The talented and adorable Betsy recently started this picture project she calls “Project FOAM“, and after some dithering on my part and a nudge from Nance, I finally got my butt in gear and joined in.
Each day, you take four pictures, one of Food, one of Outside, one an Abstract, and one of Myself (only, take a picture of YOURself, okay? I don’t have time to get gussied up in case you stalker types are planning to stop by and snap pictures of me looking like an idiot). Post them to Flickr, and add them to the FOAM group. Easy!
Come on, you know you wanna. Join us!
Here are mine so far:
FOAM 1: Food: Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup (they were on sale!)
Outside: Under the bird feeder (seeds fell on the ground and sprouted; that’s not grass)
Abstract: Some people call it “blurry”, I call it abstract! Heh.
Myself: Me and one of the Cookies. I spend far too much time with kittens perched on my shoulders.
FOAM 2: Food: Mmmmm, Bugles (I swear every food picture won’t be of packaged foods!)
Outside: The weather has been all sunny and blue skies this week.
Abstract: Hummingbird feeder that desperately needs to be taken down and cleaned and stored for the winter.
Myself: All gussied up (HA!) for Walmart.
Food: Shrimp (before cooking).
Outside: The thing growing between the garage and workshop. Someone told me what it was; I don’t remember.
Abstract: Cat bed.
Myself: Kitten on my shoulder, sniffing my eyeball.
We actually left the house after dark on Saturday AND I DO NOT KNOW HOW THE EARTH REMAINED ON ITS AXIS. We were very low on pig food, so we ran up to get a bag of it at Tractor Supply, and then we stopped at the movie store on the way home and rented The Proposal.
(Because we’ve been watching so little TV lately, I changed our Netflix plan down to the lowest level, where you get two movies per month. When we go back to watching more TV (whenever that might be), I’ll change it back again. ‘Til then, that generally means when we feel like watching TV and have already watched V (liked it), Modern Family (LOVE it), How I Met Your Mother, and Two and a Half Men, we’re shit out of luck because there’s nothing left on the DVR.)
We watched The Proposal, and although there was nothing unpredictable about the movie, I like Sandra Bullock a lot, and Ryan Reynolds is really fucking funny. How come no one ever told me how damn funny he is? When he’s standing in the office after Sandra Bullock told her boss that they’re getting married, the look on his face had us howling.
Fred is conflicted, and I have to say that I am, too. We have too goddamn many chickens, we really do. I mean, that doesn’t stop us from sticking eggs under hens when they go broody so we end up with MORE chickens, but still. We have too goddamn many chickens.
He processed 15 chickens a few weeks ago, and it didn’t even make a dent in the population.
Saturday morning, when he put the “Eggs: $2/ dozen” sign out, he also put the “Chickens for Sale” sign out. Eventually someone stopped and wanted to buy a chicken. Fred sold them one of our older roosters (they specifically wanted an older chicken), which they were planning to eat.
(And then we both felt sorry for the rooster. EVEN THOUGH he was on the list to be processed by us, soon! We’re dorks.)
Later that day, a man stopped by and asked how much our hens were. Fred told him, and he said that that was more than he’d wanted to spend. He said that he’d been hoping to get a “good price” on them, because then he’d buy a bunch of them and take them up to the flea market and sell them.
Fred immediately went and took the “Chickens for Sale” sign down. We have too many chickens, and this might sound strange, but we’d both rather kill and eat those chickens than to sell them to someone who’d keep them crammed in a cage and sell them to someone who might keep them penned up in a tiny yard.
Our chickens live the life of Riley. They have plenty of room to roam, they have dirt for dust bathing, food provided to them, friends to hang out with, and occasional treats tossed out to them. If they get sick, they’re treated for whatever their illness is. They’re safe and protected, and I think that in their own chicken way, they’re happy. We can’t stand the thought of them going from this life to a life where they’re not as happy.
See how we are? We immediately assume that no one else would treat the chickens as well as we do. Mighty impressed with ourselves, aren’t we?
So Sunday morning Fred got up and processed ten more chickens, older ones who’ll be perfect for cooking in the pressure cooker and canning, later this week.
He’s considering processing another ten on Wednesday, and then thinks that once that’s done he’ll do another ten in a couple of weeks.
Our freezer is going to be STUFFED. And of course, the problem is that one chicken will last us for at least two meals, if not more. With something like 50 chickens in the freezer and (in a month or so) an entire pig in there as well, we are going to be SET.
Once the chicken population is down to something manageable, we’re seriously considering turning the maternity yard into a yard for our Light Brahmas, who’ll be our meat chickens (they get very big, but they do it a lot slower than Cornish Cross chickens). The largest part of the chicken population will remain in the back 40 to provide eggs (and remain under the protection of George and Gracie), and then we’re talking about moving the little coop to the back yard, and keeping the Silkies, Crested Polish, and the crippled chickens (Charlie, and one of the Black Copper Marans who has some sort of foot deformity) back there. They’re so little that I’m afraid they’ll end up being harassed and ultimately hurt by the full-sized roosters.
Wow. I can go on and ON about chickens, can’t I? I bet that’s more than you ever wanted to know about the Crooked Acres chicken population!
One month down, one to go! It’s been a month since the Wonkas failed their Combo test (for the new readers, they all showed up as FIV positive). One more month, and they can be retested – and I’m certain they’re going to end up negative this time around.
I’m pretty sure you can actually see the ear floof growing longer.
“Something doesn’t feel quite right…”
A basket full o’ Violet = a basket full o’ LOVE.
We are in the process of weaning the Cookies off their bottles. Fred got up Sunday morning and gave them canned food on a couple of plates, and two bowls of watered-down formula (we’ve seen them all lapping out of a bowl in recent days). When I got up a few hours later, the plates were empty, and so were the bowls. I went ahead and tried bottle-feeding them, but except for Milano (Pink) and Hydrox, no one was interested.
At noontime, I gave them two more plates of canned food and two more saucers of formula. The food didn’t disappear as quickly (though I did give them more this time around), and there was still formula in the saucers a couple of hours later. Everyone seemed happy and not starving to death, except for Milano/ Pink. She seemed kind of sleepy and slow to move, but she was also sleeping when I walked into the room, and I think it takes her a little while to wake up. She came over and sat in my lap and asked to be petted, and then she played with her siblings for a while. When I got up to leave the room after half an hour, she ran over to the side of the bed (which is where I sit when I bottle feed them – they can get up onto the bed from the floor just yet, so I can feed one of them at a time without the others trying to steal the bottle away) and howled and howled.
I talked to Fred about it, and he said “Well, make a bottle and I’ll see if she’s interested.”
I did, and she was. So was Hydrox. And between those two and the minimal drinking the rest of them did, we emptied about a bottle and a half.
So the plan for now is to bottle feed them in the morning and again at bedtime, and supplement the bottle feedings with canned food (and formula in saucers) at both those times, and again in the middle of the day. Obviously, if anyone begins to lose weight or seems to need it, I can supplement with bottles in the middle of the day, but I’ve seen all of them eating either canned or crunchy cat food AND lapping formula out of the saucers, so there’s no reason they should go hungry.
Speaking of not going hungry – TimTam/ Blue feels so heavy these days, because she’s SUCH a good eater (she was the first to eat the canned food) and has such a big round belly that I said to Fred, “I swear to god, she’s gained a pound. I’m going to weigh her!” She’d gained an ounce and a half in the two days since I last weighed her. It’s funny that she felt heavy to me – god knows that if I were to pick her up in one hand and a Wonka in the other, she’d feel like she weighs nothing. I would dearly love to get a picture of a Cookie next to a Wonka next to Elwood next to one of our big cats (maybe Tommy), just for a size reference. There’s just no way I could pull THAT off, though!
All slap fights end with a lick. It’s the rules!
Is it just me, or does it look like someone just got a TALKIN’-TO?
It’s rough to be this cute.
Time to balance on my foot! Here we have TimTam/ Blue, making herself at home.
Maxi would like it known that she will put up with NONE of your tomfoolery, thank you.
Previously
2008: No entry.
2007: Stupid bossy car.
2006: “Damn pansy-ass city folk.”
2005: as a customer and a HUMAN, I outrank the computer, and I’d like a little RESPECT, thank you.
2004: All this cleaning is making me lightheaded.
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: Little things make me happy.
1999: Guest entry by Fred.