Conversations with a 4 year old

S and I were in Wal mart today(I hate that I have to shop at Wal mart but my small town doesn't really give me much in the way of choice) and I decided to stroll through the bathing suits to see if anything caught my fancy. Not that there is any sunshine to wear a bathing suit in but here's hoping!

S: "What are we in here for?"

Me: "I wanted to look at the bathing suits."

S: "Why? You have a perfectly good bathing suit at home."

Well, he told me, didn't he! I can't imagine where he gets that from! *wink wink*

It's green at least

The garden is growing like crazy(so are the weeds) with all this rain we have been having. All we need now is a bit of sun so the soil will warm up and my seeds will germinate!

I went gung ho weeding my front garden but as you can see the grass and dandelions are ever so sneakily moving back in! It's hard to motivate one's self to go out in the rain to weed!

This is my recently renovated herb bed. I dug my chives and thyme out(they are the only herbs that survive the harsh Alberta winters to come back in the spring) put a whole bunch of cow manure, topped with a layer of spoiled hay, then a layer of compost and raked the soil back over. In addition to the chives and thyme there is now lavender, rosemary, oregano, dill and fennel. And my lovely bleeding hearts in the foreground.
The vegetable garden. In May I dug out all my perennials, rototilled the garden into two strips and it is all dedicated to vegetables. My rhubarb is now in the bed at the front of the garden along with saskatoon berry bushes and day lilies.
This is where I moved my raspberries to at the far end of this row. This strip is all berries. Raspberries at the south end with strawberries on the east side, then two red currants, a patch of grass that wouldn't allow itself to be rototilled and four blueberry bushes snug amongst the chicken litter.
Garlic in the foreground that I planted in the fall. I was so pleased to see that 10 cloves sprouted even though I planted at least twice that. Next is three varieties of potato- red, white and purple. Then snap peas around the teepees, four rows of onions, more pea teepees and then five rows of carrots- purple haze, king midas and a mix variety of orange, yellow and purple. Lastly is four rows of beets- baby ball and golden.
The other row of the garden isn't much planted yet. There are broccoli seedlings, kohlrabi, and brussels sprouts and hopefully if the weather improves and the soil dries out a bit, I can get in my beans, cucumbers, zucchini and whatever else that's left to plant!

Happy Gardening!

It happened

Early this morning white stuff was falling from the sky. Most of it has melted except for this patch in the field.

So not impressed!

What a big boy!

Well it happened... my baby boy turned four earlier this week. My how time flies! And he's so mature now too *chuckle* it was almost like he woke up that morning and decided he was a big kid!

Seeing as my husband had to head back to work early we celebrated S's birthday twice; once on the weekend and then again on the actual day just me and the kids. Originally when asked what he wanted for his birthday dinner, S had said Uncle(as in, the mean old rooster) I told him that we couldn't eat Uncle because I needed him for breeding stock. So he settled on just a regular old roasted chicken for dinner with rice and broccoli and cheese sauce and a raspberry cake for dessert.



The actual birthday came along and while F was at school, S and I made the batter for vanilla cupcakes. A birthday just isn't a birthday if you don't get to lick the beaters!
S and I spent part of the day in town together. We went to the Farmer's Market, played at the playground and went out for lunch. After a simple supper I put the finishing touches on S's vanilla cupcakes with chocolate butter cream and blueberries and home made vanilla sandwich cookie ice cream. Yum!

It was a wonderful day for a wonderful little monster boy! xoxo

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.