Hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year and are surviving the winter weather. Here are a few pics from the last couple of months.
Jess turned this oak stump into…..
this bowl and gave it to my mom for Christmas. He claims he broke every tool he has on it. (I think it was worth it) 😉
My ladies did not think much of all the snow and ice.
But……
First egg!
they finally started earning their keep!! I’m getting 8 or 9 eggs a day now.
We’ve had snow and ice and slush and rain and now mud….more moisture than we know what to do with!
We got to go sledding….
Guess who had the most fun!?
Rebel LOVES the snow and the excitement of sledding turned him into a little terror!!
With all the snow and ice the chickens weren’t able to get out and munch on any greens so I started sprouting wheat for them. They LOVED it and it’s much easier for them to digest than whole wheat kernels.
We also fed them dried sun flower heads that we had saved from the garden.
Just a few random pics from January.
Can’t believe February is already here!! Have a good one everybody!
Wow, November is over……Christmas here we come!! Lots happened in November, as I look back through the month of pictures it seems like these things happened 6 months ago not 3 weeks ago!! Time sure does fly when you’re having fun. 🙂
We started off the month with a trip to the Oregon Coast.
The aquarium was tons of fun!
I finally finished harvesting the rest of the dried beans. I only got 4 pounds this year so I think I need to plant more than 3/4 of a row of drying beans next year.
I shared a photo Jo took last month of the barn owl and this month she got an even better shot of him (or her?)! Anyway, he (or she) has been hanging around a lot so we decided to name him (or her) Ollie…..can Ollie be a boy or a girl name???
Photo By: Jo
Still waiting for these ladies to start laying eggs. We are down to one month!!
Earlier in the month we had frosty mornings and….
rainy afternoons with lots and lots of rainbows!
Our neighbors horses kept escaping from their pen and headed strait for our green lawn every time. The girls had a blast petting them while they grazed.
A couple days after the horses came visiting I woke up to this guy in our garden. For some reason the girls didn’t go pet him. 😉
The last week or so the weather has been cold, cold, cold!
And frosty, frosty, frosty…..
Hope you all had a grand Thanksgiving and are looking forward to Christmas. The girls got the tree up and decorated over the weekend. I LOVE that they are old enough to do this (by themselves) and still young enough to want to!! 😀
We harvested 4 wheelbarrow loads of squash and pumpkins out of the garden! We gave away A LOT and still have plenty to eat through the winter.
I’m so happy with our onion harvest this year.
Photo Taken By: Jo
Jo’s puppy, Rebel.
The cutest nephew came to visit!
Jo made shrimp egg rolls for a school project. They were honestly the best I’ve ever tasted….she got an A, I LOVE homeschooling. 🙂
We also finished harvesting the sunflowers. The chickens will love these this winter.
Photo By: Jo
The barn owl came back for a visit.
Photo By: Mary
Warning, scary chicken ahead…..
Poor, poor, poor Tiny….molting season is not being good to her! Last month she won a grand champion ribbon and this month she would definitely win the ugliest chicken award. 🙂
These little ladies out grew the small coop so we moved them to the big one. I keep pointing to the nesting boxes and telling them to get with it! Unfortunately, I still have two months to wait.
Love all the fall colors!
These two have been giggling for days because we are headed to the Oregon Coast on Monday. Their bags have been packed for about a week now. 🙂
I just got an Instagram account and I’m a little obsessed! (it’s so fun!) So come follow along! (the icon is above my picture at the top of this screen) I’ll be sharing photos of our beach trip next week, and any other pics I snap with my phone.
Other than a sinus infection (yuck yuck yuck!) that lasted a couple of weeks, I had a really good September. We’ve been enjoying the lovely fall weather and the garden is STILL giving lots of good stuff!
The cantaloupe is delicious! We’ve eaten seven of them so far and more are coming. I keep praying that the frost doesn’t come for a few more weeks so I can finish harvesting as everything continues to ripen.
The girls are going to have some nice big pumpkins to carve. 🙂
After raising meat chickens over the summer it feels like these little layers are growing slowly, but they ARE growing and will need to be moved to the bigger coop before long.
I think at this point the Golden Laced Wyandottes are my favorites.
We started to harvest the sunflowers that the wind blew over. Most of them aren’t quite ready yet though.
Jo’s puppy grew lots this last month!
