Sunday Hot Dog Roast

We had a hot dog roast today with extended family. Much fun was had, even though it was chilly and misted almost to the point of rain while we were getting started cooking hot dogs. The wind ended up blowing the clouds away, though, and we had a very nice time.

Officer Marshmallow, Guardian of the Fire
(they have these new campfire marshmallows in the grocery store now: WOW!)



Baby Princess with a pink marshmallow on her s'more



Court Jester

An intruder is spotted: a fledgling bird (with a very emotional and vocal mother in the branches above).

Even birdie gets a snack, but we didn't fry his worms.

Something Unusual

We have a lot of groundhogs around here. There is a particularly fat and audacious one who lives richly on my garden produce when it is in season. Right now, though, it is baby groundhog season. Our neighbors caught a couple yesterday, and brought them over for us to see. I guess they were cute, but I could not say that I like them, babies or not. (By the way, I don't think it was very smart to catch them. Baby groundhogs are aggressive and amazingly powerful.) But all in all, it was pretty interesting.

Leah Learns a New Trick, and Mommy Gets a Surprise

Leah Carole has learned to sit up, and we are so proud we had to put her picture on the blog!

I got a surprise the other day when I went into the bathroom. I am used to surprises of the unflushed variety, as well as the wet-towel type of surprise, as well as the loose-toothpaste-cannon surprise. This was the first time, though, that I have ever surprised a dinosaur in the middle of his bath.

Baby Chicks and a Funny Story

This spring we took the plunge and ordered twenty Barred Plymouth Rock chicks. Our friend Alice ordered them for us along with her own, and when they arrived she drove them over to us. The kids had been anticipating the chicks' arrival for weeks, and were very excited when Alice drove up. Alice, being a generous person, had brought us some eggs from her existing flock when she brought the baby chicks. The kids were running to greet her, eager to see the new babies, when Alice stepped out of her truck holding...two cartons of eggs. Their faces wereso funny! Eggs? This was not what they had been expecting! But the carton of chicks was soon to follow, and, much to their relief and excitement, the adventure began.

Here are some of our chicks (the dark ones), plus 25 meat birds from the same order that we were keeping for another neighbor for that first day. The yellow ones are very cute, but we like our Barred Rocks.

Here they are after some time has passed, pretty feathers growing in.

This chick is a good sport.

This is what the chicks looked like yesterday, all ensconced in their new chicken house in the back yard. One chick died. Out of the 19 remaining, six seem to be hens. I was hoping for 10 hens, but we will take what we get. I hope to have one of the Amish families around help me with preparing the cockerels for their future usefulness in a couple of months. We think we would like to keep one rooster, but we will see about that! Any advice, chicken-meisters?

Spring in the Pasture

One job that comes around every spring is to walk or drive the pasture fences to find areas that need repair. It is nice to have the kids along on these errands. They have been cooped up all winter, and then the sun comes out, the grass turns green, the breezes blow, and kids just celebrate! This was such a cool, crunchy green day in May.