Our Fingers Are Crossed

We have been waiting for quite some time for our Rhode Island Red hens to hatch some new chicks for us. Each spring we get excited because when we go out to gather eggs we will find a hen sitting on her eggs. Unfortunately, she would lose interest after about a week and we were left with rotten eggs. Brandon and Bryce always love this though. I mean what could be more fun than throwing rotten eggs??? They must throw them way out in the back pasture...Mom's rule!! We have hatched a few eggs on our own with an incubator but we must raise them until they are almost grown before we can put them in with the adult hens. If we put them in too soon the other hens will peck them to death. So, having a momma hen hatch her own chicks is the easiest way to raise a new batch.

This spring our hopes are high once again. We have a bantam hen sitting on a nest and she has been there for over two weeks now!!! Isn't she beautiful? I have tried to get some eggs in the nest next to her and she is NOT happy about me being near her nest. We decided to put a few Bantam hens in with our Reds because they are better "sitting hens". Our newly hatched chicks may not be full-blooded Rhode Island Reds but that is okay, we just want fresh eggs for eating!! Looks like our plan may be working!!!This hen is really in the mothering mood! She keeps stealing eggs in the other nests and hoarding them. She has so many eggs that she can't cover them all!
And the greatest and most interesting thing has happened. The "sitting fever" has caught on! Just look! We now have 3 hens that are serious about sitting....so far. The Rhode Island Red on the far left flew off shortly after I took this picture. She only had two eggs under her which I promptly removed before Mrs. Greedy took them!

According to my recordkeeping we should have some chicks hatching next week from the light colored hen. She was the first to start sitting. Hopefully, the other two will stay put until their eggs hatch too! In the meantime, we are rationing our egg eating. Once you get accustomed to fresh farm eggs the grocery store eggs are just not good, even the expensive, free-range ones. And who knows, if all these eggs hatch we may be in the egg selling business again!

A Special Mother's Day Wish

Our family has so much to be thankful for this Mother's Day. We have been blessed beyond measure with answered prayer!! My niece, Rhonda, was able to take her beautiful baby boy home from the hospital this week. I can't think of a better Mother's Day gift, can you? This little fellow entered the world 10 weeks early at a little over 2 lbs. He has had a tough battle but with a will to live, the prayers of many, and a mother's loving touch he has reached 4 lbs and 6 oz. Way to go Cameron!!

Here is a picture of Mommy and Cameron just prior to leaving the hospital. He has grown so much! I can't wait to hold that little guy and give him lots of kisses!!

An especially heart-felt Mother's Day wish goes out to you, "RhondaBerry"!! I love you dearly and I will continue to pray for Cameron to grow stronger each day!

What Would You Do??

I was alone outside one morning recently doing my chores. On my way out to feed the chickens everything was normal. Nothing out of the ordinary. Now mind you I am ALWAYS on the look out for my two worst phobias....snakes and flying roaches. The roaches are the big brown ones that can be a couple of inches long and they ALWAYS want to fly on me!!!! EWWWWW!!! For those of you who do not live in Florida you may not know what I am talking about-be thankful!

So, after feeding the chickens I was on my way back up to the house and suddenly I froze in my tracks! This is what I saw! Now that guy was NOT there on my way out to the chicken pen. Hmmmm....... I quickly ran through my options in my head. Do I turn and run? Where would I run, back to the chicken pen? No, that won't work. I could run around the house to the front door but it would be locked. By the way, were my boys awake yet to help me???? I decided to begin yelling for some help while keeping my eyes fixed on this little beast in case my screams startled him and he decided to "spray". I had visions of sitting in tomato juice. Oh no, this just can't be happening!

Thankfully we had not turned on the house air-conditioning yet so my windows were open. Now if I could just get the boys to hear my cries for help.

It didn't take long for Brandon to come to my rescue. He was brave enough to walk right up to this skunk. And boy did we have a good laugh. Here is my "skunk". It actually IS a real skunk skin. It had been in the shed for quite some time and I had forgotten about it.

The boys have a new puppy and that mischievous little thing is always into something. Turns out she found this skunk hat while I was busy with my chores. She drug it out to play with and left it in the grass, right in my path. Whew. What a happy ending!

Pregnant Again!

Ahh Haa!! I knew that would get your attention!!! No, I am not talking about Brooke and I am definitely not talking about myself, for that matter!! So....who is pregnant again, you may ask? Let me explain.

For about the past six months or more Monroe and I have been in a disagreement about Missy, our cow. When she was "in heat" several months ago the neighboring bull kept calling her name. You know what I mean. He was bellowing sweet nothings in her ear. Actually, it was in ALL of our ears ;-) He was telling her how beautiful she looked and how she was the only one for him, etc. Monroe decided to put Missy over on the neighbor's pasture so the two lovebirds could .... well.... you know! As it turned out, Missy's little visit was only about 10 minutes because the whole time MerriBell, her grown-up calf, was crying for her Mama to come back. So rather than having to repair fences, we put Missy back on our side with her overgrown, spoiled rotten baby. After that day, the bull never called on Missy again and I was sure they didn't have time to get anything accomplished. As the months passed Monroe and I watched Missy to see if she was "showing". Nope.

I couldn't tell at all. She is a very, shall we say, full-figured female so I didn't see any bulge. Monroe, on the other hand, saw all the action that blissfully romantic day and was certain she was pregnant. I mean, come on, 10 minutes, folks!! That is all the time they had together. Apparently our Missy is like me and dare I say, Brooke. All our husbands have to do is walk in the room and we are pregnant! (Thank you Lord for the blessings of our children.)

