My neighbor

This guy/gal has been showing up often at our house. This particular day, it was for a birthday party. One night, it showed up for dinner (found it in the chicken coop eating an egg). As long as it doesn't try for a slumber party, it will be welcome. Living where we do, I'll keep the "good" snakes. While this one isn't the best snake to have around (You want a King snake. They eat all the venomous ones), it does eat mice, rats, and other small rodents. So it has a home for now.

So tell me, do you have odd visitors at your home?

Isn't she a beauty? We have five of these in our chicken yard. They are definitely my favorite. I'll post pictures of the others in a few days. But these are called a barred rock. They are very curious, quiet, and full of personality. And great egg layers. I haven't quite figured out who is laying and who is not, but I'm pretty sure one of them is among the three that have started laying.

Since the chickens are so genteel, we let the kids in the pen with them often. Partly to keep the chickens acclimated, and partly to teach the kids to care for animals. So the other night, Paulee was in the pen because she wanted to pet one of the "girls". They were being very compliant, but she just wouldn't touch them. So as she stood there telling me all the reasons she couldn't pet the chicken by herself, this "girl" spotted some tiny little fingers. They were just hanging there. Right at chicken eye level. Being the wonderful Mom that I am, I stood there nice and quiet to see what would happen. The chicken cocked her head, took a hesitant step or two towards Paulee, and then lightening fast pecked Paulee's finger. Oh the commotion that started! Paulee jumped and yelled. The jumping spooked the chicken who then jumped and yelled. And that started a chain reaction amongst the other girls. Once Paulee was calm, she chased all the chickens in a circle for about five minutes, lecturing them about biting her.

The next day, she summarized the event with a perfect statement. "That dumb ol' chicken tried to eat me yesterday!" Guess I'd better stop calling our rooster "that dumb ol' boy".

Easter has come early (or late, whichever way you look at it)

The kids went out to feed the chickens some peaches. I was inside, still peeling, pitting, slicing, and storing peaches. In mid-slice, I heard a massive scream from the kids outside, and literally heard them galloping to the house. They tore the screen door off the hinges, and all yelled at different times, "There's an egg! There's an egg!" I heard it five different ways. As did the entire neighborhood. And yes, there it was, in the corner of the coop, a tiny little brown egg. I'm so proud of my girls!! And now over the next few days and weeks, we'll be getting 14 more little tiny eggs. The kids can't wait for the "real" eggs to start. They are envisioning scrambled and fried eggs every morning for breakfast. They're dreaming, but that's what they think. I don't make a big, hot breakfast every morning, and fresh eggs isn't changing that. But, Jeffie Jean is going to get to fix breakfast one morning a week this school year, so that will be one more hot breakfast for them all, and maybe it will be eggs.

And back to those peaches. A dear man from our church brought me a huge box of peaches Wednesday morning. Yep, not quite a week after Georgia Beth's birth. It has taken me three days to get them all processed. I knew I wouldn't have the stamina to can them, so I was just going to freeze them. Now here is where it gets interesting. I called Mom to find out how Grandma froze her peaches. I always call Mom to find out how Grandma did something. Because if Grandma had a way of doing something, that's just the way it should always be done. Always. Never deviate. Never improvise. Follow her directions to the tee. Yeah. Until this time. WHAT?! Did I just say that?! I didn't do it just like Grandma. How could I? She actually peeled each and every peach. Do you know how hard that is? And how long that takes? Now, I helped one year with the peaches. My job was to slice the peaches. She peeled them. And I promise, I couldn't keep up with her. She could peel a peach faster than I could slice them. My Mom mentioned that she like to peel them. Didn't blanch them because she thought that cooked them too much. Really, I think she took pride in her peach peeling abilities. I tried. I ended up with half the size of the peach when I finished, and it took me like five minutes just to get the skin off. So, I broke, and did it different. I blanched them. And then, I didn't dry freeze them either. Grandma just sprinkled hers with fresh fruit, and put them in zip top bags and froze them. And I chose to make a syrup for them, and freeze them that way. Man am I being a rebel! Mom said that the peaches texture changed, and I remember Grandma always fussing about freezer burn. (But then again, she worried about that with anything that spent even a day in the freezer) So after some research, I found that "wet freezing" significantly reduced freezer burn. So that's what I've done. As you can see, I've felt the need to confess. To whom, I have no idea, but I'm glad my secret is out. And I now have 13 quarts of sliced peaches in my freezer. And a massive batch of peach crisp. And the chickens even got a treat too. And I'm so glad I don't have to look at peaches anymore. Did I mention I can't stand peaches?

Too bad I can't find the cord to the camera. I'd love to share pictures of the egg, chickens, and peaches with you! And the clean kitchen too. Oh yeah, I even cleaned up after myself!

Boxing in

This is what we did today. We worked from first thing this morning, all the way to dinner. Well, Heath did. Kids took lots of play breaks, and if you look close, you can see the chair in which I did most of the supervising. There was a late lunch, and a longer break than intended, but everything that needed to get finished today was completed. And this "Little Hen House" that I had envisioned looks more like a "Cluckingham Palace" at this point! It just looks huge! And after we get the A-frames up this week, it will just look massive. But that's okay, the chooks will love the luxury, and Heath will love having his shop back!

I guess in all fairness, I will show you what didn't get done. This is today's laundry. At least of it. It's kind of hard to see, but it's quite a bunch. Trust me. I don't think I've seen the bottom of the pile in forever!

This is the dishes. Shhh... Don't tell, but I didn't wash them up last night after dinner. So now I have last night's to do, AND tonight's. Can we say FAIL! Oh well, it's just the way it goes around here some days. I promise, I'm not going to lose sleep over dirty dishes or laundry!

I thought that I would post these pics so I could squelch the rumors running around that I am Superwoman or that I "do it all". Nope. Some days I get work done, other days I play with my sewing machine, play outside, or answer the call of the couch. The hard part is to make sure the playing doesn't get more time than the cleaning!

It's in the mail!

I just finished my first online pillow order! It has turned out to be absolutely adorable. I have been wanting to do a "cowboy" themed pillow for someone, and jumped at the chance when I got an email from my sister-in-law's friend. And when I went outside to take pictures, some of our neighborhood friends wanted to join in. I tried really hard to get both the pillow and horses in one shot, but they were too tall, I didn't want to poke holes in the pillow with the barbed wire, and if I got the pillow too close to the horses, they tried to sample it. So we'll settle for a shot of the three at the fence and then another one of the pillow. It was also very difficult to do all by myself, so just pretend my hand isn't in the picture. It was so very hot outside as well. I don't know, somewhere around 105 degrees or something like that.

The pillow went together with only a few mishaps. Things that just are an irritant, nothing major that would be of interest. And I'll leave you with one last picture. But if you are Savannah Smiles, and don't want to know what the pillow looks like until it arrives in the mail in a few days, then I'd stop reading at the end of this paragraph. For all the rest of you readers, isn't this the most adorable little boy pillow! What fun he can have playing and imagining with this!

I told you it was adorable!