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It's a beautiful sunny morning here in northwest Georgia. In just a little bit I will be going outside for the day, but before I go, I want to make a real entry here this morning.
I hope everyone is having a great weekend so far. We are going to have some really fantastic weather all weekend here. Warm sunny days in the 80s. Perfect weather in my book.
So lets just jump right into it.
Derby had a sort of grooming session yesterday...CUT short..he he...pun intended.
Shelby started out with the detangler/shiny stuff spray on his mane. I was just going to cut up at the top, where for whatever reason a horses hair decides to flop over the other side of the neck. As Shelby started working away at what can only be described as two dreadlocks...I said...you know what...
Lets just cut it ALL off. If I was a horse, and it was getting to be hot weather I wouldnt want all that hot hair hanging down on my neck making me sweaty and uncomfortable. Not that I have any idea what its like to be a horse, but you know, thats just what I think it would be like.
So away I went, chop chop chop...he didnt seem to mind one bit. I think he actually felt pretty good getting rid of all that hair. I didn't trim the front though. He needs that hair up front. I have been told that helps keep flies out of a horses face. I don't know for sure if that is true, but I have trimmed the front before, and it looked quite goofy, so I left it alone this time.
Shelby brushed him down, brushed his tail,shined him up, sprayed him with fly repellent (for horses, not just any old spray). I picked out his hooves. Its been so wet here all the time its a constant pick fest around here to keep his feet cleaned out.
Then came the part Derby doesnt like. The wormer paste. Yep, it was time, had him tied, might as well get it out of the way. Why can't they make that stuff taste good so they won't hate it so much. I want to know. Someone should think about that. Tips (the dog) worm pills taste good, she chews it up and gulp its gone. Shelby rewarded him with a carrot to get the nasty pasty taste out of his mouth.
He was quite done with us...
and made his way to the gate. After all that, he had to GO anyway...yes, this is how a male horse pees...lol...
In other news...Einstein is recovering. Amazingly enough, he is now able to use the leg that was injured, possibly broken, to balance. Before he was using his wings to stay up on his good leg when standing. This is good. He is young and is still growing so I think in the following weeks he will recover enough to live a mostly normal existance out in the flock. I know his brother and sisters will be glad to see him when he gets back out there.
For now though...he will keep resting in the carrier and practice short walks around the kitchen floor, where his poops can be cleaned up easily. I go right behind him and get it up right away. I am afraid he will accidently fall into it, or step in it as he is still working on balancing. He will never use that leg fully again, but if he can just use it to get by that will be good enough for us. He is really so very sweet and loving, so I am very glad he is doing better each day.
The emus on the otherhand...
don't seem to like being confined. BUT with that said, do you see that worn down trail against the fence. This is not the first time they have done this. ALL the pasture out back and my obsessive emus paced the main gate area on the other side of the garage, where I would come to feed them once a day. So you see, they are not being deprived of living space. They did that way before I had them penned.
It is for the best. It has to be this way. They succeeded in killing one of my layer hens, repeatedly tried to stomp any of my white chickens, or polish. They have something against white poofy chickens, or poofy headed chickens...I don't know what. The layer hen was neither, but I know they did it. Her head was shoved into a corner when I found her. That is what chickens do when under attack, they will protect their head first.
After the incident with Einstein I couldn't allow it to go on anymore. Things had to be done. You can't explain to an emu (see how big their bodies are? See how TINY their heads are, that tiny head has a tiny brain in it, very limited space in there) that this chicken or that chicken is not the enemy. They were starting to attack the goats too. I am disappointed. There were days when I could look out and see all my animals grazing happily, but it never lasted. The horse would chase the pigs, the pigs would run at the goats, the emus hated the goats, the horse hated the goats, well...everyone hates the goats...poor goats. They don't mean to be annoying...they are...just being goats.
Its time for me to go, I have plenty to do today. The animals need to be fed and watered up full as I will be going out of town to visit Grandmama. Mama, Daddy, Erin, and Shelby will be going also.
That means washing, waxing and vacuuming out, wiping down the inside of the truck. You know how it is. You don't want to go out of town in a dirty truck. You don't want your passengers to think your truck is always this dirty...ah...even if it is. ;) I will take before and after pics, just for fun...it does need a good cleaning inside and out.
Happy Weekend! See y'all....
Just dropping in on my own journal. I know its been a stretch without any entries. I have just been busy doing things, being productive, enjoying the warmer weather. It has been wet and overcast a lot, but at least its not cold anymore.
We had a full weekend this past weekend. My older sister Patti came for a visit, along with my niece and her boyfriend. We had a very nice visit. Sunday we all went down to visit Mama and Daddy for the day, and Monday they hit the road to home.
I have some special news to report. :) Dad from over on Dads Tomato Garden and his daughter Mary are going to be coming for the day for a visit in about a week and a half or so! Hollie and her family are going to come and meet them also. It ought to be a real nice time. I am honored that Dad would make the trip to come and visit us. I can't wait for the visit!
I am going to keep this entry short. I know it has been a little bit since I have been able to get around and see what is going on with everyone. I am going to start with you Paula, I know I am really behind reading you, and I miss reading you so much.
I hope everyone has a good Tuesday, and I am off to read for a little while. :)
I had all the pictures labelled in between, but not this time, just gonna put it all at the bottom here in order...
Me, Shelby, Ian
Shelby, Ian
Shelby, Gaddy (my Daddy)
Shelby, Mawmaw (my Mama)
Shelby and Erin, my youngest sister
Erin and DJ, her boyfriend...we like this one, he seems like a keeper. ;)
I went outside, came back and my pictures are gone? Wha happen????
I am always the one taking pictures...so there usually ends up being no pictures of me...not that I care. I am more into taking pictures than being in them. ;)
I didnt forget, I wanted to post pictures of my family dressed up. It doesnt happen often, so I wanted to capture it on camera before the opportunity slipped by. So here we go...
Enjoyed all the comments on yesterdays post. :) I always enjoy comments. Todays post is just a rambling of what my day was like yesterday. I hope its not too boring. Some days I feel boring, other days I feel a bit more interesting. ;)
Yesterday started out great. I was up very early and went outside at around 7:30 in the morning. The sun was shining and there was promise in the air of a great day ahead. I started out the morning getting everyone fed to the gills so they would be a very satisfied bunch. All water pails, buckets, and waterers were scrubbed clean and filled with fresh cool water with a touch of apple cider vinegar for good digestion and it also keeps the algae from growing in the containers.
Afterwards I started taking the tarps off of the Sultan pen and the Silver Laced Polish pen. To my pleasant surprise Coco, Laverne, and Shirley had been working overtime and I had five nice hatching eggs to pluck from their pen to be put in the incubator. I hope they are all fertile and all make it to hatch. After I pulled all the tarp off I replaced the sunny sides with the shade material I had bought way back when at Lowes. Walmart has rolls of this same shade material. Normally it is 25 dollars a roll. Its just that material they use on sun shades, where it lets the breeze through but not the sun. I got rolls of it on clearance at Lowes for five dollars a roll. I wish I had bought more. Anyway, I got the pens covered on the sections that would have sun during the hottest part of the day. The sultans have had no sun up until today, so the girls were really soaking it up yesterday, splaying out their legs and wings, laying on their sides, really enjoying the warm sun.
After finishing those two pens I chunked the tarps over the NOW emus fence, yes, they are penned, and I am very pleased with the peace that has happened due to this action. The chickens are already feeling safer. I looked out the door this morning and there were many more than usual out free ranging and enjoying a stroll out back without being fearful. I took those two tarps and fashioned a shade in the corner fence area. Not beautiful looking, but functional. We are wide open out here and have a severe lack of shade, no trees really to speak of since our land was farm land before this house was here. We have fields all around us too.
I fed the emus layer pellet, more than usual, since they were penned now. I unfolded one of my folding metal chairs in their pen and put the feed pan on the chair. Hoping to fool the goats for a little while from seeing the food. Even though they wouldn't be able to reach it, they would try. They would stick their heads through the fence and get stuck, and that is just a maddening experience. If they are really stuck, if you push, they push against you. If you pull, they pull against you. Frustrating to say the least. I would cut the horns off, but I like their horns, so I won't do that.