Jo got her hair cut and her ears pierced. My little tom boy is starting to care about hair, nails, clothes and jewelry! WHAT happened!?
August was a blur!! Birthdays, dogs, 4-H books, fires, harvesting, dogs, the fair, starting school, butchering chickens, and did I mention dogs? I thought about writing a post called “How to say no to more dogs”….wait, we don’t know how to say no to more dogs. I guess the post should be called “How to spend $2,436.70 on dog food every month”.
(OK, I exaggerated a little, or a lot, but SHEEEESH!)
Anyway, here are a few pics of our crazy August.
The chicks I ordered at the beginning of August are all doing very well. Four more months and we should have fresh eggs again, at least more than two a day!
I love grocery shopping in the garden!!
We got a new food processor!! Just in time to help with harvest. Thanks Aunt Stella!!!! We LOVE it! (Can you tell by the look on Mary’s face?)
This is Mary’s bantam hen “Tiny” and that is a small snake she has. She stole it from one of the other hens and slurped it down like a noodle! I had a little trouble keeping my breakfast down after watching that.
In my last post I mentioned that we told Jo that she could have a puppy for her 11th birthday. It took a little while to find one, but she did.
I really don’t think he could be any cuter and she is IN LOVE! Meet Rebel:
Two days after she brought Rebel home, Jade came home and brought his dog. He had to leave him with us because he couldn’t find a house or apartment where he could keep a pit bull.
Seriously!? Who could not love that face!!
We missed Gunner and are glad to have him back! The other dogs missed him too and Rebel thinks Gunner is his best buddy. They spend hours wrestling around the house…..highly entertaining for us!
We had some interesting sunsets in August because of some horrible fires in the area.
Waiting to show her chicken.
The girls did AWESOME at the fair with their chickens!
Mary got Grand Champion Market Chicken and Jo got Reserve Champion Market Chicken! They both got blue ribbons in showmanship and Mary’s chicken “Tiny” (the one eating the snake above) was the Grand Champion of her breed! They also did VERY well with their 4-H books. All that hard work paid off……literally. They both sold their chickens at the market livestock sale and got $250.00 and $375.00…..for CHICKENS that only cost them 10 dollars to raise!!!! We live in a great community with great people that support our kids! Of course their Papa and Grandma also helped in this area 😉
Photo By: Jo
The last day of the fair the girls and I enjoyed watching the rodeo and Jo took a bunch of pictures.
Photo By: JoPhoto By: JoPhoto By: Jo
And then there is the cutest nephew EVER!
The garden is still over flowing!
Photo By: Digger
My sunflowers grew 13 feet tall!
Photo By: Digger
This is the first time I’ve ever been successful growing cabbage!
After the fair we started off our home school year with a field trip to OMSI. (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.)
It was a great day and a wonderful way to start off the school year!! We are easing our way into a full school week. The rest of their books will be here next week so we will be in full swing after that!
Hope you all had a wonderful August too and are getting used to the cooler weather!
We had a WONDERFUL last week of July. 🙂 The summer is just flying by!! The wind stopped blowing and the temps went up again. My husband and I are LOVING the warm summer nights and we’ve had some gorgeous sunsets! We’ve also been enjoying lots of garden produce.
Hope you enjoy some photos from our week.
My biggest pumpkin so far.
Odie turned 11 this month (77 dog years!)
Just about ready to harvest a couple watermelons with several more on the way!!
Made fluffy, whole wheat, huckleberry pancakes by adding a cup of berries to this recipe.
Went swimming to cool off a bit and spent lots of time working on 4-H books, posters and demonstrations to get ready for the fair coming up later this month.
Two summers ago we raised several Cornish Cross Meat Chickens. Meat chickens were a brand new adventure for us and even though we lost a couple and taking them to the fair was a disaster, we had fun, and they tasted GREAT! I blogged about the whole experience and you can read each weeks post starting here.
This year my girls wanted to take meat chickens to the fair again but didn’t want to take Cornish Cross. I did some research and Ranger Broilers seemed to be the next obvious choice. They are bred to be a fast growing meat chicken just like the Cornish Cross, but they are good foragers; unlike the Cornish Cross that like to sit in front of the feeder and stuff themselves. I am excited about comparing these two breeds.
We ordered 15 chicks from Meyer Hatchery and they arrived June 11th. When we got them home we realized that they had sent us an extra chick. A few days later, I began to suspect that the extra chick was a Cornish Cross. A few days after that I was sure of it, now I can compare the two breeds while they grow!!
