The flock!

There's a stockpile of other pictures on my phone that I want to get up here, but here are my ladies as of today. Yes, we have two new ones. Lady Bird had a tragic accident -- she was smushed under a board. That was my real introduction to farming, I think. Anyway, the kids and I didn't want to just leave our flock depleted, so we got two more. Meet Daisy and Beaker. We've only just gotten them fully integrated with the others this morning!

Beaker

Daisy

Attila, Red, Becky, Colleen

Red with the babies

Peep, peep!

The big girls kept leaving the babies in the dust....

Chasing after "mama" (Flour)

By the way, this morning Jack let me know that he didn't name her "Flower," he named her "Flour".  This seems actually very appropriate to our family.  :)

Look, a flock!  I was worried the big girls were going to have a harder time accepting the babies, but they did great.

I love how they all stay in the shadow.

I started by having Daisy and Beaker penned off separately with Flour and Red.  You can see they still want to hang together with the ladies they know.  Yay, friends! :)

Attila in the back, Flour in the front.

Jack really can't resist them.  Especially since the others are so big already!

Becky was the worst pecker when I first tried to introduce them, so I'm really happy that she isn't even attacking them in the hen house now!

And here's where the girls go to bed.  You can barely see Daisy's bum right down near Becky.  :)

Chickens!

I'm getting quite excited at the prospect of keeping a few chickens in our yard.  Our lot is big enough to allow us a few and between Jack's love of finding eggs and Evie's love of anything bird-related, I'm sure they will be a welcome teaching and growing-up aid too.

I have no interest in starting a flock when the weather is still cold and wet, though (unless I happen upon some free chickens or another noteworthy enticement to get going right away)!  So I'll be waiting until spring to get the actual birds.  That way I can get through my learning curve while the weather is pleasant, and then be ready for next winter when it rolls around.  For now I'm reading up on chicken books from the library and eying the yard to decide on the best place for a coop!

22/365: country living

Today we got to see a baby cow.... and I mean a BABY. She was born this morning at 8:30 a.m., and Jack and I were able to go over and visit around 4:30 this afternoon. Jack got to touch her muzzle and admire her for a few minutes before she needed to go spend time with her mama. She was already up and around, being willful and adorably stubborn as Chris tried to lead her places. :)

I was going to take pictures but I left the camera at home and my phone's camera wasn't up to the low-lit task. I'm not too worried about it though -- we'll be seeing her again soon enough!

21/365: good idea!

Jack has finally figured out a way to play with Pooka without getting scratched!

17/365: Pooka

We haven't mentioned here that we got a new kitty! He showed up in the bushes outside Alex's work. Since he was all black and very loving, we pretty much had to bring him home with us.

A few weeks/months (who's counting?) and a vet trip later, he is a lot bigger than he was in these pictures, but just as much of a troublemaker.

Did I mention this kitty is very good at finding places to snuggle?

It took him about two weeks to realize that the food and water bowls weren't going anywhere. In the meantime we got this balloon kitty, whose belly was always bigger than his head!

Bo gave him a tentative approval to live with us.... but he's NOT going to be friends. We were worried about Bo being mean to him, but it turns out that Pooka is the bully.

Here is Pooka "to scale" next to some of Jack's toys. He really was a tiny kitty when he came to us!

His favorite part about being domesticated? This particular spot on the couch, which he naps in at least twice daily. :)

2/365: Farmer Jack

Chris recently bought a farm, and the place is pretty much heaven in Jack's opinion. There are dogs, kittens even more pliable than Pooka, goats, sheep, pigs, chickens, and rabbits. And that's not to mention two of his best friends, Daphne and Cyprus!

Plus, Chris makes a mean taco and he definitely loves when we have them for lunch. :)

Jack is just now able to skip his nap on some days and survive, sanity intact, until bedtime. We usually take it easy for the afternoon, reading books and doing other quiet activities. Well, today he did skip his nap and then we decided that to fill our afternoon, we would go to Chris's farm and see how big the pigs had grown since our last visit.

We ended up tromping around the farm all afternoon while Chris fed the animals. Jack was excited to see them all. He even went in the pig pen and got knocked down in the mud by three curious pigs. He didn't mind, even when he tripped and fell right back into the muck after I had just rescued him!

The big hit was the hen house, where Daphne found two chicken eggs, and Chris found five. Jack was totally impressed, especially when Chris gave him an egg to take home! Here is the single photo we managed to capture immediately after returning home: (Do you know how hard it is to photograph a tired toddler?)


Here is my darling little boy with his boots on the wrong feet, peppered with mud splotches, exhausted beyond belief, and yet still totally excited about the egg he earned for his help doing farm chores.

Right after this, he watched Daddy crack and scramble the egg. Then he ate it (followed by a few more) and snuggled on the couch briefly before conking out. All in a day's playing, right?

more fair pics

Hey, cows! Last time I was at the fair (several years ago) I saw a GIANT cow. I literally wouldn't have been surprised to hear it weighed two tons! We did a quick look, but we didn't see any particular monsters this time. Just these guys:

Of course we had to see the petting zoo! Jack and I quickly got lost in the crowd of animals, so no more pics! (Alex stayed on the outside with the phones.)

Jack made sure his daddy kept up. :)

Apparently someone shrink-rayed this horse! There was a whole paddock that was supposed to hold mini horses, but when we went there all it held was draft horses. Was someone playing a joke? This poor guy, the only refugee, was wandering the streets!

Here the draft horses were getting readied for their competition, which was incredible! I have a whole series of that to post, but I have to choose the best pictures, and get the pictures off Alex's phone too. In the meantime, here they are all gussied up and ready for the show:

State Fair, part 1

Of course, our camera ran out of batteries nearly as soon as we got there. We used our phones after that, but of course they're never as good.... Here's what I managed to snag with the REAL camera:

Entering the fair. What IS that giant thing?? (A ferris wheel!)

Daddy, it's huge!

The fair was VERY overwhelming with so many people, so we went to the horse arena where there were no shows going on. There were three horses in there -- a much more manageable thing than 500 humans!

Horse #1: This one was very good at walking past us and being pretty.

This one was gorgeous, but didn't come near us too often!

And this pony was a stallion. The big horses were mares, so their handlers were warned about this feisty little guy. :)

Next we saw chickens!

And bunnies!

And then Jack saw the world's biggest chicken. Whoa!

This guy's cage was twice the size of the others!

Holy smokes, cows! I think this guy was the second place winner. They were about to go into the ring and be announced.

...and I think this guy was 3rd place.

I wasn't able to get any pictures of the actual activity, but we saw mutton busting! That's when you tie a rope around a sheep's armpits, stick a little kid on it, holding the rope, (all we saw were under 5 years old), and let the kid ride the sheep bronco-style! I love Jack's face in reaction to this: