Do I have hens or roosters??

I wanted chickens. A lady at church said I'll get you some chickens. I say okay, but I would like one rooster. I just like hearing them crow in the morning. She says okay, I have a friend who has white rocks and golden comets, it will be a couple of weeks. To make a long story short about 6 weeks later I get 10 chickens, 1 rooster, 9 hens. The lady from church says he guarantees they are all hens but the one. I had wanted fancy chickens, not particularly white ones, but the majority were white rocks. Everything is going along well. You can see to the left of the blog the picture of the rooster. He matures really fast, has been crowing for weeks, lately going on and on, all day, even at 4:00 a.m. There is a white rock hen, really friendly, Tom is making a pet out of it. It would actually want to be picked up. We called her Matilda. Matilda is the chicken above. We began having suspicions about her and we were right, Matilda is a rooster. She is still very nice, but the other rooster was getting really pushy. Now what are we going to do with 2 roosters. We decided to give the rooster on the left away and keep Matilda, who is now Milo. Good thing, his last morning here he pratically went through the fence at Tom. We have neighborhood kids who are at the fence various times of the day looking at the chickens, so a mean rooster is out of the question.

I have a grandson, J, quilting bookworm's son. He is a real animal lover and knows just about everything there is no know about chickens, rabbits and horses. When he comes over he is always trying to catch the chickens, etc. He was telling me he thinks I also have 2 golden comet roosters. I am beginning to think he is right, they are beginning to look more and more like a rooster than a hen. I hope I am wrong. I was planning on lots of eggs.

Here is another picture from the garden tour.

Until next time.....

Garden tour

This weekend was our local YWCA garden tour. They have it every year. There are usually about 7-8 gardens and you drive all over the county snooping around peoples yards and getting ideas.

This is one of 3 hydragneas that were in a row at one of the houses. I cannot believe how big they are, especially in our climate, which means a very cold winter.

The above picture was from a house with lots of rocks around the flower beds, zinnas, sunflowers and very country looking. The property has actually been in the family for generations but they tore down the farm house and built themselves a new one. All of the gardens were beatiful. Two were on very small city lots but they used all their space and were just as nice as the big sprawling yards. I'll post the rest of the pictures tomorrow from the tour. It was a fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

We watched the grandkids - Jessica and Tyler from Quilted Simple over the weekend. We had a really good time. We went bike riding, went to a festival in the county park. Jessica and I went shopping while Tyler stayed home with Tom. Tyler is always say lets go work Grandpa. This is Tyler on the fence. He is such a little farmer boy. It was in the 80s on Saturday but when Tom said they were going out to work he had to put on his long jeans and work boots.

Until next time......

More pics from the weekend

Just uploading some more pictures from yesterday at the park. About a mile from our house is a county park. They have about 10 miles of bike-walking paths that are asphalt and one runs along a creek. That is where the biking picture is of Tom and the grandkids. They biked 3 miles and I walked. My leg was bothering me yesterday so I walked a little bit and turned around. These 2 are the lily pads and the creek that you walk along. Gorgeous any time of the year.

When Annie was feeling better we would walk just about every day at this park. Unfortunately she is still not feeling well, the cough seems to be getting better but she has no appetite and is still very weak. She will force herself to get up if she thinks a job needs to be done, but other than that she just lays around. I still haven't given up on her though - just taking longer than I would have thought.

Up next will be a garden tour that I went on today. Its an annual event and the gardens were unbelievable.

Hopefully I will be back later....

Picture Sunday

Just pictures today of what we did so far this weekend..

Yesterday was riding bikes at the local park.

Jessica and Tyler before church today.

Until later this afternoon -- enjoy your Sunday!!!

Cooking, antique store finds, just a nice buggy

Today was cooking day after work. I had to make macaroni salad for a funeral dinner tomorrow for 60 people. So while I was doing that decided to make blueberry muffins with some fresh blueberries that I had gotten this week. They were so good. I froze a dozen but I am sure these will be gone by tomorrow. I had enough for another batch but I ran out of eggs.

My question is-- how does someone with chickens and a blog call country-chicken run out of eggs?? I think I need to have a talk with those chickens.

The scale and hamper came from the antique store that is just around the corner from us. I had seen the hamper there before but they wanted $30 for it. On Sunday it was marked down to $10 and the scale was $12. I thought I did pretty good.

