All in a day...

There is so much that happens out here in a day.  Really.  There are always eggs to deal with:

This is about 4 days' worth of eggs.

There is usually some wildlife to gaze at.

This was a herd of 6 mule deer - a doe and her triplets from last year, plus another doe and yearling I think.  We see them a lot.  They are "our deer".   

 Some cows to coo over:

I just love these cows - they remind me of Ferdinand the Bull, which I wrote about here.  They are so fierce-looking and yet so docile - they let me pet them (plus, they are girls).   Aren't they cute?  They are at O'Keefe Ranch, which is a lovely place to visit just outside of Vernon - about 20 minutes from our place.

This yellow-headed blackbird was hanging out with the cows.   

Some lovely flowers to photograph:

Yes - I love dandelions!

Some children to take to the airport for a flight:

Yes, my children are in that plane!

And then later to supervise on the trampoline (which they dug out of storage and set up all by themselves (wiping a proud tear):

And then some cupboards to re-organize because I bought myself a Mother's day present of a more simple set of dishes!  Here is before:

And here is after:

I don't know - maybe there doesn't seem to be much difference, but I had about 5 different dish sets all mixed up in there before, and I always had to think about where to put things.  Now it's pretty much all Corelle, which are so light and slender and stack so nicely (and made in the USA to boot!).   It's part of my intense work to simplify and streamlife my life (although I think we don't need that many bowls...) 

And ok - all this stuff didn't happen in a day - it happened in a week - but it feels like a day because I'm not really used to being that busy - and I don't think I really like being that busy at all!  So much for simplicity!  I didn't even take pictures yet of all the house trim I am re-painting!!  And did I mention the ducks are all doing heavy-duty "nesting" behaviour?

3 more chicks

Goldie, one of our silkie hens who hatched last summer, has now hatched out 3 of her 5 eggs.  Well, I thought she had 4 eggs, but I guess she laid another one after I got her all settled on her nest.  The 3 chicks all look like silkies - 2 black and 1 yellow.......although one came out of a green egg - so I'm wondering if that was Petunia's egg (she is my little black silkie/americauna).  You can see Goldie down below, and then a dark chick (maybe Petunia's) and the yellow one - definitely pure silkie as you can tell by the head shape and the feathered feet.

And here's an update on Twiggy and the kids:  All doing well.  The silkie is in the middle - much smaller than the other two.

My daffodils are in the height of their glory:

 And the goats are enjoying some sunshine after a day-long deluge yesterday:

Hazel and Caramel

 Tia, as always, is hoping someone will throw her that darned ball:

Here's what my gardening has consisted of lately.   I am not really gardening so much as landscaping this spring.  I am moving a lot of stuff and going to make this previously bare bank into a wonder of beauty and colour.  You can see 3 green cedar-ish shrubs in place now, plus a blue spruce tree.  There are also 2 maple trees, a mock orange bush and a spirea in place.  They are hard to see as they are not in leaf yet.  Stay tuned for more progress.  My plan is to make my life easier by moving a lot of flower gardens to this bank where the weeds won't be so obvious and can't spread anywhere.  Then, I am doing the opposite of what I started 7 years ago:  I am going to more grass.  I used to hate grass, really bought into the "food, not lawn" mentality, and I still do - except that it's too much work.  I need to make my life easier in this respect, so I have more time for my animals and other hobbies.   So this bank has always been so ugly and needs a facelift, and my flower gardens in the front are going to become lawn.  It will look wonderful when we're all done!

And this is Daphne, the little banty hen.  I was trying to get a good shot of a quail, but those birds are so sketchy, and I ended up with this great shot of Daphne instead.

Waiting for spring

I know it's already spring, officially, but here on the mountain things happen much more slowly than everywhere else.  I finally have a few flowers blooming - the crocusses are finished, the tiny irises are nice, and the daffodils are about to open up.  There are plenty of robins and thrushes around, but only this past week are we seeing much of the colour green.  We have some new visitors this year - quail!  They're like my other little herd of farm birds - something new for us up here for sure.

