My awesome boy!

Look what my boy made me! He's the best.

Pantry pictures

Mark made some shelves for my food storage room and I've been able to get everything organized. I love it! It really appeals to the side of me that likes organization.

Here is one set of shelves where we keep our main staples.

This bookcase has been converted to our can storage.

The little bookcase is our empty jar storage.

Here is the other set of shelves on the other side of the room. It has our baking goods and other assorted food stuff.

As you can see we only have 5 gallons of water stored so far. I need to make that my next priority.

In other news, all the chickens are fine. No more signs of the hawks. And next week is meat bird processing week. I looked around a little to see if I could find anyone to do it for me, but no luck. I'm not really looking forward to it, but I know I can do it.

The hawk returned

Yesterday evening, Logan and I were sitting in the pasture with the goats and sheep. Our beautiful free rare chick, Dusty Miller was out there with us.


The chicks (who aren't really chicks anym0re) love to come out on pasture with us because we stir up all the little grasshoppers and they eat them. Dusty Miller was following the sheep around, when out of nowhere a hawk swooped in and grabbed Dusty Miller! Right in front of us. Dusty Miller put up a fight, the hawk dropped him and moved in to grab him again. By then Logan and I were both up and running over to Dusty, while yelling at the hawk. The hawk dropped him again and flew off.

Dusty Miller was freaked out, but ok. I couldn't believe the hawk grabbed him not 20 feet from us! I think it was a different hawk than the one that got Kudzu, it seemed smaller. I hadn't heard any hawks for about a month and had let me guard down. I guess they are still around.

If I can get Buttercup to snap out of her broodiness, will she start laying again? Or do we have to wait out the whole 21 days before she will lay again? Not having any eggs at all is a pain! My new girls should start laying in about a month. Then we will be swimming in eggs.

Buttercup is acting weird.

My laying hen Buttercup isn't acting right. She's been on her nest for a week acting broody. She won't leave the nest and makes terrible noises at us if we try to get her out. However, she hasn't laid in a week either. Why would she be acting broody if she isn't laying? I got her out of the coop and checked her vent. I didn't see an egg or anything. If she is egg bound would I see the egg, or do I need to feel inside to see? There are no signs of broken eggs anywhere. I just think she isn't laying.

Any ideas what could be going on and what I could do to help?

Trip to the creek

While my sister was visiting, we all went to the creek. The animals love to run down the hill to the creek. You can see the people do too.
The people get tired before the animals do.
The sheep always lag behind and have to run even faster to catch up.
Once at the creek, eating is the order of the day. We pull the branches down so the animals can reach the good leaves. Here we've recruited my sister's boyfriend to help.
The goats will use each other to balance off of to try to get the high leaves.
Crossing the creek on logs is fun too! Especially if you play king of the hill and knock someone into the creek.

More hanging with the animals

My sister came again this weekend. It is always great to see her! And she always gets great pictures. Here are a few of them. I'll have lots more this week.

Pictures for Grandma

My Grandma requested more critter pictures. Who can say no to Grandma?

Sorry for the long time between posts. I teach for Kaplan University Online and one term ended so I had to do all the grading and get grades submitted. Then the next term started, which takes a lot of set up time. And my dad visited over the weekend.

My cute boy. He's grown so much!

The guineas are doing great. I'm not sure I've even posted about them yet. We got them when they were about a week old. They are so much fun to watch! The run in a pack and make a racket.
Nebula
IO
Some of the goaties.

I'm way behind on reading blogs, but trying to catch up.