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!

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

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 )

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.

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. 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! 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!

This was the male peacock with the biggest tailfeathers I have ever seen up close! He looked so beautiful! 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!

Hehehehe! This picture of Hannah makes me laugh!!

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.

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!

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

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! (good for her!)

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.

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!

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 ). 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! {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!

]]> http://lacy.obeyingthetruth.com/blog/2010/06/no-place-like-home/feed/ 8 http://lacy.obeyingthetruth.com/blog/2010/06/vacation-work/ http://lacy.obeyingthetruth.com/blog/2010/06/vacation-work/#comments Thu, 10 Jun 2010 11:52:33 +0000 Lacy http://lacy.obeyingthetruth.com/blog/?p=3023 Well, at least I had a reasonable excuse for this prolonged wait for the next post. 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. 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.

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!

I just wanted to write a quick post and let everybody know that my big brother got married yesterday (May 24th)! Here's a photo (taken by Megan's Mom) of him and his wife, Megan! I'm so happy for them! May the Lord continue to bless them, and guide and direct their steps according to His Word!

So, Levi is currently in Ohio (that's where he got married). God blessed him with a good job at a nice hardware store, and he was able to get a car and his driver's license there. It's strange to think of my big brother being married already.. lol. They make a nice looking couple, don't they? BTW, Megan made her own wedding dress; the one in the photo above (and below). It's beautiful and a very modest wedding dress!

~ My brother and his bride ~

Levi & Megan Self

With the one on the left, the original, there's too much "head room", so to speak. I fixed this by cropping the portrait. That also took the focus away from the busy background and put it more on the subject. I also bumped up the brightness and contrast and fiddled with the color levels a bit to improve the coloring of the portrait, AND I sharpened it a bit. As a "finishing touch", I added that little white border around the photo. What do you think? Which one do you like better?

Another thing I like to do with some of my photos is make them look old style with black&white, or sepia toning.. For example:

This particular picture of Gracie just looked a lot better in b&w (black and white) than it did in color — to me it just looked bland in color, so I did a couple edits, bumped up the contrast & brightness, and converted it to B&W. Mom says she looks like an albino or a ghost cow since I converted it. As for the barn, I wanted to try to achieve and "old" look to it, as if it were an old picture of an old barn. I think it turned out pretty good with the sepia coloring. Your thoughts?

Yesterday… well… where do I start? Okay, let's start with Hannah's little escapade. I heard Gabriel barking at the guineas, and the guineas screeching at the top of their lungs not too long before milkin' time, so I ran out to see what the problem was. I ran down to the barnyard gate, and that scared Shadow out of the woods and he ran down to meet me. Well, I got through the gate and was heading down to the hen pen, and I heard more hooves pounding, behind me. So I turn and look, and there's Hannah. On the other side of the fence! I ran back up to the gate and lassoed her neck with my arm and pulled her in before Shadow could come up behind me and push his way out (I can't hardly stop him when he gets to pushing. He's strong!).

Well, I thought, maybe she got in to Gracie's stall, and the pen door blew open from the wind, and she got out. I went and checked, and Gracie's stall door wasn't open. She didn't get out that way. After milking I went up to the top of the field where Shadow was, and saw the place in the fence where she bent the chicken wire down and squeezed through. :O She puts her front feet up on that chicken wire that's connected to the hi-tensile fence, to get the leaves up higher that she can't otherwise reach. Well, that chicken wire bends real easy. So with all her weight, it just bent right down, and she just went right through. I hope she doesn't make a habit of this. Next time she could be in the garden that we just got planted!

At chore time, Gabriel and I went in the hen house to fill up the chicken feeders, and I happened to look up at the bird nest that is under the roof right above the hen house steps, to see if I could see any of the baby birds that were there. I sure did. I saw two not-so-litlte birds staring right back at me.

So I got Gabe out of the Hen House, and I ran back up to the house to get my camera to see if I could get a good picture of them to post and show ya'll. I got back down there with my camera and got up on the steps, and I had just raised my camera up and turned it on, and it must've startled them or something, because they all flew out of the nest right at me. And there wasn't just two of them, there was about 4 of them! I was pretty disappointed that I didn't get to get a picture of them! They were so cute.

Anyhow, I put the cat in the barn after that for a while, just in case any of the birdie's decided to land on the ground. If Sunny was out, they'd be cat food.

Let's see, what has happened since my last post? I try to write the most important things down in the calendar that I have on my desk, but most days I forget it's even there! Wow — I can't believe that the last post I made was on the 1st! WOW! Anyhow ( ), let's see… Aunt Linda and little Matthew came on the 3rd… lots of blank days for the calendar until the 8th, when I took 4 dozen eggs down to our neighbor.

On Sunday, Dad and I cleaned out Gracie's stall in the barn. Dad was using the tractor, with a wagon thingy hooked up to the back of it, and was loading both that and the tractor bucket with wet hay, while I was on the other side with the cart, loading up hay into that. It took us a little while, but we eventually got it done! Since there was only room for two people with pitchforks, {me and Dad} Mom went around with the water hose filling up all of Gracie's water barrels. Later, Dad cleaned the roost in the hen house, so we got that all taken care of for another couple weeks.

Yesterday, Aunt Mel, Uncle Wayne, and my cousin Kyle came down to visit with us and spend the night! We had a good visit, and enjoyed their company! They just left here a little while ago — they stayed long enough to watch us milk Gracie, 'cause they wanted to see how we did that. Oh yeah, Kyle and I played about 3 games of chess while they were here. He beat me on the first one {some trick maneuver he did}, I won the 2nd game, and the 3rd game that we played this afternoon ended in a stalemate (I guess that's how you spell that!) with just our kings left on the board! I hadn't played chess in a long while, but I enjoyed it!!

Guess what? I change my braces tomorrow, and it's my last set! The only thing after those are my retainers — I can't wait!

Here's a photo of my new book, Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. I finished it not too long ago, but of course I'll go back and read it again, just to make sure I didn't miss anything! It was a really good book, and I enjoyed it. I keep forgetting to take it outside, so I can try to get a better picture of it, so this one will have to do for now!

Okay, here are the results of the poll "What kind of animal is Sammy?":

Chicken (3 votes)
Turkey (1 vote)
Dog (0 votes)
Guinea Fowl/Bird (11 votes)
Goat (2 votes)
Other.. none of the above (4 votes)

Here is the final answer, folks! Sammy {Samuel Allen} is a Guinea Bird!! Congrats to all those who voted on Guinea Fowl!! Here's his picture: