That's Pretty Cool!

How about a summer weather post? It seems that this has been an unusual summer, so I decided to record a few of my thoughts. So far we have had a fairly mild summer with a lot of rain. We saw our thermometers reach 90 only a few times in all of June and the first half of July, although we have had some very humid days to go along with all the storms. The heavy rains have been the most notable weather events this summer. I wish I had kept track of all the days in which we have had a down-pour! According to the National Weather Service, our area had 6.45 inches of rain in June compared to a 4.26 inch June average for rain. They say we are already at the July average of 4.28 inches of rain and we are just half way through the month!

The good news about all the rain is the fact that we have not had to water our garden. The bad news is the fact that the garden has gotten pounded very hard during several hard rains, winds, and even hail one day when a small tornado touched down not too far away from us! It was 92 degrees today and the weather man thinks this will be a very hot and humid week with temps in the 90s everyday, and the "heat index" into the 100s. The chances for rain are low until the end of the week.

Every summer I hold off getting the air conditioners out for as long as possible. We figure if the house is too cool, no one will want to be outside working and playing and enjoying the summer. We are blessed with a lot of shade around our house, and the hills keep the sun from shining directly on us for very long, so we tend to stay fairly comfortable. Only one night have I been uncomfortable sleeping, and that was a few weeks ago at the end of June. The day time teperature had been 90 degrees beginning in the early morning, followed by a 20 minute hard rain shower in the afternoon which brought in some oppressive humidity when the sun blared the temperature back up to 90! That night we slept with no covers but I awoke sweating around 1:30 in the morning. When I looked at the thermometer outside it was showing 80 degrees! I don't even know what the temperature was in the house, but that night it wouldn't have even helped much to sleep outside. That was the first time I thought we should get out the old faithful window air conditioner. But the next day was not too hot and I actually didn't think about it again. Until today....

Today was actually not very uncomfortable, but I was in town and heard folks talking about the terrible heat and how bad it was going to get this week. If I had not run several errands today, I would not have realized the dire danger we were facing! It began this morning. We watched Matthew, Christina, and Simon do a martial arts demonstration at a local day care and the workers there mentioned how hot it was going to get. At Walmart I overheard a couple men talking about the heat. After Walmart I stopped to pick up some cattle feed and the fellow at the feed store told me that things were going to get unbearable because of the heat. Next stop was for the Impala panel that was damaged last month when we hit a deer and the guy at the junk yard asked us if it was hot enough for us. We also needed some things from Auto Zone and one of the workers there had a good attitude about the heat. He said it was going to be hot, but that he would rather have the sunny days instead of the rain no matter how hot it got!

Well, all this talk about heat led me to look up the weather forecast and I found out there was a heat advisory on for our area. It also said this: "PRECAUTIONS ARE URGED FOR THOSE ENGAGED IN OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES THIS WEEK... PARTICULARLY DURING THE HOTTEST PARTS OF THE DAY. DRINK PLENTY OF FLUIDS... STAY OUT OF THE SUN AND... IF POSSIBLE... STAY IN AN AIR- CONDITIONED ROOM." Well, I guess they talked me into it, because after carrying a couple of 100 pound bags of feed to the barn and feeding the bulls and Gracie, I got the window air conditioners out of storage, and brought them home. I brought two for upstairs, one for the boys room and one for the girls room. These were newer ones I bought last year to use in the Lawrence county house. I also brought home the old faithful Fedders unit for our living room.  That air conditioner is beginning to take on the aura of a legend!

Now for my air conditioner commercial. I bought this Fedders window air conditioner back in 1989 in Richmond Kentucky at a Rose's store that has since gone out of business. That summer we purchased and moved into a very hot 12x67 mobile home. I guess we used this Fedders air conditioner pretty heavily for 3 summers in that trailer, and it did a great job. We took it with us when we moved to Eastern Kentucky, even though we had central air in the mobile home we rented during '92.  But I'm pretty sure we have used it sometime during every summer since 1993 when we moved here to Pure Water Hollow! It is still doing a great job cooling right now as well, even though it is 24 years old! Maybe I'm strange, but well made products from previous decades still make me smile and reminisce about the "good old days" when American manufacturers and workers still took pride in things they produced!

It will be nice being able to have a cooler house on the very hot days, but we will be sure to not let the air-conditioners spoil us.  There is still too much work to do and fun to have outside!