Here's what I've been doing lately, (among a million other things):

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/page.aspx?pid=2433   This is a Great Blue Heron nest.  She has laid 5 eggs!

and http://www.allaboutbirds.org/Page.aspx?pid=2422&ac=ac&utm_source=Cornell%20Lab%20eNews&utm_campaign=48964f52af-eNews_HawkBirdCam_March_2012&utm_medium=email
These are Red-Tailed Hawks, Big Red (momma) and Ezra.  They have 3 eggs now which are due to hatch anytime now.

I've also been watching these hummingbird babies:  http://www.ustream.tv/hummingbirdnestcam

I just log onto them and keep an eye throughout the day.  I find it so restful to hear the wind blow in the speakers and the sounds of the birds......kind of meditative.  Birds are like that. You get to see the hummingbird babies a LOT, because mamma is a single mother. 

On the home front, Twiggy has hatched out 3 lovely little chicks; a silkie chick (likely mamma's baby), an Americauna chick, and a chick from a cream-coloured egg - I think perhaps Silver-laced Wyandotte with an Americauna daddy.    I don't have a web cam on her, but here are some pictures:

Twiggy, shortly after being moved out of the milk crate and onto some fresh bedding in the rabbit cage.  Three babies sleep beneath her, warm in the safety of her feathers.

Americauna to the left, silkie to the right

Americauna cross

Silkie chick

They are getting stronger every day, eating more every day, and spending more time out of mamma's feathers, so I will try to get some better pictures.  Can't wait to see a glimpse of baby hawks and herons too.   A lot of H's - hawks, herons, hummingbirds and hens.   And here's another neat H-bird I saw - a sharp-shinned hawk, I think, right in my poplar tree:

Of spinning and passion

Here is a note I receive from my dear Tante Hilda, who hails originally from Belgium (yes, I am a proud mixture of Belgian/French Canadian):

Hi Monique,
I should have brought back my parents' wooden spinning wheel. I looked at it a long time, but it was too difficult to bring back and then where would I put it? It became a decoration item, "memories", in my parents' living room. At the end of the 2nd world war or just after, my dad, who was an inventer, made a wooden spinning wheel for my mother.

Everything was very scare in those days, and my mother used natural sheeps-wool to knit socks and sweaters etc.  It felt a bit rough on your skin but it kept you warm. We did this for quite a few years and I remember my dad or my mother at the wheel spinning and pedaling away winter evenings. We kids prepared sometimes the sheepswool for the wheel. Strange what in those days was a necessity is now a hobby and almost luxury.

 

I've been thinking so much about my aunt's words.  They resonate with me.  How do things that once were necessities become luxuries?  Why do any of us "modern people" choose to spend our time engaged in activities that we don't really have to do?  I don't "have to" grow a garden.  I don't "have to" preserve the food I grow, or learn to milk a goat, or get eggs from my own chickens or fibre from my own rabbits and goats.  I don't "have" to do almost every single thing that I do.  (And I wish I didn't have to do the things I do have to do - like cook supper.)

And then I had an experience (well, several) last week that created a bit of an epiphany for me.  I spent some time at Karon Taylor's goat farm http://www.taylorside.ca/welcome.htm, (where I got Hazel from) in preparation for getting Calypso bred on her next cycle, and I got to see Karon and her friend Cherry Bolduc   http://www.mostlyminis.ca/ at work keeping baby goats alive and mother goats milking and the whole thing.  And I heard Karon's story about Emmy, her Golden Retriever pup who she found at death's doorstep, having been cast aside by the mother, and who turned out to have a cleft palate.  Of course, they discovered the cleft palate after everyone, including the residents at the Senior's home where Karon works, had already bonded with Emmy, so euthanizing her was not an option.  Luckily she found a talented vet surgeon:
http://www.okvet.info/InterestingCases/tabid/1075/Default.aspx.   I must say, Emmy is one of the most beautiful G. R.'s I've ever seen, (and you know I'm biased by my own Tia).  Karon has written a book about her experiences now, and I can't wait to read it. 
 
And I watched the passion these women have for animals, and one comment Cherry made keeps resonating through my mind:  "that's what we do - save babies!"   I'm reading Ken Robinson's book The Element:  How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything,  and wondering what on earth my passion is.  So when statements like the one Cherry made affect me so strongly, I pay attention. 

