Abby

We have a new smiling face in our goat lot. Her name is Abby and she is Angel's mother. A neighbor called us Sunday evening and asked if we wanted her because the people who owned her had sold all of their goats and had taken down all of their fences. She was wandering the neighborhood with nothing to protect. One of their neighbors was threatening to shoot her and the neighbor who was making the threat thought that she was just too good a dog to be shot.

So, I got the call and went directly to my DH, something strange happened, I am still in shock. He said that I could have her. It may have been because I was told that she was probably bred to Angel's father and he thought that we could sell the pups but when we went to pick her up, it was obvious that she isn't pregnant.

The goats and chickens took to her right away, but Angel was not happy. They didn't remember each other and there was no happy reunion. At first Abby was afraid of Angel and didn't want a conflict but then she started snarling and growling every time Angel got close to her. Finally they fought tooth and toenail, Angel is bigger but Abby has more experience, so she prevailed. When dinner was served, we found out who has probably been missing some meals and won't be missing anymore. Abby will not share food under any circumstances.

Abby is the dog closest to the camera in these pictures. She is very friendly, even with strangers which is a quality that Angel does not possess, she does not like strangers in any form or fashion. However, we were told that Abby will not tolerate anyone messing with her goats.

In researching Great Pyrenees as Livestock Guardian Dogs and getting expert advice, I learned that it is best to have two. Since I was lucky to get one, I never asked for a second one. But I can already see why two is best, since Abby has arrived, Angel is already less keyed up, her stress levels are way down. She felt that the goats were totally her responsibility and she wouldn't let them out of her sight. She has started leaving the goat lot now to do some patrolling and checking on Cooter, the billy goat, who lives up the hill. She is also coming to the barn/house for some cuddling. I think that she will be more of a guard dog for the whole farm now.

Deviled Eggs

Leaving nothing to chance, this was my final experiment. I brought the water to a full boil in a small pan with 1/2 tsp. of salt and a splash of vinegar added. Then I placed all of the room temperature, old and new, extra large eggs in the boiling water with tongs. I boiled them for 5 minutes then removed them from the heat and covered them with a lid. I let them set for 20 minutes before removing them from the water with tongs and placing them in ice water for 10 minutes. Next I placed them in the freezer for 10 minutes, then peeled them under cold tap water.

The results were these; some of the eggs were overdone, some of them peeled perfectly, some of them wouldn't peel at all and the older eggs were no different from the fresh eggs. I give up!

Experiment #2

I tried bringing the eggs to a boil in salt and vinegar water, then removing from heat, covering with a lid and letting set 20 minutes, then rinsing in cold water and placing in the freezer for 5 minutes method this morning. The first egg that I tried to peel was impossible. So I left the other egg in the freezer for 20 minutes and it wouldn't peel either.

But all was not lost, I tried peeling them under cold running tap water with a strainer underneath to keep the shells from going down the drain and that really helped.

I am going now to try something different.

Boiled Eggs

I haven't had the time to blog for a couple of days, my dear neighbor bought a new computer and I had to spent several hours at their house yesterday setting it up and installing things. Today I made pear jam, I canned 10 pints. The pears were wonderful this year, very abundant, healthy, worm free and sweet.

I finally got around to trying my fresh boiled egg experiment tonight. I read over my notes and tried a mixture of several methods. The eggs were very fresh, I boiled a pan of water with a splash of vinegar and a pinch of salt added. Then I added two large eggs to the already boiling water with a pair of tongs. I boiled them for 12 minutes, then removed them to a bath of ice cold water with the tongs. After several minutes I removed them from the cold water and attempted to peel them.

The first egg was picture perfect, except for the fact that it needed another couple of minutes in the boiling water. It peeled very easily and looked nice, no discoloration and the shell had not cracked. I was thrilled that it had worked until I tried to peel the second egg. The shell did not want to let go this time. This was a great disappointment for me.

I am too tired to try it again tonight, so tomorrow I will try bringing the eggs to a boil and then removing them from the heat, covering them with a lid and let them set for 20 minutes. Then putting them in the freezer for 5 minutes.

