Sunday Afternoons

On Sunday, we took a drive to do one of our most favorite things on a sunny day.  Let's be honest, it doesn't even have to be sunny...we've gone in the pouring rain before too (which is often better, because less people show up!).  We drove about an hour and 15 minutes north east of us to attend a farm auction.  It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining, the birds were chirping, the deals were coming my way....

Here are a few shots of our day....

 This is just a typical farm yard.  I love the older man sitting underneath the Canada flag in front of the barn.  (He's sitting on some painted wooden trunks that I bought, by the way!)

 Art's been dying to buy an old truck for the yard.  I keep telling him that he has to wait until we buy more land, because I don't want to move something like that twice!  It would look great with flowers growing out of the box of it, don'tcha think?

 Here are my Girls and my nephew, sitting in front of the summer kitchen, just hanging out and messing around.  This was his first farm auction, and I'm thinking he might just be hooked!

Here are one of the treasures we brought home.  They are hand carved, primitively painted duck decoys.  Art especially loved them, so here they sit! 

I'll be posting some pictures of our other finds once I get them all cleaned up.... if I remember. :-)

There are a few pieces that I'm very excited about and a few pieces that I have no idea what I'm going to do with, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.



Recovering from the Looong Weekend

This long weekend turned out different than we had planned, but it was good.  Friday night we relaxed and hung out, and Saturday morning at 6 am, my nephew and his girlfriend showed up on our doorstep from BC.  It was an unexpected surprise, but fun to visit with them for the weekend.

They came to hang out with my other nephew who has moved here and is living with us, so it was good for brothers to be together!

They spent some time at the mall on Saturday since we had previous plans, and when we came home Saturday night, we arrived home to no power.  It had been knocked out by a huge storm we had.  Not such a big deal, but when our power is out, our garage door doesn`t open, and since we have no house key, it can be kind of a big deal.  Thankfully, I`d left a door unlocked (phew!), so we were able to get in the house!

The next morning, the power STILL wasn`t on, so we ended up going into town for breakfast, and then took our nephew to the new Cabela`s in the city, which they enjoyed.  When we arrived home, just after lunch, the power had finally come on.  Thank goodness!  The great thing about living in the country is that when you have no power, you have no water.  Very fun with a house full of people.  The other nice thing about no power is that your sump pump doesn`t work, and when your sump pump doesn`t work, and you get inches of rain, you have to go and manually empty out where your sump pump is, every few hours.  All.  night.  long.  The last great thing about having no power is that your very full fridge(s) and freezer(s) don`t work, and you lay awake all night hoping that you`re not going to lose the hundreds if not thousands of dollars worth of meat you have sitting in your said appliances.  Thankfully, they were so full that everything stayed cold as it should!

After all was said and done, we were without power for about 15 hrs.  Not so fun, but boy was I thankful for it when it came back on!

Sunday afternoon, we took my nephews to shoot gophers and ride horses, which they quite enjoyed, and then headed back home for the evening.

Monday morning, we woke up, once again, to NO POWER!  I could`ve screamed!  So, instead of making a big breakfast for them before they headed out, they headed for home.  Just after they left, the power came on, but we were without for another 5 hrs.  My goodness!  This summer has been full of many, many storms and rain for us!

Monday afternoon, my parents arrived here for the evening, and headed out first thing this morning for home.  Thankfully, we had power though!

Hopefully your weekend went a little smoother than ours...!

Chicken Farmers, Extraordinaire!

Last week, we took our meat chickens into a poultry processing facility to be processed. 

Originally, we started off with 20 chickens.  When all was said and done, we had 14.  14 large, supple chickens (the processing facility guy's words, not mine!) 

I left at 5:30 am to drive these bad boys, all alive, and in the box of the truck, to their place of death.  I unloaded them and drove the hour and a half home.  Later that afternoon, we headed back to go and pick up our flock, now wrapped and chilled. 

When we picked them up, we were talking to the owner of the facility, and he was quite impressed with our birds.  They actually had some problems bagging them because they didn't fit in the chicken bags, and were too small for the turkey bags.  He told us that he's never seen chickens this big, and normally, with big chickens, they're quite tough, but these chicken's meat was nice and supple.  Hooray for us!  When Art told him this was our first time raising meat chickens, he couldn't believe it!  He asked us what we did....and he told them....Put them in the chicken mansion and feed them!

I think it was the mansion.... they really liked the mansion.  They had a high quality of life in the mansion....

All of our chickens were 10-12 lbs. once they were processed, so I think they will serve our family well. I have yet to roast one of these bad boys, but I'm going to next week, when we have some company to help us eat this big boy!

The funnest thing about the whole experience (other than being rid of those ugly birds) was that you get to choose what you have put on the label.  Here's what ours said: 

I think that we need to change our occupation, because frankly, I feel like a Chicken Farmer, Extraordinaire!

New Lamps

I bought these old oil cans at an auction last summer, and they've been sitting around my garage for the last year, patiently waiting for me to make them into something useful.  I've also had a lamp kit patiently waiting for me to use it.  This past week, I (actually, my miracle working hubby) drilled some holes, added some silicone and made some magic.  Here is the result!

I actually made 3 of these.  Two of them are small, and I have a larger one.  I've been searching the globe for lamp shades, and this one is (I think) a winner....unless I can find one I like better. 

Each of these little ones went in one of The Girls' rooms, and the other large one went into our room.  I have yet to find a shade that will work with the big one, but eventually, I'll find one!

Here's to re-using old junk!

Chicken Mansion

We've had many, many projects this summer.  The biggest project has been building a new chicken mansion to house our new flock of chickens.  We looked and looked and researched and researched, and finally ended up deciding to build our own mansion.  The first reason was that it was most cost effective to do so, the second reason was that we wanted to be able to build it very specifically to what we wanted.  Here is the finished project!

There are a few most details to take care of, but it's pretty much complete.  I bought a weather vane to put on top of the mansion, so that'll add to the charm of it!

Right now, we have close to 40 chickens in there.  20 meat birds which will be butchered next week (thank heavens, those things are fat.  and ugly!), and then 20 layers.  The layers will think that they're living the good life once the meat birds are gone, there will be so much room!

The structure is 10 ft. x 16 ft., so there's lots of room inside to store food and other chicken paraphernalia.  We've also put up a fence around the outside for the birds to be outside and get some fresh air, so they're loving that!

The mansion is painted barn red, and it's everything I dreamt it would be!

My Kitchen Window

I was cleaning up the dishes from dinner the other day, looked outside my kitchen window, and this is what I saw...

A teenager, hanging out on our back lawn.  We shushed the Girls, and sat and watched him for a while.... I think he might be lost, because normally where there's one deer, there's more.  But there were no more....just him, and his fuzzy little antlers starting to grow.  Perhaps he's the rebellious one?  Wants to take off on his own?  Spread his wings?  I dunno....

Since then, we've seen him almost every day.  I think he likes the Girls....

My Existence

It feels as though we are in the throws of summer here, which means more time outside, less time on my computer! We've had my 17 yr. old nephew here for a few weeks, so I've been driving him to job interviews and day jobs. Then, my parents were here for a week, and we hosted my dad's side of the family for the weekend for a family reunion. The weather has been blissfully hot, so that means sprinklers and popsicles and cool baths at night. It also means thunderstorms that go on sll night long, Girls in our bed, cuddling and listening to the rain. Tank tops and sunscreen and tan lines, towels being washed constantly...this completes my existence these days. Summer. I love it!