I'm back!

I am kind of amazed that it has been a year since I have posted!  A year ago this month my mom had a heart attack and I spent two weeks in Las Vegas with her as she went through a quadruple bypass and an episode of flash pulmonary edema.  On the plus side I also got to spend a week with my sister.  It has been many many years since that has happened and it was good for all of us, I mean other than the heart attack.

I came home and put Mark and Rebekah into public school after 8 years of homeschooling.  I went to work for the first time since Justin was born over 20 years ago (at this point 21 years ago) on the same day they started school.  Justin had moved to Temple before I got home and John took Alex to BYU-I in early September.  Not only that, John retired from the military and started a new job a couple of months later (in October).

The Ferguson household had been pretty much dumped upside down and scrambled!!!

I have been wanting to post but where the heck to start after all this time?! This week :)

Monday was Alex's 19th birthday! He will be heading back to BYU-I in early September with his cousin Vickie.  Notice I made 2 pineapple upside down cakes, 'Cake of the God's" or so I've been told.  There were no leftovers. None.

August 1st brought the end of Justin's 2 month stay with us as he headed back up to Temple College (about 40 minutes away).  He got his Associates degree at the end of last semester but has some science classes he needs to take so that he can apply for nursing school.

Long story short on the new kitty. She was a stray someone brought in to have fixed. I have been wanting a calico and I decided to adopt her and her litter of kittens she will soon be having.  You can see her shaved tummy, I really had to make a quick decision.  She came with the name Mia, but Mark wants to name her Cocoa Fo Sho.  I like Mia but he has said it so many times I think Cocoa is going to stick.

My niece had a baby this week and Alex and Rebekah just finished with the play "South Pacific" today.

Hopefully you will see more of us as I continue to get used to balancing everything out.  I guess I am a slow learner :)

What kind of chicken am I?

I am a cross between three different kinds of chickens.  Any guesses?

 

This is my mother or my aunt.  They are a cross between two different kinds of chickens.

I know most of you won’t care, but I think that the rooster is beautiful and he was hatched in our house so it is kind of different for me.  The hen is not much too look at but the two black hens gave us a lot of eggs over the last few years and we lost one this last summer during the heat wave.  They were one of the first chicks hatched when we returned from Arizona.  These pictures were taken last April when we still had green grass.

Delaware Hen & chicks

Justin posted this on face book, but I wanted to post this here as well.  I had decided to plant some lettuce in the garden and the chickens were EVERY WHERE!  This summer we had tried to contain them for a little while but they started dying from the heat, so we let them out again.  Monday night we gathered every last chicken up and a couple of turkeys and put them in the chicken run.  Wednesday afternoon this hen and her chicks showed up in the yard.  It was a shock to everyone.  She and her chicks are now safely in the brooder until they get a bit bigger.  This will give us time to get a fence around my garden, again.

Whistling Ducks

This is from last April.  Every year we get a pair of whistling ducks that stay for a couple of days at our place.  Last year they stayed for almost a month.  You can see one on top of the chicken run and one on top of the old trampoline that we have now moved.  We were using the trampoline as added protection for the geese, but now we have Amy :)  I took this picture from my back porch.

Alex & his pet Delaware, Stacy

We ordered some Delaware chickens about 8 months ago. At the time it sounded like a great idea, not so much today. I picked them (10 pullets) up and while Justin was looking around for chicken supplies (he had been warned days, weeks and months in advance) the chicks were in the living room. I was not paying attention because I was making dinner. I kept hearing Alex say, "but we are not having chicken". I thought he was talking to his cousin Stephen, thinking that maybe Stephen really liked chicken and Alex didn't want to share. Or something. As it turns out Alex had been holding one of the chicks and introduced me to her as 'Stacy'. Then it hit me, he didn't want Stacy to know we were actually having chicken! (Yes, and this is a good day for me ;)

It didn't stop him from feeding Stacy a noodle from our chicken helper. I told him it probably wasn't a good idea, but it didn't stop him.

She ate that whole noodle!! We were all impressed. I'll let you know if she survives it.

HELP ME!!!

This is all ten puppies trying to nurse at the same time. If you look closely you can see how messy the puppies are. That is because they had just finished eating some dog food. We started Sunday giving them a quarter cup, because I wasn't sure if they would eat it or not. They have wiped out everything we have given them. This morning it was 3 cups!!!

Here is a couple of them finishing off dinner, well snack really because when they were done they headed right for Mom!!


FREE puppies is 3 weeks :)

Puppy Pile

This picture is more impressive if you turn it. But for some reason I cannot get the picture to stay in the right direction. How many puppies do you count?

We had two that are mostly brown. Funny is that one is the biggest, above, and one is the smallest, below.

According to Mark, who now lives in the barn with the dogs, there are two that are in competition for being the smallest.

Grand total: 11 puppies

Cute Chicks

Day old Buff Orphingtons anyone? Please?

Spring is here

These are blue swedish ducklings. The one that looks like a bandit is a mutt. Half blue swede and the other half a mixture of Aunt Tammy's ducks.

