Archive for the ‘basic living’ Category

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Diesel’s and Dolly’s Most Excellent Adventure

Sunday, September 4th, 2011

Last week Mom and Dad put us in the truck.

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We figured we were going to the vet.

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We started out on the same big road we usually drive on.

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There’s the old school house we always pass.

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But then we turned down a road we’ve never been on.

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And before too long we were on a really, really big road.

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We weren’t too sure what we thought about that big road. Especially when we saw the truck in this sign.

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We were sure hoping that wasn’t a picture of OUR truck.

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But after a while the world got a little flatter.

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And we relaxed a little.

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And then it got hotter.

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We knew we were far away from home when we saw these trees.

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And this river.

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And then when we saw this sign……

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We got very, very happy.

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And soon we were at my Mamaw’s house!

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Our cousin, Oliver, showed us around.

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We played for a good, long while.

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And then, after such a long day, we rested.

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Boy, oh boy, did we ever rest.

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And before we knew it, we were back in the truck.

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But this time, we had our Mamaw and Oliver with us!

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And having Mamaw and Oliver with us made this trip go very fast. Before we knew it, we saw this sign.

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That made Daddy smile.

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And that made us smile.

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We’re not sure how Oliver felt about it.

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But we *are* sure that now this is Oliver’s most excellent adventure.

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The end.

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Posted in basic living, puppies | 10 Comments »

Iddy Biddy Egg

Thursday, August 11th, 2011

My girls do not often lay iddy biddy eggs, but it makes me smile each time I find one.

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Everyone seemed quite tickled with this iddy biddy egg. And, even though all my chickens lay white eggs, this egg has a pretty pinkish shade to it.

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Here it is with the other iddy biddy eggs I’ve found.

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It’s not as small as the others, but it’s much smaller than a regular sized egg.

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I set my iddy biddy egg on the windowsill to dry out, under the watchful eyes of its’ new friends.

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I’ve heard some rather crude names for these type of iddy biddy eggs. But I can’t bring myself to call something so cute such unattractive names.

I find it amazing that out of the thousands of eggs I’ve collected from my chickens, I’ve only found 6 iddy biddy eggs.

Do your chickens lay iddy biddy eggs? What do you do with them?

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Posted in basic living | 7 Comments »

Clipping A Chicken’s Beak

Saturday, August 6th, 2011

Poor Duke. It seems like that fella just can’t get a break sometimes. And I’ve been so preoccupied lately that I didn’t even realize how long his beak had gotten.

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Bernie brought it to my attention last night and I told him I would get Duke out of the coop at first light, before the others were released for the day, and trim that beak first thing.

Duke is my only chicken that has a beak like that. For some reason the top of his beak doesn’t quite match up to the bottom, and the top often continues to grow over the bottom to the point where he has difficulty eating. If allowed to get too long, (which, sadly, is where Duke’s top beak is in that picture) he will be pretty much unable to get enough food into his mouth to sustain him.

I am embarrassed to admit I let this go on for too long, but I want to share it here so any of you that notice the same issue with one of your chickens will know that it is extremely easy to remedy, and it is painless for the chicken.

A chicken’s beak is very similar to our finger and toe nails. If your chicken has a white beak, you can probably see the “quick” in it – the tender portion that contains blood vessels. The portion of the beak that grows past the “quick” does not have blood vessels, or nerve endings. So if you are very careful not to clip the “quick”, it is really quite painless when trimmed.

The first thing I do whenever I have to work on one of my chickens is lay him on a towel (or her, but I’m gonna refer to the chicken as a “him” because we’re talking about Duke here), and wrap the towel completely and snugly around him, so he can not flap his wings. Securely holding your chicken while working on him is extremely important.

Once I had Duke wrapped in a towel, I laid him on my lap and used dog nail trimmers to trim his beak – not all the way back to the “quick”, but just to the point that his top beak was fairly even with his lower beak. If you don’t have dog nail trimmers, you can use side cuts, but the cut may be a little more jagged.

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I know he looks awful in that picture, but it’s just for sympathy, I assure you. Even though Duke and I have spent many moments in similar situations and you’d think he would have learned by now, I honestly think he believes if he looks dead enough I’ll leave him alone. Goofy rooster.

