What have I been up too?

Well I took maternity pictures for my niece Ashlee. James and Ashlee are pregnant with a baby girl named Madeline (Maddie). Maddie has allot of struggles in the womb and will be born needing brain surgery. She will be whisked off right away. Maddie also suffered a stroke in womb and the doctors will not know the severity of that stroke until after Maddie is born. Maddie will be surrounded with love and she will be spoiled.

What else
I have several of these plants growing in my garden and had to share how interesting the leaves are. I found out they are a type of potato plant. Yup the ones we eat. We planted several types of potato's this year but in the past only planted white ones so the plant looks totally different. Cool huh?

And this is Opie, he is the baby goat that lost his momma.

Opie is doing a little better. He is learning to get along with the other goats. He still thinks of me as his other momma so he runs up to me and cries. But he is better then he was before. He was crying so hard his voice would run out. Opie boy is a sweetheart!!

Harvesting Animals

Sat we harvested (killed) a few turkeys and roosters. Freezer has food so we are thankful for the harvest! We had 1 25 pd turkey, 1 20 pd turkey and 2 15 pd turkeys. We also butchered 2 roosters. It was work but rewarding. Probably gross to a some people but its better to be farm raised then the ones you buy in the store. Ours have never had hormones like store ones. Taking the life of something is not easy but its something we must do to eat. So you do it. The animal feeds us. We know it sacrificed its life to feed us and appreciate and thank God for it.

Gardening

Tomatoes growing fast. Flowers everywhere on them. Below is a tomato growing out of the flower. In process one would say.

When we tilled our garden from last year we were going to just plant potatoes in this part of the yard. Well apparently last years pumpkin that did not really take off, replanted itself and now is HUGE! It has flowers growing off of it everywhere. And to top it off last year we DID NOT plant tomato plants in this garden, but apparently someone did before prior to us buying the house. Around 7 tomato plants replanted themselves and now is growing with flowers all around this pumpkin plant. What a treat! I have no idea what kind of tomatoes we will be getting but YUM!

Gardening is allot of work. Our family sadly doesn't keep up with Gardening as we should. We tend to be lazy. What can we say! The tool above is an old manual tiller. This helps go through the rows much quicker! This year we pretty much lost much of our crops. Weeds are bad around here. And we have farm animals who love to be in the middle of it all
Bless their pee picken hearts as my mom would say. :) Well we also have the ducks helping us too and probably a few deer.

Eggs

I posted one other time about a small egg with in our eggs..well here is a photo I took of an odd shaped egg, another small one. And a very larger one compared to the regular size egg.


Weird huh?

Birds

So we thought they were all female Mallards...one is not apparently..Its molting and its colors are changing!! HOW COOL IS THAT?Anyone want a Mallard duck when they have babies?

If you look closer you can see baby chicks eating and drinking with one of our bunnies. They get along great.

Babies and momma outside for the first time together. So fun to watch!!


EDITED June 26th
This morning I found mom with a bunch of feathers missing and her baby chicks all gone. We are not sure if we have a weasel or a fox but whatever it is has been eating our eggs and some of my mom's chicks, pulling them through a whole. Not sure if its the same animal as the one doing it to my mom's chickens or not. Whatever it is only goes after the babies and eggs.

Growing up..remember how small they were

Still a baby, but we think it will be a white duck

This above is a close up of one of the baby quails

Remember the baby chuckers..well above is one that has gotten bigger. Though still not fully grown, but bigger :)

One of the baby Mallards. We think all 4 are females

This is a picture of one of our chocolate runners and the Mallards

Beautiful week-end and random

My baby ducks enjoying one of their first swimming lessons outside

My cottontail
Spring is here! YEAH!

My daughter Julionna

So cute!! and...

This shelf is not the cute thing but it is one of my favorite things..my mom gave me this when Brian and I got engaged 17 years ago. This shelf is full of little things we collected along the way. Some items were purchased and some items found and some given. We love our treasures. This is a real printers drawer (type shelf)

We purchased 5 chickes (little banties) so adorable!

This sweet heart is 1 of 4 little mallard ducks. We got them at coastal farms. We are doing to have to clip wings for sure. This should be it for this year. The fresh eggs have been the best and having ducks keep the bugs and slugs away :) SO CUTE!