Quite a while passed, but eventually Troy spotted the food, and stuck his head through, of course. Rather than do the push and pull act, I got the hose. Remember, I said goats don't like to get wet. So I started to hose him down, hoping this would encourage him to pull his fool head out and move on. This is not a real stressful occurance for me on around here. They become more distraught over their predicament than I do. You see, I am able to walk away...they cannot. I am hosing Troy down, hosing, hosing, and he pulls for a few minutes, trying to free himself. Then he gives up and decides to push forward and he is STILL trying to get to that pan of food! Darn him. I hosed him down from head to toe. I debated on going in and getting the horses shampoo since he was caught anyway. Lucky for him he decided to get free of the fence just as I had decided that would be a good opportunity for him to have a bath...lol. Silly goats.
I also let Tequila out into the flock yesterday. I was going to put him in with my black giant cochin girls, but I just decided nah...I have enough hatching projects going on and so there was no need to keep him penned anymore, let him out to be free.
There is a pecking order he had to endure first though. I knew he had to make his place in the flock. I wasnt too worried. I don't have any roosters that want to fight to the death. Most will spar off for a minute or two and then the winner is declared by the other running away.
Tequila is a regular size cochin. He is not small, nor is he big, like Pete. When Hank passed on Pete took over the right to head honcho in the flock. He does a good job too. Not being overbearing, but keeping order. Tequila sparred off with a young silkie rooster, the silkie rooster backing down. Big yellow rooster sat on the sidelines, he has no place in the flock. He is big, but he is low man on the totem pole around here. Speckles tried to work his way in line to spar, but was cut off by Pete. When Pete caught sight of Tequila it was on. I supervised, making sure things didnt get too rough. Pete is a big ole Golden laced Wyandotte rooster. Neither one of these boys were going to last long. They would get tired in a matter of minutes. They are just not made to fight long. There was much puffing up, pecking of the ground. Some kicking and some comb pulling. Pete surprised me though. He was the first to run, and Tequila followed. The both of them dragging around, trying to still fight, but too tired to do much, it turned into a girly hair pulling contest. One would grab the feathers on the other ones neck and pull, while the other pulled to try and get away. Finally it was over and they both retreated to shaded corners to rest. It was fast becoming too hot for all that. No blood was shed at all. I am not sure who is the victor in this round. There might be a few more rounds before it is decided who will be the king of the yard. The rest of the day was peaceful. Maybe they will decide to coexist together without fussing. At dusk last night Tequila was not sure where he fit in to roost for the night so I just picked him up and put him back in his pen where he is comfortable for the night. He will eventually acclimate and find his place, but for now I will rescue him for the nights.
As I worked steadily outside, I was noticing it seemed quite hot out. The sun was out, but it was humid, and I was taking that into consideration, that it might feel hotter than it actually was. I went in for some ice water and a break into the air conditioned house and glanced at the weather station to find that it was indeed quite warm out. It was 86...in the shade. It bumped up to almost 89 before the day was out, with high humidity. I decided to call it a day around four o'clock. I had been up since 3:40 am, and I was kind of tired. You know how you are hot and then you come in and cool down and it makes you sleepy, well I took me a nap for an hour. It sure was nice too. I didnt even feel guilty about it, I had worked plenty and deserved it.
I woke up and got the house picked up, some dishes done and vacuumed. Patrick and Laury would be around soon. Laury is a vet tech and I don't have the stomach for what had to done with Everetts foot. I may or may not have mentioned that Everett has a knack for getting into things regularly. He finds string with his feet, a lot. Seems like we were always cutting string off his feet. Well, one time it took its toll and cut into his foot. He has had an infection that I have been trying to treat for some time now. His foot is swollen and fevered. I have tried penicillin shots, even injected one straight into his foot. Not a lot seems to have helped. I tried draining it through a scab on the back of the foot, but not a lot of puss came out. So now it was time to lance it.
laury came with her gloves and box cutter knife. I had gauze and antibiotic oinment. I held him over the sink and she cut a small incision. Again, not a lot of drainage. So, we soaked his foot in epsom salt, she loosened the scab again. You could see down in the hole, but we were not sure what we were seeing. Could be dying tissue, could be anything. She said best thing to do is keep soaking it, about twice a day if not more. If it is infection, the epsom salt will draw it out. We applied the antibiotic and wrapped his foot up.
Ian got home from work while we were doctoring and Patrick and him talked a bit while Laury and I were working on Everett. I also got Laury to look at Einsteins leg and give me her opinion on it. She said if its broken, it is below the knee, which is good, it may heal and he will be able to walk again. I know I won't put him down, I am way to attached to him already. The fact that he is not done growing may help the healing process too.
