What Have We Been Up To?

And the farm animals take over the blog! Clearly, the humans have been too busy to blog lately, with their homeschooling and church and cleaning pens and stuff, so we thought we animals would share a few words on what we have been up to around here!

We finally got some rain around here, and the "goosies on the loosies" as that house mama calls us like rain better than any of the other animals! Why? To play in, of course! But also, because weeds mean that we eat fresh greens that the other animals don't reach. Mama says that means we are brats telling everyone else about it, but we are the guard geese after all, so we should get some perks!

House mama, also known as the feed lady, she tried to pull some weeds down by her garden recently. We told her this was unacceptable, as they were the salad bar we hadn't gotten to yet. Finally, we got her to leave the piles for a couple days so that we could munch a bit before she did more work.

She still has more to prep for our eating. We are done with the other piles, so she had best get busy!

Just because the geese roam all the time doesn't mean they are the only ones with good treats! Despite getting our own salad bar in our pen that Wyatt keeps stocked and growing for us, we still get baskets of sprouts!

It is like a party when the red baskets come out in the middle of the day!

We even share with the guineas! (Well, most of the time, anyway!)

Breakfast time is the best time in our pen! Okay, well, we think we get the best dinner, too! We have the house mama and our Bailey trained to bring us bottles twice a day, and then Daddy Powerstroke lets us have the feeder . This is our look that says, "We are cute!" We know you agree, and the Brahmas that share a fence with us in the grow out pen sing along with us.

The house mama is always excited to see melons doing well. What we like about melons, is that the chickens get lots of melon and then they are in better moods!  They complain less about us singing at night when they are in good moods, and I think I heard this kind of melon called a honeydew...

Just in case you were missing out on some of my cuteness, I am Freedom's Prayer!  I am pretty sure the world is here to cuddle me!

Did we mention we are masters as coexistence? The goats might say we complain about them singing, but we keep our rooster in line, and also have a pet snake in our pen. If you look closely, you will see his tail over by the old feeder we like to stand on.

This guy doesn't bother us hens, and our nesting boxes and new feeder are up off the ground. The desert comes with mice, so we let this guy wander around so the mice don't bother our nests, and in turn we nest up high and only try to sit on eggs up in the loft where Wyatt keeps our straw. The added bonus- the bigger our Wyatt gets, the funnier it is when he tries to get eggs from us up there! Then we all stand around in the door to our hen house and watch him... Did I mention bonus points for anyone who can get him stuck up there so he has to call for help?

Why yes, the chickens tried to take over! But guess what! We are just too cute to ignore!

My brother was being silly and trying to wrestle with our Dad, so I decided to play peekaboo from my favorite house. Dad also likes to pose. Don'e tell the house mama, but he leaves a pile of poop near where he poses on purpose. She says he wasn't well socialized before our Bailey brought him home, but Bailey says that means he will do just fine in our family of homeschool goofballs. Not sure what that means, but she always scratches our ears and brings us food. And, if we cry really loud, she will come out over and over to check on us!

Well, that is the world according to the bucks, the geese and the Big Pen. We dare the does and the others to outdo us!

If Recipes Came with Warnings...

I got a magazine in the mail the other day. I don't often have much time for reading them, so was feeling a little guilty about that, and started to page through this one while waiting to have my blood drawn the other day.  A couple recipes caught my eye, including this one.

The recipe itself looked really cute, chocolate mouse in ice cream cones, dipped in chocolate and topped with almonds. But the recipe had a lot of crazy stuff in it, so I thought I could get by with a few substitutions. I figured I could buy some cute little ice cream cones, fill them with french silk made with simple pure ingredients, then dip in chocolate and top with almonds. Sounds simple enough, right?

I took time for extra refrigeration of the cones with the french silk before I dipped them in chocolate, as french silk can be quite touchy that way.  Wyatt was finishing some math, and getting pretty excited for dessert.  So I melted the chocolate and got going on dipping, which was a little too mess, and therefore I resorted to painting the chocolate on with a spatula and sprinkling the almonds on top.

I thought things would be fine, when I tried to return them to the fridge to harden more.

There was a crash, several fell out of the tray into the fridge, a few crashed on the floor.

Wyatt jumped up to stop Shadow from heading toward chocolate and helped me clean up the mess, securing the remaining for dessert.  

The ones I grabbed on the way down, came out rather lopsided.

Wyatt looked at me trying to decide what to do and said,

"It's a good thing recipes don't come with warnings, or people would never try them."

We both got a pretty good giggle. For someone who dislikes writing so, he has some pretty good one-liners! Had I known the outcome, I still would have played with this fun little recipe.  But there have been a few experimental recipes that might not have happened over the years.

So if you had realized things wouldn't turn out like the photo, is there anything you would not have tried? 

Days of Our Buckeyes... part four

Thirteen days. Thirteen -not so bad -but not what he had planned for -days.

Bucky didn't want to be ungrateful toward his new friends in the big fancy pen with the barn and the loft and the roosting poles and heavy wooden nest boxes with the older hens who somehow seemed to tolerate him as the newcomer.  They were all pretty nice, really, though the hens were pretty set in their ways.

There was Poofy, the Cochin in the big nesting box who only shared with Buffy and Delia.  And then there was Lady Liberty who seemed bent on stealing their favorite spot when they got up to eat.  But even that wasn't much drama. And the worst he got from Austra and her sister was being outright ignored.

Bucky thought about going to meet the Phoenix hen up in the loft. The others called her Sneaky, but that didn't sound much like a name to Bucky.  She'd been up in the loft above the barn since the boy caretaker had been away. And even then, the mama lady from the house had looked after and talked to them all, but the hens got more pats and encouragement than the boys. Not that it helped that she didn't seem to appreciate their crowing contests...

Anyhow, the feisty, stubborn Sneaky had been up sitting on eggs when the caretaker boy returned from somewhere he called "camp". She couldn't be all there upstairs, because she kept dropping them over the side of the loft. A few times, the mama lady gave them back to her, asking if she had heard of  shaken baby something. Whatever it was, it didn't sounds good!  Just when Bucky was looking up there, thinking of going up to keep her company, Delia told me she was unfriendly and that when she sits up there like that, going up to visit is a death wish akin to cuddling with the owl that tries to get in at night.

Bucky knew he shouldn't complain, even the big, dominant Brahma roosters were tolerating him and not fussing at him much, as long as he was nice to the hens.  And they get plenty of treats- melons, squash, sprouts, and apples.  But really, from this vantage point of half an acre away from Mahogany at the closest, there was little chance of Bucky seeing his true love.  Even less chance of winning her back, not to even remotely consider getting her to run away with him.  

For all Bucky knew, she had forgotten him by now. 

Yet every evening at sunset, settling in with his fellow friends in the big pen barn and all of their quirks, he gazed at the beautiful sunset and thought that Mahogany was gazing at the same beautiful sunset, and he hoped he would see her again soon...