Chicken T-shirts

While we're on the subject of chickens don't forget to check out these chicken themed T-shirts!

Dirt Road Duds

Tomorrow I'll post pictures of another chicken coop I started working on. It's small and portable and will house 2 to four birds. I was hoping to have it finished this weekend but it's going to rain tomorrow and Monday.

Happy Hens and Baby Pigeons

Well, the roof is on and the hens in. We're getting 5 eggs a day right now. They're from the White Leghorns. The Rhode Island Reds haven't started laying yet. Probably in another two or three weeks.

The roof on the next boxes isn't nailed down yet. I'm so happy with this chicken coop! There are still some finishing touches I want to add. In fact I have some grand ideas which will remain secret for now. I'm still figuring out how to implement them.

More good news! We finally have baby pigeons. After three years of trying here they are.



Another pair are sitting on eggs. They should hatch around the 27th of March. Keep your fingers crossed!

More chicken coop progress

Ken got the roof on the coop today!! I didn't get a picture of it finished because it was getting too dark, but here he is waiting for me to stop fiddling around with the camera and help with holding the sheets of Ondura straight while he nailed them on.

Chicken Coop Progress

Here we are with the nest boxes half built. I put a window in the east facing side. I'm not an early riser so at least the chickens can enjoy a bit of the morning sun until I let them outside.

We're building a chicken coop!

Here it is so far. Actually it's a bit further along than this now. I built the nest boxes yesterday and today I made the front door and got that hung. Tomorrow I have to make the back door and a screen window. On the right side I'm going to put a little "pop door" with a slider to let them in and out of the pen - which isn't built yet.

The "attic" area is going to be used to store the garden tools.

Ken's been tied up with firefighter training but he got the trusses up and hopefully tomorrow he'll get home early enough to put the roof on. He has the purlins on one side already and all the roofing material ready to go so it won't take but a couple of hours.

We decided to put it close to the house. It'll be nice to just step outside to collect the eggs but it will also be safer for the chickens. There are so many predators back there around the barn. We lost all of our other chickens to raccoons. They were in a pen with a shelter but the racoons would grab them as they ran close to the wire. We didn't want to get anymore until we had a good coop to be able to lock them up in at night.

I based the design on these Jimmy Vyse Arks available in the UK.

I'm having so much fun! I love building! A bit chilly at this time of the year though.

February Storm

It's that time of year again. Seems every February we get a period of high winds. This year was particularly bad. They brought down lots of power lines and the resulting sparks caused lots of brush and forest fires.

Ken was out with the local fire fighters battling forest fires for 9 hours! While he was gone the power went out then not long after that a terrific wind gust brought down this large white pine that was standing by the driveway. It couldn't have dropped in a better place. Just missed the house. Just missed the power line coming into the house. If it had gone more to the right it would have landed on the chicken coop we're building and if it had gone to the left it would have wiped out the garden fence!

Of course Ken wasn't able to get up the driveway when he returned home but that was better than any of the above scenarios. He took the next day off work and he and Joshua worked on cutting up the tree and getting the branches piled up out of the way.

This year's deer

Here's this season's deer. Ken walked by me saying "guess I'll go get us a deer". About 5 minutes later I heard the shot. Sure enough there he was up on the hillside field dressing this nice doe!

Having so many deer around kind of takes the sport out of hunting but then again it was nice not to have the task of carrying her down off the mountain and out through the other hollow like last year. We just lifted her over the stream and into the barn.


This year we ground quite a lot of hamburger meat.

This is Ken using the grinder attachment I bought him for his birthday last year. It works great. The KitchenAid mixer was his retirement gift! When I buy him tools he usually says "wait a minute, you've been wanting one of these!" He likes kitchen stuff so this way I was sure he knew it was just for him. He knows that never in a month of Sunday's would I ask for a mixer!"

We got about 40lbs of meat altogether. One deer lasts us most of the year, in fact I still have a little bit left from last year but that's because I used it sparingly thinking we would run out. We keep talking about getting a pig as it would be wonderful to have our own pork too.

It's very comforting to see the freezer full of meat. Especially when it's free meat!

Some finished knitting projects

Winter really set in here so as usual when it's cold outside all I want to do is knit! The first picture is a hat I made using the Llama I spun - shown in the last post.

I'd made this little cardi and hat for a friends new baby granddaughter and well, I was thrilled the way the flower came out and decided I wanted a hat with a flower too! Hey, I just turned 50. I can wear crazy stuff now.

The cardi is known as the 5HBJ or 5 hour baby jacket.

Thanks Lorainne wherever you are!!!

It's pretty easy to follow and enjoyable to knit.