Spinning Wheel

I brought my spinning wheel home from my Mother's last night. It belonged to my great-grandmother, I believe. We bought it from my Uncle many years ago and took it to a wood craftsman who refinished it and repaired some of it.

It did have one spindle on it that had been replaced by my Grandfather, he had whittled a replacement for it with just a knife. That is what makes it extra special for me, because I stayed with my Grandparents a lot as a child and I remember my Grandpa whittling. I told the man who repaired it not to touch that spindle.

I loved my Grandfather very much and I loved spending time with him, he was an incredible man. He taught me so much about everything. My Mother worked, so my Grandparents who lived right across the road, babysitted me. I helped with their garden, helped do laundry with the wringer washer, my Grandmother taught me clothesline etiquette. Knowing the proper way to hang one's laundry on a clothesline was very important back then. Knowing how to witch a well was also important and my Grandfather taught me how to do it.

I played with this spinning wheel when I was young, all of the time and I am just thrilled to be able to own it and spin with it. My oldest Granddaughter's favorite Princess is Sleeping Beauty, and since the spinning wheel is such a part of the Sleeping Beauty story, I plan on passing this one down to her someday. I also hope to be able to teach all of my Grandchildren how to spin.

Unofficial

The unofficial word is that our trainer, Mark Burnette took 4th place in the 2008 Extreme Mustang Makeover in Fort Worth, Texas. No word on how much money his horse, Hoof Hearted brought at auction. I will post it here when I hear from Mark.

As a side note, we currently have three horses left that were trained by Mark, so you had better buy them while they are hot. Leroy, a bay ApHC leopard gelding, Zana, a sorrel AQHA mare and Heath, a red dun AQHA gelding have all had 30 days training with Mark Burnette. Joe, a Palomino gelding was also trained by Mark during the winter months and was not touched all Spring or Summer, he recently sold for $2500, he had not forgotten any of his training after sitting idle all of those months.

Golden Egg

Well actually it is a dark brown egg. We are currently getting only extra large, large and small eggs. But the other day we got an extra, extra large egg, the size of a duck egg. I was very curious about which hen was laying this distinctive extra large, dark brown egg, it is the only dark brown egg that we get. I don't have one hen that is different from all of the rest, so I had to do some detective work.

The egg in question is usually already in the nest when I wake up in the mornings, so for me to catch this hen would mean that I would have to get up with the chickens and I am not an early riser. However, this morning I caught a break, my super sleuthing cat decided to sleep in front of the nest boxes in the barn/house last night and he is a late sleeper also. The hens were not happy when I went out and removed him. They were all gathered in a disgruntled group.

The first one to jump in the box was one of the new red hens. I had suspected that it might be her, she is no bigger than some of my other hens but she is the biggest of the three new red hens. Sure enough, without so much as a cackle, she left the nest a few minutes later and there was the big dark brown egg. Case closed, thanks to my partner, Garfield.

We are getting 7 to 11 eggs per day now. Which means that our refrigerator is full of eggs most of the time. I still need some faithful buyers, but I did sign up to bring deviled eggs for the Church pitch-in. So I have been reading about how to make perfect hard boiled eggs from fresh eggs, that peel easily. So far here is a list of tips that I have found:

• Put Vinegar in the water
• Put Salt in the water
• Put Vinegar and Salt in the water
• Put Baking Soda in the water
• Put room temperature eggs in already boiling water
• Don't boil at all, just place in boiled water and cover with a lid
• Tap rounded side of egg on hard surface to slightly crack then boil
• Cool immediately in ice water
• Cool eggs quickly in cold tap water then put in freezer for 5 minutes
  

I am confused and don't know which method to use. I am thinking that what I could do is take all of the eggs that I gather today, super fresh, and try a different method on each egg to find which method is the easiest and quickest.

Videos

I got all of the videos of Mark Burnette and his Mustang, Hoof-Hearted, uploaded to YouTube.com. These were taken on the same day that they left for Fort Worth, Texas, for the 2008 Extreme Mustang Makeover. This was his last practice ride at home. The last video is of my Husband riding him.

The radio program did air this morning and Mark mentioned us as one of his sponsors and commented on the good horses that we have for sale.