Let's Go to the Movies!

I decided that the Pure Water Hollow crew needed a little break from all the mowing, gardening, fencing and farm chores, so last night we enjoyed a rare "night on the town"!  We ventured over to a town we seldom visit in a neighboring county.  We ate at a quaint diner/dairy bar and then found the movie theater located in the community center.

This is the Roy F. Collier Community Center in Inez which houses, among many other things, a movie theater!  It is a nicer and cleaner movie theater than the one in Paintsville.  The place we ate was across the street, so even though it took too long for them to bring our food out we were just minutes away from the movie.

I had originally planned on taking the family all the way over to the Mountain View Drive-In movie theater in Stanton to watch the new movie, "Monsters University", but there was a threat of thunder storms.  I doubt a drive-in movie would be very much fun in the rain!  Two years ago we went to that drive-in and watched the Pixar movie "Cars2".  We took our one-ton with the large 12 foot flat bed so there was room for the whole family.  We set up our chairs and cushions on the truck, ate pizza, and enjoyed the movie.  That was a lot of fun, and I was hoping to do it again this summer.  But, the possibility of rain took my thoughts in a different direction.

Thinking about "Monsters University", I realized that it was being shown in both the 2D or 3D formats.  This may sound odd to those of you who go to the movies all the time, but my family had never seen a movie in the now popular 3D format.  Instead of going to the drive-in, this would be our first movie experience in 3D!

Actually, Christina and Simon had seen Toy Story 3 in 3D when they stayed with Grandma up in Cincinnati during the summer of 2010, but Monsters University would be the first 3D movie that we would see together as a family.

I was pleased with the 3D and everyone had a great time!  I still have many of my old viewmaster reels that we get out and look at every now and then and this movie made me feel like I was watching a viewmaster reel with movement!  How fun! 

Actually I was surprised how quickly I got used to the 3D effects.  I realized this when I noticed that I was no longer being amazed, even though the picture was still in very life-like 3D.  If the 3D trend fizzles out, this would probably be the reason, coupled with the higher cost.  (I can't believe I actually paid $9 for each ticket.  $54 for my family just to see a movie, not counting any refreshments, is rather steep!  But my wonderful family deserves a treat every once in a while, and I thank God for blessing me with the means to make it possible!)

I wanted to get a picture of us in the movie theater with our glasses on. Christina really enjoyed the movie, even though she did not think it was "cool" to have her picture taken in the theater with the glasses on!  I'm glad she still puts up with me! 

The 3D glasses sure have come a long way since I was a teenager!  For the one or two movies in 3D that I saw in the 80s we had white cardboard glasses with one red lens and the other blue, if I remember correctly.  Talk about a "not cool" fashion statement!

In the same building as the movie theater, there was a McDonald's play place, which was pretty neat.  No restaurant, just the play area!  After the movie, Timothy had to try it out some.

  That's Timothy up there in the tube and also flying an airplane.

This is a picture of the seating area next to the play place.  Lisa and Simon are looking up at Timothy.

And here is Timothy at the bottom of one of the tube slides.  He had a great time playing here and I think he may have enjoyed this more than seeing the movie!  (Wouldn't you know he would have more fun with something free than something that cost money?)


But enough of play time!  Let's get back to some more work around the homestead!

Our Cows

I've not shown the cows in a while so I thought I would snap a few pics when they visited us down here at the house a couple days ago.  It was a beautiful sunny day!

 Rosebud is over 3 months old now, and doing great!  She has certainly grown!

There have not been any changes in Violet or Dandelion.  If Violet was really bred when we got her, she should be calving any time now.  I'm starting to have my doubts.

Here's all three of them together.  You can tell that Violet is a much bigger cow than Dandelion, but I don't think she looks pregnant.  Apparently it is pretty normal to be able to see the rib cages in Jersey cows, even when they are healthy. 

They decided to line up to show their different sizes: small, medium and large!

We've been working on  fencing a large portion of our hillside for them this summer.  It's been a long-going project but we get a little more complete everyday!  Other than that and waiting for Violet to calve, there is not much to report on the cows, so this is a rather brief post.

Chick Update

A mixture of fun and frustrating is how I could sum up the chick raising process for us this summer.  I decided I would give an update now that we are probably at the mid-point.

