“You’re all very lucky! With Rachel and I both temporarily out of work due to COVID-19, you’re likely to get a lot more posts than we’ve been providing these last six months or so.” Famous last (well, I suppose first, since they began our previous post) words. Here it is, 34 days since our last posting, and not a single post in the month of April.

Quarantine has not turned out to be the extraordinary free time experience we’d thought it might turn out to be. The first change is that Steve has gone back to work — he’s currently training as a senior banker, which is still considered essential so he’s green lighted to head to the office every day. And I think a lot of people, including ourselves, would have assumed that since we homeschool being quarantined is pretty much the same as always. That has not turned out to be the case.

Our kids had co-op, religious ed, and a whole host of activities that they were involved in. So while the school part is somewhat similar (save for having Daniel at home, as he had been doing half-day kindergarten), everything else not so much. They’re missing their friends and doing all the things that they enjoy much like anyone else. And I’ve discovered that being home during those hours that we’d normally be out means that there are a minimum of 12 extra hours per week of the mess making, dish dirtying, and dragging in of dirt that accompanies four busy boys.

On the plus side, despite the fact that Steve is still working we’ve still had some time for one or two additional projects. First up was starting seeds. We were a little behind the game on that one, and are keeping our fingers crossed that we have enough time for them to yield a decent harvest.

We added 12 chicks to our flock of laying hens, as well as an additional 20 meat breed chicks. All of which, of course, need housing.

Steve got up the frame of a new hen house with help from the boys. If it looks solid, well, that’s the intention. No more trying to modify existing shelters — we’re not losing any more birds to predators if we can help it. Fortunately, a decent portion of it can be made out of leftover materials from the addition, and we have plenty of shingles and siding left to make a hen house that will actually match our own house. It might even be -gasp!- Pinterest worthy! We’ll have to post the final product once it’s complete.

The goats have all delivered these past few weeks, and we’re back to milking. Every single last kid born this year was a BUCK. Bucks are, well, basically useless on the homestead, especially now that we have Colonel Mustard (or Johnny as we also call him) here to do the siring. We really could have used another doeling to add to our line up of milkers, but alas for some reason our little herd is going to remain the same size for at least a season longer.

Along with the meat birds, one of the excess bucklings will probably find their way into the freezer too… we’ve found that the ground meat is remarkably similar to lean beef and that some of the cuts make an excellent Jamaican dish that even Daniel liked (and Daniel doesn’t like anything that isn’t peanut butter and jelly). We have a local farmer who is supplying us with plenty of grass fed ground beef and have plans to get a quarter cow from them in August. Even if fears of a meat shortage come to fruition, we should be in good shape by the end of the summer.

We’re all safe and healthy, and we’re hoping that you are too.