Danny, and Blackie

Posted by Lacy in On the Farm on Monday, August 23, 2010

Well, apparently there wasn’t just something wrong with Danny’s foot. His problem had been actually coming from his hip. I don’t know whether he dislocated it or broke it or what, but it was obvious he wasn’t getting any better. Dad put him down yesterday morning. :( The night before when I was trying to feed him, he wouldn’t even eat. I had to put the sunflower seeds and stuff in his beak before he would even swallow it. He was just not getting any better, so we figured it was just better for him if we put him down. Bye bye, Daniel William Junior!

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I was putting the guineas in last night, and noticed that Blackfeet and Martha didn’t come in with the rest. So I called Gabe over to help me find them, and started doing my guinea whistle to call them and calling their names – no response. So I walked over to the turkey building to look over in that direction, and when I turned around I saw this grey form laying over by the duck pen. I knew it was dead before I got there, just by the way it was laying – I just didn’t know which one it was. Gabe and I ran over there, and it was Blackfeet (Blackie). This is the strangest thing I’ve ever encountered. No sign of blood, no missing feathers, he was just dead. I don’t get it. Just like Sammy when I found him. :/ I must be missing something, because there must be some reason that 2 of my guineas have died without any obvious reason…

By then I was getting pretty worried about Martha, but come to find out she was just up nesting in the woodpile (and right beside a tunnel spider, too). So I got her out and carried her back to the guinea/rooster pen. Now I have 2 boys (Jesse and Adam) and 5 girls (Martha, Mary, Abigail, Sydney, Philipdelphia) left. My boys are really getting outnumbered. That’s not counting my two old guineas I have left though. Now I only have 9 guineas in total. :O

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West Virginia Pictures

Posted by Lacy in Capturing Life in Photos, On the Farm on Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Well, I figure it’s about time I got around to posting some more of the pictures I took from my trip to West Virginia. I really didn’t take that many… at least not as many as I thought I’d take! (I’m writing this from a program on my computer, so this post works as a test as well :) )

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The tunnel is from the bike ride that I went on with my Aunt Mel and cousin Kyle (that’s Kyle standing in front of the tunnel). Let me tell you, that tunnel was long.. Very, very long. They had lights all the way down through it, but it some places you went through dark spots because the lights were burned out or something. It was kind of fun riding through a long dark tunnel. And it was very chilly in there. My hands were ice cold by the time I got to the other end! 2nd picture is one of the views from the trail. The kitten was at my Aunt Mel’s house. :)

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These are pictures from when we went to the zoo – the way it was set up reminded me more of a large barnyard, except for the fact that this ‘barnyard’ had bears, tigers, lions, and such. :P They had a large snapping turtle in one of the water thingies, only the reflection on the water didn’t let me get a decent picture of him. The only thing you can make out is the size! :P They also had llama’s and donkeys, a lemur, parrots, lots of chickens, peacocks, and cats running around. The mama peacock was just one of several who were walking around with their little babies!

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This was the male peacock with the biggest tailfeathers I have ever seen up close! He looked so beautiful! :D The white one behind him is a female. Then there’s my cousin Angie with her little dog, Princess. And a picture Angie took of me at the zoo with the white donkey. He was a friendly fellow… always trying to get that upper lip around something so he could bit it! :P

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Hehehehe! This picture of Hannah makes me laugh!! :D

Also, just wondering.. Do any of my readers use MSN Messenger? I just set mine up the other day and was wondering if anybody uses it. :)

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Danny's foot & Babysitting

Posted by Lacy in On the Farm on Friday, August 13, 2010

The other day I was in the hen pen and I noticed Danny was limping (since when does he not have some sort of problem?), so I picked him up and looked at his foot — and even took him over to Mom so she could take a look at it — and we didn't see anything. So this morning he was still limping and now wasn't coming out hardly from under the hen house, so I had Gabriel go in and get him out for me (Gabe's such a good helper!!).

This time I stuck him in the Duck Pen so he could stay off that foot as much as possible (there's not too much room in there) and have plenty of food and water and not get bothered by anyone. Staying in there for a while helped Limpy (a hen that, for a while, was limping something awful — until she spent a week or 2 in the duck pen. Now she walks just as good as any other hen). So I reckon we'll see if that helps. I sure hope it does!

I've also been able to babysit Mckayla for a couple days (not in a row though :P). She goes back to school again this Monday, so I'm enjoying the time I get to spend with her during the days! Actually I'm babysitting her again today — she's playing I SPY on my other computer. Oh yeah! I didn't tell ya'll I got a laptop! (Well I guess not, since I just got it the other day and I haven't posted in a while again :P) I just got it on Wednesday, so I'm still getting used to it and all. I really really like it though! It sure it nice! :D

I haven't got a picture of it yet, but I'm sure I will! :D

The horseflies around here are just awful this year. I suppose because of the goats and cow that we have now, they're more attracted around here. We've killed a bunch of horse flies already. Then there's those HUGE, BIG, GIGANTIC "horse flies" (I call them buffalo flies — just because they're so big) that keep biting Shadow and Gracie (they don't seem to really bother Hannah that much, for some reason). Whenever I kill them and don't squish them, I feed them to my favorite hen, Goldie. She just loves them! :D (good for her!)

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Over a month!?

