here lately

 hi friends!

i'm collecting my thoughts tonight and thought i'd 

share a few here before bedtime.  

when i got out of the jeep a couple days ago, 

this greeted me.  i still smile as i remember their "hello"

-saying fiona loves the donks is an understatement.  she goes crazy if you separate them.

 in this picture, it sure looks like spirit is fond of fiona as well.  

i'm so glad they're getting along well because old violet who is standing behind them, hasn't been doing 

so well these days.  she's reeeeally old and has sure slowed down. 

that brings me to our dogs. 

old addie and francois are changing too.  

just this past week, addie has not been able to get up the step to come 

back in the house anymore.  everytime we let her out to go potty,

we have to get off the porch and lift her up.  

yesterday as i did so; i felt something.  

she has a mass on her back end.  she has other fatty tumors that in the past 

were supposed to be okay but now... i'm  not so sure.  

she'll be 13 in june.  

francois limps alot.  he'll be 13 in november.  

don't know what i'll do without them when their time comes.  

there have been alot of  changes this month.  

myguy has decided to sell the cows.  

 i know he really loves havin cows but

they've been eating us out of house and home.  

we managed to keep them last summer through the drought but had 

to feed them through much of the summer as well as the winter.  

it's been a real losing proposition.  

the biggest problem aside from paying for crappy high priced hay ...was just finding some for sale.

we managed to hold on through it all but now it's almost time to start buying hay for 

next winter again.  we learned our lesson waiting til second cutting after the rain

stopped and farmers started hanging onto what they managed to cut.  

so ... here we are again, looking at having to go buy more hay.  alot of hay.  

we have neighbors on all sides with cattle and that always makes it harder too. 

if you don't keep a bull your cows want to go find one.  If someone else has a bull,

their bull wants in with your cows, and your own bull gets bored fast and wants to go

fight other bulls or find more cows.  

it got even more interesting lately when i walked past the corral the other day 

to find our great big bull nursing a cow who had just had a calf a day and a half before. 

yes really.  no wonder he was fat as a tick and our cows looking  poor.  

so, we've started selling off cows... starting with the bull.  

next week, we hope to haul off the rest.  

myguy... well he said much as he likes cows... he's ready to not hassle with it all.

i think he'd rather tinker with a  chevelle or camaro that eats less.  

more news:  we  had a massacre. 

remember lucy here?

she along with about half our flock were killed by a dog. 

i always turned our chickens  out during the day when i'm home- except for our grand daughters rooster.

at dusk they always went in and i'd close the coop door behind them.

but one evening i ran with myguy to help a friend. 

i walked out the backdoor to run and close the coop to find a dead chicken by the back porch.

then another and another and another...

i could hardly believe my eyes.  

i had stapled a screen  over a doggy door that was in the middle of our coop and 

separated three hens with babies and old spur the rooster from the flock.

the dog clawed through it to get in the back but those chickens hid

behind the feed barrels and the dog couldn't reach them. 

everything else was either dead, or  up in trees, or missing.

we found 14 dead chickens, two chicks and several others we just never found.

next day a neighbor stopped in and asked if we were missing a chicken. 

she found the husky in her garage with a dead rooster and said it had blood all over it.  

she said the dog wasn't hers but it had been hanging around.  

another neighbor stopped by and told me her husband shot the dog.  

no one claimed it... 

still can't believe we lost so many of our sweet chickens.  

one silky i found way down at the edge of our woods.  

another quail antwerp belgian in a tree in the woods.  

i was so happy to see them and was sooo glad our grandgirls rooster 

was safe in a separate pen.

everyone has pretty well quieted back down now.  

back to laying too.

  

it's almost time to get plant the garden.

i bet many of you are dreaming and scheming as well? 

it's so exciting to plant isn't it?  

i've not tilled my garden at all yet!  the grass and weeds are growing!!

i always loved the look of things laying newspaper or cardboard down and mulching it 

so i'm contemplating laying heavy black plastic and mulch between the beds and rows.  

i'm so thankful we have a few old hay bales up in the loft that have not been sprayed

with herbicide.  learned my lesson the hard way with that one year!

speaking of hay, i guess i oughta sign off and hit it.  

my last photo of the evening is one i took earlier today saying goodbye to my sweet roo.  

i'm pretty sure OLD SPUR, will be gone when i go to the coop tomorrow.

i took this pic to save in my journal of my favorite roo i've ever had.  

he was the free chicklet i got one year when ordering from the hatchery.  

i kinda wondered if he got bit by that dog but i don't see a visible injury.  he is the rooster

that fled behind the feed barrels with the three hens and chicklets.  

he was getting old ... but was  fine up til all this. 

amazing how attached we get to our furbabies and feathered friends.  

thanks for stopping by the shed 

and spending your precious time with me.  

until we meet again,