Out in the country

I live in the country-  as in the closest town is 10 miles away.  And it is a very small town, too!!  I know that while living out here, in the sticks as some people call it, comes with its share of rodents and such there is one intruder that I really don’t care for.

SNAKES!!!

I was opening the garage door yesterday and saw this…

YEP- It’s a snake.  Up until yesterday all we have seen are small baby snakes, nothing major.  I am happy to kill or rehome them… no big deal… But this one was a BIG,and I mean VERY BIG deal!!!  It was over 3 feet long…

(My mama is so BRAVE!!!)

I screamed, I cried, screamed some more then grabbed my cell phone out of my pocket and called my Daddy!!  Well, needless to say he was on the tractor, so Mama came to my rescue!!  I am SO VERY Thankful they live close by… otherwise Jon would have come home to a daughter in a tree (I told her to climb one and stay put till the snake was gone) and a wife frozen, crying, and terrified in the driveway…

Yep- I am that scared of them!!

It is a rat snake, and while I know that they are considered one of the “good snakes”- I still don’t like them. 

I had nightmares last night because of this creature!

UGH!!

~Kristina

Chicken Pen

This is our chicken pen.  I got online and looked up a bunch of different designs and drew out a chicken house from all my favorite parts of the others.  We are working on painting it red with white  trim today.  It is looking so good!

This is the view from the yard.  You can see how big the chicken pen is. We wanted to give the chickens lots of room to run around and scratch.  The original plan was to get 3, maybe 4. But we have 9 at the moment.  I am thinking about getting another 8 chicks to raise to eventually put in the freezer…   

This view shows the house a little better.  There is a 2x8 board against the house but it is not part of it… Jon made the house 5 1/2 feet tall so I can stand up straight inside.  It makes it so much easier to clean it out.

This shows the nesting boxes.  I like this part because I can just lift the lid and grab the eggs and not have to actually go into the house.

This is the inside of the house. There are 6 nesting boxes, but the hens seem to like to share just 2 of them.  There is also laminate tiles on the floor to make it easier to clean out.

Roosting bars in the corner.  Jon made them out of Cedar branches. I put hay on the floor to help with cleaning out the chicken poop.

A view of the front of the chicken house.  We put “Cape Cod” style windows on the house, to let a breeze in, the hot air out but also keep the rain out as well.  Lily says the house has a face.  Can you see it, too?  :)

Lily loves to feed the chicks.  They are about 5 months old.  We currently have 2 RI Reds, 1 Barred Rock, 2 Silkies, 2 Americaunas and 2 Easter Eggers. 

The Silkies are super sweet.

I am TERRIFIED of snakes!!  Seriously!!!  So Jon and I decided to put hardware cloth around the bottom 3 feet of the pen, then the chicken wire higher up.  I have it zip tied together.  I also didn’t want raccoons, or opossums to get in the pen, so we made it about 7-8 feet tall. I hope it helps.  :)

 

While I was outside, I thought I would share our garden for this year.  We added 2 new beds and a couple potato cages to the garden… and a FENCE!! YAY!! :)  I cannot wait to paint it white!!  so pretty!!!

 

These are our tomato “trees”… the two short ones on the left are the cherry tomato plants.  They are Lilys.  She checks the garden and then eats all the cherry tomatoes.

This is our potato cage.  It is new for me, I have never grown potatoes like this.  But it looks like it is doing pretty good!!

Lettuce bed- We have spinach, Iceberg and Romaine lettuce

And this is my fence!  Part of my birthday present/mothers day present.  We got the pickets off freecycle and are using 2x4s left over from other projects…  Once completed it will keep the dogs out of the beds!!  YAY!

And you cant have spring without a litter of kittens…  AWE!!!

 

~ Kristina

Rain

I just LOVE the rain!!  I actually like most forms of water- rain, lakes, rivers, the ocean… but I really really love the rain.  I love how it cools the air, how it washes the dirt and pollen away. I love the smell of the rain and the feeling of it on my skin.  I just LOVE the rain!!

