yay! pictures!

A few weeks ago this field of oats became hay. I can see a part of the field from our back yard and in the afternoon sun it looks like gold.


 This is just a really cute kid modeling my new sunglasses. If you look past her you can see my new flower bed (it was my mother's day gift). This weekend we added some solar lights around it and it looks awesome. I love it so much.

We might have a new barn cat... only it doesn't seem to like anything about the barn. I barely ever see him during the day, but he definitely lets me know if I've slacked on getting his food out in the evening. He'll walk straight to the front door and stare and meow at me through the side lights. It's been interesting.

I'm at the very last of my "I should be washing those dishes" time, so adios for now.

the great outdoors

 Sometimes the contrast of jungle type woods at the very back of our place is startling compared to the cleared pastures. Especially when it rains. After such a long drought I am amazed to see green in the middle of July. And most of all, thankful.

Choosing the "or not" option

What you see in that picture are free range, natural chickens. They are never penned up, fenced in or fed anything other than the natural grasses and bugs that they forage for themselves. They don't lay eggs anymore and I'm happy to just watch them run around. They are "retired". So am I. At least from chicken keeping. That's right, we're not getting any chicks this year. I'm done for now. Maybe forever, I don't know, but I know I stopped enjoying it and we (T and I) have always had an agreement that if we stopped enjoying something out here then we'd let that go. Why do something that doesn't bring you happiness if you have a choice about it? We don't always have that choice in life about many things so if I can choose between 'chickens or not' then I'm choosing 'not'. I can focus that energy into other things. Things that are much more important to me right now. And I can always buy fresh eggs from the farmers market or get them from my family (if they decide to keep up the chicken thing).

I suppose that's all for now. There's really not much happening as far as farming goes. I did jump the gun and plant some green bean seeds yesterday. (I have to beat the grasshoppers.) At least I'll have some garden stuff to talk about soon!

gardening, again

It seems like I just can't let gardening go, no matter how challenging it is for me. Last year my garden was doing great until the drought and grasshoppers started destroying it. The watering and caring to production ratio was way off so I let it all die. Here I am with this years new seed catolouges. I've never ordered from them, but I love looking through them and getting ideas and planning. You'll have to bear with me through the process because I tend to get overly excited about peppers and squash and then I crash about halfway through when the Texas heat starts burning my plants up. Then there is the pestilence problem (grasshoppers) we can't shake no matter how high we raise our garden off the ground.

Our chickens are gone and we aren't planning on getting a new flock this year. I know what the title of this blog is and it's true that I still live in the country, but there are really no farming updates or adventures to share for the time being. I'm going to try to have a small garden and we'll see how it fares. It'll be my little hobby and as soon as it starts stressing me out it's gone. There is absolutely no reason to serve up any additional stress to my life. Especially in a year that we start T-ball, kindergarten and lots of saving and planning for building our house. That will be a real adventure! I can't wait to be able to share pictures of that. Then you'll see just how crazy we are!

I hope everyone has a nice Wednesday. I'll be back at some point tomorrow with all sorts of fascinating talk about eye exams.

picture collage and farm update

Someone asked where the pictures were at in yesterday's post. It was not through a comment on the blog, but directly to me while I was eating my third helping of potatoes last night.

T: No pictures?!
Me: (chewing thoughtfully) Um... no? I wasn't sure if I should?
T: .....   (probably thinking about me begging him to go take some pictures FOR me while I scarfed down both pieces of our cake.) (He's a good man.)

So, while he was drawing our future house plans I was making a collage. (I saved you from scrolling through nine pictures, okay? You're welcome.)

I'm such an artist. And a preserver of memories. 

I have no transition here so we'll dive right in with the...

Farm Update

We went from a micro herd of cattle to a mini micro herd. If that even makes sense. They are my brother's and he picked up the two calves and one of the cows last night. So we went from 5 to 2.

Next up are the chickens. We have 22 or 23 chickens. They have steadily dropped their egg production to four eggs (at the most!) a day. I thought, at first, it was just the seasonal drop off... but let's think about it this way: they are getting old, which means fewer eggs, which means I am buying $15 of feed a week for 28 eggs (at the most!). Wow. Those are some really expensive eggs... are they made of gold or least silver?? That's something like 0.53 an egg.  Anyhow, it's not worth it for us to be sinking money and feed into non productive chickens. We do plan on getting a new flock next year, though. I enjoy my chickens for the most part and love the fresh eggs we get. However, I only plan on getting 6-12 chickens. Our main goal in this farming thing we are doing is to feed our family, first and foremost. I guess that's all I have to say about that.

