Say hello to my stinky little friends

We went down to Red Deer yesterday for the Heritage Poultry Sale at the Westerner Agri Centre. Heritage birds are the old breeds of chickens, ducks, turkey etc that need preserving as newer hybrid birds that grown faster or produce more eggs come onto the market.

I went there with the hopes of finding Muscovy ducks and Silver Spangled Hamburg chickens. Well... I found neither. Or rather I found the ducks but they were all spoken for. Booo! But I did get the name and email of a woman in my area that raises Muscovy ducks so that was promising anyway.

We did come away with eight three week old chicks though who are now residing in the rabbit cage... in my bathroom. Didn't I swear somewhere along the line that I would never have chickens in my bathroom again?

This little brown ball of fluff is an unknown. The lady I was buying from asked if I wanted it for $3 because she didn't know what it was. I'm hoping that it's a Buff Orpington seeing as the other chicks I bought from her were Orpingtons.
This is a Blue Orpington(we got two)
A Cornish Giant(three of those) These are Hybrid meat birds. This would be what you would be getting from the grocery store. They grow extremely fast- you butcher them at eight weeks. They are not Heritage birds but I was curious as to the difference in a meat bird and a dual purpose bird like my Rhode Island Reds.
This is S's Lavender Ameraucana, Candy. F's is named Lightning.

And today I am going to look at some black Indian Runner Ducks as well as Silver Spangled Hamburgs that I found on line! Yay!

T-Bone

T-Bone is a week old today and I decided to brave the rain to go up and try to snap a few pictures of him. His mom, Cinnamon, is a little less protective of him now that he's not as brand new so she doesn't act as if she's going to eat me if I get within 20 feet of him.


Dexter is a bit of a pest when it comes to the calves. He likes to bark at them and you would probably jump too if you heard his high pitched bark. T-Bone was trying to decide what Dexter was until he barked and sent the calf running for his mom!

Now, whether or not you're wondering why I name the cows food names I figured I'd better clarify. It seems to me that when the time comes it will be a lot easier to send a steer named T-Bone or Sir Loin to the freezer than a steer named Handsome or Buttercup don't you think? Don't get me wrong, he is adorable but the fact is we aren't raising cows to be pets.

Welcome Pepper!

Last Thursday when Cinnamon dropped her bull calf 'T-Bone', I figured that we would see Sugar drop her calf within a week. Well, tomorrow T-Bone is a week old and Sugar dropped a heifer calf this morning! She's a pretty little thing and I named her 'Pepper.' I missed seeing this one come into the world but I managed to get a few pictures when I got home from town.





We have one more calf coming sometime in the next month or so and then that will be it for calving until late Fall when Chocolate and Vanilla will be dropping theirs. Unfortunately it won't be the best time of year but there's not much I can do about that. Next year will be different, we'll be able to plan it out a bit better.

"SURPRISE"

"They're for the salad," she says holding them out to me.

My kids have a wild sense of imagination, no?

Alberta Beach

Northwest of Edmonton on the shores of Lac Ste. Anne is Alberta Beach. We decided to go there for a picnic today in celebration of the May Long Weekend. Last year I mentioned a May Long Tradition of snow but thankfully this year we have managed to break tradition with 20+ degree weather! It was a lovely day and the kids had a great time digging in the sand and splashing in the water.






Tomorrow I'm back to working in the garden and trying to get everything planted! No more days off for this country mama.

Hope you have a lovely May Long Weekend!

Conversations with a 3(almost 4) year old

My husband K was digging the hole for the post for my clothes line(the other one got knocked over this winter by our neighbor's tractor) and he found a nice big worm for S.

Me: "What are you going to name your worm?"

S: "I'm going to name it T-Bone"(this is the name we chose for our bull calf)then upon further consideration "Actually I'm going to name it Flower because it smells like flowers."

Me: "That's a nice name."

S: "Actually I'm going to name it Dirt because it actually smells like dirt."

