Awards

I've gotten some great awards lately and want to acknowledge those who gave them to me. I so appreciate all the support and love I've gotten from my blogging buddies over the last year.


Lisa gave me this beautiful award. This one means so much to me!

Melody gave me this new one.

Here is the text that came with this one.

"This blog invests and believes the PROXIMITY - nearness in space, time and relationships! These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers!"

Adventure Girl gave me this wonderful award. I think it is really cute.

Here is my connumdrum with awards. I LOVE getting them! I love the acknowledgement. I have a problem with not feeling good enough in life and the awards give me a little boost. However, I find it very hard to then give them out after I receive them. I hate choosing people to give them to, I hate picking favorites. If I read your blog it is because I love it. I've stopped reading many blogs over the years because they weren't a favorite. So I've already narrowed my list down to my favorites. I feel like when I do give awards out they always go to the same people. But I feel like a blanket this award is for all of you is lame. So what to do....

Short chicken update

Sorry to bore you with more chicken stuff, we're just so excited about them! I opened their run today and they were doing the typical staying in the run thing, so after a few hours I went down there with them. As soon as I sat down they ran out of the run and started exploring the surrounding area. I sat with them for a bit then went in.

A few hours later, Logan and I went down to check on them and they did the same thing. They were in the run and came out when we came down. Then Buttercup ate corn out of Logan's hand! He was so excited. They still don't like us to touch them, but they seem to be viewing us as protectors. They are much braver when we are around.

Views

I've had some requests for more pictures of our views.

The chicken coop is being kept in a fenced in pen that the previous owner made for working the cattle. We have 2 of these pens. Each pen is bigger than our previous back yard. We then still have the pasture. So, the chickens have a pretty big area to run around in, if they would ever leave their run. I have to force them out each morning and shut the door so they can't get back in. As soon as I open the door again, they run back in there. I'm trying to be patient and give them time, but it seems to me like they should want to run around on all that great grass and be in the sun.

Anyway, the other day while sitting in the pen with the chickens I decided to take pictures from where I was sitting in each direction.

This is looking toward my neighbor Boyd's property. He was working on the fence so that is why his tractor is there.


This is looking back toward our pasture.

This is looking toward our run-in and the beginning of our pasture. The run-in didn't quite make it into the picture but you can see it's shadow.

This is looking back toward the house.

These were all taken from a sitting position in the middle of the pen so they aren't the best pictures. Call them a chicken eye's view of our place.

Soon I will post pictures taken out of the windows of our house.

Chickens day out

I let the girls out of their run for the first time yesterday. It took them about 10 minutes to work up the nerve to leave the run.

Buttercup was the first to go out. She is the more adventurous one.
It looks like it might be pretty cool out here.

Hey, Kudzu, come on out, it's fine out here.

Look at the awesome thing I found here!

What the hell was that?!

They roamed around for about 20 minutes then headed back to the run. They still spend most of their time in the run even though the door is open all day. We were joking today about how chickens really are chicken.

Athens Locally Grown

One of the best things about living in Delaware was I had local sources for everything. We had a meat source, a milk source, an egg source and a few produce sources. All local and naturally grown.

Moving here I was worried about finding local sources for everything. I got on Local Harvest and found out about a group called Athens Locally Grown. It is basically a co-op. A group of people found farmers that would provide products every week. On Sunday, they post what is available that week and members can place an order. The organizers then go around to all the farms and pick up the orders, then the members go pick up their orders at a centralized place at an arranged time.

They have produce of all types, eggs, meat and raw milk. The meat to choose from included beef, chicken, pork, lamb and goat. The raw milk included cow and goat milk. They also have many cheeses.

We placed an order last week and went to pick it up. Here are the tables full of all the orders.

Here was the line we waited in to pick up our order. The line was consistently this long the whole time we were there, which was over an hour. Pick up is during a 4 hour time window. I don't know if it is this busy the whole 4 hours.

Here is what we got. The most exciting things were the goat's meat, which we've never tried and the goat's milk. We plan to get a dairy goat or 2 in the spring. We've been advised to make sure we like goat milk before we get goats. So we decided to try it. Logan really liked it, I found it had a bit of an earthy flavor, but I could adjust to it.

I'm excited to have found this. It will be a convenient way for me to get local, naturally grown food. I also hope to find some local farmers of my own.

6 things

I've been tagged by Deb, Lisa and Amy for this meme, so I thought I should do it.

6 things about me that I haven't already told you in another on of these memes...

1. I wanted to be a vet when I was younger, but I didn't think I'd be able to handle doing surgeries. So I went to grad school to study viruses and ended up doing surgeries on animals all the time. Oh well.