Justin has been hatching eggs for the last couple of weeks. The week we got our show broilers (two weeks ago, Justin and Alex are showing them in the Milam Co. Fair), he hatched 5 chickens (3 survived). Last week he hatched 5 ducklings and 4 chicks. This morning he informs me that he already has 3 eggs showing signs of life. I'm soooooooo excited (not). Anyway, he is trying to sell them so if you are interested in saving my sanity gives us a call :)

The meat goats are due at the end of March and the Dairy goats are due the middle of April. We also got our first turkey egg today. And yes, Justin rushed it right in holding it with great care. We have four Turkey hens - that kind of scares me. How many eggs do you think they will lay?

You might be a redneck if . . .

Goats

Mark with Brunette.

Rebekah with Blondie

Yes, I need my head examined!!!! Mark wanted to show goats, so we got some show goats. Like we needed an excuse. We sort of lucked into these actually. A friend I met while doing goats before had these. She claims that they haven't been able to keep goats in stock very long because of the way the economy is going. Everyone wants them - ok, well not everybody, but . . . We were lucky. And as much as I fought it, it has been like coming home with them here. Check out the pictures, including the one of Earl the buck.

Teyla

Wow, it has been a long time since I have posted. Well, we have lots going on, as usual. This is Teyla. She is a Cocker spaniel. I've been wanting a lap dog for a while and came across her when I responded to an add that had goats, chickens and cows for sale. She is soooo cute. There is a reason God made puppies and children cute though, and that is so you don't throw them away when they are misbehaving which she usually is. My MIL had been warning me about her sons dog, Frank, and how much he was terrorising the place. NOW I know!!! Just like kids though, I know she will eventually grow out of it. And when she is being cute, she is being very cute : )

Bobcat

We have been losing Geese, Ducks, chickens (except for the free ones) for a while now. We got a live trap and FINALLY last night caught something. I think she had a litter of kittens that was coming with her though. Her teets were a little swollen, but more like they were healing not nursing a new litter. She was also thin. I promise it was not from a lack of food!!!!

Look in the 'more family pictures' to see more.

More on chickens

We moved these guys today. This was taken when they were first born. They are now 1 1/2 weeks old.

So last night Justin went to check on the chickens and found a snake eating one of our Buff Orphingtons (of course cause we paid for them). They are about mid-size, not babies, not full grown. It was quite a shock. He had a hard time with my gun, didn't know it had a safety (it was dark). And had to use a different one that the snake shot wouldn't fit into. He hit it, but it got a way. Hopefully to die.

Something else we did, which I thought was really cool, was take the frame from our trampoline that flew over the chain link fence in AZ, and wrapped chicken wire around it. Justin and I did that one day. Then last Saturday John and I took out the carrier and put a top on. Justin and his friend Hayden helped a little bit before taking off for Vickie's party. Then we stuck the geese and ducks in there with a pool. What a relief to have them out of the hen house - we couldn't keep them supplied in enough water.

Today I went to TSC and bought some wire to make a 3 ft. x 10 ft. enclosed run for the 11 chicks that have been living in Justin's bedroom - boy were they stinky. Justin and I had it put together in 2 hours. And it didn't turn out half bad. These guys are a little smaller and I'm sure a snake can get into the 1x2" wire, but I doubt he could get out stuffed with birds. Hate to use them like bait, but they had to go outside.

FINALLY!

I actually sat down yesterday afternoon to try and post something. Then I got a phone call and one of our cows was in the middle of labor down in the Easter Egg field (thus named for the enormous amount of eggs we hide there every year). So off I went. When we got there my SIL had deduced that she needed help, when I looked I couldn't dispute the fact. So the chase was on. I had no idea how fast a cow could run with a baby hanging out of her privates. AND that she could jump a fence as well. We did this for about a half hour and then let her rest to see if she made any progress on her own. No luck. The teenagers finally devised a plan and we finally got her. Tammy and I pulled with all our might during the contractions while Dad worked on getting the head out. We got him about half way and then decided Steve needed to take over. That was one exhausted calf and cow.

Today they are doing fine except for a slight limp on the babies back leg. He is huge!!! And she was a first time mother.

Anyway, that is how it is around here. Always something going on. Always!!! I like it but you forget how busy you can stay. Since we have been back we have had an Easter Egg hunt, Easter, been boating/water skiing, gotten 20 chickens, 10 turkeys, 4 geese, and 2 ducks. We have lost 1 (lousy) chicken, 5 turkeys (being the most expensive) and a goose. Justin has hatched 11 more chickens. My sister-in-law has had a baby (she is soooo cute), I have helped with her home (this is child #7) and her kids. We had a baby shower. We have gone camping and John was promoted to First Sergeant. John was off for the first 3 weeks of being home and he helped put skirting up, made stairs, put up a shed, planted an enormous about of fruit trees and worked around the farm among other many miscellaneous tasks to numerous to mention. Sam (BIL) killed a coyote in his front yard (next door to us) and has it now on display for all the other coyotes as a warning (I haven't actually seen the display, but he did bring it over to show us : )

Justin turned 16, Jordan (niece) turned 13 and Vickie (niece) turned 20. On our own acre we have killed 2 copperheads and 1 rat snake (actually I think they turned this one loose, but I can't get anybody to actually confess to this or not).

We have only had internet for a week and I've been trying to figure out how to get all of this down. I'm tired just thinking about it. So this will have to do.

Hopefully I will be able to blog more often. At some point I did put pictures in the family file of our boating/water skiing trip. So be sure to check it out.