I'll try to find the link to the baby hat and flower patterns. They were easy too.

Spinning for winter woolies

I know, it's been so long since I posted anything here. We get so busy and I forget to take pictures of what we've done or I just don't feel like sitting down and writing about it all.

Anyway, I was up early this morning because Ken overslept and didn't have time to feed the horses and goats as he usually does. So after feeding everyone and a couple of cups of tea and a trip around the net looking at other peoples blogs, and thinking: "man I wish people would updates their blogs more often" ....hmmm, guilt set in.

Fall came and has almost turned to winter. We've had hard frosts most mornings this week which has put me in the knitting and spinning mode. I just ordered some Wool of the Andes from

Knit Picks

The Shoreline Twist and the Tidepool Heather.

Last winter I was so cold all the time until I found an old wool sweater in a box and tried it on. I couldn't believe the difference real wool makes. Forget the double sweatshirts. This year we're all having pure wool sweaters, wool hats and scarves! Joshua likes to pull his socks up over the bottom of his pants when he goes out in the cold so I told him I would make him some little leg warmer things to save his socks which remain baggy at the top after being stretched over jeans!

I started by spinning up some llama and alpaca fiber I found on ebay. Also got a good start on the red merino mill ends that I bought LAST year. Love that stuff! It spins so nice and it's also treated with superwash so it can be thrown in the washer.

The dark brown in the pictures is the alpaca, the lighter browns are llama and the other twisted two color yarns are a bit of both. I'm not sure how well llama and wool work together when plied but I had those bits of singles left over and decided to give it a try. Will have to be careful when washing the fabric in case the wool shrinks more than the llama. It'll probably end up as an accent color in a scarf. Or Josh's leg warmer/fake sock tops.

So many Rabbits!

We're awash in rabbits at the moment. Here they all are getting some fresh air and sunshine while we cleaned out their house ( the horse trailer) last weekend. They've all been seperated into age groups for growing out and ( since they're all weaned now) their moms are in their own cages hanging under the roof of the new rabbit barn we're building on the back of the horse shelter.

Yes, the one at the top was an escapee. He was easy to catch though and now he's back with his little group.

I love baby bunnies. I also love the rabbit pies cooked in the oven of the wood cookstove! No chemicals, preservatives or artificial colorings.

Actually they're all named Stew!

Indian Artifacts

Just look at these!

Brandy, our little Jack Russell, dug a hole in the yard just outside the back door. It was only a little hole big enough to get her nose in. Joshua for some reason bent down to look inside it and couldn't believe his eyes. There was this beautiful black flint Indian blade! It's about 2 1/4 inches long.

The other is made from white quartz. I found that one not long after we moved in here. It was just laying on top of the dirt by the stream.

It gives me goose bumps to think that Indians once hunted in my backyard!

Garden Fence

Once again I must apologize for not posting for so long. This darned computer had another melt down and has been in the repair shop.

In the mean time I've been taking lots of pictures and if all goes well I'll try to post something every day.

We finished fencing in the garden! Glad that's done. As you know we also built a fence for the neighbor across the street. So far everything is growing beautifully. The deer are sticking their heads through and managing to nibble a few of the plants around the edges but it's nothing we can't live with.

These pictures were taken last week. I need to go out and take some more. It's amazing how fast things grow. It's like a jungle in there now. The potatoes are doing really well and we have lots of tomatoes but they're ripening slowly it seems.

4th of July

It's a day late but Happy 4th of July to everyone that it applies to!

It was a very quiet one here. Ken went down to a family get together in North Carolina so it was just me and Josh here taking care of the farm.

I sat out on the porch swing most of the evening hoping to catch sight of a few fireworks but there was nothing. I could hear quite a few in the distance but not a thing down here on the creek. But it was more than made up for by the flashes of hundreds of fireflies though! They were all busily blinking , looking for their mates. I love the fireflies. Wish there was a way to photograph them. After a shower the whole place sparkles with them like an enchanted forest.

While he was in NC Ken stopped by the farm store in Fayetteville and picked up some white pigeons!! That was a stroke of luck. They don't have them in stock very often. Since we came here the ones we have haven't laid any eggs. A few birds have also been lost to hawks. Now I'm down to two and they both seem to be males. The two tipplers in the aviary keep sitting on eggs but they never hatch. They sit about 10 days and then kick them out. I looked inside the eggs and there was no chick in there, just a regular yoke. I've added vitamin supplements to their diet and made other changes but to no avail. The birds may just be too old. I got them about 6 years ago and they were adult's then so I have no idea how old they are. Anyway, Ken's on his way home with 4 new white homers - young ones- so we may be in for a chance at breeding these. Everyone keep your fingers crossed for baby pigeons!

