First Comes the Chicken...

Then come the...

Look at these little golden eggs.  (at least they are golden to us)

We are now getting close to a dozen eggs everyday.  YAHOO!!!  We are beyond excited!

If you lived closer, we would share our bounty with you.  Really, we would.

Now, as excited as I am about the springtime weather today, I think our chickens were even more excited.   They have literally had snow frozen to their feathers a few times this winter, so this sunshine was great for them.  They scratched in the dirt and leaves all day.  THEY WERE HAPPY CHICKENS!

I Am the Cake...Happy Valentine's Day

I am the cake that maxe (makes) Faith happy.  Friends, Faith loves cake.  I have rated BIG!!

I am also the queen that she loves.  She is my princess.  She is A princess because she is a child of the King, the King of Kings!!

Bring on the Tulips.  I love Tulips!! 

Faith got me the red ones and  Beth got me the white. Donnie got me the orange ones that I will be able to put in the ground. 

Faith also surprised Donnie and I with breakfast in bed.  Toast with apple butter...my favorite!! 

Valentine's At Miss Mary's

For our family Valentine's gift, Donnie always takes us to the neatest restaurant.  We only go once a year and we always look so forward to some great country food served family style.

A lot of you have probably heard of Lynchburg, TN because of Jack Daniels, but the best part of this tiny little city to us is  Miss Mary Bobo's Boarding House Restaurant.  This place has some of the best southern, what I like to call country grub food, that I have ever eaten.  And, what's really neat about it is that you eat it at a big long table with people you don't even know.  You may or may not like that part, but it's really fun getting to know new people.  Today we ate with a couple from CA and a family from Mass. 

At the head of the table is a hostess who tells you all kinds of neat stories about the boarding house and people who have stayed there.  The Boarding House was orginally built in 1867 and continued to be used that way until the owner, Miss Mary, died in 1983.  She was 102.  Is that not so cool that she lived to be 102?  I love history and I love historical places. 

Just in case anybody wants to know what was served today, I will be happy to tell you.  We had fried chicken, meat loaf, corn, rice casserole, green beans, cornbread muffins with REAL butter, fried okra (Faith's favorite), apples (made with a little local flavor...it's all cooked out, but Donnie still want eat them), sweet tea, and a heart shaped fudge brownie with cherry topping and homemade whip cream.  OH MY!!  I ate til I could eat no more.  It was delicious.

These babies were my favorites!  There apples are to die for...

Here are two of my Valentines. 

Another one here waiting for our names to be called...

And my last Valentine talking to his daddy.

Our day was wonderful.  Our tummies are still full.  Our memories continue...

HAPPY VALENTINE'S TO EACH ONE OF YOU.  Remember that when you think about this holiday and all the "love stuff", that God loved you so much that He sent His one and only Son to die for you so that you could have everlasting life through Him.  That's real love.

The Grocery Challenge is Over...For Now

My January grocery challenge is over and I think I did pretty well.  No, I didn't do exactly as planned with only spending $75 for the whole month, along with eating from our pantry and freezer, but I didn't go over too terribly much.

Can I give my excuses?  Actually, no excuses,  I will just say that $75 was really hard to do for a family of five.  Beth's birthday fell in the middle of the month and we had company over, so part of my money did go for that.  Very well worth it.  I think I ended up spending more like $150 for the whole month, which I think is still pretty awesome considering what I usually spend.  Let me just say that we ate very creatively.  We really stretched our food.

This was so much fun for me.  I love challenges and this, my friend, was a challenge.  It really taught me a lot also.  I have not always been the wisest shopper at the grocery store.  I have bought a lot of stuff I didn't need to buy and didn't worry much about what was on sale or if we really really needed it.  That is going to change.

I went shopping yesterday and did very well with what I bought.  I will go again in a couple of weeks and do another semi-big trip and then I am going to do my challenge again in March.  This time I will be more realistic and probably say $200 for the whole month.  We are loading up our freezer with venison and beef that we just had processed so I will not be buying meat.  That helps a lot to keep my total down.

I am very excited to see how I can start saving money at the grocery store.  It makes me feel good to know that I am stretching the money that my hubby works so hard for.  I will be watching for sales and planning my meals accordingly.  I'm sure most of you already do that , I just haven't.

I have to tell you that my family was very ready for me to go shopping.  I did buy the necessities throughout the challenge month, but no extras.  Keith couldn't wait and poor little Faith was so excited to have orange juice back in the house.  I had apple juice so I wasn't buying orange juice until the month was over. 