All 16 chicks were active, cute, and very entertaining. All of us agree these are the quietest chicks we’ve ever had. At 2 weeks they are still pretty cute but that doesn’t last for long.
As you can see the Cornish Cross sticks out like a green bean in a fruit salad…..ok, that was bad, but I was trying to come up with something other than “he sticks out like a sore thumb” and well, that’s the only “appropriate” one I could think of.
We weighed them at 4 weeks.
The Ranger broilers weighed in at an average of 2 pounds 6 ounces, and the Cornish Cross weighed 2 pounds 10 ounces. At 4 weeks they have eaten about 60 lbs. of feed. As soon as I think they are big enough we will let them out for at least a couple hours every day so they can forage for grass and bugs. So far, other than growing just a bit slower than the Cornish Cross the only difference between the two breeds is that the Rangers seem to be more curious and friendly.
I’ll post an update in a few weeks and then a final post after we butcher them at the end of August. Thanks for following along!
What a month!! It has been so beautiful, and the unusually mild weather has brought with it early signs of spring. Some of which are beautiful and cute and some….. well, lets just say I could live without ticks and snakes being out already.
I don’t ever remember being able to do so much “spring cleaning” outside of the house in February and March. It has felt great to enjoy the sunshine and get my hands dirty already. 🙂
Hope you enjoy some pics from March.
Photo By: Mary
Photo By: Mary
queenofthereddoublewide.com
The orchards down on the river are all in bloom!!
Mary made these cute little coconut macaroon nests with chocolate covered almonds for the eggs.
We finally got last years pigs in the freezer! Oh how I love a freezer full of pork that my parents raised!!
First time mowing the lawn this spring! This is one job I don’t have to ask her twice to do. 🙂
I got my raspberries trimmed back and thinned out, now they are growing like crazy
Hope you all have a productive and fun April. Happy Easter!
I know the weather was crazy in some places during February but here we mostly enjoyed breezy sunshine and temps in the 50’s during the day. It got me dreaming about gardens and baby animals. Hope you are getting to enjoy some sunshine too wherever you are, even if there is snow on the ground!
Here are some photos of our February.
The ladies started laying a few eggs again.
This is his “I really want to chase that chicken” look.
This is the view I enjoy when I go for a walk.
The dogs obviously found something way more interesting to do than walk with me.
Oh look, the red double wide…..fancy that!
This is my favorite chicken, so sweet!
The official pooper scoopers! As you can see one is scooping poop and the other is pretending that she was not just singing into the end of a long stick. HAHA gottcha!
Jo and Digger repurposed this old cabinet into a “cat house”. Now the dogs can’t eat the cat food. It’s kinda funny to watch them try though!!
In the classroom, we celebrated Valentines Day and studied Polar Bears.
July was full of nice weather, many trips to the pool, and a more relaxed schedule than the past few months. On the 7th I officially became a mother-in-law and a grandma!! I couldn’t feel more blessed. 🙂 I’m so glad Jade and his family live close and we get to see them almost everyday! Dusty turned 18 on the 29th….wow that went FAST!
Thanks for stopping by, I hope you enjoy my photos from July.
Mr. Busy playing in the water and laughing at his Aunties!
A pair of swallows built a nest above my kitchen window. I wasn’t thrilled at first considering the mess, but it was so fun to watch them grow. Four babies quickly grew up in this tiny nest with mom and dad swooping in and out all day long to feed them, (that’s either mom or dad on the far left).
Like all babies they grew up too fast, and now are flying around catching bugs. Now I need to wash the bird poop of the side of my house and kitchen window. Oh joy!
Two rattle snakes in one week is enough for me!
The bird whisperer! Hahahahaha
Mary’s sweet little bantam.
Bacon and ham!
Jo was supposed to be practicing for the fair with her little black hen. It didn’t take long for her other 2 favorite, spoiled pets (Stinky and Boots) to realize they wanted to be on the table so they could get some attention too!
Rebel LOVES the snow and the excitement of sledding turned him into a little terror!!
With all the snow and ice the chickens weren’t able to get out and munch on any greens so I started sprouting wheat for them. They LOVED it and it’s much easier for them to digest than whole wheat kernels.
At 2 weeks they are still pretty cute but that doesn’t last for long.
