On Goodness and Mercy

Alternate title: Hatchery dude - "We have a 90% success rate!" {snort}

For the longest time while all the chicks were in the brooder I tried denying that I had ANY roos.  In fact there's a video floating around wherein I proclaim "and there's Mercy.  She's the one who has already gotten her comb and wattles!" {eye roll} and "that one is Goodness who is a biiiiig girl, I wonder if she's older than the others?" {huff}.  Oh, then there's a video of them when they were only a few weeks old and both Goodness and Mercy were already squaring off.

Riiiiight.  As you have already surmised we ended up with two roo's.

So we decided to change their names to Goodman and Mercer.  Which frequently came out as "Goodness" and "Mercy". Whatevs, they didn't notice.

After everyone was moved out to the coop the boys started fighting more and more.  Goodness mostly kicking Mercy's behind.  Which sent me to frantically searching the internet for ideas on what to do.  Much hemming and hawing later my Beloved and I decided that one of the boys needed to be re-homed.

Goodness on the left and Mercy on the right - before all their sickle feathers came in

My Mommabean was currently without a rooster since Stinkeye had lost a battle with a hungry critter.

Stinkeye, whose name I believe was Socrates originally
but being a mean & nasty rooster was renamed accordingly

It was decided that Goodness who was the louder, more crowy of the two would go live with Mommabean. She lives further out the boonies on more land so he'd annoy less people with. his. incessant. crowing.  And she had more hens for him to slake his lust on.

Goodness

Goodness is the chicken who had the eye problems.

Just look at those feathers!

Shake it off big guy

I think he was part pheasant

So! Mommabean, my sister & brother-in-law, my Beloved and I headed out to the run to catch him.  Have you ever tried to catch a chicken? Ooph.  We locked all the other chickens in the coop then spent the next 15 minutes chasing him around.

It would've made a seriously fantastic video - five adults trying to catch one chicken.  Many half curses (little ears were standing on the other side of the chain link fence) were flying, faces turned red and we were all out of breath by the end.

Wonder why I've been referring to Goodness in the past tense? Yes?

Well, Mommabean decided after one mean rooster that she wasn't going to put up with another.  I hear tell that for the first month or so he was kosher and acted like a gentleman.  But at one point he knocked my nephew down while he was feeding them and chased my sisters mother-in-law.  He currently resides in their freezer.

Poor Goodness.

And Mercy (or Mercer), he's mostly good.  Every once in a while he gets to where he feels the need to challenge me. He'll fluff himself up or stomp after me at which point I stop, turn around and whisper menacingly "I am the big rooster around here dude and I will end you." Followed closely by screechily shouting "Ooohhh! Pretty rooster, I want to touch the rooster! Here rooster, rooster, rooster" while chasing him.  It works for us.

He gets mad when I tell him his legs look like #2 pencils

Master tidbitter, First Class

The only one missing from this photo of his harem is Lola

Cold, wet and windy - Merc don't care

Shared on Homestead Barn Hop

Sunflowers

We planted a lot of sunflowers this year along the south side of the pole barn.  We bought two packets of seeds but the majority of them were freebies

Some of them were absolutely beautiful

Others were your average (still pretty) type sunflower

Theeeeeeeeeeen there were the mammoth ones

Oh my gosh.  So huge.

I could've sworn I got some pictures of them before they got so top heavy but I can't locate them right now. Anyway, my problem now is this:

Holy. Mackerel.  I have zombie sunflowers.  

And yeah, what exactly do you do with them now? They look sad and more than a little horrific.  

So, you know what I did? I actually Googled "Sunflower Anatomy" earlier today.  Because, well, where are the seeds? Do you know what comes up? Fo'realsy charts of a sunflowers anatomy, naming every receptacle scale, phyllaries, ray flower and disc flower.  Huh.  Well.  Okay then!

After a third cup of coffee allowed more brain synapses to fire I Googled "harvesting sunflower seeds".  Much more helpful.

My plan now is to keep half of the heads for the chickens and leave the other half for the birds that over winter here.

Any other suggestions?

(nearly) Wordless Wednesday

Bugs? Of course.
Sparrows? Yep.
Crows? No problem.
Sandhill Cranes? I got this.
-Ghost Rider out.

Keeping our airspace safe since 2014

(nearly) Wordless Wednesday

It's the eyebrows.  They're attack eyebrows.*

*Doctor Who reference that other cool kids will get

Voutsaras: Strolling Through a Greek Village

I have a fair number of pictures from Voutsaras, the village my father's family is from, and a ton from the other places we visited in Greece.  I'll share more pictures as I sort through them and try to figure out what in the name all things Holy and good in this world I was thinking when I took them.

Voutsaras is a tiny village in the northwestern area of Greece near the Albanian border.  According to Wikipedia thirteen years ago it had a population of 150.  And let me tell you, all but 4 of them came out to see what we were up to - especially me with my camera taking pictures of their houses. One old yiayia even asked what exactly were we doing!  Whenever my aunt would introduce us though they knew our family so we were all good in the hood!

Let's get this party started, shall we?

The house my aunt and father were born in.
The family lived upstairs and the animals there to the right.

I love the blue gate, shutters and doors so, so much!

There are shrines like this ever-y-where.  This one is in front of the village school.
Which is up hill.  Both ways.  He wasn't lying!

I lovedy lovelovelove Icons. Always have.

The house my papou lived in with his first wife.
She died tragically during the War.

What is left of their second house now (insert sad face).
This is where my other aunt- the one who we went with- and my uncle were born

Voutsaras, Ioannina, Greece

My darling mother-in-law and wonderful Aunt.  The neighbors invited us over for coffee!

You see the marble steps? That stuff is everywhere I tell ya!

Moseying around

My fabulous mother

Legend has it my father climbed up the bell tower
 and carved his initials into the stone at the top.

The well

I am absolutely enchanted by the these turquoise window frames

It's a Hobbit house! Or something.

The ubiquitous fig tree

Farewell Voutsaras.  Until next we meet.

If you to go to Google Maps and looked up Voutsaras, Ioannina, Greece you'll see the same red car at the well... I wonder how long its been there?!!??

Not A Patient Patient

I am not patient.  Lazy, mostly, but not patient.  Once I decide something needs to/has to be done and I've envisioned the outcome, I have zero patience in the waiting for it to be done.  And the person I am least patient with is myself.  I have a goodly amount of patience with others just not myself.

I expect so much from myself and I'm often falling short on my expectations.

Rheumatoid Arthritis has really thrown a wrench in my plans.  I know when I'm feeling good I shouldn't over do it but I've got SO MUCH to do that I race around doing all that I can while I'm able before the rug is pulled out from underneath me.

The Humira was working great and things were looking up, I had Grand Plans for this summer.  And in June I noticed I started feeling progressively poorly for whole weeks at a time and I couldn't figure out why, I wasn't pushing myself too much, I wasn't stressed, blahblahblah.  I blew it off and excitedly prepared for Greece.

Eleven days into my trip the bottom fell out and I was progressively getting worse.  The flight home was torture and the two weeks following I was crippled.  I couldn't move, I couldn't do anything.

I went to the Rheumatologist and now have a diagnosis and a plan and hope.  I lose all sight of hope when I'm in the midst of a flare; when I can't imagine getting through the day let alone getting to 62?

I have, he believes, from my Humira, Drug Induced Lupus.  The plan is to change my TNF Inhibitor go on a big steroid burst and go back on Plaquenil.  I should be back to good in anywhere between 3 weeks to 6 months depending on when my body stops freaking out over the Humira.

But, I am not patient.  I want to finally finish unpacking since we've only lived here for a YEAR! I want my vent hood that's been sitting on the pole barn floor put up.  I want the mop boards and quarter round done.  I want to paint the upstairs bedrooms.  I want to refinish the desk and chair in my bedroom.  I want to stop living in a half done house so I can enjoy it.

I want a picture perfect, magazine worthy house.  Yesterday.

But, I have to wait some more and it is driving me insane because, you know what, I've got things to do and I don't have the patience to wait.

Learn? Little green guy, I want patience now! And everything on my list done.

Radio Silence

Here I am again apologizing for my lack of posting.

Greece was AMAZING!

