Things that I love

I am focusing on the positives in my life and want to list the things that I love. The more I give love and gratitude, the more love and gratitude will come to me!
This is where I will start, but I find myself loving so many things as I go about my day! I find gratitude in new places now such as a red light, as this often gives me time to check a text message or grab a water bottle from the back of my car.
I Start like this:
I love my husband! He is the perfect mate for me! He has such patience and is always there for me!
I love my children! They have grown up to be such wonderful adults and have given me so much joy as I reflect on their growing up. I love that they are all near by and all get along well with each other!
I love my grandbabies! Bailey is adorable and I love to hear her talk! She jabbers on and on and she brings me so much love! I love the baby that Jessica is carrying. This baby brings more hope and joy to us!
I love my farm! I love being able to go out and sit with my dogs and goats and just get loved on by them! I love that Bob is such a great mate for Pearl! I love that my goats are bred or being bred to have babies this year! I love my chickens! Big and small, I love listening to them when they are excited about laying an egg or cuddling up for the night on a cedar branch in the coop. I love my geese for the wonderful and delicious eggs that they provide and that they are such perfect alarms for the driveway! I love that they are grass eaters! I love my pigs! I love that they are prolific and gave us 4 piglets! I love that they are grass eaters too! I love that the female pig is easily contained behind a single strand of electric wire. I love our cats. I love that Lefty caught a mouse in the front yard today! I love that Tulip has calmed down when she is in the house! I love my jobs! I love being a nurse and being able to make a difference in many lives! I love my home health jobs and being able to connect with so many new people. I love that I often can see Divine Intervention at work in my daily life! I love my Mona Vie company! I love the people that I have become close friends with through MonaVie! I love eating right! I love having the option of having any foods that I want simply by going to a grocery store or restraunt. I love that I can get hot outside, then step into my air conditioned home! I love that I can take a shower when I want! I love that I have the convience of indoor plumbing and electricity. I love that if I get the urge to talk with my family and friends, I can simply call them on my cell phone! I love that when I get tired, that I have a nice big clean bed with lots of pillows that I can snuggle down into. I love that my husband can do the same beside me! I can(and will) go on like this for hours! I will do the rest of my listing of the things that I love later after I log off of the net. But, one more.... I love that I have internet and this sweet little net book!!!

A day in the life of a deranged farmer

Is a "Deranged Farmer" a farmer without a range?? Hmmm.
I worked hard all day at my job, which by the way I LOVE, got home after 7 pm and stopped inside for a brief moment to put away the ice. Apparently this has to be done in a timely manner. Otherwize, I would be putting a leaky bag of water into the chest freezer. This would do me no good. Okay, then I hurridly made my RVL shake for dinner... also LOVE this! Poured into a to go cup and took off to the neighbors house to bring them a bucket with a lid. Seems that they, along with 99% of the world have leftover vegetables that they would normally throw away. I rarely throw mine away now, because we actually eat them here! We don't guilt-buy them only to pretty up the fridge.
So back to the neighbor. She wants to contribute to the healthy appetites of my pigs! Cool!! She already had a sack of vegetables for me at the door. I thanked her and traded the empty bucket for the bag full of scraps. Back in the van/truck to the back door neighbors to feed their ducks and cats while they are at the coast this week. (Lucky bums) ~I accidently typed "Lucky Buns" I laughed for a minute, then fixed it. Then I thought that you may like to laugh too... Leave the engine running, cause I don't take long! Off to Chicken Larry's to pick up my newly hatched chicks! Larry rocks! He gave me 42 chicks for the price of 28! He likes to refer to himself as "Mr Haney"" from Green Acres. Only in the fact that if there is something that one may be needing, he will have it somewhere on his farm, and of course it's for sale! We all need a Mr Haney. Okay, I load up my 42 chicks and after discussing very important things like the sale barn in Durrant and what to do with chickens and peacocks when they die, I head back home to put the chicks in the brooder that I got from, you guessed it, Chicken Larry! Realized when I got back to the house that the animals had not been fed yet, so I dawn my evening wear (headlamp) and head out to the goat pen. Billy helps feed the goats and the dogs, we put up the geese, check on the chickens in the pen and gather eggs. I have 2 game hens (from Larry)sitting on some eggs together in a nest box (made by Larry) with a chick or 2 hatched under them. I like to make it worth their while for all of their sittin' so I popped a few of the chicks from Larry under them. They thank me by not pecking the holy begeebers out of my hand. Now I can feed the pigs the bag of scraps from the neighbors. The babies are all tucked in the pig shack. I am done. And it's only 10:15 pm! Now, I can relax for oh, 30 minutes before going to bed. Now for the count: 4 goats plus a billy goat on loan for breeding, 2 great pyrenees dogs to watch over the goats and everyone else, 27 chickens, 8 roosters (rescued 7 roosters Saturday night), 44 baby chicks, 3 geese, 5 rabbits and 6 pigs. Yeah, we've only got 3 acres here, so it's starting to feel a little cramped! I guess we need to sell some stuff. Feed is getting out of hand. Anyone need a rabbit? A few chickens???

Fences....

