BIG NEWS!!!!
Those guinea eggs are now guinea keets! Here are some pictures. Dad standing close by and ever protective Mom.
I have been outside (MAN is it humid) putting up metal posts and stringing the black netting on the posts to give them a safe place. I am afraid the emus may stomp the babies if they see them running about.
They are SO CUTE!!!
You can see in the last picture one is dry and one is wet...so some are still hatching. :)
Did you know you can grow silkie chickens from seed? Look, here are some blooms opening right now...
Right before my eyes...another bloom opened!
Uh oh, this one is over ripe! It fell right off the plant! ;)
Okay, so maybe I didnt grow them from seed! These are those same weeds growing in the garden area taking over everything. If only they did produce silkies then I wouldnt mind so much! ;)
I was reading the Bedlam Farm Journal this morning. I subscribed to it, so I get alerts for every entry. One entry in particular made me flinch. Read here and you will know why.Coquette
I know chickens are not for everyone, but you have to give them a chance, and you have to know how to lure them in to be friends with you and enjoy your company.
Usually, you have to get them very young or as a chick, and pay a lot of attention to them. Hold them, talk to them. Give them treats like I did Phoenix. Phoenix gets a plate of lima beans or I will cut some corn off my cob, if we have cornbread he likes to have some on a little plate of his own.
But food is not the only way to a chickens heart. All chickens love to have under their wings, in the pit rubbed. They love to have the back of their neck scratched.
I have so many stories of proof that chickens do love humans and want their attention and affection.
Take Blue for instance. He is always up for my affection. He will make the sweetest little cooing sounds to me and then I give him a good massage under the wings. He stands right there and loves it. There is no food involved in this exchange, just love and affection.
All my roosters that are affectionate to me will dance for me. Phoenix and Blue do it all the time.
Bonnie and Clyde, they love to be held. Especially Bonnie. She will fly right up onto you and snuggle down and be so content.
You could hold Phoenix all day and he wouldnt mind.
Look at Hank, that recent picture of Hank and my Mama, he cooed and just talked away to her.
You can go out and pick up most any of my chickens and cuddle them without protest.
It is because I have spent time with them. Some more than others.
Now I wont lie, I do have a few, that are just out of their minds. Take Alan for instance, as hard as I tried to get him to warm up to me and love me, he refused and to this day is always looking for a chance to tear me to pieces. He is just an aggressive insane rooster. That is why he is kept penned.
Then there is poor Everett. I talk to him all the time, he is a nervous bird. I can tell that he wants to be friends, but his fear just overwhelms him and he runs from me all the time.
Some breeds are just predispositioned to be friendly, like the giant cochins. They are very laid back and will tolerate handling easily. Same goes for my silkie hens Thelma and Louise.
Lets not forget Rod. My white Sultan rooster. He LOVES me. I can just talk to him through the pen door and he gets all excited. Starts dancing and clucking. If I pick him up then he is just the happiest boy you could ever want.
Some chickens are not as bright as others. The same goes for any species, including humans. So if your chicken is insane like Alan, or the best house chicken in the world like Phoenix, its because they are all individuals and everyone is different.
I am writing this in the event that Mr. Katz may take the time to come over and visit my journal. I did send him a short email and a couple of pictures. I doubt he will, as he is a famous and busy man. But, just in case he does, I would like to sway one more person, that is a professed animal lover, to give chickens a chance. You just have to know how to be with a chicken, thats all it is.
Here are the two pictures I sent him. I found Shelby and Phoenix relaxing one day last year out on the porch. I told her to remove her hands to show that Phoenix was not being held down and that he was actually relaxing and enjoying her company. He never jumped up, never moved, just gave me that look, like WHAAAT? LOL
Thankyou all, so much. For making me feel comfortable and not so embarrassed. Your words mean a lot to me. In this country, these days being overweight is increasingly common, yet it is shunned like you have a disease and must do your best to get rid of it. No one wants to be overweight, its just the way it is. My Mama always says, just think, if we were all alike how boring that would be. So thankyou for allowing be to be me, visually.
So how hot is it? Its sweltering. I need to grow a set of gills to breathe outside. The temperature is 96, but the heat index is 115, and yes, it feels all of 115 to me. If your not in a pool, there is no reason to be outside. Its just brutal.
This is the position most commonly seen during the first hour the chickens are let out. My babies, they are just so happy when I let them out. I am beginning to relax some now and not be so fearful of more attacks. I am not seeing any evidence of any predators left hanging around waiting for a meal since Ian shot that fox.
Our garden is a wash. I dont know what this weed is that you see, but it is prolific and grows like mad. The pigs like it, so I pull a lot of it up and feed it to them every day.
Down in the ground there somewhere are red potatoes. I want Ian to dig them up so we can at least have those. Last year we had such a bounty. I was canning and pickling like mad and had so much to work with. This year it was just not meant to be.
One of my sweet old girls below..they are my first babies I ever raised. She is a speckled sussex. Just hanging out with me while I take pictures. She is six years old now.