Flying for close to 13 hours however stunk.  It made my RA flare up and I am struggling on a daily basis; to walk, to dress, to hold a pen, to stand up, to sleep.  Tomorrow I go to the doctor and hopefully we'll get this under control because I am really excited about sharing the experience, my chickens, the kittens, projects (that have been on hold) I've been working on, more room reveals...

Bear with me.

I'll be back on the air soon.

The Chickens: An Introduction

Since I am mostly lazy and have almost no time fer nothin' cause I'm tryin ta prepare myself for Greece I haven't gotten around to properly introducing Flint & Flavia.  But, I will.  We swears on the the Precious.

Like right after I extinguish the memory card from my camera which I had to set on fire to show it who's boss because it just. stopped. working. The camera won't recognize it, the computer won't recognize it when I put it in the little slot, it just keeps saying ERROR ALLYOURPICTURESARELOSTSUCKER.  And of course I had a gabajillion pictures of the kittens being The Cuteness.

So moving on from that tragedy. I went out to the Prison Yard to visit the chickens today and took my camera, with new memory card inserted, and somehow I took 108 pictures and 2:00 video (?). So I'm going to drag  the introduction of my little flock out painfully slow.  That way you'll get at least eight blog posts out of me!

Y'all meet Emily.  The sweetest chicken around.

Theme Thursday: Sports

Bringing up the rear here, which is where I usually place in sports, for Cari's Theme Thursday: Sports!

Me? I'm not athletic.  Never have been really.

I even hated Field Day in elementary school.  I didn't win any ribbons.  Ever.  I never received praise for my heroic efforts in the long jump, which if you're the shortest person there, other than the kindergarteners, is an Epic Endeavor! Whatevs though,  'cause that was +/- 30 years ago.  I'm over it. Mostly.

Stupiddummyhead Field Day.

Okay, so, I don't run.  If you see me running, you should run too.  Because I'm here to tell you that the only time you will see me run is if there is a Tyrannosaurus Rex hot on my heels and the theme from "Chariots of Fire" is playing in the background.

I did however play soccer during that time, and that, I was passingly good at.  I played defense because, as you now know, yours truly is not a runner or sprinter or jogger or even a speed walker and defense didn't require me to run very far very often.

1980.  The year I was a soccer star.

I was the only girl on the all boys team but after being carded more often than not because I couldn't remember to turn my dang hands the right way while shielding my young lady chest, I didn't sign up the next year.  Woe is me.

So there you have it - the beginning and end of my athletic career.

Except for a two year stint on the tennis team in high school (see? Not a lot of running) which we will never speak of again.

Naming the Farm

I've a touch of the ditz today.  While thinking about our "farm" and the naming there of, my mind has wandered off on several different tangents.

Like:

• Naming the farm which is not to be confused with buying the farm.  Which, duh, of course, makes me wonder where & when the saying "bought the farm" came to mean to die. 

Fast forward 27 seconds and you can wonder no more! Here's the answer.

Of course that begs the question

• So what makes a farm a farm? We aren't growing food here yet.  I haven't got any farm animals other than our eight pullets.  We grow a ton of apples and cherries in our orchard but we don't sell anything.
• Is a "farm" a huge commercial operation? Someone who has hundreds or thousands of acres?
• How is Hobby Farming defined - is that what we would then be? Should we, could we define ourselves that way? How many acres do you need to be considered a hobby farmer? Why the distinction between the two?

Those are just a few of the things that have been running through my noggin since yesterday when I told my Beloved that we have to come up with a name for our farm.  Which isn't really a farm per se.  It's a 151 year old farmhouse on four acres that used to be a real working farm (as opposed to a fake idle farm?), with a dairy barn, pole barn, chicken coop and orchard.

The point to all of this rambling: How does one go about coming up with a name for their farm? 

Veering off in a totally different direction now!

Two weeks ago we hand done some pruning in the orchard and instead of just dumping all of the apple wood branches and limbs I asked my Beloved to pull a ramp that lead up to some barn doors over under the lean-to so we could put it all in one spot.

This is what we found:

Note the size of the hole and the bones

AaaaAaAAhhHhhh!!

He kept insisting that it was a goblin's lair.

