I think the photos speak for themselves! Winter fun is snow forts!
What are your kids’ favorite winter activities?
Tag Archive for Wordless Wednesday
Winter Wonderland – Wordless Wednesday
This is a photo of our friend’s pretty lane a week before Christmas. We went to her house to pick up eggs since none of the hens we have left are laying. Sniff. Sniff. Anyhoo….I just had to stop to take a photo of the winter wonderland.
It’s been bitterly cold the past few days. All the animals have been hunkering down in the barn.
How’s the weather where you are?
The Way My Three Year Old Decorates a Christmas Tree – Wordless Wednesday
In Saturday’s post, I mentioned the way my three year old decorates a Christmas tree, well here are the photos to show just how he does it!
Don’t be too shocked at the almost wordless Wednesday post! I am cheating to watch a TV show with hubby and because I am going out to lunch with fellow farmer friends today. 😉
Chicago at Night from Willis Tower – Wordless Wednesday
In October I went into the city of Chicago for a business meeting with Moms.com and after the meeting we walked to Willis Tower. The photos below are of Chicago at night from Willis Tower. It was really cool.
Willis Tower, or the formerly known Sears Tower, the tallest building in the United States. Sears was actually the company that built it to house all its employees in one place.
The Sears Tower became Willis Tower when a London company rented out a large space in the building and had the option to rename the building in its contract. And that’s exactly what they did.
When you visit Willis Tower you get to watch a little movie on the history of the building before you are escorted up to the Skydeck. On the Skydeck you can walk around, shop for gifts, look through the telescopes and walk out onto the “ledge”. The Ledge is a glass box basically and when you step out into it you can look down at the city of Chicago through glass. I was not brave enough to walk out onto the ledge, minding heights as I do.
I definitely recommend you visit Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) the next time you travel Chicago.
Silly Kittens! – Wordless Wednesday
In light of Saturday’s Top Five Laughs post, thought I’d share this photo of Freckles at the beginning of her climb and Selene as she looks on because I think they look adorable!
Today the kittens were out in the snow for the first time and they batted at it! Sadly, I didn’t get a photo of it.
The kittens climbing all over the garage and my husband says they think it’s their own jungle gym and I tend to agree.
This week’s Wordless Wednesday is almost….wordless!
Yogurt and Blueberries – Wordless Wednesday
Yogurt is a yummy, healthy snack. Creating yogurt recipes is pretty easy when you keep it simple and I like simple. One of my favorite snacks is yogurt and blueberries. To spice it up I like to top it with almonds and pecans. I love eating just plain frozen blueberries too.
I was playing around with taking photos of food and took one of my yogurt and blueberries. I thought it turned out decent enough to make into a blog post.
For my yogurt and blueberries snack, all I did is poured vanilla or French vanilla yogurt into a bowl, added frozen or fresh blueberries, topped it with sliced almonds and/or pecans. We do this a lot with any of our favorite fruit. You could do this with plain yogurt too.
We also like to make smoothies….at least until our blender broke. 🙁 Sniff. Sniff. Still have to figure out which part I need to buy since the last time I purchased the wrong part.
Something we have not made since getting Miss Moo is homemade yogurt. Amazing, eh? Whenever I buy yogurt to have the starter it always gets eaten before we get to it.
Do you eat yogurt? Do you do anything “fancy” with it? Have any yogurt recipes to recommend or do you make homemade yogurt?
Sick Chickens – Wordless Wednesday
This summer our egg business really took off. We could not keep up with the demand for our eggs, even at $5 and $6 a dozen. We allow our poultry to free range as well as feed them certified organic feed making our eggs a “premium” product. To accommodate the growth in our egg business we bought a couple of batches of 6 month old pullets from two other farms. Bad choice. We knew the risks but wanted our egg business to keep growing and not drop off. Our intentions were good but the result was fatal to our egg business, as well as our entire flock of poultry.
Our laying flock was healthy. There was nothing wrong with them. Then we started to notice sick chickens. The ones that were sick stopped laying. They showed signs of being lethargic, sleeping a lot, coughing, wheezing and like they had a cold in the eye. The pullets we bought obviously brought an illness to our healthy flock because this illness showed up within two weeks of bringing home the second flock of pullets. 🙁 We were very concerned for the safety of our customers, our broilers and our turkeys. No vets in the area deal with chickens so we had to go to a university veterinary lab. The closest one to us is the University of Wisconsin. Two hours away – one way. We took the vets two live birds to help them make a diagnosis. Live birds allowed for fresh tissue analysis and a more accurate diagnosis. My husband made the trip on a Friday in September.
