Sunday, June 17, 2007

The Pit Crew (part two)

Mom and I picked about another 4 quarts of cherries on Saturday night. We made some cherry jam and pie filling. The cherry jam is so yummy that I plan on getting some more jars this week and making a couple more batches. It still doesn't look like we made a dent!

The chickens are now comfortable coming outside. Today after we returned from church I opened the door and as I walked back to the house, most of the chickens were outside. They stayed out most of the day scratching in the dirt or eating bugs. They are starting to look more and more like their pictures on the hatchery website. It looks like we might have 4 roosters. There are two black and white ones that look like seagulls and no other chickens look like them. I need to go look again at the cuckoo maran photos to see what the roosters look like. I don't remember any of the hen photos appearing this way.

I bought them a new 3 gallon waterer and an 11 pound feeder. It is nice to not have to refill the little ones all day long.

Kelly and Enzo seem to finally be settling into our new life here. Enzo a little more than Kelly, who has been plagued with some stomach problems for the past couple of weeks. She is going to the vet on Tuesday and I hope they can give her some medication to help her get through the hump. She seems to love being outside here. Whenever I take her out she just runs and runs around the yard. I can't wait until we have the time to put in our new electronic fence. It will be nice, once they are trained with it, to just let them have run of the yard. I didn't blog this when it happened, but the second day we were here, Kelly got out and ran away. We couldn't find her for more than two hours. She wasn't wearing a collar and since she is so afraid of people, you can't really catch her easily. Everyone was just so sad. Bob and the kids drove around for two hours looking for her. Someone had spotted her up at the high school, but Bob never spotted her. I was unloading my van and had the strongest impression that as when I was finished, I should get in the car and drive up the road and she would be there. I quickly finished what I was doing and grabbed the keys. I drove up the road, just past our property and there she was, standing on the side of the road as I had seen in my mind. I am so grateful for the gift of the Spirit at times like these. We did buy Kelly and Enzo tags with our new address the next morning and put new collars on them (and we bought the fence but haven't had the time to install it yet).

Life here has been demanding on us physically, but in a good way. It is the kind of exhausting that you fall into bed at night grateful for the rest. We haven't had a chance to hook up the tv in the bedroom yet, and I may just keep it that way. Honestly, I have only sat down once or twice since we have been here to watch something on tv. I also just realized that I haven't logged into instant messaging since I moved! I find that oddly fascinating.

We are still on the lookout for a nice horse and some goats. The pastures keep growing and growing and we need some animals to keep it in check. Also, the barn is so empty and lifeless. The barn swallow are our only inhabitants.

The garden is doing well. We have about 25 green bean plants that are fast growing. The other plants are surviving and I noticed 3 or four pumpkins starting to come up. The beets, onions, carrots, and lettuce should be poking through soon. We started miracle grow this weekend. Hopefully, it will give everything a little boost.

It is off to bed for me. Melanie leaves for girls camp in the morning and we all need the rest.

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