2. I'm pretty much always cold, but I have a genetic defect where I don't sweat, so if I get too hot I pass out. It is very hard for me to find a temperature where I'm comfortable.

3. My car is a hybrid, it's the first non-stick shift I've ever owned. I learned to drive on a stick.

4. I'm a martial arts groupy. I've never done martial arts myself, but I love to watch them and be around that environment. My sister did martial arts as a kid and I always drove her to her classes so I could hang around. Logan now does martial arts and I still love hanging around, watching, and helping him practice. If they didn't make you wear a white uniform, I might do them myself, but I look really stupid in white.

5. Red is my favorite color. Most of my clothes are red. I've dyed my hair red a few times, but then I didn't have anything to wear because my red clothes didn't go well with red hair. I'm back to my natural hair color and wearing red a lot.

6. I was a really bad cook when I first got married. So bad that Mark did all the cooking. It wasn't until after Logan was born and I started staying home that I learned to cook. I started by just copying Mark. I'm not a pretty good cook and do all the cooking. I can even bake! Which to me was the ultimate hurdle.

I'm not going to tag anyone because I think everyone has been tagged. If you haven't been tagged for this and want to do it, consider yourself tagged!

The girls are good

They made it through the night and were happy to see me this morning. Kudzu let me pet her a little.

It was so cute, when I went out this morning, they were locked in the coop part and it was silent. As soon as I said good morning girls, they started clucking. It's funny how they know they are supposed to be asleep until I go out there. I'm going to put some more bedding in the coop to make sure they are warm enough at night.

We got chickens!

Our 2 new girls! Aren't they beautiful? We picked them up from a local farmer today, they are 5 months old. They are Buff Orpingtons.

The one in the front is Kudzu, the one in the back is Buttercup. Kudzu is Logan's chicken and Buttercup is mine.



Logan and I spent the week making a small coop for them. It is made from a x-large dog kennel, surrounded by a large wire run with a tarp over it to keep out the wind and rain. These guys had never been on grass before, so they sure were excited to see grass! We have a fenced in pen that we will let them out in in a few days, after they settle in.

Kudzu is in the back in this picture.


Logan spent about an hour sitting in the run with them. He really wants them to be friendly, but since we didn't raise them they may never be as friendly as he wants them to be.

Logan tried the food bribing technique to get them to like him. Left over waffles from breakfast.

Just another picture of the girls in their run with the kennel in the background.

Tonight is supposed to be near record lows for this area, down to almost 20. I'm worried about the girls. They will be fine right? They are in the kennel, with pine bedding, it is protected from the wind. They'll keep each other warm right? It is the first night and I'm worried!

My latest creation

I have managed to do some crocheting despite everything that has been going on. I made this cactus for Logan.

As you can see, he loves it!

I also made a Christmas present but can't post the picture yet since the person it is for reads this blog.

And totally off topic, Logan got to feed some stale bread to the cows today. This was the only one brave enough to come up and eat from his hand. As soon as we left, 4 other cows came over to eat the bread that fell on the ground.

A cool award!

Farm Mom gave me this awesome award! Thank you.

I'm passing it on to:

Ceecee
Gail
Lisa

You guys have great blogs!

We walked out of the garage this afternoon and look at what we saw! That is my car in the picture. Our other neighbor had moved his cows to the pasture right by our house. The cows were just feet from our driveway. It was so cool to walk about and see them all standing there.

Even cooler was how the cows that weren't right by our driveway came running over to say hi. Actually I think they wanted food, but it is more fun to think they wanted to say hi.

I loved this brown cow with the shaggy white face.

Logan really wanted me to take a picture of him with the cows.

So, we have cows on both sides of us, it is so exciting! I still can't believe this is really where I live now. It feels like a vacation that I'm going to have to go home from soon.

Meeting the neighbors

One of our new neighbors came by today to introduce themselves and brought a loaf of freshly baked bread. It was still warm!

When we moved into the house in DE no one introduced themselves, much less brought bread and there were almost 1000 houses in our subdivision.

We've now met everyone on the street, they are all so nice. Everyone of them has offered us use of their truck or tractor and told us to call when we need to build something and they would come and help. This is so new to us, we aren't sure what to make of it. But we like it!

Meet the neighbors

Cows in the field next door, this was also taken from the front porch. He rotates the cows so they aren't always right next to us, but it sure is fun when they are.



Here are the cows in my bathroom mirror, I'm not sure you can see them in this size picture.

The cows across the little dirt road in front of our house. I'll post pictures of the road tomorrow. Sorry for the darkness of this picture, I took it on our walk last night.

The barn next door.

A close up of the barn next door.

Misty morning

It has rained here the last 3 days, which is awesome! This is the sight I woke up to this morning. I've always loved fog.

This was taken from my front porch overlooking the neighbor's land. There is no house there yet, but he is starting to build one. We may end up being able to see a neighbor when he is done, but for right now, it is just us and the cows!

I still haven't had time to catch up on anyone's blogs, I'll try to this weekend. I'm not ignoring you guys...

We have internet!

We got our internet set up today, it is actually broadband. Mark keeps saying it is like magic to have good internet in the middle of nowhere like this.

So, without further ado, the house!

That is a huge screened in porch on the back with a great view of the pasture. All the living area is upstairs, the basement is totally unfinished, which is great for us.

We are making progress on unpacking and repainting Logan's room. He decided he wanted the room that was painted a bright pink. For some reason he wants us to repaint it. 3 coats of primer later, it is still slightly pink. Luckily, we will be painting it green so that should cover that last of the pink that is showing.

I'll post pictures of the neighbors tomorrow...

Short Update

Turns out we won't have internet until Friday, we're sitting in a Best Western parking lot right now.

Our stuff has been delivered and we are busy unpacking. We've met everyone that lives on the street and they are all really nice. I looked in the mirror in the bathroom this morning and saw cows reflected in the mirror. Our only neighbors that we can see are cows, it is so cool!

The house is clean and really nice now. I'll update with pictures and catch up with what ya'll have been up to when we have internet at home.

We're in Georgia!

We got to Georgia today. We're staying in a hotel tonight but will be staying in the new house tomorrow night. It will be empty, so we'll be on the floor, but we'll be staying in the new house! The furniture gets delivered Tuesday. We'll be without internet until Wednesday, so I'll post pictures of the house then.

We spent this afternoon cleaning the house, it is filthy! I don't think they've cleaned at all in the 5 years they've lived there. I spent 3 hours just cleaning baseboards and only got half way done. They were all brown, turns out the paint is white! All the walls need repainting and everything else needs scrubbing. We'll be cleaning all day tomorrow to get ready for the movers Tuesday. Once the house is clean it will be beautiful, it is really nicely done, just dirty.

We're here!!!! This may actually be happening....

Halloween

Despite everything that has been going on, Logan had a great halloween. He was a Lego, as you can see, we made the costume the day of halloween. It was pretty easy to make and turned out looking great!

We went trick or treating in my brothers neighborhood, which consists of 180 townhouses. Only about half of them were giving out candy, but it was still the most candy Logan had ever gotten. Even though our neighborhood had more houses, they were farther apart and Logan usually got tired after about 30 houses.

After trick or treating we all went back to my dad's house and drank a bunch of wine. It was fun to hang out with my brother, even if we did end up arguing politics.

I'm going to try to post some pictures here and there over the next few days. We have been doing some fun things while waiting for everything to work out. We will be at my dad's house for at least 3 more days before heading to GA. I can't wait to get to GA!

It's Done!

No, not the election, I lost that before I even voted. The house in DE closed today!!!!! We are NOW officially homeless. We close in GA Friday and move in Monday. I finally think this may actually happen.

Thank you so much for all the encouragement and good thoughts. It kept us going this last week. I can't wait to post from my new house!

Living in limbo

Things have not been going well. We were supposed to close Monday on the house in DE and still haven't closed! The buyer had some last minute loan problems. 2 days AFTER we were supposed to close, his bank (Bank of America) denied his loan. This was after giving final loan approval and even sending the HUD papers to the lawyers. We found this out Wednesday night. Needless to say, there was much hysteria Wednesday night. I was crying for hours, we weren't sure if we were going to have to put the house in DE back on the market, or if we were going to have to move back into the DE house. We can't buy the house in GA until we close on the one in DE.

The buyer is currently working on getting a loan with the mortgage company that is associated with the realtor's office. As of last night, everything looks good for closing on Wednesday. All the papers go to the final underwriter Monday, so we should know for sure if he gets the loan Monday evening. If we can close on the house in DE on Wednesday, we should be able to close in GA on Friday. And move in the following Monday.

This has been an extremely stressful week! Everyday they told us we were going to close that day and we sat around all day waiting to hear that it had happened, and every evening we got a call from the realtor telling us it hadn't happened again. All we have is 7 days worth of clothes, everything else is on the truck in GA! Logan and I are going to be staying with my dad until closing, Mark went back to stay in the empty house in DE. He figures at least that way he can go to work and it will help pass the time.

We need all the good thoughts and positive energy you have!!