And here's a story from Robinson's book (p. 24) that really hit me:

My brother Ian is a musician.  He plays drums, piano and bass guitar.  Years ago, he was in a band in Liverpool that included an extremely talented keyboard player named Charles.  After one of their gigs, I told Charles how well I thought he'd played that night.  Then I said that I'd love to be able to play keyboards that well.  "No, you wouldn't," he responded.  Taken aback, I insisted that I really would.  "No," he said.  "You mean you like the idea of playing keyboards.  If you'd love to play them, you'd be doing it.".  He said that to play as well as he did, he practiced every day for three or four hours in addition to performing.  He'd been doing that since he was seven.

Suddenly playing keyboards as well as Charles did didn't seem as appealing.  I asked him how he kept up that level of discipline.  He said, "Because I love it."  He couldn't imagine doing anything else.

And I wonder........do I really want to be a spinner, or do I just like the idea of being a spinner?  What I do have passion about, and what I have indeed created and indeed do every day, is care for a variety of  living things.  Like Cherry and Karon, I really get off on keeping living things alive and fluourishing.   But maybe I don't value that enough because it's not something that I can earn a living with - at least not at this point in time.  While I muse about what my passion is/are, here is a picture that shows us without any doubt, that Tia has got this all figured out.

How I spent my 44th birthday

No - I didn't get a tattoo.  I've been much to busy to even design one, but I would like a leafy/viny arm-band one day. 
What I did do is have a wonderful day, and most of it very spontaneous.   I got invited to my neighbour's for lunch (just a coincidence) and I ate cake for breakfast (a nut-based cake with no sugar so healthy cake).  I hung out with my barn critters and took the dogs for a walk.  I went to Vernon to buy the new camera my mother has gifted me with: 

It's the Nikon Coolpix P500 and I chose it after much, much, much deliberation.  I was also looking at the Panasonic Lumix FZ100, but in the end decided that was too much camera for me and the fabulousness of it would be lost on me.  For $100 less I got the camera more for "point and shoot", but with great movie capabilities, fast shutter speed and a whopping 36X zoom!   Now I have to learn how to use it.  I have the battery charged and it's all ready to go.  I took this picture with my trusty little pink Canon PowerShot SD 1300, which has truly been a great point and shoot camera, but I find that I can't get good animal pictures with it because of course, animals are always in motion.   You can also see my new camera case there, and the lovely birthday flowers my mom gave me.  (She also made me the most fabulous cheesecake in the world).   Thanks mom!

I also bought a 5 gallon bucket of light yellow paint (Benjamin Moore "summer  harvest") to start re-painting inside my house.  We will eventually have a new laundry room downstairs and the boys' bathroom will be finished, so I'm all ready, plus I want a fresher/brighter/cleaner/uncluttered look in the whole house.  It has finally really hit me that the chaos that I create around myself is too distracting for me to function as well as I would like, so I'm in round 47 or so of "declutter my life".  Look at all that junk - I simply have way too much stuff!  It's almost spring so I'm ready for the spring cleaning paranoia that sweeps my psyche each year.  (And I want to get done because April is "restructure the garden" month!)

After buying my paint, I met my friends Sheila and Maureen for dinner at the New Dehli in Vernon (yummy) and then we went to the Talkin' Donkey to listen to some performers:  Trevor Caswell http://www.myspace.com/trevorcaswell and Jayme McKillop who were being filmed by Maureen's husband Bruce.  They were really great - wow - first Jayme belted her heart out, and one of the songs she wrote was about the events of 9/11 from the perspective of a mother with a brand new baby in her arms (her son was born Sept. 6).  It brought back to me my same experience.  Liam was born Sept. 2, and when my mom said "have you watched the footage yet?" I didn't know what she was talking about.  I put the TV on, and as I stood there with Liam in my arms, I was just flabbergasted, tears running down my face.  Anyway - that's the power of the arts - to move us, to re-connect us to each other and the earth and to our own selves, our experiences, and our memories.

(And a little aside; when I showed Bruce my camera and said "my mom bought it for me", he showed me his newest little gadget - a super tiny film camera thingy - and said "my mom bought me this!  It was too funny.)

It was a very good day.  And today is Mr. E's birthday - he is 13 and gaming all day long as per his birthday wish - and can you believe it is snowing on his birthday?   Shocking!!

I hope we survive this day, because as it turns out, kids who game all day long get really cranky!

