summertime

At the risk of sounding and looking like a total country hick I"m showing pictures of what we did at mom's last weekend.
My sister bought one of those "Topsy-Turvys" and put strawberries in it early this spring. Apparently, strawberries like being in there and threw out LOTS of runners. Since she did not want the runners to root in the front yard she cut them all off and brought them out to mom's house. After some discussion about the best place to put them, dad and Sami went to go find an old tractor tire that we filled with dirt and planted the runners right by mom's front door. The mobile tire swing did not impress the mothers watching (me, my mom, and my sis) but the kids and the boys(dad and BIL) thought it was a great idea.


The kids are having a great time at mom's this summer. Dad has put Sami in charge of the animals. So she and Jason have been getting eggs and feeding calves. They missed a several nests tho-see those half grown chicks? There are probably close to 100 baby chickens from this summer running loose on the farm. Some just hatched out this weekend(13 i think we counted in the newest nest) all the way up to the ones you see in the picture that are about 1/2 grown already. This fall dad will butcher almost all the roosters and put them in the freezer. The hens get left alone mostly because the whole exteded family likes truly fresh eggs all spring and summer. Now I realize that it sounds kind of like i'm trying to have it both ways-chicks and eggs. And in a way I suppose we do, but we can't find all the nests in time to get those eggs for our use because the hens are not penned in any way so there are nests all over the farm. Mom's front flowerbed(that nest was left on purpose), the barn, the hay shed, behind the calf pens, just about anywhere they can hide from dad.




These calves are still in their baby pen because they are still being bottle fed. They will graduate to a larger outside pen probably in september when dad weans them.