Some fences are intimidating. Some are functional. Others still are just kind of pretty. Unless you've seen my neighbors. I don't know what they were going for, but "pretty" is a far stretch! So are the terms "functional" or "intimidating" There is some really old picket fence, then a bare spot, well not really bare, there is an old chair laying there and part of a bike. Then there is more fence with tree parts and downed fence, then there is, I'm guessing, 12dogs laying in the road at the curve and spilling back into the yard. Lovely to look at. Really. The dogs like to find things to drag out of the "fenced" yard and lay them into the street at the curve. Well, I mention their fence because it makes mine look spectacular!! ;D Mine is a mish mash of garden fence made more goat-worthy by adding some wood pallets to the exterior, then other areas have cattle pannels. Another spot for the geese is hog wire with orange constuction netting to keep the pesky geese in. The south side of the property has some very old barbed wire, but goats don't respect barbed wire. Did you know that about goats?? I once read an interview with a goat in Mother Earth News and the goat said that you could just place the goat in the field and tell him to stay and he would. I think he is a big fat liar! So, I added some more, you guessed it.... wood pallets! There is one point where I ran out of pallets and decided that an old piece of barn tin would look nice along the poison ivy, so I slapped it up and it has held so far. It gives the place that certain ambiance! When the sun is just setting, the glow on the old tin is magical! The pigs are easy. 2 strands of electric wire. The problem with this is when an occasional baby chicken finds herself outside of the chicken coop, she tries to find a way back in and stumbles on to the electric wire! This is not good! This I know from experience. So does Sparky! I don't know if you have ever had the sensation of holding a hot wire for a second or 2, but try doing this while you place your free hand, (or head) on the chain link fence! Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the chain link fence around the chicken coop! I had some 20 foot pieces of chain link that were just laying around, so I beefed up the chicken coop with them. Nicest looking pen that we have! Anyway, back to the electric wire and Sparky. I was in feeding the chickens yesterday evening and counting babies as I usually do. They move around fast! Have you ever tried to count a bunch of chickens? Especially when they all look about the same!! It's as hard as counting fleas on a dog! I suppose, although I have never done such a thing. So, here I was counting. 1,2,3,4,5,6....11. Hmmm... again....1,2,3,4,5....11. Really I think I saw 12. Again and again. Now I am fairly sure that there are just 11. I started out of the coop when I saw #12 just laying there looking at me with a quizzical look. Hmm... never saw her look quite so layed back before. I then realize that she is entangled in the hot wire! Jeez! Okay, I carefully balance the handful of eggs in one hand while I ever so gracefully snatch the sizzling chick by the scruff of her neck away from the wires that were actually twisted around her leg! Her head had been resting on the chain link. (like I was talking about earlier, in case I lost you) I took a bit of a shock myself in this harrowing rescue! She smelled of singed hair, which I thought to be odd since she does not have hair. ~Note to all of you city folk; chickens have feathers. Which leads me to believe that burning feathers smell much like burning hair. Just in case you ever wondered. So, there she was, looking kind of like she was poised to do some sky diving, her legs stretched out behind her, long and stiff, toes slightly curled... This is not the way chickens usually lay. They really like to keep their legs up under themselves. Have you ever woke up in the middle of the night with leg cramps? They hurt! You have to get up and stand to stop the leg cramps, and then you walk around a bit. Next thig you know, you are wide awake and it's only 2 am, so you go on line to see who else can't sleep... Oh yeah, back to the chicken. (Sparky) Did you know that chickens sometime require physical therapy? They are not too fond of either! I laid Sparky on my legs and did some passive range of motion and she was a little pissed about that and didn't mind telling me so! Chickens can get loud! I put the poor girl in a box for the night. Mainly because she kept singing too much and would have kept us awake. This morning I picked her up for more therapy and she suprised me by her quick recouperation! She could stand and looked really good! Sparky got to go back to the coop this morning, and I reminded her to stay in the coop! "See this fence?" ~showing the hot wire to Sparky, "Next time it'll be the last time!" With that, she snuggled in a laying box and ate some feed. Now, I'm sure that all of this discussion about fences and chickens has made you think twice about starting a small farm. Or maybe it has made you think of KFC for dinner. In any case, next time you see electric wire,think of little Sparky! She will no doubt grow up to lay hard boiled eggs!

Beds

I woke up this morning at 5 am. I almost (almost) smiled at the funny thought that was in my head as I awoke. My thought was that my memory foam mattress must have alzhiemers. Now, mind you, I can sleep in just about anything including a very short trip in the elevator (2 floors down, standing up) I can sleep in any position. I have been known to sleep in my toy box when I was a kid, and also my pillow case! I have slept in hammocks strung from trees in the median on I-95 when I used to do a lot of traveling in other peoples cars. I have napped in an igloo that we made in our front yard (Gainesboro Rd in Rockville, Md) I have slept in the dog house with the dog, I have slumbered in many a pool side lounge chair while bands played at pool parties at the beach. I have dozed at the wheel a few times! ~Yikes! I nodded while in for my semi-annual EEG as a pre-teen. Slumbered in lithotripsy, snoozed at the movies, napped in waiting rooms, really. I can sleep anywhere! But this mattress of mine is trying to kill me! I find myself sleeping with my body pillow rolled into a ball and me draped over it face down into the mattress, or sleeping with my head at the foot of the bed. I toss and turn in my sleep and dream that my back is broken! So, now I have a plan!! I must keep it a secret from the memory foam mattress, as I am sure that it would retaliate further and surely do me in whilst I snooze tonight... But I will be shopping for a new bed. My most clever idea is to take a box knife and cut the evil memory foam mattress up into cusions for my garden furniture! I will aquire some fancy material and make some covers for the cusions and viola! I will never have to worry that some poor homeless guy will find old Alzhiemerish memory foam matty and have horrible nights of painful unrest! No, not even the cats will want to slumber on these cusions! Oh, and if I have any left over pieces, I may make an ottoman and rest my stinky feet upon this old mattress! Hahahaha!!!