Posted by Lacy in On the Farm on Wednesday, July 28, 2010

My goodness. I can hardly believe it's been over a month already since my last post! I think that's about the longest time I've ever had between posts, don't you think? Time sure flew by. It doesn't feel like that long ago to me that I posted (but it probably does to ya'll!).

So many things have happened around here since my last post. We finished re-doing the chicken pen wire, and also the rooster pen. When I was up in WV with my grandparents, Mom and Dad framed in underneath the overhang of the barn and then put chain-link fence around that, so that Gracie couldn't get to the woodchip bins and get the lids off of them, like she's real fond of doing. :P

Something else happened too… remember Sammy, my little guinea buddy? The one I had a hard time naming? My most intelligent guinea? Well, I was putting the guineas away one night, and noticed he was missing, so I started looking around for him. At first I thought maybe the other guineas had been attacking him and he was hiding, but he always would come running when I shook the scratch bucket.
I found Sam down by the pond, close by the plank — dead. I thought maybe he broke his neck or something, but Mom thinks he might've died from heat exhaustion.

Since my last post we've also dug out the waterhole some more, so it can hold lots more water in it! Guess what? I even found 2 snapping turtles in it! I had a hard time catching them, but I used my pond net and after a few tries managed to get them in it! There sure was a lot of bullfrogs and such in there.

And we also re-did the roof on the overhang of the barn… replaced the shingles with metal roofing. And re-did the spouting, and put in a bigger water tank to catch all the water. Only… it hasn't rained very much since we did all that, so we've been having to carry water from the house in 5 gallon buckets to fill up the animal's waterers!

It sure has been hot here lately.. I mean, it was up to about 104 degrees with pretty high humidity! These past two days it has cooled down some, down in the 90's at least. You wouldn't have thought that 90 degrees would've felt cool, but after being in 104 degrees for a while, it sure does! I'm so thankful for the temperature drop! And I'm sure the animals are enjoying it as well!

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No place like Home!

Posted by Lacy in Capturing Life in Photos, On the Farm on Sunday, June 27, 2010

It sure feels good to be back home again! :) Last Thursday (17th), I got to go up and spend a week in WV with my grandparents, which is why I haven't been able to post lately. I took the laptop with me, with the intention of hooking it up to the internet and being able to upload pictures and perhaps a post or two, but alas, when I finally got up there and got the thing unpacked, I realized I had forgotten to pack the modem… without it = no internet! Oh well!

Levi and Megan came in to visit me on Friday. That was fun, and so nice to be able to see them again! I did get some pictures of them while they were there, but this is the best one that turned out:

I enjoyed getting to spend time with my grandparents and the rest of the family up there, but it's nice to be back home! Now I've got to get settled back into the routine here again… lol!

Here's just a couple of the pictures I took while I was up there. (I didn't take as many as I thought I was going to :P ). The kitten is a new one at my Aunt Mel's; I nicknamed her Misty. The doggie is my cousin Angie's (she's in the last photo); her name is Princess. I'll be uploading more as I post. I even got to go to a small zoo while I was there! :D {It was set up more like a large barnyard}

Well, I just wanted to write a short post letting everyone know I was back.. Now I've got to catch up with everything that's been going on online! :D

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Vacation Work

Posted by Lacy in On the Farm on Thursday, June 10, 2010

Well, at least I had a reasonable excuse for this prolonged wait for the next post. :P You see, Dad went on vacation (for a month or so!) on May 27th, and we've been pretty busy working around the house, trying to get stuff done. :D Hard to believe I haven't updated ya'll since I posted about Levi getting married!

We put up a couple more strands of wire in the front yard, and got the electric ran to it; so now the front yard fence is electrified when we put Gracie over there! (Dad put in a switch so that we could turn it on and off, so when Gracie's not in there, we keep it off.

There was a lightning storm we had on the 3rd, and somehow the top of a tree behind Gabriel's pen snapped and managed to land in the camp fire area. I'll never figure out how it missed the entire pen, and also all the chairs that are in the camp fire area. It just missed everything! I didn't think the wind was bad enough to be able to blow it over there… lol.

Oh yeah, Dad, Mom, and I took down a tree in the barnyard {and it wasn't easy this time}. It was one in front of the chicken pen, to the right of the hen pen door. We needed to get it out of there so we could work on the chicken pen, so we decided to take it down. Well, it was Mom and I pulling it with a rope, while Dad was cutting the tree. Mom and I couldn't get it to move in the right direction (the first couple feet were pretty important, because we had to get past a oak limb on another tree); not to mention the place we had to pull from, the run in pen, was muddy. We were slippin' and slidin' everywhere! We eventually had to get the tractor to pull the thing down, because it did get caught on that oak limb, and there wasn't any way we could get it down!

This is what we were working on yesterday — repairing the fence on the chicken pen. There was a hole at the bottom of the fence and the new chickens we had got (did I tell you about that? The lady that we give milk to, we got 10 new chickens from her.) kept getting out, so for a temporary fix we put two hay bales in front of the hole, which stopped them. :P

What we put up yesterday was chain link fence. I liked it, and it was fairly easy to work with (much easier than chicken wire!). We put the boards in the middle because the goats seem to enjoy rubbing against the fence with all their weight, and it was bending the chicken wire in and pretty much ruining it. So this way with the boards, it'll be extra support to this fence doesn't cave in when Shadow does that.  I think it looks really nice… can't wait till we get the rest done! (We'll be working on it more today.)

Well, I've got to go. :) I'll try to update again soon!

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