. I will bless the Lord, who hath given me counsel: my reins also instruct me in the night seasons. I have set the Lord always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” (Psalm 16:5-11)