New Baby Chicks

Oh, and today was the first day we found two eggs in the chicken coop laid by… I don’t know, by I suspect that the two Golden Comets, Pixie and Peep, were the first to lay beautiful brown eggs! Even my husband was excited about it. He loves eggs. Especially beautiful brown free range chicken eggs.

If you remember, when we originally got the chickens, I had a total of fourteen. Unfortunately about two months into that, something forced its way into the coop and slaughtered ten of them in one night. The one “hen” who survived (three of the chickens were on a road trip to campmeeting with me) has now turned out to be a rooster. His name is Lucky. We then got five more chicks, one of which got sick and died of a respiratory illness, so were ended up with a total of eight chickens who are all getting ready to start laying any time.

You can see my girls here roosting on my back porch. Not necessarily a good thing. But they are just so cute!

Of the eight pictured above we have…
2 Buff Orpingtons (one is a rooster) – Buttercup, Lucky
2 Golden Comets – Pixie, Peep
3 Rhode Island Reds – Penny, Violet, K.C. (short for Kentucky Chicken)
1 Amberlink – Speckles

Now, for our new baby chicks hatched October 5, 2011…

3 Americanas (the brown striped chicks) – pink, blue, and green eggs
5 Marans (the black chicks) – dark chocolate eggs
1 Golden Comet (the yellow chick with red stripes on back) – brown eggs
2 Buff Orpingtons (the yellow chicks) – brown eggs
3 California Spotted Whites (the yellow chicks with black polka dots) – white eggs

Not sure what we’ll name these adorable little ones. I like to wait until they get their feathers and I learn more about each individual hen. Although, amazingly enough, they look different enough we can tell them apart. Hannah and Laura are already trying to come up with names for the ones they claimed as their own. It’s just so much fun!

You know it’s cold when…

… your horses have icicles hanging off their fur. That was the sight that greeted us today when we went up to take care of our horses. Yeah. It was that cold. 9 degrees to be exact when we were up there.

We had about 10 inches of snow, too. The well has been out at the place where we keep our four horses for about six weeks now and so we have to haul about 40 gallons of water to the horses everyday. In the snow. And we can’t drive to where the horses are, we have to park at the top of the driveway because of all the ice and snow. We live in the mountains. The whole ordeal takes about two hours between hauling the water, moving the hay, and making sure no one horse gets greedy with his or her buddies food.

Having horses this last year has been a very rewarding experience. Really! Having the horses makes all the cold and pain worth it! Owning the horses has tested our endurance and we have learned some things we never knew this winter. Mainly that 9 degrees is really cold and 24 degrees feels really warm in comparison!! Ah… for the love of a horse (or five).

Horse Club

Today was our 4-H Horse Club meeting. I was so sorry Sarah and Emily were gone and didn’t get to go! Hannah and Laura had a wonderful time! Here they are riding Train Wreck:

They even got to ride bareback for the very first time:

I think I found the perfect horse for my daughter Sarah. He is so gentle, well trained, and just gorgeous! He was a Wild Mustang from Nevada. I hope it works out!

Isn’t he beautiful???

Happy Arbor Day!

Each Tuesday on A Virtuous Woman you can find a great list of Homeschool Freebies! Today is no different!

Seeing as today is Arbor Day, I have a number of great “tree” themed finds for you. Perfect for studying all month!

I took my four girls down to the courthouse here in Harlan today where they were passing out free trees. We were given a number of saplings:

5 persimmon trees
2 black walnut trees
1 pawpaw tree

I hope to get these in the ground tomorrow! The girls were excited about the trees. The saplings were pretty small and it will take years for them to reach maturity, but it will be fun to watch them grow and take note of the changes they make over the years.

Happy Arbor Day!

A Day in Nature

Okay, so on Friday morning (last week) I took my daughter, Laura, to speech therapy. Hannah was with us, too. the parking lot was really full so we had to park quite a ways from the building. I pulled into a parking spot and there was a tree right in front of the car. Hannah says, “Mom, look! There’s a robin sitting on a nest!”

Sure, enough, there was a mommy robin sitting on a nest! We got out of the car, very excited. The nest was just above my eye level. The robin was startled when we got out of the car and she flew away. I couldn’t see into the nest and didn’t want to touch it, but I did hold my cell phone up above the nest and took a photo. There were no eggs on Friday.

So, this morning, we went back to speech and since we were running a little late, we didn’t stop to look at the robin’s nest until after the appointment. On our way back to the car (I brought my camera for the occasion!) we saw the mommy robin again sitting on her nest:

I stepped up on the curb (about 4 feet from the tree) and she was again startled and jumped up out of her nest, but stayed very close by on a branch. I held my camera up and took another photo, and this is what we found:

Are those not the prettiest little eggs you’ve ever seen??? We can hardly wait to see babies!

