Easier to read version

Since I've gotten so many emails I'll type out the story that is on the newspaper thingy in my previous post. I hadn't realized that it was so difficult to read.

*On the front page of the "Thompson Times"*
Over the past several days the Thompson's Sandhills Holler has been under attack. The assailants swoop in without warning and have attacked several times daily. The victim count now stands at six, so far though there have been no fatalities. The victim's families remain hopeful for full recoveries.

When interviewed the youngest of the Thompson clan declared war on the culprits of these vicious attacks, and has vowed to stand guard at all times (or at least when Mom lets him). He is so dedicated to the task of protecting the victims that he was awake at 2:00 this morning calling out to the remaining members of the household to guard the victims vigilantly.

Miss Fred Thompson will only state that it is her unshakable opinion that the culprits should be shot and beheaded. She declares that their heads should be mounted on sticks spaced about the perimeter of the area of the attacks to warn other such threats to the safety of the residents of the Sandhills Holler. She also at times ponders what the assailants may taste like slow roasted with onions and garlic.

The eldest Thompson son has taken a firm stance on prayer as the sole solution to the attacks but has yet to offer his opinion on forgiveness of the attackers. He was unavailable for further comment due to his patrol duty.
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I thought it was kind of fun to write a goofy story to blow off some steam after dealing with the hawks for so long. Our little chickens have never ceased to amaze me through the whole thing. We have all learned alot and through it all the kids and I have learned so much.

There was a period of time though that I was very concerned for the kids (the chickens too but mostly the kids). The chickens had been so traumatized that they would only sit so very very still and quiet.....I guess hoping to keep from being noticed and labeled as hawk food. The kids would not leave the chicken pen....they literally wrote out a guard schedule and took turns keeping watch over those chickens. I went out to check on them and saw how they had taken sticks and laid them out as spears to throw at the hawks, they had buckets full of stones and had made slings to hurl them with. I got worried about the stress on the kids because they seemed to be so uninterested in the rest of the world ......no matter what. As time went on that day the kids got more and more quiet as they had chased off hawk after hawk and many times more than one hawk at a time. Their frustration in not being allowed to harm them grew by the minute and they were so irritated by the helplessness of the whole thing The kids stayed out until after dark and came inside looking much like the war weary chickens...it was the quietest suppertime we've ever had. It was that night that Caleb woke us all up shouting at the top of his lungs to get the hawk away from the chickens. I finally had to force the kids to go somewhere away from home and think on other things for an afternoon.....when we came home we worked feverishly to make the chicken pen more secure and tend to the hurt chickens. Thankfully we haven't had a problem since.

The chickens are all looking good now and Harley the super duper tiny biker chicken is doing really good now and is quite happy. We still have some work to do inside the coop to make the chickens more comfortable for winter and hopefully soon they will be secure enough and well enough to start laying me some eggs!

We're under attack!

You guessed it, the hawks are after my chickens again!! Poor little Harley the super duper tiny little biker chick is one tough little bird. Yesterday that hawk had her down on the ground just really doing it's best to tear her apart but she got away!! I'm beginning to wonder if she has managed to steal a few lives from a kitty somewhere nearby. We have worn ourselves out trying to chase those hawks off and have all but totally rebuilt the chicken yard and coop to try to keep them all safe. Too bad ya can't just shoot 'em!!!

Chicken pictures

First picture.
Here are the guineas sounding the alarm. They came back home the day after they escaped. Turns out they decided to visit the neighbors pond.

Second picture.
Harley the super duper tiny little biker chicken. Notice her black feather "jacket". She is posing next to Rosie who is a snobbish bigger hen and likes to peck at Harley.

Third picture.
Our embarrasingly cluttered chicken haven. It is all made of "recycled" materials. The lumber for their house was all collected from dumpsters at factories where Troy was working. The fencing material around the house was being thrown away by someone...I don't remember who right now. But my favorite part is the steel cage fencing that used to be a tool "crib" in a factory. We kept the "authorized persons only" sign on the door.


















I just had to show ya! The big white rooster is Rufus. He is Scooter's daddy and Harley's honey pie....she follows him all over the place and it makes Rosie so mad! Chickens are so much fun!

Our chicken adventures

Well having chickens has turned out to be quite an adventure for our family. Before we moved to North Carolina we had always lived near so many farms and did work for so many farmers that we never had need of getting our own chickens....now that's not the story and I like my chickens anyway. I was given 8 of the cutest (I know chickens aren't supposed to be cute) tiniest little bantam chickens that I have ever seen.....7 hens and a beautiful white rooster. Well, shortly after getting the chickens we decided that we also wanted guineas to help control the bugs and snakes around here.....they are really ugly and noisy but they soon convinced me that they are important to keep around.

