Family Happenings

Goodness. I can't think of a title. There's too many different things to find a word or word phrase that encompasses everything. I guess the best would be "Family Life."

The day after Alyssa's birthday, she started walking! And Pat & I both saw the first step. And now each day, she's taking more and more. Yesterday she took 6 steps in a row. She gets pleased as punch with herself when she does it.

Susanna has been positively accident-prone the past couple of days. She got shocked twice by the electric fence, fell on the driveway & cut her knee, scraped the back of her leg sitting in the tractor bucket and ran into the temporary fencing. It's just a cord of fence and we're not used to it being there yet. Susanna was running full-tilt and ran into it with her neck-and got a rope-burn like mark on it. After she ran into it, she fell backwards. The poor thing-she's never hurt herself so much before.

So, yesterday morning when we heard her screaming her head off-in a way we've never heard before, everyone who heard her went running. Hannah thought the rooster was going after her (he's never gone after anyone) and all sorts of horrors went thru my mind. It turns out that Abbie(our guide dog puppy in training) had a chick in her mouth.
Our broody hen sat on 11 eggs-only one of them hatched-a cute little black chick. Yesterday they were outside for the first time. The chick is fine. Abbie didn't bite down-she just held it in her mouth. She does the same thing with eggs-carries them around. So, we rescued the chick (and rescued Abbie from the chick's mother) and all is well. I tried to get a pic, but the chick's mother is quite aggressively protective of her one baby. LOL Not that I blame her. She is an excellent mother. She hatched out 9 chicks last time and took great care of them.

I got most of my garden planted, but I'm not done. Those blasted chickens thought my freshly planted & mulched garden looked like a table set just for them. They got in there & scratched all over and made a mess. They ruined my cucumber plants and some of the squash.
Well, I don't want to pen them up-I love seeing our chickens happy & free in the yard. So, my dh (he's such a good sport) took the snow fence & wrapped it around my garden w/ supports & used a bungee strap to close it. So, it appears to be too much work for the chickens to get to now.

Since only 1 chick hatched, we're thinking of borrowing an incubator from 4-H to hatch out some of our eggs ourselves instead of buying chicks. Although, Hannah really wants Auracanas. But they're not available right now anyway.
I want some more silver laced wyandottes-they are so pretty.

So, the temporary fence (that Susanna ran into) has made it possible for our steers to be on grass until the summer pasture is ready for them. They are very happy. One of them goes to the butcher in June-we're all out of beef. We have 2 calves due next month. Jonah & I were using the number of horses and number of cows we have to do ratio problems. We also did horses to chickens and dogs to cat. What was abstract became more understandable for him when we did that.

Yesterday, my dh invited a co-worker of his here w/ his daughter who loves horses and had not ridden since she was 3. She's now 16. Hannah is 13. They had fun. While we were eating dinner, Hannah's friend, Danielle showed up with a plate of chocolate covered strawberries for us. That was a very nice surprise!

I had sent a loaf of home-made bread to them in the morning and then they sent the strawberries. I just love having them for neighbors. Danielle is in Hannah's 4-H club and they have become such great friends. We really do have a few great neighbors-I really count that a blessing. Some of our neighbors even know our cows by name, which for some reason is hysterical to me. Last summer, our neighbor, Brian, called to say that Lindsey was loose in our driveway. After we got her in, I wondered, how does he know her name?? LOL