The Amish buggy was parked in our neighbors back yard this afternoon. The man had come to town and had stopped to ask about fishing in our neighbors lake.

I am off to do some knitting and watch TV for a while. I have a new project that I'm working on and hopefully by tomorrow there will be enough to show.

Until next time........

Annie and Rooster

Haying is done

We are done with our first cutting hay. Since it is so late we probably won't get a second cutting, but then again the way it has rained you never know. We got over 1,000 bales out of the 2 fields. We actually finished up Sunday. We had one wagon left but got to tired at the end of the day on Saturday to continue. We had left a very thick row for the last one and decided if it got rained on we would have bedding for the chickens. We only got a few drops on Sunday morning and were able to bale it up by 4:00 p.m. on Sunday afternoon. After all the problems on Friday, everything worked out okay for Saturday and Sunday. Lot of broken string on Saturday and rebaling but you'll have that. Now to enjoy the week before its on to another project. We need to make some repairs to the barn roof - its next on the list.

Hope to have some pictures on tomorrow or Wednesday. Sunday I stopped in at the local antique store and got 2 nice things for $22.00.

Until next time......

This blog in interrupted for hay season

Whew. Haying never goes as planned. I definitely had different ideas, but then again I should know better. We started out really good on Wednesday and Thursday. Things moving right along. Friday came and was a different story. We have had a baler for probably close to 12 years that we traded with another farm couple for the use of our round baler. Things went well, but then things happen like divorce, death and auctions. All of a sudden the now farmer woman shows up wondering if we still had HER baler. Note: We did try to take this baler back several years ago but they said No, no, its yours to help pay for some of the repairs that we caused on your round baler. Okay, we are nice people, go ahead and take it, we will borrow a baler, we probably still have 600 bales to go. We borrow our neighbors, 2 bales into the field loud noises were heard, its broken. Lots of fixing, trips to the farm parts store, 7 hours later and only 45 bales were made. Now what. Get the paper out, no balers to be had that were advertised, except maybe Pennsylvania. We called the people we used to rent land off asking - do you still have that baler that you wanted us to take several years back, broken, but maybe we could fix. (I should add, my husband can fix just anything and several people know this). Yes we do, come on over and see what you can do. We were in the barn until midnight Friday night trying to get it to work, reading the book, unbaling hay and hand feeding it to this baler. Tom was up at 6:00 this morning. Good thing we have good neighbors, as the baler was running at 7:00 this morning. Our of our neighbors heard us and brought us over a loaf of fresh baked bread to make toast with. So now its off to the field to see what we have come up with. Actually the best part was the book said if you think this part is out of alignment hit it with a hammer. We did 3 taps with the hammer, hopefully it wasn't to much. If this doesn't work we are going to see if we can rent a round baler as the rain is coming.

So wish us luck, say a prayer and hopefully this will all be a story we can talk about to our grandkids some day. You know how that goes: Back in 2008, I was baling in the field on a 90 degree day, etc., etc, etc.

Until next time.......

What have we been doing??

Boy do I have these pictures messed up. You can tell I don't know what I'm doing. Hopefully I know more about getting hay made.

The pictures at the bottom should be on the top, top on the bottom. Anyways that's what we did today. Hopefully tomorrow will be raking and possibly some bales will be made.

Just the right weather to -- hot, 90 degrees and steamy. I'll be back tomorrow, hopefully with pictures in the right order.

Another Wednesday afternoon and a ??

Its Wednesday again. The only thing different today is Tom has the day off also. Its hot (almost 90 degrees), sunny and great hay making weather. They do keep changing the weather forecast just a bit, but hopefully they will be wrong and we will get some hay made. Hopefully later today I will have some pictures of that.

For now - I see that some of you are doing 5 projects finished in July - or something like that. See that pile on the bench?? I would just like to get 5 things done on that bench by the end of July. I know, I know, its July 15 and there is a lot of stuff there. Those baskets are fully of knitting that needs just a little something to be finished, the large tub has baskets that need to be store somewhere and in one of those baskets is a pair of capri pants that need a button. I think I need to step up the pace a little. I did get one item off the bench yesterday though. There are 2 dishes that needed to go back to church, so when I went to weed I took them back. I just never think of it on Sunday morning. Wish me luck!!