Anyway, back to my story. My dear hubby called me on the phone yesterday afternoon and all he said was, "We have a calf." I was very surprised, to say the least. In fact, my two younger ones kept repeating my high-pitched reaction to the news all afternoon yesterday, "WHAT...WHAT????" Wise Guys!

So, being the humble wife that I am (chuckle here!) I ran out the front door and yelled to my dear husband,

"You Win!!" To which he very graciously just grinned back at me and said nothing. Smart Man ;-)

Here are a few pictures of our newest addition. The little white bull is our brahma, Little Bit. He just wouldn't get out of the picture! You would think HE is the proud father! The lighter brown cow with horns is MerriBell. This new calf attracted a lot of attention from everyone. I have learned cows are very curious creatures! Notice the big guy on the other side of the fence. He is the proud Pappa. It was almost as if he knew it. He hung around for a long time yesterday.

Poor MerriBell. She has been forced off of Mama's lap, so to speak. I am waiting to see if Missy will continue to let MerriBell nurse as well as the new calf. We may have some sibling rivalry!

I have so much more to share but I have been too busy to post. Also, my card reader has been broken so I couldn't put up any pictures. Bear with me. I see the light at the end of the tunnel!

Honey Update and More BEES!

Busy, busy, busy! That is life around my house lately. Now I understand what I have heard others say about springtime on a farm and the busyness of it all! Whew. I literally fall into bed every night exhausted but satisfied with all that was accomplished for the day. It is a good kind of tired!


The final count on our wildflower honey is 15 quarts. While this is not my favorite honey it will be put to many uses like baking bread and making smoothies, etc. We are very excited to get all this delicious, nutritious honey with very minimal processing. This honey was extracted and then strained...that's it! Mmmm, mmmm, good!!

While we were working outside a few days ago, Brandon spotted a swarm of bees out by the garden. The problem was where they chose to gather. Can you see them in the side of this bank of dirt? This is the dirt hill Monroe made for the boys to climb with their four-wheeler.

Here is a better shot of the swarm.

We were expecting rain later that afternoon so Brandon was anxious to get these little guys into a new home. Naturally the next thing to do was to call Ethan for advice and he, not seeing the situation, suggested putting a new box over the swarm. We just couldn't figure how to go about that so Brandon just put the empty frames close to the bees. There was a small amount of honey left on the frames so that would entice the swarm to come on in. A few of them were interested but not enough of them to persuade the rest to come along. The rains did come but it didn't seem to bother the bees. We learned that they squeeze together so tightly that the water just runs off their backs. Amazing!

The next day our hero, Ethan, once again came to the rescue. Even he said this was a tricky place to try and catch a swarm. I watched from a safe distance ;-) and every once in a while I would get brave enough to snap a picture! After working with the bees about 45 minutes Ethan was able to coax them into their new home.

You can see how the homeless little fellows are liking their new hive. It didn't take them long to move in once they got word that it was a safe place to go.

Orange blossom honey season is from March to April so I was hoping we would get another hive of orange blossom honey. We shall see. It takes them some time to establish their new hive so they may need all of this season's orange blossom to "set up house". That will be okay. We are just thanking the Lord that they chose our property to swarm to! Another blessing is they landed right beside our vegetable garden. We left the hive box right there hoping they will be busy little bees and pollinate our garden!

Have a blessed and joyful Easter Holiday!

HE IS ALIVE....HALLELUJAH!!

Wake Up Sleeping Giant!

I have made it a point to keep this blog focused on my family and our daily lives but I can remain silent no longer with this travesty that our government, well the executive branch, has forced upon this great country.

This representative sums it up nicely.
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=G44NCvNDLfc

And The Wall Came Tumbling Down

My college guys were off for spring break last week and their dad took advantage of having them home for a few days and put them to work. I must say that this was not their idea of spring break!! However, the weather was too cold for a day at the beach, or camping or any other outdoor activity we could come up with. It even rained for two days!

So, off they go to accomplish the task at hand. Don't they look excited? In reality, the only thing that would be exciting to them about now would be that they got to drive and use this beautiful tractor. It just happened that Monroe was making a repair on the tractor for a friend and he allowed us to use it while we had it

Their job was to tear down a brick wall at the end of our drive. This wall had been an eye-sore since we moved here. It is/was white brick, to match our house, but it was made of a type of sand. It was very dingy looking from years of neglect and when we tried to pressure wash it we noticed it began to come apart. Taking down the wall got put on the bottom of the "to-do" list around here. That is until now!!
The wall came down very easily. Brandon is standing where the wall once was. The chain link fence belongs to the neighbor in the background. It was behind the wall. Now for the large corner post. Here Brent tried to chain the post and pull with the tractor. That didn't work so......

Brandon a.k.a. "Mighty Man" gave it a try! Unbelievable strength but still no luck ;-) One more idea...push it over with the bucket of the tractor. (Notice the county putting in water pipes down the highway. We are not too happy about it! So much for country living, huh?)

Finally!!

And here is the reason it was so hard to tear down! It was buried in the ground with concrete and rebar. We have noticed that with the many repairs and updates we have had to do with this house that it was built extremely well. We have seen that the builders did not cut corners with the materials. We had only lived in this house about a year when our area of Florida was hit with three huge hurricanes. The eye of all three storms went directly over us. We were very concerned about our home since we had not been able to complete alot of the repairs needed. However, the only harmful damage done was that we lost about 20% of the shingles on our roof. After making it through those three hurricanes we felt very confident that this house was well built!

God is good!