Warming up

The days are starting to get cold enough that it can be hard to warm up when you come in from outside.  While I enjoy the "hunkering down" that we tend to do in the winter, I still don't enjoy the cold!  So, in an effort to remind myself of warmer days (and to catch up on summertime pictures), here are some photos from June. 



Friends Cameron and Alex feed the chickens

Laurel sure misses her buddy Alex

Happy girl!

Is there anything else to do when you have mud puddles and cute rain boots?

I think not!

Notice the boot to the left continuing to kick water at Cadence!

"Hey guys!  Where are you going?!"

"I guess we're outy!"



Ups and downs of this farming business...

We are on a roll.  Not the yummy, yeasty kind with butter or a good one of any sort.  We are now down 2 chickens.  The girls LOVE the chickens.  They constantly ask if they can play with them, enjoy collecting their eggs, and just have fun watching them.  I don't really know how one "plays" with chickens, but regardless, they are attached (see details of last chicken funeral).  Personally, I'm not up for cuddling with the feathered friends, but I love the clucking sounds they make when we come to see them and having fresh eggs all of the time is pretty darn cool!

It was much to my dismay to come home from work yesterday morning, after being awake for 24 hours no less, to find another fatality.  This one was no accident or chicken suicide.  Despite being in TWO enclosures, it was predator driven.  I'll spare you the details, but... yuck.  I'm just thankful that I am the one that made the grisly discovery and not one of the kids.  I'm fully aware that they will one day happen upon something like this, but I'd like to protect them from it as long as I can.  As far as they know, Midnight ran away from home!  We are continuing to reinforce the enclosures, but such is life when your animals live outdoors, I guess.

Now for the upside... see below!  I have been dreaming of green and blue eggs since we moved so Brad surprised me with four Easter Egger chickens.  They are two weeks old and adorable!  These, I may cuddle with!  We don't know yet if they are male or female.  Something new that I learned - basically one waits to see if they crow to figure that one out.  Who knew!  Keeping fingers crossed for no crowing, green eggs, and tight fencing.

Really?!  Does it get much cuter?!

Oh wait, yes it does!  Look at that pose!

While Brad wasn't looking we HAD to take a picture of a "biker chick"!  Happily it didn't poop on his cherished Triumph.

And then there were 10...

...Chickens that is.  We have had our first farm fatality.  I knew with more animals in our midst we will have more of this,  I just wasn't expecting it to happen so soon.  Poor thing didn't even have a name yet.

Here's how it went down.  We are now building an enclosed free range area for them but until it's done this weekend they are stuck in the coop, and not too happy about it.  Turns out that neighbors and their dogs don't appreciate roaming chickens.  So, the girls and I headed out to feed and water them and two birds flew the coop. At the same time our dog, Shiloh, happened to escape our house and saw 2 chickens running free.  This must have been the moment that her 11 year old mixed lab self must have been waiting for... she was off on a chase for them.  The girls were screaming at Shiloh to stop, I'm screaming at the girls to stop Shiloh, I'm yelling at the chickens to quit flying the coop and hastily put the lid down on the coop.  Shiloh managed to get a few feathers but thank goodness we caught her before she caught a chicken.  Now that sight REALLY might have scarred my children!  Then I heard a loud thump on the coop lid and it actually "bumped" up. 

So, Shiloh's safely back in the house, the girls managed to catch both chickens, we open the coop lid to put them in... we find one deceased chicken.  Was it suicide, a weak heart, or did it get in the way?  Either which way, it was a Bummer.  Immediate sobbing and tears from Laurel, Sierra's asking me where it's heart is and do I really know it's dead, me trying to appear brave enough to pull a dead chicken from the coop.  Ugh... it sucked! 

Today we had our first chicken funeral.  We buried it, Laurel put rocks in the shape of a heart on top of the dirt, we named it as we each said a prayer.  "I hope she enjoyed her life and had good friends."  "Thanks for providing us eggs."  "I hope she has lots of cracked corn in chicken heaven."  You know, the usual things you say at a chicken's funeral!

Hopefully this will be the last for a while.  This one felt particularly traumatic, but hopefully we won't be having a full on funeral for every farm member!

You're in the right place still!

Times are a changin' here!  We started this blog back in April 2010 to document our journey to bring Cadence home from China.  She's been home now for 9 months (!) and if feels like she's always been a part of our family.  Yes, it's challenging at times (those closest to me know just how challenging!) but I look at her everyday and wonder how we got so lucky to have this amazing little girl join our family.   She has truly completed it!  I figured that I would stop blogging after she was home, but I have found that I really enjoy it.  I like to look back and relive some of the highlights of my life.  Maybe someone out there in the blogging community gets something out of it too. 

So, I've decided to keep up with it, but we are shifting gears a bit.  If you've been reading (or know me!) you know that we have recently built a new home and moved to 24 acres.  Brad is constructing a barn (or doing something with all of the wood sitting in pile out there) and we recently acquired 11 chickens.  We hope to get a goat or two once the barn is up and then we'll be on our way to being a real farm!  Right?!  We have a lot to learn so just as I stalked read lots of adoption blogs way back when,  I'll now be stalking learning from your farming blog if you have one! 

Sierra getting one into the coop

Laurel seeming a bit more adept at it!

Cadence kept her distance to check them out

Chickens checking it out

These are the two things we found in the box when we took the chickens out.  We are assuming they are only responsible for the egg!

Spring Break

For some reason, when all 3 kids are home, the volume in our house increases 10 fold! If one is gone, it doesn't matter which one, the noise level is reasonable. For this reason, I've been slightly dreading the summer. I love summer, pool time, relaxing with the kids. But thinking about everyday, all day, being overfilled with noise, I was feeling a little overwhelmed. Sierra and Laurel had spring break last week so I got a little taste of what summer will be like... and it wasn't too bad! I'm sure we'll be outside a lot, but I think as the novelty of all of them being together wears off a bit, so does the noise level. Yay!! We did manage to do a few fun things. A friend from work has a sheep farm and has recently lambed almost 100 babies! Wow! We were able to make it out to her beautiful property and bottle feed a couple of the babies. We explored the ground, petted the horse and dogs, and fed the mama lambs gingersnaps. Yes, gingersnaps... who knew!

Brad was off one day and we took the kids to Bounce and Play. Of course the big girls loved it and not surprisingly, so did Cadence! Once we went down the big slide with her she was ready to do it all by herself. She is a daredevil! On a more subdued note, Sierra, Laurel, and I went to a friend's pottery studio. The girls had been there before and started a project. Unfortunately our friend was called away and they weren't able to finish... so they finally completed their plates. More exciting, they were able to use the pottery wheel. Wow, much more challenging than I anticipated, but we all had a lot of fun!

Maybe summer won't be so bad after all!