By Alena Mentink

This winter has been very busy, fun, and full of new experiences. We have worked on school, made lots of plans, and enjoyed being outside.   This fall, Dad and the boys went hunting. They decided to try doing the muzzle loading season this year so that they would be able to have a longer hunting season. Although they sat in the deer stand several times, they never were able to shoot anything. On their last time sitting, they saw a couple of deer in the distance. After waiting for a while, they decided to leave since the deer still hadn’t come any nearer. As they left the deer stand and began to walk back to the car, a few more deer suddenly ran out from the woods. If they had waited for just a few more minutes, they probably would have had their deer. However, they are getting closer to catching one. During their past experiences they have never even seen a deer. So, at least they were able to see some.

Aiden sold his first chickens. He invested in five broilers early in the fall and raised them throughout the rest of the season. He had no problems finding customers (thanks to his grandparents!) and might be selling some more this year.

Dad cured and smoked our first bacon. He salted the meat for a couple of weeks before deciding that it was ready to smoke. We borrowed a smoker from our grandma and grandpa. Caleb and Aiden worked together one Saturday morning to set it up. Then, Dad cut the bacon on our meat cutter. It looked very professional. After that, he fried a couple of slices on the stove. We all tried a small piece and decided that it was a little too salty. So Dad let it soak in a bucket of water for a couple more hours. Then, he put the meat in the smoker. After letting it smoke for several hours, he put the strips into several zip-lock bags and put them into the freezer. He left one bag out and we ate that one for supper. We decided that it was still a little too salty, but otherwise, it was an overall success.

This winter, Caleb did his first year of trapping. For Christmas he asked for a couple of traps from Grandma and Grandpa Mentink. They gave him both a large and small trap along with an old trapping book that Caleb greatly enjoyed. This winter, Caleb caught three raccoons, two opossums, and two skunks.  Caleb sold the raccoons and Dad (or Mentink Fur Trading, as we like to call it) paid Caleb for catching the opossums. Caleb’s first skunk was caught in a culvert. Our uncle told him that as long as the skunk didn’t see him and get scared, it wouldn’t spray. So, Dad scrambled down the steep slope to enter the culvert from the other way. Then he tried to quietly crawl through the metal culvert without scaring the skunk. This, of course, is quite awkward under normal circumstances and since Dad was fairly nervous and expecting the skunk to spray at any moment, it was very difficult. As he approached the skunk it was facing him, so he couldn’t do it then. After trying several times, they did manage to set it free. However, the skunk refused to come out, so Dad and the boys left it alone. By the next day, the skunk was gone. How Dad managed to not be sprayed is still a mystery.

The second time Caleb caught a skunk happened the day after the first skunk experience. This time the trap was out in the open, so putting the blanket over the skunk was much easier. The skunk didn’t spray that time either, so we wonder if it might have been the same skunk. Whether it was the same one or not, we are thankful that no emergency trips to the grocery store for tomato juice were needed either time. We learned of the tomato juice tip from our uncle Casey after his skunk experience as a boy trapping.

This winter we also enjoyed being able to go sledding. On most days after school we bundled up and headed straight for the sledding hill. There were even a few Saturdays that after tearing out plaster all morning we still went sledding for a couple of hours. Being surrounded by hills gives us plenty of options, but some of them are either too steep or covered with cow paths and ruts. We kids have three distinct favorites. Our first favorite is smooth at one end, but the other end has a large bump and a couple of ditches. We have found that crashing into the frozen ditches is rather painful. We managed to snap a sled in half, break up a couple of our old sleds, and get thrown face first into the snow (particularly me). But it was all worth it!

