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.
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!
Now that I have a little more time on my hands, I’ve been taking tons of pictures; so I decided to make weekly post of photos. Hope you enjoy!
This enormous toad was hiding under our honeysuckle bush.
This is his “holy moly it’s hot out here” look. I only know this because I had the same look on my face.
This is my favorite pic this week……heck, this might be my favorite pic of the year! The girls got to walk next to the church float in the 4th of July day parade! Can you spot 5 pieces of candy flying through the air?
The garden is growing like crazzzy, well at least the parts that the bugs haven’t eaten. I picked my first zucchini yesterday, it was YUMMY. 🙂
The meat chickens are growing quickly and are definitely in the ugly stage right now.
After watching some episodes of I Love Lucy, Jo decided to dress up like someone from the 50’s. Just makes me smile!
The temps have actually swooped down into the 80’s the last couple of days. After weeks of being in the 100’s it’s a welcome change. 😀
Happy June everyone! The weather is so summer like here (96 today) but, we are still a week and a half away from finishing up the school year. I’m to the point that I’m counting down the hours instead of the days….bring on summer vacation! The weather has been so warm that we have been able to get tons of stuff done outside this spring. My garden is planted and everything is up!! I think that’s a record for us, I’m usually still trying to get things in the ground towards the end of June.
Here is a few pics of what’s been going on around here the last couple of months.Digger tilled the garden at the beginning of April.
Best buddies keeping an eye on everything.
Maple tree in the spring.
My sisters ewes lambed in early April. These cuties will be her 4-H lambs. I love me some baby lambs…..I just don’t want them at my house. 🙂
Oh how I LOVE spring time!
I love this guy too….even more than spring time. 😉
I decided to try the deep mulch method this year in my garden. Digger dumped a bunch of straw bails in the garden for me.
The girls helped me spread the straw.
Jo’s favorite part of spring is barn kittens.
Some friends gave us an abundance of onions. Homemade beer battered onion rings are AMAZING!
Baby corn!
More pics of my growing garden and maybe the recipe for the onion rings will be coming soon! 😉
Have a great June and may our great God bless you abundantly!
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.
January has come to an end and I’m hoping the fog has too. 🙂 We only had a couple days that the sun came out and we enjoyed them VERY much. Here’s a few photos I took during January.
This is Peach, Jo declares that she is “the fluffiest cat in the world”.
Mt. Adams on one of the sunny days.
Mary made these yummy rolls!!
Jo found this elk shed out behind the house! I’ve only seen elk around here once so we thought this was pretty cool.
We had a snowman theme in my classroom throughout January. 🙂
If any of you have any zombie issues….I know who to call!
So I got a little behind…..ok REALLY behind on posting ANYTHING!! Life just got away from me for a couple of months. I didn’t even take many pictures, but I figured I’d share a few from what I did get over the last three months and let everyone know that we’re still alive and well. 🙂
Jade got a puppy and Jo is in love….This is the most spoiled dog I know!
Mary went to work with Digger and saw Sasquatch. 🙂 (She took this one).
I have always had a rule about picking pumpkins….”If you can pack it you can have it.”
They might be getting to big for that rule. They managed to get their 38 and 41 pound pumpkins home safely.
I’ve been trying to spend a few hours every Saturday cooking for the freezer. I love having homemade extras in the freezer for breakfast and lunches.
Gunner grew LOTS in the last couple months.
We got our first snow really early and the weather has been pretty crazy. We’ve already missed 3 days of school due to ice storms. Hope you are all staying warm, safe and enjoying this holiday season so far!
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.