Awash in Fibre

February is the time that animals start shedding their winter coats.  When you have a lot of rabbits, that means ending up with a lot of matted rabbits.  Here is poor Flopsy, who needed some serious attention last week:

She had some nasty dirty stuff stuck to her tender bits, so I had to soak her in the tub for a little while.  I know she looks terrible - but as her new hair grows in, I will keep up with it better - I promised her!
Her fibre is amazing though - it's like silver and gold:

And this looks like a rabbit on my sewing desk, but it's just all the fibre I took off of Flopsy - it's absolutely gorgeous stuff.  I cut it off because I didn't want to hurt her.  I still have another 5 or so rabbits that need some really intense grooming.

Now, earlier in February I noticed that Lemon's hair was starting to come off in chunks, so I started brushing both him and Willow every few days, and I have been getting this: 

I don't know if you can see that Lemon's coat is just sort of sloughing off... he's pretty easy to groom because of course he must always be in my lap.  His sister requires a bit more chasing down.  Her fibre may be softer yet, I'm not sure.  And I think I'm getting guard hairs too, but I still have so much to learn, and with all the things I am interested in, it may be another year or two before I really know what I'm doing and what I have.  I keep all my fibre in paper bags and when I am ready, it will become something.  In the meantime, all the really dirty, matty angora fibre is going outside this spring to see if birds will use it to make their nests!

Draw Day

Today is the day I said I would do the draw for the little Hobo bag, and I will announce the winner at the end of this post. 

I'm also happy to announce that yesterday and today actually feel like spring may arrive this year after all.  Yesterday it got to 12 C and some people in our area ended up having flooding problems because the ground is still frozen but the surface water was running like crazy in yesterday's sunshine.  I brought a new little silkie rooster home yesterday, from Nikki who breeds a wide array of chickens (and I fell in LOVE with the Coronation Sussex' she has and now feel that I MUST end up with some of those), and there was a river running by her place (luckily for her, right on by and not through).  Anyway, Nikki has a type of Maran chicken, and Blue Orpingtons, Buff Brahmas and Red-Blue laced Wyandottes and all kinds of wonderful breeds, and anyone interested can ask for her phone number.  She will be selling fertilized eggs and day-old chicks.  My Australorp hen, Isis, as well as Will and Kate (light Sussex) came from her eggs.  Here is a picture of some Coronation Sussex chickens.  Her rooster looks just like these ones:

I just think they are gorgeous.  Silver and white.  Shivers down my spine.

And here is my new little rooster, in quarantine for the first few days (I've learned my lesson):  

He needs a name, so suggestions are welcome.  He makes me think of really dark coffee for some reason.

And speaking of coffee, here is a finished project that I haven't posted yet:

It's just panels, sewn together via my own design.  I have enough little panels left to make some placemats, so I'll do that one of these days.  The quilting I did (mostly free-motion) was really terrible, but I learned a neat trick from my mom, and I covered the back with a new piece of fabric before binding it, so no one can see quite how bad my quilting is.

Here is where it lives now, on the beautiful sideboard that had been my grandmother's. 

I had originally designed it to be a wall hanging, but I am wanting a less cluttered look as time goes on, so instead, it is a table runner.  I just love this piece of furniture, and all I set on top is one bowl with fruit in it.  (I really have too much stuff in my house!)
And now, the moment you've all been waiting for...I did it the old-fashioned way and asked Liam to choose a name.  The winner of the little hobo bag is...

Holly.  Congratulations Holly.  You won one of Sheila's paintings too!  Next time, I will be raffling off an apron I think - I have two that I will be making and commenters will be able to choose which one they want.  It will be a while though - March is "work on house" month, as we have been renovating our basement and it's coming along wonderfully and will need my attention when all the painting starts.  Then it's "move all the front flower beds month".  Then it's "gardening" month........you get the idea...  Tell me what you're planning to do this month. 

Posting comments

If you're wondering how to enter a comment.... I just realized something:  First, if this message came to your in-box, you have to go to the actual blog to comment.   This is a bit of an inefficiency, but it's what we're stuck with for now.   You can't respond to the message that comes to your in-box.  I'm realizing that for me, it's easier to just look at my blogroll, which is on the right hand column of my blog, and I can see when my favourite bloggers have made a post and can look right away.   So for me, it's turning out that subscribing to a blog isn't the most efficient way to keep up-to-date (plus, I am finding that I prefer reading on the layout of the blog rather than what shows up in my in-box).    But if you don't have a blog or a way to check in regularly, then the subscribing option may be the best.