We ate supper a bit late, around nine. I fixed some subs. It was fast, easy and we were hungry.
That was pretty much my day yesterday. Not too bad a day at all. Today it is overcast and the threat of rain is out there. It is staying mostly south of us for now. I am off to shower and do a few things outside if the weather permits. I hope everyone is having a great weekend. :)
Big Yellow Rooster
He was supposed to go to a new home, but the friend of a friend that was supposed to take him never did.
Some days, you just want to be over. Yesterday was one of those days. If you don't want to read about animals behaving badly, or yelling, hollering, running and screaming...huffing and puffing and sweating...well, you can skip this entry. If you do want to read about it, then you may proceed with caution. ;)
Ian was off yesterday. For some reason mayhem always ensues with the animals when he is home. I am not saying he causes it, it just happens this way. He must think the animals are running wild every day like they do when he catches them being bad or crazy, or whatever you want to call it.
But let me start from the beginning.
There was tension in the air as I called for Shelby from upstairs. I really really hate it when I call someone and they don't answer, or don't come when called. Usually, if I am calling your name I want something from you that is going to result in you rising off your fanny to come get something or do something, so just get up and come see what I want. Makes both our lives easier. When you have a teenager in the house, this all goes out the window. All this commotion over the fact that I was about to fix her lunch.
After lunch, and much hurt feelings, I go out to pick the mud out of Derbys feet. I ask Shelby to please get his comb and come get all the loose hair coming out of him before we let him out. She asks where is it, I say on the table up there on the porch. "I cant find it" she says...then all hell breaks loose. I turn around and the emus are stomping on one of my sultan girls...and why this is I have no idea, seeing as they are confined to their own personal pen, but nevertheless...there is one out, and it is being pummelled as I run my butt across the yard and out the gate to intercept the emus from killing my bird. Sultans are very dumb, so they will not try hard to get away from danger, they will just stand there and be killed.
Yelling does no good with emus. But I still yell, I don't know why, I guess I think maybe one of these times they may listen and actually STOP. It hasnt worked so far. So I am yelling and hoofing it across the way and I run the emus off and pick up the sultan hen. The latch on their pen was not latched. I don't know if it was me, or maybe the horse. He is very itchy right now and will rub against anything to relieve the itching. When he is shedding his winter coat, its an itchy affair. My guess is he was rubbing and the latch came undone, and the door to the pen was just slightly ajar enough for one of the birds to squeeze out. I would say I bet she won't do that again, but Sultans are really really dense, I mean...they are not fast learners, if at all, ever. They are pretty, and they are very sweet, but they are not smart, at all.
With no permanent damage done, I put her back in the pen and made sure to lock it up tight. While all this was going on, Derby saw his chance and pushed the gate open and out he went to start munching on grass. This was not the plan. The plan was for Shelby to brush out the loose hair first.
Oh yeah, and then..after all that...I yelled, did you find the comb???
Yeah...
WHERE WAS IT???
On the table...
RIGHT WHERE I SAID IT WAS!!!
I was sweating and mad and out of breath. I told her to get out back and brush that dang horse, so she did.
Oh but it gets BETTER, or worse...depending on how you look at it.
Later in the day...I go outside to see what is going on, Ian had been outside for awhile, and I am greeted with him carrying Einstein back towards the house.
NOW what.
Ian says he was out of the fenced area...and the emus got to him, were stomping him. His leg had become dislocated and Ian popped it back into place. I don't think its broken. Earlier that day I had seen the white crested black polish pullet, his sister, flying BACK over the fence into the chicken area, so she had made a narrow escape. Einstein had not been so lucky. If Ian had not been out there, he would probably be dead right now.
I took Einstein inside and he has a splint on his leg and I have his toes splinted outward, spread out. He has shown promise of trying to use that leg, but I am sure it hurts. It will take some time, but I am really really hoping he will recover.
