Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Sunny Days

We had an eventful day as always. I started my day off with chores as usual, it takes me about 45 minutes to 1 hour. I could probably do them quicker but most days I do them leisurely. The first thing I do is get the goats bottles ready and the kids feed them. They are finally at once a day bottles, not bad compared to 5 times/day when we got these babies at 7 days old. The weaning process has not been too bad, the hardest point was discontinuing their night time bottle. They now spend their days out in their pen but I still bring them into their area in wood room at night, we will soon have a place for them in the barn for nighttime. After taking care of them I refresh all of the inside animals: feed & water the cats, chinchillas, dog, parakeet, and I have 8 chicks still in the house soon to be out. Then I feed and water the broilers, partridge, bantams, quail, ducks out at the pond, and finally our laying hens that aren't yet laying.(should be by the end of June) Yikes... I never realized how many animals we had until we went away on February vacation and I had to write it all my special instructions out for my neighbor to come and feed all the animals and that was before goats. Regardless, it is a lot of work but we enjoy doing it and it is a great experience for the kids. Our friends and family enjoy as well. When we first moved to this town, which is about 12 miles from our hometown, we really did not have much company. We were "too far out"! Now that we have this place and have started to accumulate some critters we have noticed an increase in visitors .
So after chores we went on an outing. Annabelle, Oreo, Maple, and I headed to Leah's school to show her classmates. We met in the park across from her school. The kids were all so excited! They took turns bottle feeding and they all had a chance to hand feed them grain. After that burst of excitement we took Maple, one of our bantams hens out and the kids had the opportunity to pat her and feed her some cracked corn, her favorite! It was a fun time for all!
This afternoon we planted our apple trees & blueberry bushes and made plans for where the pool was going to be placed, we will be starting on our ground work soon. No such thing as boredom here!

A recipe to share that I found on-line. I cooked this today and it was so easy and the whole family enjoyed. I used a fresh chicken (unfortunately..not farm fresh but in 7 weeks it will be) and I mixed it all together with about 3/4 cup of water and placed it in a crock pot on low for 8-9 hours. (also for mushrooms I just used a small can with the juice of regular mushrooms)

RECIPE BY: MizEmerilLagasse

1 (3 lb) frozen whole chicken (or a chicken that with just fit in your crock pot)

1 lb cremini mushroom or button mushroom,

halved 1 small onion

3 garlic clove

1/2 tablespoon dried rosemary

1/2 tablespoon black pepper

1/2 tablespoon salt (I like kosher)

1 tablespoon garlic powder

1 tablespoon onion powder

3 tablespoons butter,

softened 2 tablespoons honey



Cute little tidbit to end this post with. (he would kill me if I knew I posted this)

A few of Luke's practice spelling words this week, his spelling compared to the actual.

trkey - turkey
tish you - tissue
flaver - flavor
wild livf - wild life

Where were kids when they made up the English language - their spelling makes more sense then ours!

I had lots of pictures to post tonight but having problems downloading.......stay tuned!
Good night! :)

5 comments:

Peggy said...

Love the goat photo! Takes me a little longer to feed the animals here but like you I like to take my time and talk to them plus I milk 3 goats.

Anonymous said...

Your goats are getting big:) Can't wait to see the rest of your pics. I enjoyed Lukes spelling;) My youngest does the same thing. She likes to make her b's into d's and vice versa:)

Anonymous said...

Oh yum. That recipe sounds fabulous.

Love the picture! Love, love, love it!

Blessings!
Lacy

Don said...

Sometimes it takes me an hour to feed and water my chickens and quail. That's mostly becasue I sit down and watch them run around and act funny.

How old are your quail, and what kind are they? Mine are Coturnix, or Pharoah's quail.

Country Girl said...

Don, they are 1 year old Bob White quail.