The goings on in our world over the last week

SURPRISE rex bunnies!

Lacey

Rusty

Lightning

Roger

Roger being roger.  Very cocky, very strutty

Buff Orpington Rooster - also for sale if anyone is interested, although he will be a stew pot guest if no one is.

One of the 4 red pyle old english roosters for sale

Spazzy, being very photogenic

Larry, being cocky.

Ms. Bunny's rex had another surprise litter.  9 of them this time! 

The beeplas playing & scratching under the elderberry's

First of the beepla's have crowed!

"Roger" the red and black Americauna rooster has officially crowed and is letting the whole world know he exists!  It's rather humorous actually because its more like a croak than a crow. LOL

Photos of das beeplas! :-D

One of the Light Brahma Hens

SPAZZY!!!  Bahaha he's the most "show-off", photogenic, gentle rooster I've ever met. :-D 
He even lets my son pull on his feathers and he doesn't squawk or try to get away.

A light brahma hen & a jersey giant hen

Silver Lace Wyandotte rooster.  Thinking of naming him "lightning".

They're getting more adventurous!  Not quite comfortable enough with the outdoors to venture out of the barn, but they are getting closer!

Light brahma hen

Light brahma hen

Stella, 1/2 pastel easter eggers

Rodney, my jersey giant rooster

Roger, 1/2 easter egger roosters

Light brahma hen trying to figure out if this silver pan of water is a good thing or a bad thing...

Roger is investigating the food pan

2/2 pastel easter egger hens

They just got let out of the coop... it was a giant wave of 7-week old chickens!  LOL They were running so fast that some got trampled and went head over apple cart.

The adventurous light brahma who actually leaves the barn

The adventurous light brahma who actually leaves the barn.  She's pecking around under an old truck.

Roger being all pompous & strutting his stuff

Lightning poking around being nosy

All of the others following this point are Moms Isa Browns being nosy and poking around the yard for stuff to eat.  :-) 

Letting the Beeplas free-range for the first time

The beeplas are officially free-ranging!  Yay! 

Yesterday my sister did chores for me because I was busy trying to put Little Frog down for his mid-morning nap.  He did eventually go down, but not before my sister opened up the coop door and let EVERYONE out to free-range.  She didn't know I had only been letting a handful out at a time so they would slowly get used to being "free" to roam...either way, they are all free now!

It went so well yesterday that I let them all loose again today, and boy oh boy were they EXCITED LOL!!!  They were running so fast when they were leaving the coop that they were running over each other and going head over apple cart!  LOL  It was so funny.   :-D

Between my husbands bantams (10), my beeplas (25), and moms adults (6)... we have a very busy little chicken farm!!  LOL   Chickens chickens everywhere!

In other news, it looks like I have no less than 5 roosters right now,  not counting my husbands.  Gah! 

To everything there is a season...

As I go about life here in the backwoods today, I am thinking about how there are times when I have become resentful of the curve balls life has thrown me. Don't get me wrong, I am utterly thankful for the blessings which have been bestowed upon me.  In fact many times I cannot even begin to fathom just how blessed I truly am, because I have gotten so wrapped up in the difficulties of life that it's just too hard to see past this situation or that.

A prime example of this is that my husband and I sold our car.  We bought that car while we were stationed on Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, CA.  It was literally my lifeline after "hell" hit & they locked him up then stopped feeding him, all for not being a perfect robot.   Driving around, was my way of coping with the utter hell we were experiencing, as well as my way to and from work in order to pay our bills after they stopped paying him.  The love of my life was locked up, I was hanging onto my sanity by a thread... and I had nothing left except my dog & my car...  So selling our car has hit me really hard.  It's been two weeks now, and I logically understand why we had to sell it, I logically understand that my husband & son are much more important than a car... but I would not be lying if I said I had shed more than a few tears over that car.  But it's a possession.  Possessions can be replaced.

Something that I have to keep telling myself over and over as each curve ball gets thrown at me, is that "This too shall pass; everything has a season, this will not last forever, so be strong and enjoy each day as it comes.  Look for the sunshine in every cloudy day."

Life today, is wonderful, it's actually a lot better in many ways than I could have ever imagined.  What I couldn't have imagined, was that I would be living back under my parents roof, caring for both my son & my husband simultaneously, while keeping chickens in the backyard to sell eggs and try to make ends meet!

I love my son & husband more than life itself.  I would die for either one of them in a heartbeat if it meant that their lives would be guarantied to be happy ones. But, in both cases, they would not be able to live without me so that whole statement is a rather silly one.

Most people take bible verses and bend them to suit the situation they are trying to deal with.  Christians today are really bad about this issue, and I don't like it. Sometimes the verses don't actually mean what people think they mean, because they've been twisted around to suit people so often that the original meaning has been lost on people.  Even when someone actually goes into the bible itself to look the verse back up, the "colored glasses" they are viewing the verse through changes the meaning.  It's only when one has the vision to take off the colored glasses and view the verses as they were originally intended that one can actually glean properly.

This bible verse, has helped a lot over the last 3-years since hell broke loose...  Take it for what it's worth. 

Ecclesiastes 3

1  There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:

2  a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot,

3  a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build,

4  a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,

5  a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

6  a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away,

7  a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak,

8  a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

First attempt at chicken mash of sorts

My husband has 4 roosters & a hen he intends me to butcher out.  They are all bantams, and since I have zero experience butchering chickens out as of yet, Daddy Frog is saying that working these out will be good experience for me, because even if it doesn't work out and I totally screw them up, that by the time I get through all 5 I should have some idea of how to do it correctly when I try to do it on the adults!  :-)

Anyway, these 5 bantams love to waste TONS of food.  I got sick & tired of it.  They are costing me money (because they are in a rabbit cage and keep beaking their food out of the feeder, allowing it to fall through the cage floor to the ground below.  The guineas clean up after them, but the whole purpose in keeping these birds alive in the first place was to fatten them up.. and all of the "fat food" (meat bird food) keeps getting kicked out and they're only getting part of it... so aggravating!!  So, I poured water all over it and crammed their feeder full!  It worked!!  :-D  Yay!!

It worked with them, so then I did the same thing with my beeplas, and it worked even better with them!  I think this may be the way I feed them from now on!  I am so stoked!!

I've been buying 50# of feed every two weeks (32 birds eat a lot...who'd have thought?), then combining it with the free cast off (straw, cracked wheat, buckwheat hulls, corn shells etc) from the mill, and the corn meal unsuitable for  human consumption, also from the mill.  The chickens love it, but there is a lot of waste when this mixture gets put into the feeders.  This mash idea... this could really work.  It is A LOT messier for me, because I don't have a system down yet, but so far there has been no waste, and the beeplas seemed to be able to eat it a lot easier.  What with the food having been partially softened with the water and so forth. :-)

Upcoming nuptuals for my brother & his bride

My brother & his bride will henceforth be referred to as Brother Opossum & Sister-in-law Opossum.  My sister-in-law has a thing for them, and they call each other by it so why shouldn't I?

My brother proposed about 3 weeks ago, and since they've been dating for the last 3.5-years... and they know where the end result will be, they decided "Why wait 6-months for the proper engagement period? We'll get married ASAP!!"  So... the wedding is set for July 12, 2014 and I'm in charge of the bridal shower on June 14, 2014.  I've never done one before but I'm hoping it will turn out as beautiful for real as it is in my mind!

Due to this, and the fact summer is getting into full swing here on our backwater farm... I've had no time to blog AT ALL lately... and that probably won't change for awhile. :-)

I will post photos of the shower & wedding as time allows and if they give their permission.