Around Christmas time we had our first lambs. They were entirely unexpected, so the twins were born in the cold barnyard. After they came, our grandpa remembered that this summer when he bought the sheep for us, the previous owner had brought a ram in the same trailer as our sheep. So we were exited and surprised at the same time. Dad rigged up a make-shift pen for them in one corner of the barn with plenty of straw and a heat lamp. We thought that our first lambing had passed quite smoothly. However, a few days later one of the lambs became so weak that it couldn’t even lift its head. Quickly, we brought the little lamb into our camper. Dad made it a bottle while mom wrapped it in towels and snuggled with it on the couch. Both of the babies stared at it in amazement and wondered what it was. The lamb let out a small bleat and Annika and Asher both jumped. Annika ran to me crying, “I scared of lamb!”, but Asher stayed where he was to watch the lamb more closely. He eventually worked up enough courage to reach out and pet the lamb. Although we tried to get the lamb to drink from the bottle, we couldn’t get it to swallow. By that evening the lamb had died.

The second lamb had been moving around the pen and nursing well, so we figured that it was pretty healthy. However, by the next morning it was having the same problems as the first lamb. The same series of events repeated itself and by the end of the week we were left with no lambs. No one could understand how it happened, especially to the second.

This winter we have also been working on school. Mom, Kailey, and I have been learning how to translate Latin. We have become very thankful for the internet because there have been several frustrating moments involved in the process. We are also thankful that we went through the Classical Conversations program. The boys have been working hard on improving their language and writing skills. Aiden’s favorite subject is math. He loves it so much that he is a grade ahead of where he needs to be. Caleb enjoys science. This year he finished about four science books and is asking for more. Kailey enjoys writing and is looking forward to creating medieval-based stories this year. She is also good at math, but she isn’t very fond of doing it. I love writing and language. I also enjoy science, but not as much as Caleb.

In January, Dad built a stanchion for milking in. When we first moved here in the fall, he was milking in a large open stall in the barn, but Dad decided that it was time for a real milking area. This was especially important since the cows can be a little fidgety after they haven’t been milked for several months. Dad had already made a stanchion at our other place, so it didn’t take as much time for him to build one here.

We have also enjoyed discovering things that we packed away and either forgotten about or thought we had thrown away. Whenever someone finds something they have been looking for, it’s almost like Christmas all over again. Having less stuff to maintain frees up more time for other more important things. Mom and Dad decided that everyone should at least pretend to move every three years.

This spring we hatched several chicks with great success. Because none of our hens have taken it to mind to hatch their own brood, we used our egg incubator that we purchased a couple of years ago. It is amazing that they hatched because the babies seemed to delight in turning the temperature knob. We have about seven roosters, so we credit most of our success to them. However, we have decided that it would be wise to purchase some broody hens sometime in the near future.

Kailey has enjoyed taking her goats on walks and training them to do new tricks. Because we don’t have a dog yet, Kailey’s goats fill in the empty place as far as tricks are concerned. However, I don’t think that her little goats would be able to defend our poultry from coyotes.

This spring, Dad has also been clearing out a plot for the garden with Grandpa’s skid- steer. Mom has planned a smaller garden close to the house. She is planning a larger garden on the other side of our garage, complete with fruit trees, nitrogen fixers, and berry bushes. Dad built a fence around the garden to keep out the chickens. We have discovered the hard way that chickens in a garden equal destruction. We also have three bee hives inside of the garden to help with pollinating and produce our main honey supply. Mom and Dad started a hoop house with tomatoes, potatoes and a few other things that we want to be sure to have early. Mom started some sweet potatoes for the garden. We are a family that loves sweet potatoes, so Mom started a lot of plants. We also sprouted green pepper seeds. To do this, we sprinkled several seeds on top of a damp paper towel. Then we covered the seeds with another wet paper towel. This made a little packet for the seeds to grow in. We took this packet and placed it inside a plastic zip-lock bag. The bag keeps the packet from drying out. When the seeds sprout, we will carefully plant them in a seed starter. This method has worked  well for us when we have trouble getting the seeds to sprout in the seed- starter tray. We all look forward to new adventures this spring, especially warmer weather!