One more thing,  I have learned over the past few months how much convenience foods cost, so a lot of those things have not been bought.  I am making my own granola for breakfast cereal, we make homemade pancakes and waffles, we bake our own bread and we have eggs.  I don't buy the boxed macaroni and cheese or other boxed meals anymore.  I just have decided that is something we can cut out.  It's a little more work, but that's okay.  I have time and I enjoy it.  Chips, also, are a huge cost, so we are cutting back on those.  I have found that pretzels are whole lot cheaper and better for us.

So, there you go.  I'm sure that was more info than you ever wanted to know, but I just really wanted to share it with you.  I am excited about this new leaf I am trying to turn over.  My husband is thrilled.

Wish me luck as I continue on my journey with this.

A Confused Chicken

Let me tell you first of all that this is the longest post I have ever done. I apologize up front for the length, but I couldn't leave anything out.  If you want to skip some, I don't blame you, but it was so fun to write about it...

Most of you know that we have chickens and have had them for almost a year now.  Can I just tell you that we are throughly enjoying them?  Yes, I know people think they are smelly and nasty or whatever adjectives you can think of, but we really like them.  We enjoy watching them do all of their chicken activities.  (well, mostly all of them)  They really are fun to watch.  Maybe that's because we lead a boring life, but I don't think so.

Since it is so cold outside, we are only getting a couple of eggs a day, but we are anticipating lots of farm fresh eggs come spring.  We can't wait for that.

Now to get to the confused chicken part.  Do you remember the hen we have that got bitten by a dog?  Her name is Oreo and she is crippled.  She survived the brutal attack and became one of our favorites.  Bless her heart, she walks around with a terrible limp, but she has persevered.

Ok, now I am going to get to my point with as little confusion as possible.  Ok...remember that Oreo is a hen.  And, we were told that she was an easter egg chicken, which meant she layed colored eggs.  So, when we began to get green eggs everyday, we were thrilled that Oreo was laying that golden (green) egg for us.  Excitement, people, I mean excitement.  Sweet little crippled Oreo was laying our green egg.  Can you say proud parents???

Fast forward a little...About a week ago, Beth walks in the house screaming that Oreo was crowing.  Did you hear me?  Oreo, our green egg laying hen, was crowing.  But hens are not supposed to crow, right?  Well,  this hen was crowing.  Or was she really a hen?  Oh my goodness...a hen or a rooster.  What was she/he?

At this point we start to think back about her lifestyle.  (hmm...know what I mean)  Was she/he the one being attacked or was she/he the attacker, because, frankly, that's what it looks like.  FULL BLOWN ATTACK!!  We couldn't really remember, but we think she/he usually was the one being chased by the roosters not doing the chasing.

Ok, now we are really confused.  An egg laying, cock a doodle dooing hen/rooster.  What to do...

We decided to separate Oreo and three other roosters from the other chickens just to see what happened.  We had to find the source of the green egg.  So if Oreo was separate from the others, maybe we could get some answers.  We waited and we watched and we listened.  Yes, Oreo continued to crow, loud rooster crows.  But, wait a minute...there is more.  (are you dying here or bored to death)

Yesterday, Donnie goes out to where Oreo and the other roosters are and guess what he finds.  Nope, not a green egg.  He found a brown egg.  WHAT'S UP WITH THAT?  But, there it was in all it's brown, not green, glory.  But the evidence of egg laying was there obviously.  Oreo had layed an egg.  No, she is not the green egg layer, but she does lay eggs and evidently she is a girl.  A hen, I'm telling you, a hen.  Do you know what that means?  MY EGG LAYING HEN...SHE CROWS!!!  I have a crowing hen.

For some of you who don't realize what that means...most hens DO NOT crow.  Usually only roosters crow.  Is that not crazy? 

I googled crowing hens and it said that hens do not crow except in very RARE instances when there is no rooster around or they are a dominant hen.  Neither case here. (at least we didn't think she would be a dominant hen)

So there you have it, we have a very confused hen.  She doesn't know whether she wants to be a boy or a girl, so she will be both.  People, there is something very wrong with that.  I mean wrong.  She has to be one or the other. 

Are you wondering about the green egg?  Who lays that egg?  We still don't know, but it is being investigated.  Our guess is that it is our lovely, lovable Murr, which, by the way, is my favorite chicken.

I know you are all wanting to see Oreo in all her confused glory, so here she is...

Isn't she a pretty thing?  See her standing on one leg.

I know you all want to know when we find out the source of the green egg, and I will happily tell you.  I will also let you know if we have any more strange chicken happenings on the Kinser Hobby Farm.