Eraser Carved Fish

I actually sat down and got back to work on some eraser carving.

Here's a nice big carp I'm working on.

First, the beginnings of the carving itself and then the printed image. Next, I'll take it into Photo Impact and adapt it for printing on t-shirts.

I closed the Cafepress shop by the way. Will be opening a new shop at www.printfection.com

They don't have as many items to choose from but their t-shirt printing is extremely high quality. It's also free to open a shop there so I plan to have a few of them each catering to a particular niche. One of them being nothing but fish designs.

And now back outside to set corner posts for the shed we're adding on to the back of the horse shelter.

Setting Fence Posts

We're a bit late with the garden this year. Ken's been working such long hours at work as well as keeping up with his handyman business. His boss recently bought a house and hired Ken to help him remodel it. So every night after work they've been over there gutting and rebuilding cabinets in the kitchen and bathroom, laying tile and hardwood floors. They work on that every night until about 9pm and then on the weekends he's been working on other peoples houses. This last two weekends he and I have been building a garden fence for the neighbor across the street! It never ends.

Now, at last, we've started fencing our garden to keep those pesky deer out!

We're using the 16 ft cattle panels as they last forever. They're only 5ft high so we'll be cutting other panels in half length ways and adding another couple of feet above what you see here. If the deer get over that I don't know what we'll do. Maybe cap the whole thing with a wire roof!

Well, anyway we're late. Keep your fingers crossed that we get to harvest something before winter arrives again!

School's Out!

A lot has been going on here on the farm. I'm finally getting a bit of time to write about it.

First, we're all done homeschooling for this year!! Woo hoo!

We finished up the end of year testing last week. Josh pretty much sailed through it and seems to have done very well. We won't get the results until the end of July. He did extremely well on the spelling test which is usually his worst subject. All that reading is paying off. Math gave him the most trouble this year so that's what we'll concentrate on more. We'll probably continue to work on it a bit over the summer.

So, now we have time to work on the garden and all those other projects that have been waiting in the wings.

Yes we did. But this year we're going to put up an eight foot fence to keep these guys out!

One Morning in April

Thought you all might enjoy experiencing some of the sights and sounds around our farm. Ken's camera can take short video clips and with the help of photobucket I was able to put together a short movie.

Computer troubles

You must all think I've fallen off the edge of the world or something. I'm sorry for the lack of posts here. Hope everyone had a lovely Easter.

As you might remember when the power went out during the ice storm in February my computer got fried. Well, it's been in the shop being fixed for the last two weeks. We got it back on Friday. Everything was going good until Sunday. Ken plugged in the camera thinking we would call my Mum and Dad and get on Yahoo messenger for a chat. As soon as he plugged in the camera the computer froze up! He couldn't do a thing with it. It wouldn't even turn off!!. He did all he could to fix it but to no avail. So, it's back in the shop.

Keep your fingers crossed that it's nothing too serious. I'm at a loss without it as it has all my artwork on it, though the software I'd been using needs to be reinstalled. -And that's another problem, I can't find the disk!! Think I'm going to have to go on ebay to find another one. It's PhotoImpact 4, I think. We downloaded the trial version of the new PhotoImpact 12 but I actually like the old one better. The new one requires that you set the screen to a particular resolution that makes everything look extremely small. I can hardly see all the little buttons!!!

In the meantime, we went looking for other graphics software to try and came across a free trial of Xara Extreme

I made this little ginger kitten design while messing around with it and put it on some t-shirts in my cafepress shop. Thought it came out quite nice. Xara's totally different from PhotoImpact but I really like it and think I'll take advantage of the sale they are having.

Afraid this cat t-shirt is all I have to show you. The camera's out of batteries so I haven't taken any pictures of the SNOW we got over the week end!!! Yes, SNOW!!! The temperature went from almost 80 F last week down to about 15 F over the week end! It may have been below that even. I know it set a record. We got about an inch of snow on Saturday and there was still some of it in the woods this morning. I'd just put all the winter coats away too. Even put up the fly curtain that Susan and David brought over for us so we could keep the kitchen door open in the (now, non existent) warm weather. All the animal's water buckets had a half inch of ICE on them this morning! Can you tell I'm not happy about having to go back to this after being out there in jeans and t-shirt planting peas and radishes last week?

Anyway, here's the Ginger Cat shirt. He looks as if he's chasing something and skidding on a slippery floor.

If you click on the picture you'll be able to view all the other items with this design on them. Cat mugs, infant and toddler t-shirts, bags and what not.