I’ll tell you what- this weather has been some kind of CRAZY!! I am definitely not complaining about it, though! I just LOVE it!! I admit, I was a bit worried about it a few weeks ago. Wondering if I was going to have to turn the AC on before June. But this wonderful cold spell, all the wonderful spring showers- I think I will be able to make it to June before the AC officially comes on for the summer. I really don’t like to have the AC on until we are nearly sweating while sleeping. We turn the attic fan on at night to pull in the cool evening air. The house is well built so it stays cool for most of the day, by the time the house warms up it is evening again and the fan comes back on.

I like doing it this way. It keeps the power bill low, but I really like the smell of the fresh air, I like the curtains blowing from the breeze. I LOVE to wake up listening to the birds singing outside my window. Spring and fall are my 2 favorite times of the year- mostly because of the reasons listed above.

Does anyone grow tomatoes in their garden?? Do yours grow TALL?? I’m talking over 5 feet tall?? Mine are that tall and still growing, they are covered in green tomatoes. I want to go ahead a pick a few and make a batch of fried green tomatoes, but I also want to wait and see the beautiful red peeking through the green leaves…

We are almost to the end of our school year. We are finishing Lily’s science books and almost finished with her sight word book. We will continue math through the summer to make sure she is fully ready for 2nd grade math and reading is never done! She has a book shelf in her room and one upstairs, both are overflowing with books. She is really into Fancy Nancy right now. A dear friends of ours is a Speech Language Pathologist and she highly recommends these books. She says it is great for learning vocabulary… I’m not sure if Lily likes the new words, the funny story line or the beautiful illustrations the best.

Happy Monday you all!!  I hope you had a blessed Mothers Day weekend!!

~ Kristina

 

Update and hopefully a new beginning

Hey-  ITS ME AGAIN MARGARET!!!   hee hee… 

  Well, I finally found a few spare minutes to write.  I cannot remember the last time I blogged, however I do remember it was more of a “I’ll be back when things settle down” kind of letter…

Life here is still CRAZY!!  I don’t know if it will ever slow down. 

Just to update you all.  Jon is still working with the forklift repair company and still loves it.  He misses the daily activity of the Fire Department, but I think those longings are satisfied with the volunteer station he is part of. 

Lily has done so well with school this year.  We are at the end of our “unofficial” school years.  In the fall I will have to legally do whatever to make us “official homeschoolers”.  We are both excited about next year.  I went to the conference last weekend and bought My Fathers World 1st grade curriculum for us.  We will finish up 1st grade math during the summer and start her with 2nd grade math in the fall, though.  She loves it so much I really don’t want to keep her from it.  She begs to do math on the weekends and on holidays, so I buy small, fun books that will challenge her but also that will be fun.  She is about done with her second Dr. Seuss math book this year…  She is definitely the apple and I the tree in this subject!  History, now that is another story, or blog…

We did something this year I never thought I would do-  we built a chicken pen… Yep- I am now the proud owner of 9 chickens.  Jon and I looked through so many designs and magazines and figured out a way to hopefully snake proof the house.  I don’t care about the other critters that like eggs, but snakes-  NO THANKYOU!!  So far so good, no snakes.  However we have lost 2 chickens due to mysterious deaths… I will try to get photos on soon, of the pen.  I am quite happy with my Taj Mahal, as Jon calls it.  Now I just need to paint it and come up with a name for it- any and all suggestions are welcome.

I have decided to cut back on the Photography business this fall.  Starting a new type of studies- I want to be able to put as much focus on it and Lily as I can.  I am still desperately trying to keep this house clean.  I seem to get the house clean and something happens that turns everything upside down.  For example- yard sale last weekend: you would think it would clean some things out… my house is as messy as ever from trying to get everything together, priced, etc.  I am happy for the things that sold, but now I have to put everything else back in its place.

I go to bed each night, thinking- I sure would like to write about what happened…  Hopefully this summer I can.  May is a super busy month for us.  Weddings, graduation, family moving etc.…  but I hope, really really hope, that I can get back into writing. Till then

~ Kristina