Stone Hill Homestead

The Four Legged Critters

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Lisl

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The Four Legged Critters

This is a picture my brother took when he was here a while ago. Tigger and Mercury cohabitate happily. This box was their summer residence, which has since been replaced by the dog house.

Mercury came to us mid winter, free of charge. His owner just wanted a good home for him. We love him. Tigger came from Emilee, Dru’s sister. He’s among the tamest and nicest of cats. As far as I know he’s a good mouser. But the mice are too much for him and my one mouse hunting chicken.

I told Dru I have a phobia of mice and I’m trying to deal with it as responsibly as possible under the circumstances. Granted, I still have the steel wool and foam spray trick to try. Maybe I’m taking drastic measures, but so be it.

These two are the newbies. Dru named the male in the top corner, Nimrod. The pretty girl is Tabitha Twitchet. They’re a bit wildish, especially in comparison to Tigger, who was raised indoors as a kitten, but they both purred like machines this morning when I went out to the garage where they’ve taken up residence for the time being.

This morning as I was on the couch I heard a trundling about above, where animals ought not be. I quietly congratulated myself for getting two more cats, but then realized that that was an awfully big mouse up there. I ran out to see if there was something on the roof. Our roof has a lean-to above the basement stair case that brings the roof nearly to the ground. I’ve been told that the dog has been seen up there with the cat. I went around the house to see if he was coming down, but I met him at the corner, running pell-mell. He was overcome with guilt when I confronted him about if he’d been on the roof. He refused to look at me and was dreadfully ashamed. I couldn’t get him to go back up either. A bit later Tigger came running around the house.

And now I’m wondering how many of the “mice” I’ve heard overhead we’re merely the cat and dog frolicking on the roof?

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Hello,

I’m Lisl

Herein lie the events, ponderings, people, and animals that make up the cacophony of our life.

Pictures of farm and family

Just happy things. First pic is Rennie helping his dad with opening an old floppy desk using Rennie's raspberry pi computer. The next one was last night while Dru took the rest of the kids skating Rian and I watched Ruthanne Zimmerman make egg noodles while we ate soup in mugs. It's been a very full and happy Christmas season. I didn't take pictures consistently. I miss doing that and want to try harder. I don't have any pictures of my own family's gatherings. But here is a smattering of photos from our busy holiday. My favorite is of Ray sneaking ham to the cat in the kitchen at my Mother in law's house. No, actually it's my boys playing together. The giraffe at the mall, wondering why he is sharing this little bench with a grown man, also cracks me up. I feel like I've learned how to burn coal in my cookstove. There was the day I was rather discouraged about it and put the project on hold for a weekend--it was a warm weekend anyway. It's a different animal than burning wood and I'm still figuring it out. How big I had planned for Freyja's "patio" versus how big it became when too much concrete was ordered. Nobody heard me complaining about it. Somewhere Dru has more pictures of the concrete operation but I was busy running circles that morning. Super thankful for Havilah and Jube helping me hold down the fort while we babysat and did projects all weekend. The men in my life are distracted by a new game. So much so that when we took the male pigs to the vet for castration (I won't do it myself when Dr. Metcalf will do it for 25 dollars and some odd cents) Rian brought the instructions along to read. And Jube had to be planted next to the cookstove to study because sitting in Dru's chair was way too close to his brothers playing the new game and was very distracted. And then Dru came home with intentions to turn in school evidences to Hacil but they had the game set up and here we are. Gleanings from the flower beds. Picked yesterday. Tonight I think we will have a killing frost. Big week on the farm. Two new pig families. And that's me after pulling an all nighter with one of the new mammas. And that's my hill billy barn there. Someday I will do better than cardboard. But for now I embrace hill billy. And I still have flowers ... Not complaining. Tonight it freezes. I picked flowers til I couldn't see anymore. The cats were not helpful. Clingy with a side of zoomies. Daliahs are happy and frost comes soon.