And here he is all trimmed up.

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This whole procedure took about 5 minutes – and the actual beak trimming took about 10 seconds.

So if you’ve never trimmed a chicken’s beak and find yourself needing to, go forth with confidence. It will be over before you know it, and your chicken will thank you for it :)

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Posted in basic living | 5 Comments »

Pony Express

Saturday, July 30th, 2011

The other evening Mary Ann called to say that Anita had extra corn from her garden, and wanted to know if Bernie and I wanted a few ears.

We don’t have any corn growing, so I quickly told Mary Ann “Heck yea, we’d love some corn! Do you want us to come down and get it?”

“Nah. I think Anita wants to bring it to y’all.”

When the dogs started barking like crazy about an hour later, I looked outside to see this:

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A special delivery via Pony Express!

This is Mary Ann’s horse, Baby:

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Baby is incredibly handsome and sweet. He sure doesn’t look almost 25 years old, does he?

This is Anita’s horse, Bo:

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Bo is a Senior Citizen as well, but he’s incredibly handsome, too.

The corn tasted amazingly sweet, and Anita invited us down to pick as much as we like.

I think we’ll take her up on that.

Although the Pony Express delivery was much more interesting.

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Posted in basic living | 5 Comments »

Summer Canning, Vegetables, Flowers, and Animals

Thursday, July 28th, 2011

When I left mama’s to come home, I also left the USB cable that connects my camera to the computer. As a result, I’ve taken several pictures the past two weeks that I wanted to share with you but couldn’t until the USB cable arrived. So……. now that the USB cable is here, I’ve got a bunch of pictures to share. And I’m going to share most of them right here, in this post, and tell you what we’ve been up to for the past couple of weeks……

This year we’re doing all our canning outside, and I am loving it.

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We’ve been getting an abundance of cucumbers. And we’ve been canning a LOT of pickles. We’ve got close to 100 quarts now.

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Our tomatoes are just starting to come in. This is the first we picked – it’s a Mortgage Lifter.

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Not all our tomatoes are that big, but we were sure pleased that the first we picked was!

The peppers are starting to come in now, and we’ve been getting lots of beans. I’ve got a crock full of string beans and onions fermenting now. They should be ready in another week or so.

The sunflowers are doing great. They were all blown over during a storm when they were about a foot tall, but we staked them to fencing, and they recovered nicely.

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The turkey poult is growing like a weed. She’s getting bigger and bigger each day and, as an only child, she is incredibly spoiled.

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Poor Jake is molting and is down to only a couple of tail feathers.

He really seems to like being a daddy. He goes on walk with Sarah and the baby quite frequently.

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It sure makes me proud that Jake and Sarah are such good parents.

Dolly still thinks Duke is her best friend.

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And Duke still chases her all over the yard.

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My sweet friend, Elinor, sent me some lily bulbs in early spring. We didn’t have the flower garden put in yet, so I planted them in pots. They’ve started blooming, and I think they are just beautiful.

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That one is called “Scheherazade”.

This one is called “Debbbie”.

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Summer is my favorite time of the year. I hope each of you is having a wonderful one!

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Posted in basic living | 7 Comments »

Elvis is Always Thinking

Tuesday, July 26th, 2011

Elvis knows if he sleeps with his head…..

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right on the water dish……

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he won’t have to expend a whole lot of energy…….

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when he wakes up thirsty.

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Elvis likes to think ahead.

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Posted in basic living | 5 Comments »

Helluva Man

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

My father passed away on July 7th, 2011. He took a piece of my heart with him when he left.

He was given a military funeral, with full Honors.

It would have made him proud.

And it would have made him even more proud to know he was buried in jeans and a t-shirt, with his fishing hat and favorite lure tucked in beside him.

Daddy wasn’t one for putting on airs.

He was my father, my friend, my confidant.

He was a helluva man.

And my heart aches for him.