He put two giant boulders in front of the hole   All that night I felt wretched because I thought "What if it's a mama and she and her babies will be stuck in there?" and "they'll die of starvation!" Honestly, I was seconds away from tears.  My Beloved held no such compunction and offered to go outside with me saying that he would hold the flashlight while I moved the rocks.  How chivalrous of him!

But I haven't been back to the barn since, I'm too creeped out by what I might find.

Have you named your farm? Your Homestead? How did you come up with the name?


Shared with Homestead Barn Hop

Laundry Room Makeover

Things that I have only two pictures of: the laundry room before its face lift.

Sorry about the blur.  After a run in with a frappuccino my
little point & shoot sometimes likes to take
"Soft Focus" pictures.

The view from the kitchen.  Have I mentioned that, at least the last owners, were heavy smokers? And they had a wood/oil burning furnace in the basement?

Things that I have have no pictures of: the laundry room during its transformation.  Oops.

Things that I have a million billion pictures of: the laundry room after.

You want to look at a half dozen ooookay, ten or so? Yes? Great!

Imma tell ya right now - I love, have from the second I saw them, lovelovelove the big wide horizontal boards

The view from the kitchen

The only thing that we really did was paint, new subfloor/floor covering, electrical of course and some plumbing fixes. My mom randomly purchased the cart from a shop owner because she thought it would look great in the house; it does.  It was so horrendously nastyfilthygrody that it took both her and I with our Mr. Clean Magic Erasers and a two gallon bucket of water over an hour to just clean the grime off.  It houses cleaning rags, clothes pins, assorted laundry stuffs, the iron, yaddayaddayadda.  It's nice because on the left side it has two small hooks you can hang things from (the big duster for ceiling fans was drying at the time) and on the right a small towel bar.

Moving clockwise:

Mah aprons.  I love me some aprons!

At first I wasn't so sure I liked what the electrician had done with the light switch there.  He had asked me if it was okay and in a moment of "Oh, I don't care, just get it done" flippancy said okay.  But I do like it.  I do like the industrial look of the conduit and the box mounted on the outside and not set it.  Whodathunkit!

Things to point out here: nothing.  Other than the nifty shelf that runs around a fair bit of the room and that our Realtor told a client whose house she had just sold, that she knew a couple that would buy the 2 month old washer and dryer because he couldn't take them. A measly $600 later and they were ours! Ka-ching!

Continuing on our clockwise journey

Ooooh! Exciting!

So yeah, there are those things.  I splurged on the laundry tub with the cabinet.  I figured if it's going to be on the main floor and out in the open, it's gotta look nice.  One of the projects on our list of Never Ending Projects is to somehow hide the dryer vent hose and that large gap.  Looks wonky.  And the cord, ugh! That is the longest electrical cord you can buy for the washer and I hate that it hangs there.

Looking up

Canning Jars = Happy

Since I filled up most of the shelf with jars, and a shelf in the mud room (easier to reach) is crammed with them I've resorted to storing them in the basement too.  I have to stop.  Eventually.  'Cause there'll be no more room!

Ahhhh.  Otis' art work which cheers me endlessly

I didn't take a picture of the ironing board because it is the DMZ of Clean Laundry 'round here.  And y'all don't wanna see that!

Miscellaneous picture - because this is my blog and I can

Actually, you can see the ironing board there against the back wall.  And my bucket.  Me likes my bucket. When we lived in the condo and the laundry was downstairs the bucket was the shiznit because we use cloth napkins.  And what better place to catch napkins, dishtowels and tablecloths so they don't get mixed in with stinky, dirty diesel fuel and axle grease encrusted uniforms? Nowhere. 

Two Fine, three more pictures then I'm done, promise.

The colors are perfect for the room as is the subject matter - double score!

My mom got me this canvas for Christmas, it's awesome. It actually has little LED's in behind the flames and they flicker. Although, I've never made them to flicker for longer than 3.2 seconds to show someone. Thanks Ma!

Aprons!

I love aprons.  About half of mine are vintage.  I am always on the look out for them at the Salvation Army or Goodwill.

Last one!

A gratuitous apron picture. That cream colored apron with the black writing is my Beloved's which was the impetus for me trying fish & chips for the first time ever!