Hi, My name is Eliza. I recently started Raise Me Strong because of my passion for my children and my desire to raise them to be strong, healthy and responsible. Today's world is a hard place to grow up and our little ones need all the guidance we can give them to become hardworking, responsible, trustworthy adults.
Here is my Family: I have two wonder sons Kaleb age 11 and Dante age 8. My dear husband has 3 lovely children, Caleb age 12, Lilly age 9 and Owen age 7. Dante was diagnosed with Autism when he was 4.
Recently we bought 7 acres of raw land. We have spent the last 2 months putting in a well and septic and having the pad for our garage poured. Finally last Saturday we moved our 5th wheel onto the land and decided to camp there while we built our home and cleared the land.
We had Lilly and Owen with us and Kaleb and Dante were dropped off Saturday afternoon to spend a day with us. Michael (my husband) and I worked painstakingly the whole day to get the trampoline up, 5 pesky trees near the driveway cut down and a fire pit built. That evening we roasted hotdogs and starburts over the fire. It was wonderful. We had a very long conversation with the four kids about how things were in the old days. (It started because Kaleb was complaining that we didn't have power yet and therefore he couldn't play X-box.) We explained that we had things pretty good because we were able to start the fire with a lighter instead of needing flint and steel. We also had beds to sleep in instead of a sleeping bag on the ground and a cooler to store our hotdogs instead of having to hunt down and kill an animal, gut and skin it and cook it in the fire. It was a good learning experience and they loved our first day of "camping".
Sunday Kaleb and Dante went back with their dad for a couple more weeks before school starts. We roasted over the campfire again that night. Mike and I made our selves tuna sandwiches because hotdogs two days in a row wasn't sounding that appealing. Mike also fixed the toilet in the 5th wheel. Yeah!! No more squatting in the woods.
Monday we packed Lilly, Owen, Buddy (our beagle), and some food and started a very long trip to NY to pick up Caleb from his mother's house. I had planed on reading to the kids on the way but got car sick after the first 30 minutes so we had to come up with other forms of entertainment. We finally hit NY around 3pm where we picked up Caleb, his dog Tracker (who his mother had gotten for him during the month he was down there and didn't want to keep him at her house) and 6 chickens and a rooster that Caleb had asked to bring home as well. (Using the argument that it would lower our food bill each month because we could eat the eggs). Then we started the 6 hour drive back. The whole trip went surprisingly well.
Tuesday my dear husband left early in the A.M. with the 3 kids and Buddy to go run errands. I stayed home with Tracker, the 6 chickens and the rooster so I could build a temporary chicken coup and haul the brush from the 5 trees Michael had cut on Saturday. Things I thought were going great. I got the coup built and put the chickens in it......when the last of the chickens were in I looked up and saw that they had found a gap under one side and one of the chickens and the rooster had already gotten out. I closed the gate and quickly grabbed the chicken and dropped it over the top then chased the rooster around for a bit till I got him back in too. I finished securing the gate and was going to go get them food and water but one of the chickens flew up over the wire. (Not just once, but several times) I finally discovered that if I stood in the far corner, providing them with some shade, that they stopped trying to escape and would huddle in my shadow. I stood like that for an hour till my husband got home. By then I was sunburned, hot, very thirsty and really, really hating owning chickens. My sweet husband gently resolved all the coup issues and managed to do so with out making be feel like an idiot. What do I know about owning chickens anyway........that's right, NOTHING!
Wednesday I went to the library and checked out a book about raising chickens, then sat in my car and read all 384 pages. I now know more then I ever wanted to know about owning, raising, breeding, killing and eating chickens. For supper we grilled burgers, hotdogs and a can of corn, then we started the campfire and roasted marshmallows and skittles.
I suppose that brings us current to today. :) I'm sure there will be many more stories as we build our little farm.
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