A couple of weeks ago I took the americauna girls and the big yellow girl out of the grow pen and put them in with the layers. After a week cooped with the established hens and roosters everything has settled down and everyone is getting along better. Hank knows his breed, he is already mating some of these young ladies. They should start laying soon now. Its so hot they may hold off til September. They are very friendly and come right up to me, standing all around me while I took pictures so I sat on the ground with them and spent some time showing them to pluck the grass and eat it. Two of them caught on right away. They are used to being fed only feed, so they have to learn to forage now along with getting feed. Thats what makes the eggs so rich in the yolk.
Caught in mid scratch there...putting her foot down.
I have a couple of pictures of my hibiscus. Two of the plants dont have an open bloom on them today, but here are the two that did. The first one is called a double dip. I have another plant that is a double dip that has red flowers too. The second is a more traditional hibiscus. Here are the flowers.
Good old Hank down below. The white americauna is his best girlfriend. He loves her...too much sometimes.
Chanteclear got a little too close to suit Hank, so he assumes the stance after running at him, warning him to keep his distance from his harem.
More pictures loading...will stop this entry and make another with more pictures this afternoon. Try to stay cool wherever you are. Its not suitable for man or beast out there today.
So yep...thats me. The picture that used to be there...well, I bet it must have been a good ten years old. I would have put up a newer picture sooner, but I absolutely hate pictures of myself. Funny, coming from someone who adores her camera and has so much fun with it.
I had just died my roots, which werent even roots anymore. I looked like a freak with half brown half blonde hair. I tend to get busy and dont tend to my hair like I should. Someone should yell, "HEY LADY, PICK A COLOR!" LOL
Yep, I reckon I am fat. I am also 40. I have come to terms with that, mostly. I wasnt always fat. I used to be a whopping 110 pounds in my earlier years. Then I met Ians mom. Now that woman, she could cook. Now I am not blaming her for my plight. I am just saying that I never really realized how much one could enjoy food until then. Her cooking inspired my cooking and well, for a long time I cooked like that. Chicken and dumplins, pot roast with carrots, onions, and potatoes cooked in the slow cooker all day. Rice, potatoes, biscuits. Everything had to have cheese on it, or gravy.
I dont cook like that much anymore. Smaller portions, no fried meat, only baked if I can help it.
I am not a sedentary person. I am always doing stuff. Y'all know that. I dont know why I am still fat. I know part of it is heriditary. I just keep thinking if I DO enough, keep myself busy enough, I will lose some weight. Even when we got up to walking two miles a day at the Silver Comet Trail...it won't come off. Yes, I had my whatchamacallit checked. Its late, cant think of it right now, but yall know what I am talking about.
I make no apologies...that picture is me. I may be fat, but I am still me inside, and frankly, I like me, even love, who I am.
Maybe one day I will be able to lose this weight. I wish I had the courage to do what one Jlander is doing (no names, its private). She is losing the weight fast and I am so proud of her. I know she feels so much better already.
I had Ian take about ten pictures of me sitting in the rocker on the front porch. I told him I would hate them all, but would be able to choose one hopefully.
So thats as good as it gets folks. There I am, warts and all. ;)
Wow it was a hot one today. We had a temperature of 101 with a heat index of 111. All the weather guessers missed that we were going to have some thunderstorms tonight. Someone forgot to tell them, because we had the wind really kicking up at dusk and then it poured. An hour and a half later I am still hearing thunder. Looking at the radar I dont think we are done yet. So I am up, waiting til it is over so Tip can go out before bedtime. She is scared of storms so we have to wait it out or she will be out there running all over the place trying to 'escape' the storm.
We have a new baby pigeon! This time I put bricks all around the cage so the baby cant wiggle out of there. There were two eggs, but a couple of days ago it got kicked to the back of the cage. I put it back, but I dont think it was any good because I found it broken at the back of the cage again. Odd, it looked as if it had hatched the way it was broken in half, but there was no second baby. The other egg shell was accounted for with the new baby. No new babies to report under the mother guinea. I wonder if any of them are even fertile. I never have seen any mating going on. We will see. If they dont hatch in another week I will have to go in and take a look for myself, because by then they will be way overdue to have hatched.
The days are getting brutally hot for the animals. I went out this morning before light and started chores. I made sure everyone had plenty of fresh cool water. I put six 2 liter bottles of water in the freezer to drop in the water buckets in the heat of the day to cool the water off some. I just can't imagine having to drink warm water in this heat. I got Shelby to bring in all the rabbits water bottles about three o'clock and filled them with cold water from the fridge. The rain though unexpected was a blessing. It cooled things off a lot.
I don't know what is worse sometimes, the cold months or the hot months. Both are hard on the animals in their own way.
