Our weekend in review....

This morning my Dad called and said our wild turkey hen was back again. She's been here off and on all weekend, it's kind of sad, she seems lonely and wants to hang out with our flock but is after all wild.

Here she is going down our driveway, she only made it halfway and decided to come back and visit the Toms. I just hope the three we have roaming loose don't take off with her. We seriously need to butcher some turkeys. We have 8 toms that need to be sold or butchered. We have a man who said he was interested in two of the toms but now seems to be dragging his feet, saying he doesn't have a pen built yet. He may end up with nothing or pay for two that are already butchered.

Cortney took some snaps of our flowers that are just beginning to bloom( all the flower photos are hers)

Our two surviving turkey poults, the Bronze poult died mid week, leaving us these two Narragansets. PTL they seem to be doing well and the mama is doing a great job.

This is the first White Plymouth Rock hen, with the three mutt chicks, see how much they've grown. It was cleaning and preening time this morning that is the only way they hold still long enough to get a good shot*wink*

This is the other White Plymouth Rock hen and she hatched out 6 chicks( two that appear to be Black Austrolope, three White rocks and one mutt) and we took the two remaining eggs and placed them under our oldest hen( who is broody, even though she isn't laying eggs, she's 8 yrs old) and if they hatch we'll give them to their original mama. Cortney doesn't think this is fair but our oldest hen is a proven mama and she's setting on eggs due to hatch on the 26th.

This is one of our White Plymouth Rock chicks bought as meat birds. Some of the hens will be replacement hens when we butcher our older hens for soup birds. If a chicken can find trouble they will, she was roosting on the wire cage inside the shed( the temporary quarters for the chicks) and must have somehow fallen down onto the floor below and couldn't get back up. Thankfully Cortney was getting out our push mower and heard her faint peeps and found her. We think she must have been down there for several days as she was very dehydrated and weak. So we brought her in and put her under a heat lamp, mixed up some cider vinegar, water and honey as an electrolyte for her, then mixed up yogurt, sunflower seeds, wheat berries and farina for her to eat. She is 200% better this morning but we'll keep her inside for another day until she regains her strength or begins to become a problem*wink*

Okay I wanted to show the amber Depression glassware we have, but it isn't a complete set. I've been looking at garage sales and antique shops for years trying to find the same pattern and color. Amber must have either been very popular and people are collecting it or it wasn't popular at all, because I've found multitudes of red, blue, green and even yellow but not much amber and never in the same pattern as ours. Well..... on Sat. Mike worked, so Cortney and I made a trip into the city for supplies and on the way home stopped at a garage sale and look what we found!.....

I didn't even know they made plates. The plates have a place to hols the small coffee/ punch cup( see the picture below) and it also came with a creamer, sugar cup and a platter to hold both.

The price on the box was $30 but it was almost 4:30pm, so before I could ask if they'd take less the lady said if you're interested( okay now I was trying to act calm and cool) she'd let us have them for $20 and only one of the coffee/ punch cups was chipped, everything else is in beautiful condition. I was so tickled to find these I told her,"sold"! Now looking back, I was a bit excited and maybe could have gotten them for less, but I'm still thrilled to have found them. They are just a bit darker than our original glassware but not noticeable enough when set on a table. :o)  Now to rearrange our china cabinet to make room for the new glassware and we'll have to have a potluck or something, so we can use them.

Yesterday we all had our own projects we worked on, Mike was cleaning and rearranging the garage and getting rid of stuff( junk), Cortney was caring for the calf( she was hired to bottle raise a calf by a neighbor rancher) and moving the lamb pen to a weedy area out by the wood shed, for the lambs to graze on and helping Mike and myself when we needed her.  I was working in the garden( weeding and watering in the hoop house), then mowing and weed whacking. I didn't get all the weed whacking finished( typically takes several hours) before we had to leave to pick up our Azure order at 6pm., so will finish it today.

The river is high, especially for this time of year and we are under a county wide flood watch. I dislike this time of year, when the snow melt raises the rivers and creeks. It's as high now as it ever was last year and we're only in the low to mid 70'sF. Praying it is a gradual warm up and the farmers really start drawing irrigation waters off to  help keep the levels down. At the lowest point along our bank edge, it's only approx. 2-1/2 to 3 ft. from coming over into the bottom of our pastures. If it would just flood that area, that would be fine, as it needs irrigating anyway, but it's the not knowing that worries me. If you live where there is water you chance flooding, if you live in a forest area, you chance fire, if you live where there are tornadoes you chance destruction, so it really is a gamble pretty much wherever you live.

Today is laundry day and we have to keep ahead of the bindweed*sigh* and we'll work on finishing up weed whacking and odds and ends jobs( putting away our Depression glassware*wink*)