Our 8 little chickens and 4 guineas were happily running around their enclosure.....which we had built around 2 of the tiniest of the tiny chickens who had proven that they could escape the fully enclosed pen by getting out of it every single day for as long as we have had them. One of my tiny escape artists is named Harley because she was so easily found..... every time she escapes she runs straight to the little barn and perches on the back of a 3 wheeler that's parked in there....we jokingly call her our little biker chick. Turns out that Harley had laid herself a little clutch of eggs and gone broody and that was probably the biggest reason that she didn't want to stay in the pen with all of the other hens who are kind of bossy to her and bigger than her. So anyways, we built a bigger pen without a top on it all the way around where Harley had been camping out on her little nest and her little buddy who escapes with her all the time too.

Just a day or two after we had gotten the pen finished ( it was actually all the work of my sweet hubby.....I'll have to post a pic soon cuz it defies description) I happened to look out the window and see a little black puffy thing ....I mean a teensy tiny little black puffy thing bouncing around in the pen behind Harley. Thinking it was a mouse or a frog or something I run out there to save our tiny little biker chicken and give her a treat......ya know just cuz she is such a cute little chicken. Well, I get out there to discover that the teensy tiny little black puffy thing is a baby Harley!!! No bigger than my thumb and cuter than almost anything I've ever seen before. Well, my stone cold heart just melted all over the place as I watched this teensy tiny little puff of chicken follow it's momma everywhere she went doing everything she did in perfect mimicry. And you know Miss Harley was just the proudest little tiny biker chicken momma ya ever did see anywhere. She was so funny to watch that I stood there frozen for I don't know how long just observing how this strange and tiny little critter just knew how to be a good momma. I watched as she scratched up fresh food and spread her wings over her baby and made encouraging little chicken cooing sounds so that the baby could come up under her wings and eat in peace. I was so impressed with that tiny chicken making sounds that I'd never heard her make that clearly told the other chickens "this is my baby and you had better stay away"......and somehow that day our tiny little biker chicken seemed to be the biggest hen in the pen.

I finally tore myself away from the chicken pen to go inside and get back to schooling the kids firmly convinced that Harley was a good momma and that I didn't need to take the baby chick away. We had already named the baby chick Scooter because there just isn't a better name for the baby of the super duper tiny biker chicken momma Harley. Even the guineas seemed to know to leave that baby chicken alone though they were easily 10 times the size of Harley. We had finally gotten back into the books and the kids were doing well enough studying on their own that I jumped in the shower. I had only been out of the shower a minute or two when I heard the guineas sound the alarm.......guineas have a built in alarm system that I'll put up against a watch dog any day. You can't describe a guinea alarm but it sounds like the natural version of the car alarm....it's sudden and utterly UN -ignorable. Well hearing all that racket I peeked out the curtain in the bedroom as I was getting dressed only to see a huge HAWK swooping down into the pen chasing Scooter!! Since I wasn't dressed enough to go outside (though I have to admit that I had my hand on the bedroom door before realizing this) I started yelling.....I mean SCREAMING at the kids to get outside and chase away the hawk. As I got done screaming to the kids who were pounding their way out the back door I looked back outside and the last thing I saw before running myself was the hawk scooped up the baby chicken and Harley JUMPED ON THE HAWK'S BACK!

As I ran up to the pen my heart just broke. Taeler was holding the baby chicken in her cupped hands and her whole body was shaking. I had seen as I was coming out the door the kids chasing away the hawk and the hawk dropping Harley's little biker chicken body on the ground. Tae had just scooped Scooter up without thinking to see if Scooter was still able to scoot even and now we were all afraid to look inside her hands. Poor Tae.....her whole body was shaking, the boys were sobbing and standing next to Harley's limp body laying on the ground. No one said anything until Tae sobbed "Mom, Harley is dead!"

As I walked over to see what exactly the hawk had done to Harley with tears in my eyes ........don't ya know that crazy little tiny biker chicken just jumped up with a loud chicken shriek and ran as fast as she could back to her nest looking for Scooter!! I bet you never heard such shouting and praising as was going on in our chicken yard that day when Tae opened up her hand and there was Scooter hopping up and down and chirping right back to Harley. We all stood there taking turns crying and shouting and praising the Lord that Harley and Scooter had survived while we watched that tiny little biker chicken momma cuddle and love her teensy tiny little baby chicken.

I was so thankful that the kids didn't have to see Harley die and that they were able to get outside in time to save Scooter and Harley both.....but I was really really extra thankful for the guineas and their extra loud extra annoying alarm calls! Well, after all that you can imagine how disappointed I am that this morning all 4 of my guineas escaped and ran away from home. We had only been able to partially cover the top of the chicken yard since the hawk attack....just enough to provide the chickens with enough cover to be safe from the hawks but I guess the guineas decided to fly out and leave. Maybe they will come back, I hope they come back. Guineas are ugly birds, but I don't know what we would do without them.....they are great watch birds, they eat all the bugs they can find, they eat snakes, they eat mice, and they guard my chickens!

