It’s About Time! April 9, 2008
Posted by Laura in Family, Farm.4 comments
Starting around Thanksgiving, our hens took an extended vacation from laying. I’m willing to give them a little slack for molting and shortened day length and all, but this was ridiculous. I kept thinking I’d been whisked into the Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type book, where the barnyard animals go on strike. I was waiting for the typed list of demands (like electric blankets).
Finally, about 3 weeks ago, the eggs started slowly showing up. As soon as I identified a hen that laid eggs and didn’t EAT them, I put her in a chicken tractor (portable coop). As I carried each one to her new, more restrictive home, I explained that really, it was better this way. Any chicken not in a tractor is in constant danger of predators. Besides, any chicken that doesn’t prove she should be spared because she’s a good layer is in danger of going in the freezer. We’re tired of the mess on the porch, searching for eggs laid under bushes, and wasting increasingly expensive feed on chickens not pulling their own weight. They have to contribute somehow. Now we are getting between a dozen and a dozen and half eggs a day.
Rachel is my ever-willing chicken assistant. She is always eager to help me collect eggs, even climbing into the tractors to get the ones laid on the ground. In fact, she’s usually eager to help me do ANYthing. She’s a great kid.
Scrub-A-Dub-Dub, Happy Baby in the Tub April 8, 2008
Posted by Laura in Family.5 comments
Lydia is a pretty happy baby, but when she hears the bathwater start, she shrieks with delight. She’ll play in there until the water turns cold. Here are a few recent pictures.
“Welcome to the bath, y’all!”
Colanders are all the rage in fashion headgear.
“Who always steals the soap? Give up? The robber ducky! Ha! Ha! Ha!”
A day in the park April 7, 2008
Posted by Joe in Uncategorized.2 comments
Well, it’s been a while since our last post – nearly a month! With the busyness that comes with spring and sometimes life in general, we got behind several areas and just didn’t make the time to post. The good news is that we have lots to share and hopefully we’ll get some new postings up over coming days and weeks.
After church today, I took the kids to the park for a picnic lunch and some playtime. They had a great time playing with some other kids. Rachel used one of the horizontal bars to demonstrate some of what she has earned in gymnastics, including skin-the-cat and a flip. Benjamin spent much of his time swinging around the monkey bars.
Several times while we were there, Benjamin came to me to ask if he could go to the restroom to run cool water over his hands. They were “getting hot”.
When we got in the car, he told me that he had several blisters on his hands. I smiled, remembering the time in second or third grade that I wore blisters all over both hands doing the exact same thing.
Then he asked how the air got in the blister. I explained to him how a blister is formed and that it’s filled with fluid. He was convinced from a prior experience that blisters were full of air, but he couldn’t explain how it got there.
So tonight after dinner and baths, we decided to prove it once and for all. Benjamin wanted to get a needle and pop his blister to see what was on the inside. I carefully helped him put a small puncture in the side of the blister bubble. When fluid came running out, Laura and I both said see, it’s full of fluid. Benjamin smiled and disagreed. “No, it’s full of air”. So we pointed to the wet spot on the tissue and said “Well what this then?”
Without missing a beat he quickly smiled and replied. “It was humid in there.”
You just got to love kids!
