Cooling Off River Style

We've already had some days here in the 90s and the last week of May ended with a string of days in the upper 80s.  On these hot summer days, we are usually very thankful to have a cool respite across the road in front of our homestead.  This year, Simon has especially been looking forward to making time for some refreshing moments in the river.  He went wading by himself last week, but has more fun when he can round up some companions to go with him.  So far, Timothy has been the only taker.  Matthew and Christina have not yet felt the need to "go swimming".

Here are some scenes from a couple of days ago.  The river was up a bit, so there wasn't as much shoreline as there is sometimes.  But there was plenty of room for some old fashioned fun!

Notice that Gusta is ready for a rescue if need be.  She seemed to be concerned that the children were in the river!

Simon had fun feeling the current rush against him.

Timothy was not as quick to get wet as Simon was,
and stayed close to shore at first.

Augusta decided that Splash wars can be great entertainment! 

(But I still think she was ready to save them.)

Let's try some swimming lessons out in the current!

Hello, Gusta.  I can get out by myself, thank you!

I almost drowned and I got sand in my shoe!

Should I throw this rock?

Am I in trouble?

I'll save you, Simon!

With the swimming fun done and everyone sufficiently cooled off, it was time to climb back up the slippery river bank.  I'm sure there will be plenty more lazy, hot days this summer, and the river will be waiting for the children's next visit!

Augusta had no trouble getting up the bank, of course, so she waited up top

to see if she needed to help Timothy.

It was a steep climb, but Timothy had almost as easy time as Gusta!

Two happy (and cooled off) brothers, above the river.

What a grand picture of summer!

The Return of Kittens: 2013

The last time kittens were born at Pure Water Hollow was the summer of 2007, 6 years ago.  Sandy is the only cat left from that batch.

This is what Sandy looks like now.  He's a very pretty cat, but we had him fixed long ago so he would stay around and not mate with the other cats we had at the time.  After a dog attack last year, he was the only cat we had left at all!

Then last July we adopted Tigger through Dumas Rescue and in August we got Charlie and Fritsie along with our German Shepard/Great Pyrenees mixed dog, Augusta.  Tigger, Charlie, and Fritsie were still in the "kitten" stage when we got them, but they were older kittens.  We chose not to get them fixed so we could have the kitten experience once again.  We figured it would be good for Timothy to see brand new kittens emerge and the rest of the children also were excited at the thought of new kittens.  So we decided to just let nature take it's course. 

Both Tigger and Charlie are orange cats.  I used this picture of Tigger on the blog not long ago and  Charlie looks pretty much just like him, so we're not sure exactly which one is actually the daddy cat.  It was exciting to see Fritsie get large with kittens in her belly; and then one day noticing she was skinny!  A couple weeks later the children found a bunch of small kittens in a box in the shed.  We tried to take pictures, but it was always too dark in the box and we decided not to take them out before Fritsie was ready.

Before too long, we began to see inquisitive little faces peering out the building!  These first pictures were taken May 18th.

This little orange kitten was the first one to really come out and explore and run around.  He was amazingly friendly right from the start!  Timothy named him Puff because he looked like Sally, Dick, and Jane's kitten which was named Puff in a book Timothy likes.

 Soon, the others began venturing out into the open.

Timothy loves them all! 

 Augusta also seems to be very fond of them, and the kittens have shown no fear of the dog at all.

There have been many cute scenes of the little kittens.  I've only photographed a small sampling.

 

After another week or so, Fritsie moved her litter to our front porch.  In this picture you can see all six of them, along with their mama making sure her kittens get all the can food they want.  It has been neat watching her wait for her kittens to eat before she eats any of it.  She has been a really great mama!

 They sure are small, cute, and playful!

Timothy has been having great fun with them!  The above pictures were taken June 4th, after he had been splashing around in the river earlier that afternoon.

I'm sure I'll come back here some time and show more pictures of the kittens.  The children have names for all of them, I think, but I'm not sure what they all are yet.  We have decided that we are going to keep all of them, and probably move them to our place at Pure Water Pastures when they get bigger.  We have had mice in the barn, shop, and house and there are no cats around.  I think they would enjoy a home there, as long as they can keep from getting hit on the road.  That would be sad, but we will have to brace ourselves for the possibility of one getting hit since the the barn and field is on one side of the road and the house on the other. 

But that move is still pretty far into the future.  For right now we will be enjoying watching them romp and play and grow on our front porch!

Thank you, Lord, for the blessing of these kittens!

6-1-13 Chicken Hatch

The first (of many, I hope) hatching of the season happened a couple of days ago.  Actually, some of them hatched on May 31st because we could hear the cheeping.  Most appeared June 1st, and the last one, on June 2nd.  That last one allowed Timothy to witness the hatch, which was pretty neat!  The mama had left the nest with her 10 chicks to soak up some sun yesterday when there were still 3 eggs in the nest.  Two of the three eggs were not viable, but one of them was moving and soon pipped!  We checked on it off and on for the next few hours, and more slimy black feathers could be seen each time.  Timothy was especially interested in it, and watched it until it was completely out of the shell.  It was another black chick!  It was still wet and not moving very much when nightfall came and the mama resumed her position on the nest.  Today, I let the mama out of her lot altogether and she had 11 perfect looking "bitties" following her!

 

 There are 8 dark chicks and 3 white ones.

The mama hen is one of the white rocks that came to our post office July, 13th of 2012, so she is just under one year old.  She seems to have excellent mothering instincts and has been a great protector so far, keeping the other chickens away from them.  She has even flogged Augusta when she got too close, and also chased Tigger away with much vigor!

The rooster that fertilized the eggs is a Buff Orpington/ Black Giant cross that we hatched out early last year.  The rooster is more buff colored than black, so I don't know if the dark chicks are getting their color from him, or from some of our black giant hens.  I'm not keeping track of which hens lay which eggs this year, so when this white rock hen went broody, I just selected the biggest, nicest looking eggs to set under her.  We have four hens that we hatched late last summer from eggs we had gotten from a friend.  They were from mixed chickens, but he said that his hens were mostly Black Giant hens and his rooster is a Black Giant rooster.  So, I'm thinking that perhaps I chose eggs laid by the black hens, because their eggs are likely the largest.

The last chickens we butchered, Lisa skinned them instead of plucking the feathers.  It seemed to work very well, and since most of us are not big fans of the skin when we eat chicken, we're thinking that this skinning method may be the way to go from now on.  I was going to try to stay away from raising black chickens because it was harder to get them clean looking when plucking the feathers, but if we stay with the skinning method, that objection is negated!  I like large chickens and I like large eggs, so if they be black chickens, then so be it!

You may notice that some of the dark chicks have white coloring on their faces, wings, and bottoms so they may lighten up some as they mature.  It will be fun seeing them change and watching them grow!

And it seems that the mama will keep a watchful eye on their growth, as well!

On a related note, our oldest buff hen (we sometimes call her Buffy) has now been setting for a week and a half.  I selected the largest, best looking eggs to set under her, as well, and they are due to hatch on June 12th.  It will be interesting to see what those chicks look like!

Thank you, Lord, for our new baby chicks....