Now for the question. The girl that I got my older chickens from has some extras, I think she has about 50 chickens. She said I could have few, just come and get what I want. How do you introduce new chickens into a flock?? Someone told her vanilla on their heads?? If you have any ideas I would appreciate it.

Until later today.....

Gardening at the church

These are the pictures of the flower beds I have been working on at church. I think I mentioned this a few posts back. We are at the end of the project for a while, just have to keep things looking nice. May in the Fall will make some other changes. The trick was to use what was there, add a few things but not spend a lot of money. I think Tom and I managed to do the whole project for under $75.00 so that wasn't too bad. We moved several of the shrubs and due to all the rain we have been having everything is still living. In the fall I want to add some perenials, those annuals are really expensive. The water to the outside is not left on, so you just can't pull up in the parking lot and start watering. This is one thing that all the rain we have had has benefited. Still to much rain for making hay. Until next time....

Wednesday afternoon

Today we had our first veggie out of the garden I have been waiting for something to be ready and today was the day. Not a very large head though, probably has something to do with all the rain we have been having lately. It was wonderful though. There are also some tomatoes that are starting to turn. Can't wait for those.

Today was my afternoon off. I had to run some errands in town and stopped off at Wal Mart to pick up a few things I can't seem to find anywhere else. They had the basket of zinnas out front and at a good price, so naturally I bought one. I guess you would say I am a sucker for flowers. Besides, if they die I will have that cute basket to put something else in.

There was a little knitting going on. Seems like in the summer I don't accomplish much on the knitting front. I love being outside so usually knitting gets put off until evening and then I'm to tired. Below is the sock I have been working on. Actually I have another sock started but I'm stuck, so I have to wait until the girl that taught the class comes back from vacation. By the time she gets back I hope to have this one to the point I'm stuck at and spend an afternoon in the local knitting shop figuring out where I go wrong.

We have had so much rain. We had over an inch between yesterday at 5:00 p.m. and this morning. We are constantly watching the weather as we have hay to make. We still have not made our first cutting. Pretty much everyone around us in the same predicament. I did see that in the next 7 days there is only 1 day with isolated showers so maybe we will be making hay soon.

Well, better get moving. I have to give the horses hay and water. Tom is working an extra shift today. He is a mechanic for a Reddy Mix concrete company so when they have night pours they like him to be there. Really messes up his sleep though, since he worked all day today, will get home around 1 o'clock and go back by 7:00 tomorrow. They are doing this again tomorrow night but I don't think he is going. You have to sleep sometime.

Until next time...

Late 4th of July pictures

Even though the holiday is over I have pictures to post. Just can't seem to get in the groove of how to upload, etc. These are a few things we did on the 4th. Hope all your picnics were good ones.

Until next time....

Happy 4th of July

Hope you, your family and anyone you spend the day with have a good holiday!!

July Already!!

Where did June go?? I do have one thing to say, it does not feel like summer. Just Monday I wore a T-shirt and sweatshirt for most of the day it was so cold. Hopefully July will bring us dry, warm weather. We need to get some hay made.

The picture is part of my front porch. Up until last year I just had broken concrete steps. Last summer Tom built a little deck out the front and I love it. Now I have some place to put all my porch decorations. We have a large patio in back so I could put stuff out there but a front porch is just nicer. I also have a rocking chair on the other side and can be found there a lot in the afternoon knitting.

This is for all you quilters out there!! Today I was reading Country Home magazine. They listed the top 10 collectibles. #2 on the list was signature quilts. A signature quilt would be one with names of people who made it, dates, places, reason for quilt being made. Some of these can be valued at $1,000.00 or a single block for $150.00. So all you quilters out there, sign your quilts, put some interesting facts on them. Someday your children, or grandchildren could become rich from selling the quilts you made. Just make sure you keep reminding them of this fact though, otherwise they could be in the garage sale for a dollar.

My border collie, Annie is ill today. I ended up taking her to the vet and she has an upper respiratory tract infection. She had a temperature of 104. She is on a antibiotic but he prescribed Robitussin DM for her cough. Its really difficult trying to give a dog cough medicine. She and I both were kind of covered in it, but I did get some down.

Until next time......