I guess I'm off to try to make some bread. Maybe, or not, we'll see. (leaning heavily on the or not) I try to bake when it's cold out, but I also don't feel like moving much. It's pathetic. Especially since yesterday I did one load of laundry (wasn't even clothes) and didn't even bother taking it out of the dryer. This is a new low for me. Of course, Rose is punishing me for leaving her for two nights in a row this weekend... Velcro child at the max. Hopefully I'll be slightly more productive today.

update: it's always fun to catch errors after you publish... I know it's collage not college. Try to ignore it in your readers, okay? So sorry.

A Farm update

What? A farm update? Really? Yes, really.
It's gonna be a short one, too.

• One of our calves has been moved. It's now at my brother's place where it can get fattened up.
• One of our lambs is going on a trip tomorrow. I think you know where. I'm having a harder time with the lamb than the calf. 
• I lost a chicken on Saturday. The heat was just too much for it. It was one of our older chickens...(that was the sad news I wasn't going to tell you about)

Well, that was quite uplifting. I'm so glad I was able to share it with you. To be honest, it was either this or listening to my first world problems with having too many toys. And that post was started and then it took a turn to being serious with a nice helping of deep thoughts and so I filed it under drafts because I'm not there yet. I want to be, but I'm not. (conflicted? me? never.)

I'll leave you now before I continue writing nonsense,
Mama

Pictures from our Weekend

Another Monday. Another day occupied with the "weekend cleanup". Instead of talking about boring things like that I have a couple of pictures to share.

Friday Sunrise

Curious Horse

Mamas and babies

The kids form of transportation and a hot dog

Happy Monday (just trying to stay positive)
Mama

Babies

I should say calves. Babies is probably a little misleading. Yesterday evening T and I went looking for the cows since they hadn't been around the house in a couple of days. We grabbed a bucket of feed and started walking. On the way we wondered what they thought was so good about being in the pastures in the back; the hay is right next to our house... and we were pretty sure there wasn't a hidden field of luscious green grass back there. We spotted them in the pasture behind the barn and they were excited to see us. Especially when they saw the feed. Then we saw this

A pretty baby girl. She is probably just a couple days old and almost walked right up to me. At the last second she turned and ran the opposite direction. She has such pretty, long, white eyelashes. Such a surprising delight.

I just ran outside because I thought it was raining. That's the trickery of screen windows and a light fog. And a cloudy morning. I wouldn't mind if it rained again. Not at all.

Anyway, she's a cute calf and I have three kids crawling on me so I have to go. See you tomorrow!

I Might Mention the Weather

It's hot. Dry. Everything is brown and dead. Every once in a while I find some green shoots of grass but they are instantly gobbled up by sheep. I don't like looking outside because it's depressing. And this post is also depressing. The last time it rained was June 22. We received a glorious 1/2 inch. Two weeks ago there was still a bit of green grass in front of our house... no longer.

 

woa

Those are some cute kids though.

I really feel for the farmers and ranchers that are dealing with this. My brother is having to truck hay in from other states to feed his cattle. That gets expensive.

Just about every church sign we pass has some version of "Pray for Rain" spelled out. The governor set aside a day (I think back in April) to pray for rain. 

Those cracks in the ground were 6-8 inches deep. In the beginning of May. They haven't exactly gotten any better. 

I think I'll recruit the children and go out and do a rain dance. It's worth a shot, right?

Farm at Sunset

Last night we headed out to check on the cows. It was right after 8pm when we got going. They greeted us at the gate in the back pasture. I forgot to take my camera off of "kids and pets" for the first picture so it's a little dark.

 

Isn't it beautiful?

This here, this is not beautiful. This is drought. We could use some rain. We could use a slow down pour for several days, maybe even a week or two? It's so frustrating to see such lush weeds and brittle brown grass. (I think we could do some shredding...) 

Again, a hard to see picture here. It's of the horses. They were running around kicking up their heels. I always get nervous when they do that. 

So, that was our little trip at sunset. I have the usual things to do today with the hopes that I can get all 4 loads of laundry put away (and wash more laundry),  clean up in the laundry room, get some plants potted, plan out supper, tend to the garden and chickens and horses.

Just for fun here's what I looked like last night. I need to explain my attire first. I went to town yesterday and was wearing jeans with this shirt. When I got home it was a blazing 143 degrees outside so I grabbed the first goofy looking skirt I saw in my closet. Then, because I didn't want to be bit on the ankles by a snake I pulled my boots on. This was all fine until T wanted to take my picture. So, here I am. Keeping it real for y'all. Laugh all you want.

Hilarious, no? At least I have the sense to not walk around in public like this. 

Wait, is the Internet public? Is this blog public? 

Possibly regretting this,

Mama