Yesterday I took some pictures of our latest chicks to hatch.  This White Rock hen hatched 14 chicks on June 21st, so they were 5 days old yesterday afternoon in these pictures, and doing great.  It was fun to see so many chicks hatch! 

13 chicks were dark and 1 was white.  I use the past tense terms because tragedy struck her brood last night.  Lisa saw a hawk attack at dusk while she was in the garden, but the mama and chicks went into their box so we couldn't see how many of the 14 made it.  I don't know how many chicks a hawk could take at one time.  Maybe something else besides that one attack had happened also?  But this morning there are only 7 chicks with this mama, 6 dark and that 1 white one.  There was another dark chick left in the nest dead with an apparent broken neck.  How did that happen?  It is very frustrating to go from 14 to 7 in one evening.

Meanwhile, Buffy still has kept all 12 of her brood, not loosing a single one (yet).  All 12 are dark, but are showing some pretty markings.  They hatched June 12th so they are 14 days old in these pictures.  They have been very fun to watch.

The first chicks to hatch this year are now 25 days old and so much bigger!  Of the 11 original chicks, this White Rock hen is down to just 5; 3 dark and 2 white.  You can see in the above pictures what a pretty pattern two of the dark ones now have.  I think they are both cockerals.  The other dark one is staying pretty much black.  I wrote about the 5 that got taken by the coon and then the very next day, Matthew saw a hawk flying off with another of the chicks!  It was frustrating that while we had the coon captured in the cage, we see a hawk swoop right down above the coon and take another chick!

On another frustrating note yesterday.  One of the White Rock hens that had been setting on a nest since June 16th walked off the job yesterday.  I had been noticing that she seemed to be neglecting her nest more and more the past few days, but now she seems to be done with it altogether.  So those 15 eggs are now no good to eat or to hatch.  (At least they will still be a benefit for the pigs!)

We also found the black hen that I knew had a clutch of eggs somewhere in the wild.  For the past three weeks or so I would see her for a few minutes as she got food and water, but she would always disappear before I could see where she goes.  And then yesterday afternoon, Simon heard chicken sounds under our house right next to the back porch!  We were able to peak under the house and saw the hen, some eggs, and at least one, wet chick!  How fun!

But... it seems that our mama cat was also interested in the strange sounds coming from under the house.  After dark, we heard some wild chick peeping sounds like something was getting them!  We didn't exactly see Fritsie or the kittens with any chicks when we looked all around, but the kitten Puff was not very hungry for the can food when we decided to give it to them.  Not fun!  I hope we gave them enough food that they were full all night and left the mama hen and nest alone!  The nest is in a location that would be very difficult for us to get at and move, and since the eggs were just hatching we thought it would be a bad idea to move them anyway.  At first I thought she was a smart hen for picking that place because it is too tight an area for the dogs to get in, and I know that Luna eats eggs if she can find them!   I guess later today we will be able to see if any of those chicks survived their first day of life, or if our cats continued to feast!  If they can get hatched and established, I think the mama hen will be able to keep the cats away like the other mama hens do.

In addition to the hen under the house, we still have 3 other hens setting on nests as of this morning.  A black hen is setting on 10 eggs in a nest we made in an old hamper and they should hatch this Saturday, the 29th.  A White Rock hen has 7 eggs in the dog house that should hatch the following weekend, and another White Rock hen has a clutch of 14 eggs in a cage set to hatch on July 12th.  I'm sure they will each give us a mixture of fun and frustrating experiences during the upcoming weeks, but I hope they will be mostly fun!

If you are keeping up with our chick count, we now have 24 living chicks between the 3 mama hens as of this writing.  Maybe there are more with the hen under the house.  I'm sure we will have some additional frustrating losses as the summer moves on, but hopefully we will also get to enjoy some more fun hatches as well. 

You know, after thinking about it, those words "fun" and "frustrating" are two words that pretty much describe every aspect of our entire homesteading adventure!  Life sure is complicated, isn't it?

The Way of Holiness

Our church service this morning was opened by our assistant pastor with Isaiah 35:3-10.  After many songs , prayers, and testimonies I was asked to take the pulpit.  I was blessed to speak on how "the way of holiness" begins right here and now for the Christian, jumping off from the Isaiah verses and using Ephesians chapter 4 verses 23 through chapter 5 verse 7 as my text.  Instead of typing out a sermon or any lengthy comments, I feel like just recording the Holy Scripture for this post, and allowing the verses to speak for themselves.  These are both awesome passages!