Snowing and more

Above is a Bard rock chicken
Blow is a Bronze Turkey (good eats around thanksgiving :( )

Below is a Rhode Island Red Chick

Below is a bobwhite quail

Below is a chucker

and the beauty here is a mountain you can see out our living room window. It was snowing and beautiful!

My rooster is handsome

This is my rooster. He is onry and beautiful!!! Just had to show yeah :)

An Egg---hum weird

So I was out checking for eggs and reached in and was picking some eggs out of one of the nest boxes and discovered this

Now in the early part of the year they typically lay darker eggs so no surprise at color.. But look at the size of that egg!!! Weird huh?

One of my chickys

Some of my chickens....

I found one of my favorite chickens dead. It looked like she was perching and must have fallen asleep and fell and broke her neck. She hasn't been sick and the position I found her says so. Frustrating!!!! She was a sweet chicken. I know to some that sounds stupid or silly but when you spend time with them and they come up to you and talk in chicken way and they are tame and come running up to me to be petted or fed and each have their own personality you would understand. God created animals for us to take care of..having a heart for even a chicken is what we are suppose to have. lolol anyway my poor chicken is buried under a flowering tree.

One of my poor chickies

One of my chickens was found by some wild animal! Makes me so upset. I love my laying hens! Poor chicky

Goodbye Hippy Chick

My hippy chick was killed by a dog, or weasel or something

I miss my hippy chick. She was a good chicken. I think hippy chick was blind, I am sure that is why she got taken. It was in the day time..

One of my roosters...

Well the other day I noticed my rooster running up to me sideways and his feathers all out and he was making an odd noise. I could not figure out what was wrong with him. The next day he came shooting out of his house when I opened up the door to the chicken house doing the same thing. I was looking at him with curiosity. All of a sudden a few hens came out and my other rooster came out and had the same thing and appearance as my rooster that was next to me. I realized there is nothing wrong with my rooster accept he is in LOVE with my boots! LOLOL I wear them when I go to my chicken pen and my chickens follow me everywhere as I have been their momma. Well sometimes I sit with them and copy the hen noises. The hens like it, then I realized maybe my noises were good enough it fooled him. So now every time I go outside in my boots he runs up feathers fluffed and goes where ever I go lol its so funny! Now if I am not wearing my boots he doesn't come near me at all!


(the picture looks allot like my roosters but for some reason I cannot find my pics, so this is not my rooster)

Before and after- What a chicken house

BEFORE

AFTER

Now we just need to paint it red and white to match our home....

My first Egg

Yup my chickies finally laid eggs!!! Here is a picture of my first chicken egg. Pretty brown egg!!

My rebellious Chickens

My chickens usually heard to the their pen when I direct them that way, or when its raining etc..never had a problem. Well the other day it was raining out pretty hard and I seen the chickens hiding under the tree, so I go to heard them, those buggers ran around the yard and refused to go to their pen. This is my dog sparky in the pen with them (different day). Anyway I looked like a chicken with my head cut off, soaking wet. It was pathetic and sad.
So after my mom helped try nothing worked. I gave up and let them be. Well sure enough if I did not make it to the house and the sun came popping out. I wonder if those chicken knew what was coming with the weather? How weird is that?

Chickens are so fun to raise!

You know all of these years I wanted chickens, really since I was a kid. Well I am not disappointed. They have been such a blast to raise!
These chickens are so comical. I let them free range with supervision because they are my babies and I don't want them to get hurt. So I babysit them. They found our garden and they chow on weeds and bugs so I am very happy with that! This is an older picture of one of the roosters from the batch. Of course they are allot bigger now! Love my chickees

Walking and enjoying the weather

I have to say it has been so very nice here in Oregon. We have been taking total advantage of the weather and living in the country. We have a garden now, chickens and one day maybe we will have some property and maybe get a beef! Now that would be great! Plus as mentioned before we have lots of fruit trees and found we also have some nut tree's! It has been a dream of mine to have a farm of my own. My kids can finally be kids here. When your out here you feel like your in another world compaired to when your in town. I thought I would miss being out of town. But I really don't. Besides having a house keeps me busier. Holy Cow.. Maybe just maybe my weight will go on the downside. I have gained 30 pounds since being in the motorhome, plus I was already overweight!

Plus Heavenly Angels in Need (HAIN) is also doing better then it has ever done. There is no more tention. Its been a HUGE blessing!

Life has been great! Glad to be here!