Patrick and Laury were supposed to come over last night to help me with Everett. Everett is one of my yard roosters, he is a silver spangled hamburg. He can't seem to stay out of things and gets string wrapped around his legs and feet all the time. Well, one of these times he got the string wrapped so tight it cut into his foot, and now he has an infected foot and it is swollen up. I have tried penicillin shots, I have tried draining it with a small hole poked in it, I have soaked it. I have done everything short of cutting his foot off to solve the problem. Laury is a vet tech, so she was going to come over and she was going to cut his foot wide open and we were going to drain that sucker and pack it with antibiotic, bandage and wrap it up good and put him in a recovery carrier to rest up and heal up. I cancelled that. It had just been one of those days where if I had one more thing to happen, I was going to self destruct. Patrick understood, and he said some days down on the farm are like that, he should know, some days are good, some are bad. We are going to try again today.
So...what is the bottom line of all this. I will tell you, I was debating on whether to just sell the three emus and get a llama. I have this vision of the horse, two pigs, two goats, and three emus...along with chickens, free ranging, grazing...out back...together. I have seen it happen, but things don't always turn out so serene and picture perfect. Sometimes the goats get on the emus nerves, and the emus give chase. Sometimes the horse tries to nip the emus. Sometimes the horse harrasses the pigs.
and sometimes...the chickens get stomped by the emus.
Those of you that know me, know my chickens come first. So, I had to make a decision as to what to do about this. The emus were not going to stop this. Sometimes they can be so calm and quiet, then all of the sudden, they lose their minds and go after a chicken. Last week one of my layers was found dead with her head jammed in a corner, trying to get away I imagine.
Often times, when I mad as hell, and my dander is up, as I stand an stew over all this chaos, Ian has the solution. Ian does not lose his head like I do. I was ready to sell off half the animals yesterday. You see, I did not get these animals to be stressed to my breaking point. They are supposed to have a calming affect. My therapy if you will. This was not the circumstance at the moment.
Ian suggested I pen the emus. The goats were not using their pen area anymore since they have been put out to eat pasture, so why not. What an easy solution. The emus won't like it, but right now I really don't give a flip what they like and don't like. They can lump it. I hate it, because I wanted them to eat grass over the summer, but it doesnt look like that is going to happen.
I do believe they are the reason I haven't had predators at night. The chickens are asleep at night, so I am thinking, fine, the emus can have the run of the pasture at night, to protect the yard, and during the day, they stay penned. That works for me. It will have to work for them too. Its easy to wrangle them back into the pen, just have to have some bread in hand and they will follow me anywhere.
Ian also took it upon himself to get the goats original HEAVY dog house I bought for them when I first got them and put it on a pallet, hook a chain up to the mower and the pallet, and drag their house out of the chicken pen area and out into the pasture area so they will have good shelter from the rain. He is always thinking way ahead of me. All I am good at is yelling and fuming over a situation. He is a man of action. He is my calm in the midst of chaos.
So, here I sit, the new day is upon me. I plan on this day being MUCH better than yesterday. I know it will be. Einstein is resting comfortably in the living room in a carrier. The emus are penned, and the chickens SHOULD be safe today. That makes me feel much better just knowing that.
So that is a day in the life of little ole me having a bad day. I guess it could be a lot worse. Lots of people have much bigger problems than I do. I realize that. But in my world, yesterday was a bad day. Today, will be a good day, and it will be a good day, because I SAID SO! ;)
My chickens come running when they see me, especially if I have a bucket in my hand. That means I must have food. Now thats not the only reason they love me, but its a big part of why they love me, I am not delusional about this.
My sister used to have a teacup yorkie. When around this tiny pup we had to do the puppy shuffle. That means when you walk you shuffle and don't pick your feet up, because this tiny little dog was always close by. If you stepped on the poor dear it would surely injure her severely.
So now I have what I call the chicken shuffle. I do still step on a few toes, but my main goal is not to step on my tiny chickens. This is what I see when I walk around out back...sometimes its like parting a sea of chickens to walk. These are mild compared to some days...
So you see, if they aren't already underfoot, they are on their way to be underfoot. You should see them at the gate, before I get in there. It looks like a mob scene at a department store Christmas sale, or a mosh pit at a heavy metal concert. Everyone is pushing and shoving and complaining...and you KNOW I starve them to death, so they are just on their last leg to get a bite to eat...yeah...right.
Short and sweet today, got to go get ready to go to Tractor Supply and Walmart for our weekly shopping outing.