You can see all of the videos here: My YouTube Channel. I currently have 34 videos there, so you will have to click the "see all" link under the videos listed on the first page.

Crossed Wires

Well, I guess someone got their wires crossed. Mark Burnette was suppose to be interviewed on "Talk of the Town" on 1340 WBIW this morning but they had Military Recruiters on there instead. My Son called to ask me if I was trying to get him to join the military, since he had read my last blog and was dutifully listening to the show this morning. So now I don't know when the show will air or if it has already aired and we missed it.

I did get some of the pictures of Mark and his Mustang ready to post here but I haven't edited the videos yet.

We were very impressed by Hoof-Hearted (think about this name being announced at the Extreme Mustang Makeover and you will understand the joke). He was already named when they got him but Mark and his family call him Buddy. He is heavy boned, thick legged, Mark said that he is sound and has a lot of stamina. He has a natural low head set and is friendlier with strangers than Mustang Sally was. Mustang Sally was the horse that Mark trained for the Midwest Mustang Challenge.


Buddy has a nice head, a kind eye and a nice sized ear for a Mustang. He is also a decent sized horse, Mustang Sally was a tad too small but Buddy is big enough for a man to ride but also not too tall for a height challenged person to own. So if you are in the market for a good trail horse and you are going to be at the Extreme Mustang Makeover Auction, then you should take a look at Buddy.

Here are some more pictures that I took, but I didn't take many still shots, I took mostly videos. The last picture below is my DH riding Buddy before Buddy's long trip to the Fort Worth, Texas competition.

Extreme Mustang Makeover

Our trainer, Mark Burnette is now on his way to the Extreme Mustang Makeover held in Fort Worth, Texas on September 18-21, 2008. More than 300 Mustang Trainers will be competing on 3-4 year old Mustangs that they have been training for the last 100 days.

We went to see Mark and his 3 yr. old bay gelding, Hoof-Hearted, also known as Buddy, go through their last day of training before their trip. I took some pictures and videos that I will try to get posted on here as soon as I can. But I wanted to post this tonight for those who live in the area, so you can listen to an interview with Mark on "Talk of the Town" tomorrow morning at 8:30 on 1340 WBIW.

I got to handle Buddy a little bit today and my Husband rode him. He is going to make whoever gets the highest bid at the auction at the end of the event at great horse.

More on Mark and Buddy later...

Coyote Visit

Early yesterday morning my DH went outside and saw a deer jump over the fence from the wooded side of our property into our pasture. Then he saw a coyote come over the brink of the hill in our pasture, the deer turned around and ran back towards the woods, the coyote pursued her.

I had just been commenting on where the fox had gone. We were seeing the fox just about every day, then all of the sudden he just disappeared. We haven't seen him for several days. I have heard that foxes won't stay were coyotes spend time. I don't know if that is true or not but it seems to always be the case here. This is the first coyote that we have seen in a long time. We haven't even been hearing them at night.

I am happy that I don't have to deal with the fox anymore but I might have a worse problem now. We have never lost any livestock to a coyote but they do make me nervous.

We have been seeing a very large buck in our lower pasture. He doesn't just have a large rack but is just massive all over. He must be older than what we usually see because he has a very large neck and shoulders. He looks like the big bucks that you see on the covers of hunter's magazines. We think that he is probably staying on our island. Indian Creek crosses our property and it splits in one place to form a fairly large island. We have had the bigger and more experienced bucks live on that island before, but not for the last couple of years.

I know that my brother-in-law and my cousin both read my blog, so they will probably want to come down for a visit during deer season after they read this. I also told a couple of deer hunters at Church about him, so his days may be numbered, as long as I get a few good steaks out of the deal, I won't cry over him. They just came out with a new study that meat-eaters don't have the brain shrinkage that vegetarians have. I believe that I could have told you that, but that certainly explains a lot.

30 Hours

Ike was not very nice to us. We got up Sunday morning and went to Church. Then we went to a neighboring town to a Chinese restaurant with our friends, who are also our neighbors. We rode with them in their new SUV. The food was wonderful, as usual, and we stuffed ourselves.

The wind was horrible on our way home and we had not gone very far, when the there was a large jolt and everything got dark inside the SUV. All we could see was leaves through all of our windows. We continued to roll forward and stopped once we could see daylight again and everyone but me jumped out of the car to see what had happened.

I just turned around in my seat and looked at the tree or very large limb from a tree, that had barely missed crushing us. Then being the pessimist that I am, I looked at the other trees nearby that were presently and violently bending over the top of where I sat and I wished everyone else would just come to their senses and get back in the car and drive on down the road.

My strong anxious feelings must have telepathically conveyed themselves to the others because all of the sudden, they all quickly moved back to their former positions and we sped off to the nearest parking lot where there were no trees. A careful inspection of the SUV revealed no damage other than the driver's side mirror had broken loose from it's housing.

We continued on towards home and the wind continued to harass us all of the way. Being the pessimist that I am, I made the statement that I hoped that we could get home once we got back on country roads. Well, the first tree across the road that we came to, once we turned on to the country road that takes us to our houses, was movable by the two men in suits who were my Husband and our friend. The next tree required two chainsaws and a few good neighbors, plus a road crew.

When we were finally almost to the neighbor's driveway, we had to drive across phone lines that were lying across the road. That is when we knew for sure that we were in trouble. We did have a phone when we arrived home, surprisingly enough, but we had no electricity. We are just simple folks, living in the outer rim of civilization, so when we don't have electricity, we also don't have water because we have a well with an electric pump.

We started hearing the rumors that it might be 4 or 5 days before we were back to normal. In the meantime we started adjusting our lives, the swimming pool came in handy for water to wash things in and to flush the stool with. We went to bed last night thinking that it would be back on by morning, but that didn't happen. We suffered with no electricity for 30 hours. It finally came back on late this evening and I had 85 emails waiting for me when I booted up the computer.

Hello Ike

The last two days have been miserable around here. We walked out the door and into a sauna. I won't say this too loudly but I much prefer cold weather to humid weather. Hot is fine as long as it isn't humid. Yesterday and Friday were just unbearable, you didn't have to do anything and you were soaking wet with sweat.

Hurricane Ike or what is left of him is suppose to arrive here today with heavy rain and a wind advisory, wind gusts up to 45 mph. That could make it dangerous here, we might get hit by flying chickens. Ike is suppose to bring cooler, less humid air this week and I am really looking forward to being able to milk without sweating.

We sat outside while we were finishing up feeding last night and looked around us and realized that we have a lot of chickens. They were everywhere we looked. I gave away one of my Banty hens with her seven chicks, so I think that I have 30 or 31 left.

My chickens are fairly strange, most everything else around here has the sense to stay out of the rain but not them. It was pouring rain on Friday and they just went about their daily routine like the sun was shining and it was a beautiful day.

We are so thankful for the rain, our pastures were drying up. Hopefully this rain will help out with the hay crop and they will get another cutting. There doesn't seem to be the demand for hay that there was last year though, the farmers are trying their best to keep the prices up but no one is buying because so many people dumped their livestock last year.

My chickens are working hard to provide us with eggs. I am getting at least seven eggs, that we can find, everyday. I found a nest of five eggs just lying out in the yard, that lets you know how badly our grass needs mowing. I am sure that some of our chickens are laying in other places that we don't know about. I just wish that I had some regular egg customers, that I could rely on. We do sell them but it is just here and there. No one that comes here to the house and picks them up on a regular basis.

My Polish rooster has finally found a name, everyone has been calling him Elvis and since I haven't come up with a better name, I guess that one will have to stick. I am very pleased with all of my roosters, none of them are aggressive and as long as they stay that way, they can stay. Rocky has us a little puzzled, we haven't quite figured him out yet. Elvis is popular with the young hens, doesn't that just figure? Bootstrap has always just partnered with one hen. The fox managed to get his first two wives and he actually grieved over them. He is exclusively keeping time with my last Mille Fleur D'Uccle hen now and that leaves poor Rudy, my D'Uccle rooster, all alone.

Little Rooster Syndrome

Rudy, my Mille Fleur D'uccle rooster had a bad case of LRS or Little Rooster Syndrome, when we brought the new Barred Rock rooster home. Now this new rooster is quite impressive, he is massive and has a real deep, rough and loud crow. The minute Rudy found him there in the pet cage that next morning, he was itching for a fight. He wasn't about to let another rooster join the community, there was already two roosters too many.

The new Polish rooster isn't much of a threat, he doesn't even crow and he jumps straight up in the air and hits the ground running at the least little noise. But this rooster was different, he just could not be allowed to stay and Rudy had made up his mind to chase him off as soon as we let him out of that cage.

When we did turn the new guy out, Rudy put up a gallant fight. But he just didn't have the right stuff. I have named the new Barred Rock rooster, Rocky, it seems to fit. The following video is what happened when he and Rudy tried to iron out their differences like men.


When Rudy finally decided that he was fighting in the wrong weight division. He ran off in humiliation. My bigger rooster, Boot-strap was next in line to take this newcomer on. I didn't see that fight but I guess that it was a good one. The good thing about Rocky is that he doesn't start a fight, he just finishes it.

Milk Goat For Sale

I have decided to sell Cinder, I am tired of milking two goats and I am drowning in milk. I have listed her on three different classified sites and have received several inquiries on her but haven't sold her yet. If she doesn't sell soon, I will turn her dry and breed her in December.

I still don't know if Paris and Collette are bred or if they are just fat. With the change to cooler weather they should start showing signs of being in heat soon, but I have a hard time even knowing for sure when they are in heat. I am afraid that I will just go out one morning and find kids. I have been told that sometimes they don't even show udder signs until after they kid.

Cooter on the other hand is showing lots of signs of being ready for breeding season but he has shown signs all summer. He thinks that he is incredibly handsome right now and is always posing for pictures in case there is a photographer around, which there isn't. But he does look nice and my DH is trying to get me to sell him too.

He is getting so strong that I am having trouble holding on to him when he wants to go somewhere. I stake him out and have to move him several times a day. I was tying him to an old iron wagon wheel because it was easy for me to move but it soon became easy for him to move too, so I switched him to a concrete block. A single concrete block didn't last long, it was as if he wasn't tied at all. So I started tying him to two large concrete blocks yesterday and he still drug them to where he wanted to go.

The only thing that I can tie him to now is trees and he still pulls all of the time and is building muscle. I haven't heard of Billy Goat pulls, like tractor pulls or horse pulls, but I'll bet he would be a strong competitor.

Sequences

If you are a loyal Patrick McManus fan, you will know what sequences are. If you don't know who Patrick McManus is then you need to do more serious reading. Go to Amazon.com and buy some Patrick McManus books, he is a very famous author to some of us. Sequences are the things that happen to you along the way when you start out to do something simple. One thing leads to another and you get caught in a tangled web of sequences.

Most of the time sequences are very bad things. But every once in a great while, good sequences come along and that is what happened to us on Monday. My chicken obsessed cousin was still wanting more chickens and especially if they were free. So we planned to go back to the place where I got my new chickens for free, they also had a pair of peacocks just the color that his mother had been wanting. We planned to leave here for the long 50 mile trip on Monday evening.

At some point during the day on Monday someone called us looking for a big AQHA horse that was broke to ride. My Husband took the call and told him about Joe, who is a large 4 yr. old palomino gelding who we had broke last winter by Mark Burnette. Mark had said that he never bucked or did anything wrong but he had only put 30 days of riding on him and we had never been on him since we brought him home. My Husband told the man that we were coming right down to the area where he lived and if he wanted to see him and try him out, we could bring him with us.

It all happened so quickly that we were a little bit in shock, we needed the money to pay for this year's hay and hadn't been having much luck selling horses this year. So we met the man just a few miles from where the chickens were located and he tried him out, then bought him. We then proceeded to the peacocks and hens.

None of us had ever handled peacocks before and we had no clue how to go about it. Needless to say the poor peacock hen lost a few feathers and we discovered that peacocks can be very nervous and flighty. We then caught 8 Barred Rock hens for my cousin and he decided that he also wanted the very large, stately looking Barred Rock Rooster.

At some point on the trip home my cousin started worrying about the rooster. He already has several roosters and his Dad has roosters too. So he started lamenting about how his Dad was going to kill him. Being the wonderful person that I am, I told him that I would take the rooster, to which my Husband said a flat, NO!

My cousin only had one large cage that would fit in the back of his Jeep, to take all of the hens and peacocks home in. So I had told him that he could leave whatever wouldn't fit here and he could pick them up whenever he got a chance. I quietly told him that the rooster wouldn't fit.

All of the chickens that we got had bad cases of leg mites, so I gave my cousin a syringe of Eprinex and told him to put 1/2 mL on the skin on the back of each hen between their wings, then to coat their legs with some type of oil or salve, Vicks Vaporub is the best but vasoline will work, I used Avon Skin-So-Soft on my new hens and on the big rooster who we put in a dog cage for the night, right outside the door that goes into our house.

My DH told my cousin before he left to make sure to come back and get the rooster as soon as possible. The next morning at 5:00, we were awakened by a man with a deep, gravelly voice imitating a rooster's crow. That is what my new rooster sounds like, it isn't a pleasant sound, but I suppose that I will get used to it.

Tomatoes

I was horribly late getting out my tomato plants this year, so I just started getting ripe tomatoes about four days ago. I love tomatoes and no one has even offered me any except my neighbor who gave me three. So I waited patiently for the many tomatoes on my own three plants to ripen.

We came home today from Sunday School to see my new chickens feasting on my tomatoes. I thought, no, it isn't possible, not after I have waited so long. I walked up the hill to where my plants are located. All of the nearly ripe tomatoes were picked clean. I could have cried. Sometime later they went back and ate the rest of the green tomatoes.

My old chickens had never done this. So I wasn't expecting it. I should have known since the wild turkeys got all of my Step-dad's tomatoes. I wanted to wring their scrawny necks. I am just devastated by this lose, I guess I will think twice before excepting free chickens again. It's just like I have always said, there is always a reason why something is free. I should have suspected that these chickens were defective.

My Mistake

I have searched the chicken websites and have come up with some answers, but chicken breeds can be very confusing. I suppose that is because most chickens are mutts, variations of several different breeds mixed up together. But here is what I think that I have.

Seven of my new hens are Silver Laced Wyandottes, though a couple of them do not have rose combs, so I am assuming that they are not pure bred.

My four new barred hens are Barred Plymouth Rocks to go with my remaining two Barred Rock hens that the fox hasn't got yet. I also have two Barred Rock chicks that I think are hens but I am not certain yet, one of them is rumpless.

The three new red hens are probably Red Sexlinks, to add to my three other red hens who are Rhode Island Reds.

This leaves only one new chicken to be identified and that is Cruella, who is not a Cruella after all. I am pretty sure that she is a he, and he is a young White Crested Black Polish Rooster. I hope that I am wrong but I don't think that I am. How embarrassing!

So adding all of these up tonight, I have found that I have 8 Barred Rocks, 7 Wyandottes, 6 Red Hens, 14 Bantams and 3 Roosters, for a grand total of 38 Chickens. I think that we may have more chickens now than horses, but I would have to add all of the horses up to be sure and that would be too depressing.

Name That Chicken

Here are some pictures of my new hens. I think that I know what breeds they all are, but I am not a chicken expert. Cruella is pretty easy to identify. Can you guess who Cruella is?

I have seven of these lacy chickens:


Four of these young barred hens:


Three of these red hens:

...and only one of these:



She makes me laugh every time I look at her.

My Egg production is really up, we got 9 eggs on Tuesday and 6 yesterday. We are sure that we aren't finding all of the eggs because the new hens don't know where to lay yet. I even found one egg lying in the middle of the driveway.

They are having a hard time figuring out where to roost too. Some of them have been roosting on the tractor, some in the horse trailer, some on the spare tire or the tongue of the horse trailer, some on the kid's toy four-wheelers, Cruella even roosted on the grill one night.

Each night since they have arrived, we have had to go on a chicken hunt after dark to find them and take them to the goat/chicken shed to put them to roost out there. One of the lacy hens has totally eluded us every night, we have not been able to find her, but she always shows up the next morning. There was even one on the passenger side floorboard of my DH's mail vehicle. We had left the window open and she helped herself to a nice safe place, he was a little annoyed about the chicken poo that she left behind.

Exciting!

Is anyone as excited about Sarah Palin as I am? My neighbor said it best last night, she told me that she hasn't been able to vote FOR a President in many years, she has only voted against Presidents, the lesser of two evils. She is looking forward to being able to vote for a Vice President this year.

Sarah Palin even makes John McCain look and sound better. He made the right choice. Here is hoping for the next 16 years!

Update On Garnet

After the crisis seemed to be over for Garnet and he was on the road to recovery, something new cropped up. He had three large whelps the size of hot dogs come up on the back of his right hind leg above the hock. They finally busted open and produced a lot of yellow pus. He had been on Penicillin at the time this happened, so I switched him to SMZ Tablets.

I am grinding the tablets with the bute and putting the powder in pancake syrup then syringing it into his mouth. He is still taking his medicine very well and is still tolerating the fly spray but he doesn't like it when I treat his sores. He did let me treat him this morning without any problems because I caught him when he was lying down and he didn't want to bother with getting up. I treated the sores on his body then lifted each leg and treated them on both sides. I just couldn't get to the other side of his body, so it will have to wait until later.

94 Degrees

I hope everyone had a nice Labor Day weekend. We spent Labor Day doing just that, laboring. We were in the hay fields on both Monday and Tuesday. Yesterday we got the full experience of hefting hay bales at 94º with no one to help us.

I drove and my Husband loaded and stacked the hay. He complains a lot more than he did when he was young but he still does an awesome job. I don't think there would be many young men who could have kept up with him over the last two days.

I did help him unload the trailers when we got back to the barn but he did all of the stacking in a tin barn with no shade over it and no air circulation, the dust was unbearable and the sunny 94º temperature outside felt cool compared to the temperature inside. He stacked all the way to the roof and does it so tightly that it is hard to get out to feed during the winter.

He has put up hay all of his life, when we were first married, we had our own hay crew and put up hay for all of the neighboring farms before the big round balers were invented. He has little patience with sloppy stacked hay. We who have helped him in the barn, have always said that when he gets done stacking hay, you can roller skate on top of it.

The hay is finished for the year and boy am I happy about that. We may pick up a few more bales throughout the fall and winter but there will be no more hot fields and hot barns to deal with. Maybe life will return to a more normal pace and I can get some things done and blog more.

Staying Alert

Our Department of Farmland Security Terror Alert has been raised here with the addition of 15 new chickens. The Fox could not resist coming in closer yesterday to look over the new arrivals. My Husband was outside and heard one of the new hens complaining bitterly, so he looked for the source of her irritation and saw the fox licking his lips nearby. By the time the DH got into the house for a weapon, the fox had disappeared.

So I have my marching orders for today, I am to keep a sharp eye out for the intruder. I have already walked the perimeter twice this morning with my new scoped Savage .17 H.M.R. that I have not even shot yet.

I will have to do some research before I am able to say for sure what kind of chickens these all are but they are a colorful bunch. One that I think is a red sexlink is already a favorite of mine, she follows me around everywhere I go. As soon as I have time I will post pictures of them and maybe someone can help me out on what they are.

Firefox 3.0.1

I finally got around to downloading Firefox 3.0.1 and a new Google toolbar to go with it. I love being able to access my Google bookmarks from my toolbar but found that they would not show up with the new Firefox browser. The bookmark button on the toolbar kept asking me to sign-in, which I did but the sign-in never worked.

Here is the fix for anyone having this same problem; Just go to "Tools" in your Firefox browser, then select "Options" then click the "Privacy" tab. Under the "Cookies" section, you should have "Accept cookies from sites" checked but I don't accept cookies from third parties and that was my problem with the bookmarks. You just need to click on the "Exceptions" button and then type "google.com" in the box at the top, then choose "allow". This will allow Google to place a cookie on your computer as a third party and will fix your bookmarks.

At first, I didn't like the new Firefox browser. It seemed slower for some reason but after cleaning out my cache and cookies, then rebooting my computer, I think that it actually is faster and I need all of the speed I can get with this painfully slow dial-up connection.