He even smelled it to check. ;)

I knew we bought this for a reason!

Last fall my husband cut down a bunch of small trees at the end of the driveway so yesterday I went down and cut off all the branches so that I could use them as stakes in my garden. The mosquitoes were killer, the sun was beating down on my head and my boots felt like they weighed 10 pounds each as I hauled the saplings up the driveway to the garden. On the way back down I saw the kids' cozy coupe in the grass(that they never use) and got the brilliant idea to use it for this...

Voila! All the saplings made it to the garden in one trip thus saving that much more of my blood from hungry mosquitoes!

A healthy calf is born!

*WARNING* If you don't wish to see a cow squeezing a calf out of her 'you-know-what' then perhaps you had better skip this post... because that is what this post is! From start to finish!

I was texting my friend K at about 10:00 this morning while watching Cinnamon out the kitchen window. She was acting funny so I decided I had better go check it out. I have been checking on her at least four times a day since we got back from the island as I knew it was going to be any day!

Cinnamon in the throes of labour
The front feet. A very good thing! I wasn't really keen on putting my hand up there to rearrange a calf that was coming the wrong way
Front feet and head are out
and the rest of the body slithered out right after


How freakin' cute is that?
On wobbly legs
It's up!
The calf is up and looking for the milk. Cinnamon is telling me to F off at this point.
The whole thing from start to finish took under an hour and both seem to be doing well. I'm pretty excited that I actually got to see it happen! I figured I would wake up one morning and there would be a calf in the field! Thank you Cinnamon for not killing me while I watched!

With Spring comes...

Fresh green leaves...
Happy chickens and...
Ducks free ranging on lush green grass...
Daffodils...
Weeding of the flower bed...
Mending and rebuilding of fences...
and Earthworms!
Lots and lots of Earthworms!
I love Spring!

A whirlwind trip to the Island

Hello! Did you miss me? I'm sorry I have been gone for so long but I'm back now to tell you about all the wonderful adventures I had while we were visiting family and friends on Vancouver Island!

Okay I didn't really have that many adventures but we sure had a good time. I should probably tell you now that I basically forgot to take my camera out the entire time we were there so most of these pictures are courtesy of my very special friend K.

We had a big family dinner the night we arrived which gave us time to catch up with some family members who we hadn't seen for a long time. It was wonderful!

On the 30th my friend K and I spent a 'Girls Day in Town' visiting some friends I hadn't seen in years before going for amazing pedicures!

We went out for sushi, ate copious amounts of chocolate and thoroughly enjoyed being child(ren)less for a day!

On the 1st we had a picnic at the beach. The kids played in the water and collected rocks and sea shells.
That night we had my birthday dinner. Mmmm so good!

"Cheese! Where's our dinner??!!"
That's a lot of candles. Yup the big 3-oh. It's not so bad actually. I can still stay up late and have fun like I did when I was 20!
On the 3rd my husband flew in from his shift in China and we stayed at my parents' place that night before heading over to his parents' place the next day. That night I was thoroughly surprised with a 'Surprise Party' that my husband K and my friend K had been planning for me. Apparently it isn't easy to plan surprise parties from China so one must enlist the help of an accomplice. He He.

What a wonderful surprise it was!
And the kids had a great time hanging out with the goats and playing on the playground.

The rest of our time was spent traveling back and forth visiting people. It was a great trip! But of course all things must come to an end and nine days really does go by quickly. I started to get anxious about whether I still had three dogs at home and if the cows were all right.

There's no better way to end a wonderful visit than coming home to find that one of the dogs(I'll give you a hint which one: she's brown and her name rhymes with llama) had chewed her way out of the garage in order to kill F's rabbit Basil.

Isn't she a sweetheart? We didn't need that garage door anyway...or the rabbit...

Thank you to all my wonderful family and friends for an amazing visit and terrific memories to remember my 30th birthday! xoxo