I wanted to let anyone know that might have visited her from time to time that Olive Riley has passed on. She was the oldest blogger in the world. She lived in Australia. Here is her blog, or BLOB, lol, as she liked tocall it. LifeofRiley
This link takes you to the blog entry about her passing on. You can click on the link at the top left of her blog to go back to where Eric writes entries for her. She was truly an amazing lady and I enjoyed reading her journal. Ray at Dads Tomato Garden was the one that had her blog link one day a while ago and I took up to reading about her.
We had a very nice weekend. Friday night Ian and I sat out on the front porch contemplating evolution, dinosaur bones and other worldly thoughts. I just recently watched a special on National Geographic Channel where there was a three foot tall homo erectus found in some remote place (Indonesia? My memory fails me now) in the middle of nowhere in a cave, where there was a isolated small village of people that were also of short stature, but not that short. There was an elder there believed to be over a hundred years old. He was also the the shortest in the village at four foot one inch.
I have been watching that channel a lot lately. I am really hung up on the Dog Whisperer. He is just amazing. A lot of what he applies is common sense if you just think about it a bit. I still have not seen him address one issue in particular and that is fear of storms. I would really like to know how he handles this. He has done so many different rehabilitations, but I havent seen this one. On a funny note, Ian and I go around poking each other in the arm with two fingers and saying HEY...SHH...like he does to redirect the dogs mind away from something the dog is obsessing about...lol. Anyway, I just love that channel, it really stimulates my mind. I also love their magazine.
Saturday we went galavanting all day. Ian wasnt feeling too good. I think he might have gotten some stomach bug or something. He was up early Saturday morning leaving the dinner from Friday night for the porcelain gods, if you know what I mean. He went back to bed after a shower for a little while, and felt some better when he got up. We went to that mall up in North Rome for a while. We cruised the mall, checking out shops. Shelby came home with some new Off The Wall Vans. High top blue checkerboards, they were really cute on her. She got a funny monkey face sleeping mask to go over her eyes and some blue, yes blue hair extention thingies. She wanted to actually die to strips of her hair blue, but this seemed to please her, so we avoided that for now. Hey, I cant really talk. When I was sixteen I had long blonde hair with a jet black streak down the back. Remember when everyone grew tails? I had one, the black part grew longer than the blonde part. I wasnt alone in this. My best friend had brown hair and had a tail that was longer and was bleach blonde. Yes, I was a wild child in those days. ;)
We had some Chick File' at the mall for lunch then headed to the Barnes and Noble. We spent a couple of hours in there easily. Shelby found a new series of books to read. I got The Wheels of Darkness and another Bentley Little book, The Return. For anyone that has ever thought Walmart was taking over the world...The Store, by Bentley Little is a must read. They never SAY its Walmart, but The Store will really creep you out, but in a fun good way, if you like that sort of thing, which I do.
I picked out a book for Ian. He just wasnt feeling too good at all. The new Janet Evonovich (sp?) book, the thirteenth one.
After that we went to Walmart and got our groceries and got home early for a change.
Sunday was very leisurely. We didnt do a whole lot at all...but that was just fine, thats the way we like it. :)
So I reckon I am done rambling. Just thought I would sit here and make an entry. I was reading some new journals, farm journals. One in particular is really an eye pleaser and has a good story teller to boot. Donna, if you havent found this person already, you will like this journal. Paula, you too. Everyone that likes to read about border collies, sheep, chickens, and on top of it all this guy does hospice work. He takes one of his border collies in for them. He takes some really awesome pictures too. Take a look back a few pages worth, I dont think you will be disappointed at all. Bedlamfarm
Its almost eleven oclock here now, so I am going to stop. I will see y'all tomorrow. Night night, sleep tight, dont let the bed bugs bite.
I liked this Meme, feel free to snag it and do your own if you like.
If you came to my house…
You would see: That my screen porch is just perpetually a mess. Between Phoenix kicking pine shavings everywhere and the trash bags I throw out the back door, and it being a catch all, I just give up most of the time...lol. You would see I just cut the grass, my new ferns hanging from the front porch, and Bubba and Everett. They are always wandering out front (Roosters).
I’d probably feed you: If you stayed for supper tonight you would get baby back ribs off the grill, ceasar salad and fresh corn on the cob.
And offer you this to drink: Pink lemonade, sweet tea, coffee, Coke.
I’d undoubtedly ask if you’d read: Any James Patterson book, he is awesome. I am reading Book of the Dead right now. This is the fourth book of the Pendergast books.
I’d want to play this music for you: Alan Jacksons Its Time For A Good Time. I cant seem to stop playing that song over and over. Its my newest CD I bought, so I have to go OCD on it and play it into the ground. ;)
I’d want to tell you about: My chickens
I’d probably suggest a game of: Rockband on Playstation 2. You want to sing, play the guitar, or play the drums?
I would definitely show off: My animals
I might get on the computer and show you: Pictures
If it was a long enough visit, we might watch: Desperado, City of Angels, if you hadnt seen them before. Or you could choose from what I have and we could watch that.
I am adding this one since Paula mentioned it!
I would share my....POOL! Lets go swimmin' y'all! :)
