My table and Chairs

Dining room table without leaves

Chair back and seat

Chair leg and table pedestal

I thought I had posted on my dining room table before but upon looking back over my posts I didn't see it so I will post again. I ended up having to special order my chairs. It took a really long time to find someone to order them for me. But I did, they were on back order and you know what? I lived through it all just fine. No weird crisis. So, I will order furniture in the future with absolutely no trepidation.
The story is that I bought a beautiful table but not the matching chairs as they were just "too much" for my farmhouse. The table needed to open to at least 90 inches and I found the perfect one and it was an awesome deal. Then after Christmas I began to look for chairs. I eventually found 2 that were perfect. Turns out they were from the same company. The problem came when I wanted to order 4 more to match. The company which has beautiful furniture will only sell through dealers, not to any individual customers. So I began my quest to track down a dealer. Not so easy in this difficult credit economy. Furniture has taken a huge hit with the recession and since there is a minimum order of 1500.00 for each dealer and no one can get or wants to run up too much credit in furniture that may not sell, I hit brick wall after brick wall. Finally I found a dealer who was not only a current customer of the company but only 40 minutes away. Woohoo!!
Chairs ordered successfully. Unfortunately 3 days later I got a call telling me they were on back order. However they arrived 2 weeks earlier than predicted and they are now safely in my dining room. It feels great. This is my first "grown up, brand new, high end" dining room set. We were always so busy raising kids and doing kid things that were not conducive to an expensive dining set. We did leave Grandpa in the old chair since he needs spill proof and the arms on his chair are better support for him.

I should be Running Errands

Instead I am hiding out in the extra room watching MonsterQuest. This episode is about monster sized spiders. I have avoided this episode up until now as I had enough stress in my life and didn't need to become educated on this subject. However, the lack of choices on the tube today, made me finally give in.
Today is normally trail riding day for Jeni and I, but we are riding tomorrow instead. The list of Grandma and granpa supplies is pretty long. I really do need to get moving, BUT.......I just need some down time. I am sure everyone reading this can relate. Just unorganized, wasted couch potato time.
There is a lot going on around here as usual, but I am finding that more and more of the projects on my neverending to do list seem to be checked off. As that happens it brings a quiet satisfaction.

That is great because we are entering the next difficult phase of advanced geriatric care. Grandpa is sleeping about 18 hours per day. That is fine and normal according to the Hospice people. Trouble is Grandma's dementia is getting worse and she can be just vicious. So we no longer seem to need to guard the doors or the papers as much from a wandering curious Grandpa. Now we need to guard the bedroom door to keep Grandma from waking him up and yelling at him for sleeping. Of course she has a different set of rules for herself. She is sleeping about 14 hours per day. So goes the day of our lives around here.

In all seriousness, Grandpa has Hospice, which to me is the Godsend as it is the training wheels I so desperately need for dealing with death from dementia/Alzheimers. Grandma is bleeding again and showing other signs that indicate the cancer getting more and more aggressive. The plan is to have the same caregivers we have for Grandpa work with Grandma since she isn't handling the disease proactively at all and will not accept Hospice willingly.
As always, Hospice has been awesome so far. However, I did a lot of interviewing and found a program that did deal extensively with dementia. It has been a good decision and we have no regrets so far.
Well, I think I have chatted enough. Until next time.

Rocky

Rocky eating with the girls

He is so beautiful!

This post is about Rocky. We got him 13 years ago. We don't know how old he was except that he was full grown already and he was "broke" to ride. We don't know if he was 2 or 6 or 10. However, his wither is looking very pronounced this summer. That would lead one to believe maybe he is a pretty mature horse. Ponies can live into their 40's so he has a long life ahead as easy as his life is. Our daughters grew up loving him and getting very comfortable with horses taking care of him and now he has several children who come to love and take care of him each week. He is loving it. He missed his girls (Merry and Jeni) who don't give him a lot of time any more. I love all my critters very much but he will always hold a very special place in my heart. I used to say: "If no one ever rides him, it's ok, he is just so beautiful to look at and watch."
Even with all the troubles in the world, and all the issues with Grandpa and Grandma, having all the nice times with the lesson kids and seeing the progress with the horses makes me very happy.
Our goal is to have horses that can work with any person with any level of experience or limitation. I think we will have achieved our goals by winter this year.

More Hen House Pictures

My adoptive mom and her new children!

Antonio Banderas, my youngest full grown rooster. He is destined for greatness.

Green Acres

Today has been quite a day in the chicken coop. For starters, I went out to open the coop and found a couple of babies out. Shoot! I forgot to put the brick in front of the door last night. Well as I did my head count I found my 2 black silkie youngsters missing. They never did show up. No bodies anywhere. They went to bed last night. So that means one thing. The little munchkins snuck out of the crack in the door too early this morning and something was still prowling. Now after all these years with chickens I know my preditors. Couldn't have been hawks. The trees give great cover. Coons, opossoms and skunks, weasels/minks leave very distinct calling cards usually involving body parts and/or go for the eggs first. So this is a carnivor of some sort. So out came the trap. I have set out pork cutlet. I'll be sure to report what I get. It is either a ferocious feral cat or a bobcat or fox is coming up close to the house which is a first. You see we have no cover in the field behind us. It is a corperate farm so those creatures usually stay further away since they don't like to cross that field. BUT we are seeing the critters closer and closer. I think it means there are greater numbers in the area.
Ok, first problem solved more or less.
Next problem. I have 2 hens that we think are at least 12. Guess what?! 12 year old hens get old hen diseases. Now I have a nutty hen who can't seem to stand any more. This started today. It's not a wound. It seems like a hip replacement issue and maybe convulsions. I don't know what to do. She is as fat as can be and laid an egg today. I put her in cage to protect her from the mob and roosters and I guess I'll deal with her tomorrow.
Problem 3. Then there are the 3 silly mothers currently in the nursery pen. I am dealing with Psycho Sadie, probably a daughter who is a first time mother, and a part Aracana hen (blue eggs) and they are known for not being good mothers. However, this one is determined to mother. It's the sitting on the eggs properly she can't seem to get right.
Ok, Sadie who is a problem every year, hatched 2 chicks. She had at least 6 more eggs. The hens generally sit for several more days while they wait on the rest of the eggs. Not Sadie. Her babies were born yesterday. This afternoon she already had her babies out of the nest and had abandoned her eggs. Her daughter, whose personality is similar to Sadie's, had one baby and had somehow managed to carry the wee one up and out of a box 2 feet deep. I am still trying to figure that one out. Her eggs were abandoned too. So I began to clean up the eggs. Imagine my surprise to find a brand new baby in Sadie's nest. The poor thing was frozen but still peeping. So I took all the eggs and the poor orphan into the house and put them under a light in a box. After doing some chores and thinking I decided to stick the orphan under the hen who can't figure out how to incubate her eggs properly. Bingo! She accepted the baby. Problem more or less solved.
I did my horse lesson and all my other chores and finally at about 9 pm I went back to see if my eggs had any cracking showing any potential new babies. Imagine my surprise to hear chirping in one of the eggs. That has never happened to us before. So I took the egg out to my adoptive mother and she immediately accepted the egg and began talking to it. Hopefully I'll go out to 2 beautiful babies tomorrow. Although you never know with chickens. Mother hens can be very cruel to eggs and babies. They seem to just know if a chick isn't healthy or a egg isn't right.
I have one last thing to report in the chicken coop. My female call duck (mini) finally laid an egg. She is very happy with her new mate and her permanant home in the nursery pen. That is great news.

More heaven!

Meal time for baby chicks

Peonies 2009. We only had one day to really enjoy them because we had a massive storm the next night.

Me on horseback finally!!!

Sweetie, our lapdog. She came to us as a 3 month old. She is bratty about some things like her feet, but you just couldn't ask for a better little all around horse. Her big problem is that she is such a pet. But we love her!

Pooped after a power ride

Ok, guys here is something I just know you can't live without. Me on horseback. Seriously, these pics have been so long coming. We have pics of everybody on the horses over the years but me.

Eggs!

What a weird thing to post about you say?! Well, stay with me. You will be glad you did. Our home has a proliferation of eggs at all times. Last year I froze the extras and we still have many of them so I haven't yet frozen this year. The egg basket ALWAYS has at least 3 dozen eggs in it. I use two recipes that use 4 eggs each at least twice a week. Bread and brownies. I give eggs away regularly. Just sell 'em you say. Well, it's not quite that easy when you breed for chicks.
The chemistry is as follows:
Chickens get busy (romantically),
Hen lays egg,
Many times many hens lay in the same box throughout the day, after x hours egg is no longer just an egg, it is an embryo.
Now, most people are just not interested in buying eggs in different stages of chick development for eating.
Also, mine free range (I let them loose to eat bugs etc) That makes the egg a bit stronger flavored. Some folks aren't too keen on that.
Lastly, if I am selling a lot, I run out of eggs for us and for breeding. But eggs for selling really are best if the roosters are removed. Then there is no chemistry issue.
Ok, back to the point. My family takes our eggs for granted and isn't always gracious about things. For example, there is a whining/groaning aspect about having to open the eggs into a separate cup rather than right into the pan etc. They hate it that they might need to wash the eggs. They want the convenience of white store bought eggs. Sometimes our sunny side up eggs are a little stronger than store bought so the whining commences over that too. Of course no one is whining over the yummy bread, brownies or boiled eggs on command.
But even I don't enjoy scrambled eggs that taste really yolky. Then this morning I got an epiphany. I grew up always adding a little milk to the scrambled egg mix. I never questioned why, we just did it. However, when Teflon pans came along the mix was too goopy so I ditched the practice.
This morning it dawned on me that maybe the milk was added to the eggs to sweeten the taste since both sides of my parent's families had farms/chickens as they grew up. I had always assumed it was to stretch the eggs since we were big families who had very healthy appetites. Well. viola! My scrambled eggs were wonderful! Mild and light yellow just like I love them!
Now on to the rest of the story-
Rakieta's mom walked several miles (3-5) to bring Rakieta eggs. R's family is very poor, BUT they keep chickens and in Burkina Faso, eggs are a HUGE luxury. Her mom brought her 16 eggs. She told me how she split them and who she shared them with. Folks, imagine a woman walking that far in the heat and traffic without real great storage to keep the eggs from cracking and giving them to her daughter who painstakingly took them by taxi to her school where she gave some to her best friends who lovingly saved them all day, took them home by whatever transportation they had, perhaps more walking, perhaps moped.
Each egg is worth something like .75 to $1.00 and they are just hard to come by. That is from not understanding utilizing better farming methods AND just plain lack of resources.
I think about my overabundance of eggs and the whining in my family about our eggs and the lack of conveniences they perceive. Then I think about the painstaking care R's mother's eggs received. Oh how lucky we are in this great country of ours!