Isaiah 35:3-10

3 Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees.

4 Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompence; he will come and save you.

5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.

6 Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.

7 And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes.

8 And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein.

9 No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there:

10 And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Ephesians 4:23-5:7

23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;

24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.

25 Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another.

26 Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:

27 Neither give place to the devil.

28 Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.

29 Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.

30 And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.

31 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:

32 And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.

5:1 Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children;

2 And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.

3 But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints;

4 Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks.

5 For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

6 Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.

7 Be not ye therefore partakers with them.


Thank you, Lord, for your Word and for our Saviour Jesus Christ, who makes the way of true holiness possible!  He is, after all, The Way!

The Culprit Is In Custody!

 It did not take long to catch this masked bandit!  It was a case of the criminal returning to the scene of the crime, but this time he walked right into a trap!

Check out those hands! 

Those hands are perfectly designed to be able to reach under nest boxes and snatch chicks from unsuspecting mama hens!

The mama hen that got robbed the night before was not going to be an unsuspecting victim this time! Perhaps the attack affected her more than I thought, or perhaps it was just her God-given instinct, but she refused to go back into her box/cage last night, even though I fortified it with bricks along the outside.  She actually hopped into the coop once with some of her chicks following her, but since a couple did not figure out how to get into the coop she settled on roosting outside on top of one of the other nest box cages.  She would have been a sitting duck had she stayed there.  I waited until complete darkness to move her into the safety of the coop.  I grabbed the mama and Matthew, Simon, and Timothy scooped up the chicks.  They seemed content to be in a nest in the coop, and I hope they will go into the coop by themselves tonight.

The other chickens were not bothering them at all this morning, but I decided to let them out of the lot anyway.  Here are the 6 surviving chicks, now 19 days old. 

I think that the markings that are coming out on the dark chicks will make them very pretty chickens, if they survive.

 

I finally took some pictures of the clutch that Buffy is raising.  I never could get all 12 in the picture at the same time, but they are all dark with some light markings.

They are one week old today, and doing great!  I am pleased that this mama has not lost any of the ones she hatched during this critical first week, and I hope we will be able to keep them safe in the future.

And since I had the camera out this morning for the coon, I thought I would snap a few pictures of some of the other chickens.

 Our Buff Orpington/Jersey Giant rooster always has something to crow about!

I like my Barred Rock hens because they remind me of one of our early flocks sired by Big Daddy Dommer.

We don't like chickens roosting on our benches, but it makes for an interesting picture anyway.  This is one of the White Rocks that is not yet setting.  Of the 9 White Rock hens we have, 1 already hatched a brood and 3 more are currently setting on nests.

And this is one of the Jersey Giant mixed hens that came from the Joe Castle homestead.

Now, I have to decide what to do with the coon.  Should we just shoot him and be done with it, relocate him far away and release him, or kill him and go to the trouble to try to make a coon-skin hat?  I haven't been able to see this one's tail, yet.  If we go for the hat, I would want a nice tail.  We've never tanned a hide before, but we've been saving our deer skins with the thought of learning how.  I'm sure it would be easier to start with a smaller skin like a coon, and I've seen patterns for making the hat on the internet.  If only we didn't have so many other things that need to get done around here, and if only I wasn't bent so much toward laziness, I think I would go for the hat experience!  But as it is, we will probably take one of the easier ways out.  We'll see....

We Lost 5 Chicks Overnight

Argh!  I'm so mad! 

I've always tried to share on this blog both the good and the bad of our life here at Pure Water Hollow Homestead, even though I naturally tend to lean more toward the positive aspects.  But more often, things do not go as perfectly as planned around here.  I'm sure this is due to the fact that we are not perfect.  We just go day by day and try to do the best we can with the limited skills and knowledge we possess, making plenty of mistakes.

Yesterday evening I moved the nest box/cage where our first hen hatched out those 11 chicks.  She is still using it as the place to take her chicks in for night, and then she waits patiently for me to open it up each morning to allow her to free range with her chicks.  I guess I had not cleaned out enough of the hatching mess from 17 days ago, because I noticed that it was starting to smell pretty bad.  I decided that it would be wise to move it over a couple of feet into some fresh ground and make up a nice, clean, new nest of hay for them.  The mama seemed to be happy with the new arrangement and took all 11 of her chicks into the newly remodeled, clean nest.  I closed them up, like usual, to keep them "safe".

This morning I opened it up just like all the other mornings to let the mama and the chicks out.  To my horror, there were only 6 chicks instead of 11!  I saw all 11 go in last night, but only 6 are there this morning!  After examining the box closer I saw the problem.  These box/cages I am using for most the setting hens are old boxes that we built in 2006 and the wood is getting rotten around the bottoms in places.  They are really over-due to be replaced, but it never seems like we have the time around here to get so many other things done that I deem more important.  So, I've been making do with what we've got.  I place bricks, cement blocks, or logs around the bases of the cages in places that seem weak.  This particular cage was pretty firm and well settled into the ground before I moved it yesterday evening.  But after moving it, I guess the bottom of the box was up a bit off the ground in places.  I didn't notice a problem last night, and it doesn't look like there is more than an inch gap anywhere, but I guess it was enough, along with the weakening, thin plywood back, to invite calamity.  I believe something like a raccoon was able to reach under that back wall and pull the chicks out from under the mama, one at a time, and have a feast.  (I have a very disturbing mental image that I can't seem to shake.)  The only evidence that was left was two single, small orange legs that were lying outside the box, right next to the back wall, un-attached to any meat.

Of course the mama hen does not seem bothered by the tragedy at all, and she was going on with her morning routine like she only had 6 chicks from the start.  I guess that is one of the ways God made us humans to be different from the beasts of the field and fowl of the air. 

But it still infuriates me that this mama hen could have done her job so well, and keep her 11 chicks alive and healthy for 17 days, safe from the hawks and crows and foxes and dogs and cats and whatever else likes to eat baby chicks, only to be let down by her trust in me, that I could provide a safe place for her family to sleep.  And it worries me that this creature of the night will return, and I don't know if any of my box/cages will be able to keep a determined coon from getting a meal.  Buffy is in a similar old box at night.  Her chicks are now 6 days old and she, too, has been able to keep all 12 chicks safe so far.  (I still need to take a picture of them.)  And I have the white hen in another old box/cage that is due to hatch a clutch out in about 4 more days, and a black hen on a nest that should hatch the end of June.  (We're using an old hamper for the black hen since all the box/cages are taken.)  Coons and other critters like to eat eggs, too, if they get the chance.  I don't know if I can really keep any of the chicks, mamas, or eggs safe enough if the dogs fail in their nightly patrols.  (It was raining last night, so I don't think the dogs were paying as good of attention as they often do.)

By the way, we just pulled two more setting hens from the coop into private nests last night.  Since I don't have any more of those old box/cages, I made up the nests in old, cracked 5 gallon buckets.  We put one bucket with the hen and 15 new eggs in a small cage.  The other hen had been setting longer, so we put 7 partially incubated eggs that she had been setting on in the bucket and put the newly conformed bucket-nest into a little-used dog house.  The dog house is in no way secure from predators, but I hope it will be safe being closer to the house where the dogs most often stay.  We'll see, I guess.

I am pleased that we are having so many hens go broody this year.  We don't want chickens that have had the mothering instinct bred out of them, even if they do lay more eggs.  I want to be able to continually raise our own flocks through the years, without having to depend on ordering chicks through the hatcheries.  And since we tend to go through periods with high chicken mortality rates around here, I don't think we can hatch too many chicks.  Plus the more chickens that survive to maturity, the more meat that will be available for the family.

But for there to be future meat and eggs, I must keep the chickens protected!  That is always a challenge in this sin-cursed world that we live in, (along with the thorns and thistles).  I'm sure that God allows chickens to hatch so many offspring at one time because many of them would not survive in the wild, but my chickens are not in the wild!  I do not want to lose any of them!  Even though some losses seem inevitable, I know that I can do things better in our chicken raising operation.  Today is a rainy day, but I still plan to locate and set up our old live traps around the nest boxes, as well as see what I can do to make the box/cages more secure.

Sitting here on this gloomy morning, thinking about smelly nest boxes and dismembered legs from precious little chicks whose lives were snuffed out in the night, reminds me that homestead life is not always the picturesque scene of beauty and tranquility that is often portrayed.

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!