outdoor chores

would you believe that i mowed the lawn for the first time...*ever*...today? with a push mower. three hours and multiple blisters later, i feel accomplished. even my husband was impressed, "you did it with a pushmower? are you crazy?" i told him yesterday that i would mow the lawn if it meant that we got to spend the whole afternoon together yesterday...needless to say, he didn't believe that i would actually mow the lawn. i feel wonderful about our large yard and its mow-ie-ness. now it's all lovely and short again. these faces (below) are that of satisfaction and my completion of outdoor work for the day. 

(oh, and you can check out my short hairs...thanks to genna;) 

this next week is about to get crazy. doing some video with "voyage", and it's going to be busy. fortunately, i don't have school for two more weeks. it'll be great working the video department with my husband instead of going it alone while everybody else does photography. i think i've come to the conclusion that my caleb and i were made for eachother without us even realizing it. hah. i mean...until this past week, i didn't even know that i enjoyed doing video. and he's loved it since he was just a little kid. go figure.

just a few weeks older..

growing up too quickly.

on the run.

these little guys practically look like miniature chickens now. no longer cute and fluffy, they have their feathers, and the chicken-walk down. i let them roam around outside of their shed-which they will be allowed to roam free as soon as they are big enough-for the first time today. they went crazy. imagine lots of little chickens flitting about, literally running while flapping their wings, hoping they'd somehow fly. did you know that chickens can fly? growing up, i had the misconception that they couldn't...but they're perching birds. crazy, eh?
p.s. they run like raptors from "jurassic park". (you didn't hear me say that...they'd be offended, i'm sure.)

two reasons

i have decided that, although i love my baby chicks, there are two i could live without. i made a poem about one of them: (it's totally ridiculous, and not my poetry at its finest;)

they plotted and plotted, and found a way out,
they knew that it's much more fun to roam about.
they ran around the yard and ate,
until it was too late
and a bigger chicken found them out.

#1. we rescued one of the chicks, but barely. the other one...probably got eaten by the coyote. it made me quite upset when caleb showed me what the big chickens did to my little chick. who knew that big chickens hate baby chicks so much?! a bit messy, and it made me queasy.

#2. baby chicken poop. this morning, i went out to the barn to give them some water. i planted my hand on the handle of the water basin...and there was the nastiest poop, just sitting there...now smeared on my fingers. *what is this stuff?* i asked, being stupid enough to smell it (i'm not even sure why i would do something like that). gagging, and reeling back, i finished my duties and stumbled back into the house. no matter how much i wash my hands, i feel like i can still smell the atrocity. gag.

chicken nuggets.

ranging free. 

sunrise.

mornings at the farm are simply splendid. even after a stormy night, the air is water-saturated yet clean, and the breeze light and sweet. humidity must be factored into the equation, but you should also imagine barn swallows nesting in the faded red barn, tucked away from the damp air-adding a certain sweetness to even a more-so wet and rainy day. 

while i was taking a stroll in the field earlier, i noticed a large object in the field next to ours. out of curiosity, i stepped a little closer. a coyote? i bet that's what has been eating the adult chickens. the little babies are growing like crazy right now, almost double their original size. i'd like to add pictures sometime. they are living in what used to be the pig's barn, in which they should stay safe from that coyote that was roaming about earlier. 

it's not that i am particularly fond of coyotes, but there is definitely something that is serene and slightly awesome about them. maybe next it shows its facey around here, i can catch him on camera. 

3 of my 26 babies.

absence?

it's been a while since i even checked my blog. apologies all around! i've been busy, as you can see. with this ring on my finger and a wedding at the end of july, i haven't had as much time as the college student i was back in missouri. talk about a crazy life currently. crazy, but wonderful. with a name-change in a month from tomorrow, life is about to get even more crazy, right?
now that you know the reason for my absence, i can proudly say that i am moved in on my farm. living with my best friend, genel, until i'm married and she has to leave. we are raising twenty-six chicks and sixteen (adult) chickens. all of them-of course-are free range chickens. between my dove and genel's rabbit, and the horse we've been housing since i moved here ("methuselah" leaves us tomorrow), i'd say we could run an interesting zoo. we'll see if i can talk caleb into letting me get some more animals that'll help us be self sustaining.
exciting season, and i'm hoping that i'll be able to update this more often now that the farm has internet.

week's tidings.

the proof of my farm work:)

a little cardinal flew into our house..thanks mom.

shopping. hehe.

chicken run

you remember watching that movie as a kid, but never imagined that you'd become one of those "evil" humans who keeps chickens for their eggs. well...it's been a while since i updated my blog, so i figured that i might as well write about the latest up-comings in the family.
we bought a farm.
it's taken a lot of work so far, and i can't even say that we are probably a tenth of the way done with fixing up the houses, but it'll be simply lovely when it gets finished. not only do we have wonderful property, but we also inherited an old horsie, whom we dubbed the name "methuselah" because of his old age. you can't forget the chickens..all nineteen of them. there was an annoying and loud rooster, but nobody knows what happened to him.
i told dad that we need an alpaca..just for kicks [chuckle chuckle..literally] and because they're cute and fluffy. honestly, though, we'll probably stick to more decent animals that don't require de-fluffing. maybe we'll get honeybees or something of the sort.
i've been working on cleaning out the house i am living in for the past two days. my boyfriend, caleb, took me to the gym with him on monday, and i thought i was going to die when i was fixing up the house yesterday [tuesday]. tomorrow, mom and i are going to start the inside painting process for the smaller house so that can be finished before we put the new carpet in.
the lady who lived in the small house before us was a "master gardener" and also knew basically everything about birds...she left lots of little bird houses in the yard and told us how to keep the plethora of birds in our area eating at our bird feeders. it literally always sounds like morning outside the house because birds are always chirping and flirting with each other. perhaps this sounds annoying to you, but actually it is delightful to have nature right at your fingertips. my dove, piper, is going to be thrilled with all of her new bird friends that live right outside of the porch.
that's another thing...we have porches on the house..three screened-in porches. piper is going to live on one of them in the spring and summer and beginning of fall so she can enjoy the scenery and bird noises...unless she gets stressed out, then she'll live back inside the living room.
i want to post more as the farm progresses, and i would love to post pictures...i just need to bring my camera there sometime while we are there.