Within a few days we had our answer. Upper respiratory infection. Sometimes fatal, especially to broilers who have a smaller trachea (or esophagus) than laying hens. Good news? This infection is not harmful to humans. The eggs and meat could still be sold. Bad news? Even when the birds recover from the infection, they remain carriers of the infection and can spread it to any new birds we brought onto our farm. Results? We have to cull (kill) our whole flock of laying hens and turkeys. Even our breeding turkeys. Our turkeys never exhibited any signs of the infection but since they were exposed, they are carriers too.
We had sick chickens for about a month. The infection went through our flock quickly and usually lasted a few days. It was basically a “chicken cold”. Who would have thought, right? There was nothing we could do for them….other than separate the ones who were getting picked on. The vet told about an antibiotic but didn’t actually recommend it since the birds were now carriers.
This “chicken cold” has been devastating. Our egg business was to the point of buying all the feed for our animals, except our horse, dog and cats. We are hoping all our customers come back in the spring.
Our plan? We plan to start fresh with baby chicks in December and have eggs available in the spring.
We will buy more turkeys in the spring and choose some to keep for breeding purposes.
We will never, ever buy chickens from unknown farms again. And may this be a lesson for anyone considering purchasing chickens from another farm to add to your current flock…DON’T.
Kittens, Kittens and More Kittens! – Wordless Wednesday
Ok all you cat and kitty lovers….I couldn’t resist posting an all kitty post after the photo shoot we did for the SHEBA post yesterday. I just kept snapping and snapping hoping to get some good, non-blurry photos of them! They are at such an adorable age. I don’t get to observe them like the children do but I love it when the children come tell me stories of all the antics and things they are up to. Like tonight, my son came to tell me that Badger is sleeping inside one of my husband’s old ratty running shoes! Why wasn’t the old ratty shoe tossed when he got his new ones? Guess they were meant to be here for the kittens! Too bad the garage is so dark or else I would have taken a photo of the kitty in the shoe!
Freckles washing herself.
Sweet little kittens.
Severus is our Tom cat and you can see the resemblance between him and Badger, eh? Oh and Sevy is our only male cat now since all his kittens appear to be females!
Badger licking her lips.
Freckles sitting pretty.
Badger sitting pretty too.
Selene sitting pretty.
Amazing that I got a shot of each one of them sitting so nicely. Full bellies helped! So remember that as a photography tip! These are their six week old photos.
Fencing – Wordless Wednesday
Our version of fencing!
Fencing supplies from Premier One.
Hubby pounding t-posts.
Baby boy helping. Sorry the photo is blurry. I was disappointed when I went to download it. 🙁
End product – fenced in pasture for Miss Moo! And we need to move it again since she has just about sufficiently cut this pasture down. Since she respects the electric fencing, we only needed to put up one strand of fencing compared to three strands or 4-7 strands for escapee horses and goats!
Homing Pigeon – Wordless Wednesday
A couple weeks ago we had a visitor land on our car. It was a homing pigeon. It has a tag on his leg that one of my daughters looked up and determined it was a racing pigeon from Nebraska. It is very friendly and allows the children to handle it. It has taken up residence with our broilers, which concerns me because it is eating 18% grower feed. What if it gains so much weight it cannot fly? Is that even possible? If it’s too heavy, how will it fly back home to its owner? And why has it decided to “vacation” here? Lots of questions. The children are loving “their” new pet though.
What is a Homing Pigeon?
When I googled homing pigeon images not many of them were the color of “ours”.
According to HomingPigeon.com a homing pigeon is:
Homing Pigeon – Aves Columbiformes Columbidae Columba Livia
Sixteen ounces of muscle and feather, at times on the wing for twelve hours, flying at sustained speeds of 30 to 60 miles per hour.
Why?
To return home where a special relationship exists between man and bird.
Wikipedia states the sport of homing pigeons was established 3000 years ago. The American Racing Pigeon Union says that in the late 1800’s homing pigeons were imported from Europe. More information about American racing pigeons can be found on www.pigeon.org
I don’t claim to be a homing pigeon expert but I hope that wets your appetite to discover more about these charming birds.