Today I thought I would post some pictures and introduce some of my babies that have grown up and become a part of the flock out in the yard. You may remember the four polish I originally was hatching for Tex, or more for Debbie, his wife. I have named the two boys, they names just came to me, as will the girls names. They are still VERY friendly. The girls will come up to me and jump right up on my lap and then onto my arm and up onto my shoulder. Yesterday while taking pictures the little black polish pullet flew from the ground up onto the top of my head! Not that she had very far to fly...as I am only five foot four inches.
This is Samson. He has taken a particular liking to Ian. Ian was out there turning over bricks and such finding grubs and plucking them out of the ground and feeding Samson these delicious chicken delights. I think Ian has a buddy now, Samson followed him everywhere that day and I am willing to bet will not forget him the next time he is out there. Samson is a mover and a runner. Not for being afraid of us, he is just wary of the older roosters out in the yard. If they get to close he will run. He wants nothing to do with a fight from them. So, with that said, some of the pictures are of him on the run, and are a little blurry. Some are better than others.
As you can see, he is a lanky little thing still...he has a lot of filling out to do, but shows great promise of becoming one of my show birds next February. It helps that he is so easy to handle and quite friendly.
Next we have Einstein. Yes, I know it may be a bit contradictory to name a chicken after a genius, but just look at him, he LOOKS like an Einstein! It just came to me while sitting out there watching everyone. He is the one at the top of my header. I don't know why the picture didnt resize like usual, so I apologize for the huge stretched out page. I will change the picture soon.
I am also hopeful Einstein will be able to be one of my new show birds. I think he is already filling out nicely, just like his brother. Oh yes, they are brothers. You see, their mom was a white crested blue, and their dad a white crested black. That makes for blacks and blues as babies.
Here are a few pictures of their sisters..yet to be named, but I can feel their names coming to me soon, right on the tip of my tongue.
They are all close ups...as these girls are all over me and it took some doing getting the blue girl to stand on something besides me. The close up of the black, well, she is on my arm. They are really very sweet girls, I love them so much!
The day is getting away from me, and I can't have that..so I am off to go outside for a bit. I hope everyone has a wonderful Tuesday!
Lets see if I can make a condensed version of the time I have lost on here to catch up!
First, there was the VIRUS that infected the computer. Ian managed to use several different virus scanners and everything seems to be back to normal...mostly, we think. Ian still seems to think I had better back up all my pictures on disc just in case it crashes and he has to format...so I will work on that a little at a time.
We always like to go out on May 5th, Cinco de Mayo. No, we are not mexican, but it is a fun time at any mexican restaurant worth its salt on this day. We went to our local El Nopal restaurant in Rockmart. We had a pitcher of frozen marguaritas and great food! It was packed, but we made it early enough that we didnt have to wait but a few minutes to be seated.
May 6th was my birthday, and our 20th wedding anniversary...but Ian had to work on this day, but made up for it the day before AND Friday, but I will get to Friday. Shelby and I went out galavanting for the day. We bought sandals for our outfits for a wedding we were going to on Saturday, I will get to that too. I got some haircolor while we were out. We stopped at Shanes Rib Shack up in Rome for some lunch. I love BBQ...it was so good. We spent the whole day out and about hopping from this place to that. We had a good day out. I did pick up a little cake last minute and had them write this on it to commemorate the day...
Thursday was uneventful, just a regular day.
Friday Ian took me to http://www.fogodechao.com/dining.htm
check out the slideshow on this page of meats.
There was complimentary vale' parking..then we were seated and we had a bite off the salad bar..then came the feast. You have a little disc, one side is green, the other red. When you flip that disc to green...servers with goucho pants come around with their long metal skewers of meat and ask if you would like to try this...and try that...slicing you off pieces. Until you turn that disc over to red, they will keep coming, so if you want to eat and not be served lavishly with meats...flip the disc. It was amazing..if you are a meat eater, this is the place for you. It is a bit pricey, but worth every penny. Lunch is 30 dollars and the price of dinner is around 50 dollars. We can't do it every day, but I can tell you, I will be waiting to go back again...anxiously!
Saturday was my oldest neice's wedding day. We got all gussied up (thats southern for getting dressed up) once we were there at the church. We didn't want to get dressed and wrinkle ourselves all up on the three hour trip from our house to Columbus, Ga. The wedding was absolutely beautiful. Kathryn was a vision.