You know how much we love all of God’s creation – even snakes. But birds are just about our favorite. That is, if you don’t count horses.

This afternoon, we saddled, er, Emily saddled Ladybelle for the first time. (I took the photos.) Isn’t Ladybelle beautiful?? We lover her!

Side Note: In case you are wondering where my other daughter, Sarah, was… well, she is staying at our Middlesboro Church with a group of young people who came to work in the community doing literature evangelism (magabooking, canvasing). She loves the work! I am so proud of her. And in case you are a member in the Kentucky-Tennessee Conference, be sure to check out this month’s Connection newsletter – Sarah has an article in it!!

Anyway, while we were up with the horses, I took a photo of the apple tree. Wow, look at those blossoms! I hope we get that many apples!

Fire Fighter

My son, James, has his first real job. He applied this week with the Harlan Fire Department. Yesterday was his first day of training. Last night Papa John’s caught on fire – not bad apparently because the fire fighters received a free pizza for their help. And this morning – just a little while ago in fact, I heard the sirens and ran out my door just in time to see the big truck driving past my house with my son sitting in the front seat. I am not sure which neighbor’s house is on fire, yet. I feel terrible and am praying that their home and family is okay. I will find out this afternoon whose house it was. Whenever a home burns, I think of how blessed I am. I can’t even imagine losing my home.

UPDATE: I was glad to find out that it was just a forest fire on the mountain and not a neighbor’s home.

Around My Garden in April

I love spring time. I love watching as my flowers bloom. Here are a some photos from around our yard I took this weekend that I want to share with you.

I was so excited when I saw the above photo of the bee – notice he is in flight!! What a perfect photo!

Eastern Kentucky Campmeeting Sabbath

We had a wonderful Sabbath. I taught Sabbath School for the younger children. I ended up teaching kids from both my Harlan and Belcher churches. I think attendance was down this year somewhat because of the economy. Anyway, we sung songs and learned about God’s love for us. And I had a footwashing and communion with the children. It was a lot of fun and very meaningful.

I forgot to take pictures of the footwashing. Footwashing is something that most churches do not practice any more. Our church does it 4 times a year – once a quarter – along with our communion. (I have three church so times that by three for me.) It reminds us to be humble and to be willing to serve just like Jesus did.

We then had communion. We moved from the room where we had the songs and story, etc. to a room where I had decorated a table with a pretty lace table cloth and the communion plates.

For the craft, I cut out 18″ squares of white flannel and let them decorate their “footwashing towels.”

They turned out really cute!

I will post the lesson I wrote for this a little bit later. It really turned out well!

The Singing of the Birds

“For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.” Song of Solomon 2:11-13

You know that spring has (unofficially) come when the birds return to your yard aside from the year round Robins, Cardinals and Blue Jays. The verse above is one of my favorites. Beautiful, isn’t it?

Last Friday, my girls and I spent the morning watching the birds in the yard. They were every where! Love birds chasing each other, Sparrows looking for seeds. Downy Woodpeckers pecking away at our suet feeder. Chickadees feeding from our pine cone feeders.

And we saw that our House Finches (male pictured above) have returned. What joy!

Friday, however was especially exciting. We saw a flock of birds in our plum tree that we had never seen before. Hannah was the first to spot them. They had some yellow feathers – we don’t usually see birds here with yellow flowers. I was so excited, I ran outside with my camera and snuck down the hill snapping photos as I went because you just never know when you are going to loose your opportunity.

I got some really good photos. Afterward, I came in and we looked at the close ups of the photos and we got out our bird field guide. We were able to identify the bird by its distinct markings.

Cedar Waxwing

Spring is just my favorite time of year!

Children of the Mountains: ABC 20/20

Last Night, ABC aired a documentary with Dianne Sawyer about central Appalachia where I live. I didn’t watch it last night, but I did watch it a little while ago on their website. You can click on the link below to watch it.

Children of the Mountains

You can also read the article here.

Harlan (my hometown) was mentioned once in the Part 3: Fighting for Survival in conjunction with prescription pain pill addictions. I recognized most of the towns mentioned… all close to here.

I love living here in Harlan County. I truly love it here. Not everyone is poor. But the cycle of poverty is rampant. Quite frequently we receive calls for folks needing food or money on their electric bills. It is always heartbreaking.

However, I want to say that while it is good that the poverty is brought to light for the rest of the country to see, it is quite unfortunate that the stereotypes about “mountain people” were played upon in this documentary. Not everyone is like that here. In fact, most folks are down right good people. Harlan is a wonderful place to live and to raise a family. It is a safe place to live. Most crime here is domestic, which is terribly sad, but that means if you have a good family, you aren’t likely to be bothered. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. God has called us to these mountains and I am thankful.

Next Page »