Black widow spiders

As I type this my kids are writing a report on our new friends that have moved into our garden. We managed to catch two of them....well it's one now since the first one killed the second one as soon as we put it in the jar....but several others got away. In the midwest black widows are one of those things that we know exist but actually seeing them is rare....apparently in North Carolina it's a pretty common thing to run into a black widow.

We were outside trying to salvage our garden which seems to have succumbed to some sort of late season blight......er ah ummmm.....it could also be neglect. So anyways we were pulling weeds and actually replanting most of what we had intended to grow and Taeler was hauling the weeds to the chickens (who knew that there were critters that think weeds are a treat?) and she had a few nasty little spiders jump out of the bucket at her. Then Caleb and I were moving around the cardboard that was laying in between rows to suppress weeds and saw a bunch of the spiders just run everywhere.....I caught the two that were sitting there looking like they wanted to bite me.

Now I'm thoroughly creeped out....not as bad as I get about snakes but (excuse me while I give in to a girly moment) eeewwwwww! Anyway, I'm off to supervise the writing of the spider reports.

blackberries and bugs and chickens oh my!

We have been so so busy lately, but good things so that definitely isn't a complaint. We've been picking blackberries almost daily in hopes of freezing enough to eat them through the winter months....problem is we can't stop eating them now. I have made jelly and several cobblers and a few cheesecakes, we've had them on ice cream and just in a bowl all by themselves. I plan to make more jelly and pick as many as I can but with 3 hungry kids and a hubby who loves them we may not get that many frozen or jellied. My family is so easy to please.....just bring in a bucket of berries and they will all happily sit down at the table munching away and visiting!

Bugs....yuck, I hate them and they are making me miserable!! We went to the pond to go fishing last week and now I am covered...literally, with chigger bites. It's hard to believe how much they itch and how much sleep they are costing me but I'm still thankful that all bug bites is all they are....we thought chicken pox for awhile. I will always always always wear bug spray at the pond now!!

Me and Troy were up late last night trying to decide on the details of my soon to be built chicken coop!!! Yippeeeee, I get chickens!!! I can't wait. One of the sweet ladies at our church is giving me some of her bantams! I have to hurry and get them a house built or should I say I have to sweetly stand in the yard and try to not hurry Troy as he builds them a house. Whatever....I get chickens!!

Life is fun!

Garden update

This was supposed to go onto the bottom of the page but it's here so isn't it cute!!! My first little cayenne pepper!



Now that I can walk around out there without sinking in and losing my shoes I thought I would post a few new pictures. We still have A LOT of work to do out there including some more clearing and lots of weeding and mulching and still planting but it has really come a long way from the pictures posted here when we were busy trying to clear it out in the beginning. http://jeanniet.blogspot.com/2006_03_01_jeanniet_archive.html

We have snow peas flowered and ready to start making pods, green beans getting ready to set on, corn growing, tomatoes flowered, and baby cayenne green on the plant. We also have planted 3 different kinds of canteloupe, 4 kinds of watermelon, 4 kinds of squash, 2 types of cucumbers and sweet potatoes, lima beans and black eyed peas. I still plan to plant potatoes, beets, carrots, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, more green beans, pole beans, more squashes, eggplants, pumpkins and whatever else I get in the mood to plant. I looks a lot smaller in the pictures than it actually is, and it's really hard to see the plants but they really are there and they really are growing.

Anyway, that's how the garden is looking these days. If all goes as I hope it does these pictures will change dramatically within the next few weeks as I haul in LOTS more mulch ( to avoid the quick sand incident repeating) and plant LOTS more stuff. We really have a lot of work to do but this winter when we sit down to eat it will all be worth every minute of backaches and blisters!

What we've been doing lately

If you look back a few weeks to when we first started working around here you can see how much land we have cleared back there in our 'garden'. It was over run with brambles and briars and weeds....you couldn't even see that building that is behind the boys in the first picture. There is also a picture of one of my favorite presents from my sweet hubby ever....my tiller!!!! I love that thing and boy does it ever make this garden bit a lot easier. Tae even gave it a try but didnt' think much of been shaken to bits trying to hang on while it munched up the ground. We still have a lot of clearing to do and bunches of trash to haul out of there but it sure has come a long way since we got here.....and we all have the blisters to prove it!



It's been busy again here on the 'homestead' but a very happy kind of busy. I just love the sore muscles that come from good old fashioned hard work! The kids have been working really hard too and are eager every day to get back out there and work some more. We have found that working so hard has it's spiritual benefits too....for one thing we are working too hard to do much talking (or sibling bickering for that matter) but that has only left plenty of opportunity to converse with the Lord in our hearts and out loud sometimes too. It's very very common to be out there working and hear one of us burst out in a song praising the Lord for giving us this wonderful place to live and work and fellowship with Him. Even if our garden never produces one bit of 'fruit' it has borne out plenty of fruits in each of our hearts.

I'll post more later and maybe some more pictures too, right now I have to hurry up and get ready to go to a meeting with the ladies from church.