I will post pictures of Ian, Shelby and I later...no one ever gets to see us dressed up. I had to take pictures while we looked presentable. ;)
In other news...the cats hate each other..well...Shelbys cat Fergie...she hates Mocha...but Mocha just wants to play! Here is Fergie blocking Mocha from coming downstairs...
Our first roses have opened on our first rose bush planted at our home here in the country. This is a hybrid rose. It is called a Blue Rose, but it won't actually be blue, it is more of a pale lavender...beautiful still. It is blooming like mad now...
Saturday evening picture above...then below this mornings picture...
Last but not least...we must talk of chickens...I have many more pictures to share that I took this morning out in the yard...but they will save for another day. Yesterday my mexican friends came by. They were making the rounds coming by to say hello and Happy Mothers Day to all their friends. Then it dawned on me, a light went off in my head. I have been wondering what in the world I am going to do with all those extra chicks the mother polish hatched out. I offered them...and they were excited to take them. I instructed Ricardo to please feed them proper chick feed. I told him bluntly, that I knew they had lost a lot of chicks, and that if he would just listen to what I have to say, and do it, they would have much more success keeping them alive. They had tried to feed some of their chicks scratch, and you cant do that. They don't have the grit in their crop yet to grind whole hard grains, and they won't be able to digest it, and it will kill them. They learned this the hard way. I told him that is why you MUST feed them the chick starter, for good nutrition and health! I gave them a bucket of chick starter, just to reinforce my wishes. I did keep two babies, out of curiousity to see what half giant cochin, half polish looks like grown. I tried to keep two girls, I hope my guessing was right. Here is one of the two I kept, they look just alike.
Now that I have more room again I can put the ones I intentionally hatched in a bigger brooder together. Everyone seems pretty happy right now. The little puff ball you see to the right in the picture above was an egg I kept and decided to hatch from the neighbors chickens while we were tending their animals and collecting their eggs. It is the fattest, cutest little baby! Here below are all of them together now.
Sunday was spent recooperating from all the excitement of the past days. I smoked two whole chickens on the grill all day and grilled some corn still in the husks with lime,chili powder and sea salt seasoning sprinkled onto the butter brushed corn. Last I made a ceasar salad. We had a nice Mothers Day feast. Ian planted my blackberry bushes out by posts out front. His blueberry bushes he planted a couple of weeks ago are doing well. The fencing out back is done. The big animals are roaming out back (goats, horse, pigs, and emus) and the chickens are up close to the house. Everyone has plenty of grass to eat now. Especially since I haven't gotten to mow out back. It is wet every day it seems. Can't mow if its wet. I will get to it eventually.
Today I am doing this, an entry in my blog, and I will probably pop in at Facebook and say a word or two...I intend on conquering the mountain of laundry and getting the house cleaned up today.
Nelishia, we have dismantled and practically torn apart Shelbys playroom, and we have lots of goodies for Katie...so we are going to be making a visit to y'all very soon okay? I will let you know ahead of time, I promise not to just show up on your doorstep! ;)
Oh, one more event happening...Patrick, our neighbor with the horses we kept, and the chickens...he asked me to hatch him some babies from some eggs he brought to me...and here they are, popping out like popcorn today!
Shelby also went on her very first horse back ride with Laury, Patricks wife. Laury intends on making Shelby her riding partner over the summer. Shelby learned a lot and had a blast. Laury also invited her to go this past Monday with her to a Saddle Club meeting. Shelby went and met some other teenagers and had a good time. I was glad she got out and about, I know she was too. :) I didnt get any pictures this time around of her riding, but I will next time, for sure.
Thats about got things caught up around here, the condensed version anyway. I think I got it all covered! :) Now, its time to do laundry and clean...but I am going to read blogs in between chores today. Its been so long since I have been able to visit everyone...and I missed y'all very much.
Well, once again, our computer has contracted a virus. It is slowing things down and its getting worse by the day. Ian is unplugging the internet connection and so I won't be online til he can fix the computer and get the virus gone. Hopefully it won't be too bad, but I suspect it will be from what Ian has read up on this particular virus.
Dad, (Ray) I got your phone number put into my phone, if its going to be too long offline, I will call you so we can set up you and Mary coming over the phone.
I am just hoping we don't have to format the computer. Any pictures I don't have on photobucket are going to be gone. :(
Until I get back...XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO
