Animals, Animals, and more Animals

We discovered Oreo likes bread after the kids dropped a slice when they were headed to the pond to feed the ducks.

As you can see the goats are abused and neglected....not!

We went to a presentation at Leah's school last night, she "published" a book along with all the other kindergartener's. All the kids in the class except 2 either wrote about their families or their cat. One child made a cook book and my unique little muffin wrote about Spring. She did a great job presenting, she has no fear of crowds. At the end of reading her book she read about the author as follows: "Leah is 6 years old. She lives with her mom, her dad and her brother. She has 1 dog, 3 cats, 100 outside birds, 2 chinchillas, 2 goats, and 10 house birds." The audience all had quite a laugh at that one and probably thought what a bunch of crazies. For the record Leah's hair is wet, not greasy. John gave me grief for posting this picture.

Here is the accurate animal count as of today, it seems to change regularly: 31 laying hens, 1 rooster, 18 partridge, 3 quail , 6 bantam hens, 2 ducks, 4 turkeys, 24 meat birds, 2 goats, 2 chinchillas, 3 cats, 1 dog, 1 parakeet = 101 if I added correctly.. ok yes maybe we are nuts!

Our only rooster. Leah named him "Bob". We have not named the hens because there are too many. We've yet to hear him cock-a-doodle-do.

Finally, a little more room to roam. We plan on making a bigger run for them but this works for now. John is going to make some nesting boxes tomorrow because these gals should be laying by July...just in time for our farm stand.
We have 8 more Barred Rocks but they are in another pen because they are a little younger.

One of the turkeys

Annie

These are the kids catch and release tanks. Top one is for frogs and the bottom one is for snakes.

Quail egg count is up to 3
look how tiny

chicken egg, bantam egg, quail egg

Below are a few pictures from a field trip Leah's class went on today. One more field trip to go and 1 1/2 weeks left of school...the count down is on. I look forward to the kids being home and not having to have a stringent schedule of wake-ups, kid pick ups, bath & bed times. I enjoy the casual times of summer but usually by August we are all ready for school again.


I learned today that the red flap under the beak of a rooster is called a wattle. This obviously is not a rooster but I thought it was cool because this was the cows stall this hen was nesting in.

I want a couple cows grazing in our field! Maybe next year when we have more cash & time to put up fencing. Our to do list before winter is very long.

Some people drink sheep milk, I did not know that either.

I'll end the note with a simple recipe. Last night I marinated some deer steak in this and John cooked it up tonight. I will use again and it will be easiest to find if I have it on my blog and maybe you all might like to try.



Teriyaki Marinade

• 1/3 cup soy sauce
• 2 1/2 tablespoons brown sugar, packed
• 1/3 cup orange juice
• 2/3 garlic clove, minced
• 3/4 teaspoon ground black pepper (optional)

Farm Adventures and Findings (Sunday-part 2)

Our first tomato! I saw it earlier in the day and forgot to take a picture. So I went out after dark and used night mode so that I could share my excitement, then...I washed it, sliced it, added a little s&p, and ate it all by my lonesome.

John and I were having a little Spring fever back in January so we planted 4 tomato plants. We transplanted them outside a couple weeks ago, at the time were about 3-4 ft high. Amazingly, they are all doing well and here's a picture to prove it. This is a first for us to have a ripe tomato so early in the growing season.

There is noting like eating something picked fresh from the garden, no comparison to the food we buy in supermarkets. I am hoping the same goes for the chickens because we have 24 that are going to be in the freezer in a few weeks.

I could not believe my eyes, Quail eggs. Ok, now I want to keep them! I had planned on selling the 3 remaining we had but now that they are producing they can stay. I think the plan is to put them under the Bantams to try and hatch them out.

Over the weekend we rented a sod cutter. We are preparing an area for our pool. Let's just say John is not very impressed with this project and the work of maneuvering the rolls of sod is literally back breaking. We did utilize the sod filling in some low spots of the land. The rolls were so heavy that as we were rolling one piece off the trailer the back end of the 4 wheeler came up off the ground and stayed there. Yikes...we NEED a tractor desperately but, oh yeah John is still shopping for one. We had an above ground pool at our old house for 7 years. It was great and the kids loved it. I had a pool growing up and I always said I'd have one for my children. When we moved here I made it very clear that I'd be getting another. Last year I settled for the blow-up deal but this year I saved some coin and bought it. I shopped around locally and on-line for a month or so and bought the best package I found. John was a bit tweaked as there are a million other things around here we could have used the money on. For those of you that know us know that we are COMPLETE opposites! He is methodical, logical, frugal and I am a bit Willy Nilly fly by the seat of my pants, sometimes irrational (only sometimes), and I can be very impulsive. I am frugal about many things but I am no where's near his level of frugality. Regardless we balance out quite nicely. We do freak each other out on occasions but that keeps life interesting!

Just getting started

Are we almost done yet?

A view through the eyes of a 6 year old.

Leah is quite sneaky. I've learned to scan through my photos on my camera before downloading because she likes to randomly take pictures. I chuckle when I look through them because she takes pictures of things you or I would never even think to.
My handy man hard at work. Can you tell by the look on his face that was not excited?

A bit more ground work and leveling and then we can lay the sand down. My uncle brought us over 7 yards today. A HUGE Thanks to him!

Leah took this picture too. The kids are always catching critters around here. We have two catch and release tanks in the barn, one is for frogs and the other for snakes. Last picture is of a Newt also found in the back pond.