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Posted in basic living | 22 Comments »

Sarah’s Surprise

Monday, June 20th, 2011

Sarah, one of our turkey hens, has been broody for a while. About four weeks ago ago I decided to let her set on an egg. Her sister, Tanya, sneaked another egg under Sarah that I didn’t find until a couple of days later, so I marked both eggs and let Sarah set on them.

When I opened the turkey coop this morning, all three turkeys ran immediately outside. And I could hear a very distinct chirping in Sarah’s nest. It was dark in there, but I could see two eggs. And I knew I was hearing chirping. So I ran inside, grabbed my camera, and aimed in the general direction of the eggs. And when I uploaded the picture to my computer a few minutes later, this is what I saw:

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One of the eggs had pipped! I ran back to the turkey coop and Sarah was getting back on her nest. The egg was rocking around and making a lot of noise. Sarah looked a little confused by the whole thing.

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But she settled in on top of her eggs, and I closed the coop to give her some privacy.

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A short time later I checked on her and look what I found.

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Isn’t she precious? Sarah seems to adore her.

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I hope the other egg hatches. I’ve heard such horror stories about how fragile turkey poults are. I’m really praying these will make it, and that Sarah will be a good mama. My plan is to let her care for them and hope for the best.

Under my strict supervision, of course :)

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Posted in basic living | 23 Comments »

Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign…….

Wednesday, June 15th, 2011

Our buddy, Dan, makes signs. Not those flimsy, metal signs that rust and look bad in no time at all.

Dan makes NICE signs. Out of sheet metal. Signs that will be around a good long while and look good the entire time.

And Dan knows how I feel about my chickens. So he made a few signs for me. And I LOVE them. A lot.

So I’m gonna share them with you…….

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That’s the sign you’ll see when you get to the end of our driveway. How cool is that?

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And that’s the “Warning – Attack Rooster” sign you’ll see when the gate is closed. It refers to Duke – who happens to be to the right of that sign in that picture.

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And that’s the sign on the coop door that I hope my hens will read each day and understand what the heck they are supposed to be doing inside that coop.

I love my signs.

I love Dan.

You’ll love him, too. Check out his website. If you need/want a custom sign of the highest quality, Dan is your man.

Did I mention how much I love my signs?????

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Posted in basic living | 12 Comments »

Things I Never Saw Living in Town

Saturday, June 4th, 2011

A few weeks ago Dolly and I met up with our walking buddies, Mary Ann and Daisy, and took off for our daily walk.

About halfway through it I said “Oh, look. There’s a pig in the road.”

Mary Ann looked at me and said “What are you talking about?”

I said “Isn’t that a pig in the road?”

And about then, the pig heard us. It seemed to get very excited to hear human voices and started galloping towards us.

We had two VERY excited dogs, so we decided to run.

Away from it.

As fast as we could.

And it chased us. A good long way.

We were running, and panting, and discussing going over a fence to escape it when we came to a bend in the road and decided to try to out run it.

And out run it we did.

And naturally, I did not have my camera.

A couple of weeks later we were walking that same stretch of road when a pickup truck, towing a large cattle trailer came towards us. It stopped and the man inside asked if we had seen a heifer.

“No heifer” we replied. “But you wouldn’t happen to be missing a pig, would you?”

“Nope. Just a heifer. She got away a while ago and I’m looking for her.” He pointed to the pasture behind us, and we looked that way.

“There she is!” I excited exclaimed. She looked like an ant, she was so far away.

“I see her!” Mary Ann affirmed.

“Yep. That’s her. Reckon whose pasture that is?” He asked.

He and Mary Ann discussed it a while, and I didn’t chime in, as I had no clue.

He drove off and rescued her.

Or at least we thought he had.

Every day for the past several days, we’ve seen this on our walk.

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She’s usually laying down when we come up on her. But when she hears our voices she stands up to greet us.

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I think she wants to go home with Mary Ann and Daisy. Mary Ann thinks she want to go home with me and Dolly.

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She’s really a cutie. I wish we had gotten the owner’s name and number. I worry that she’s all alone. Daisy and Dolly would sure like to keep her company.

I’m pretty sure I never saw these things when we lived in town.

I wouldn’t trade living here for the world.

Posted in basic living, homestead | 9 Comments »

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