At any rate, on the blog, look below to where it says "comments" - in blue I think - and click on that. You'll be able to read the comments, then there is a box waiting for yours. You then have to type in 2 strange words there - if you can't make them out properly, the computer will give you a new set after you try to submit your comment. Under the ID section, you can click on Name/URL and just put your first name in there, then click submit.

Remember to leave a comment on the "Happy Blogiversary" post in order to have a chance to win the little hobo bag!

Today it is snowing and only -3 C.  That's a much better temperature than the -20 C we had 2 mornings ago!!   I'm making sure to keep the bird feeders well-stocked.

Happy Blogiversary!

As I celebrate blogging for 5 years on this cold February day, I took a stroll through some old posts.  It's both an eerie and amazing feeling to see how much my life has changed.  I'm a different person now, almost.  (They say that all the cells in our bodies are completely renewed every 7 years). 

Five years ago, I was not a quilter.  Or a knitter.  I had dogs and cats but no chickens or farm animals of any kind.  In short, I was not a farmer.  I didn't have a coop or a barn or a tractor. I wasn't a blogger yet; I was just fooling around with this new-fangled notion called "blogging" and full of all kinds of sustainable living idealism.   I was really unformed, a mother fumbling around, trying to piece together some kind of whole-some life for my kids.  As they bicker in the living room while I write this, I am not certain I was successful.  But, in the process, I have created what feels like a pretty interesting life for myself - I would never have thought I would ever get excited by fibres and ducks and chickens, that I would help baby birds hatch, that I would have goats who hop into my lap when I sit down, that I would comb rabbits every day, that I would make stuff with my hands, my mind and my heart.  Looking back, I can say that these five years have actually turned out much better than I ever imagine they would.

Here is the quilt that started me going on the artsy aspect of my life:

The truth is, my mom did the quilting on the dragonfly for me - I was just too green to have the courage to do it myself.  At any rate, it started me on a journey, which is the whole point.   I may never have started this path at all if I hadn't seen this dragonfly and new I HAD to have one.  I do have a thing for dragonflies, as this picture shows:

Gee - that was 6 years ago now.  My 44th birthday approaches.  How shall I top that off?  I still have a few weeks to decide.......

Well - I found something to raffle off in celebration of my 5th year blogiversary:  Check out this little hobo bag.  I made it a while ago and was saving it as a gift. 

Yes, those are littly cowboy hats.  These little bags are great for things like skeins of yarn or toilettries or little kiddy toys or whatever.  If you want a chance to win it, just leave a comment and you'll be entered in the draw.  Tell me how you have changed in the past five years.  I'll be drawing a name one week from today - Sunday, March 3, so get your comment in!!  And this is how I shall celebrate my blogiversary - by sending a little gift to one of you!

Convergence

I recently realized that I was getting a little silly and having way too many blogs. Those who know me well will be shocked to hear this, but it was starting to make me a little scattered....(I know, I know, your jaw just dropped).   So - after consulting with my blog team (that would be Sheila and Amo), I have decided to consolidate everything into one blog, this one. I have been importing posts from my other blogs, and I know this has caused some confusion as they show up on this blog as new, instead of with their original publish date.   Sorry about that.  Anyway, I will endeavor to label each post with a category, so that you can decide right away if you want to read it or not.  Hopefully this change will be user-friendly for all of us.

This is a timely decision, as I also recently realized that my blogiversary is coming up; 5 years on February 26!   I should host some kind of prize give-away to everyone who comments to that day's blog post......but what on earth can I give away? Anyone interested in a silkie rooster? or two? Ok, ok, that won't entice you. I'll have to come up with something else. Hm.......it may be later than Feb. 26 after all. 

Here for your viewing pleasure are what I consider to be some rather nice photos I took in these past few weeks, as a way to say farewell to winter, because, surely, spring must be just around the corner now!

Ah, Winter; the best time to appreciate the intricacies of branches!

Bandit gets hungry?

Nothing more beautiful than a February dump of snow!