It’s one of those days. What do we talk about today? We did things. We have plans for the weekend. Sue’s been working her butt off. Just like always. Sun comes up beautifully each morning (see photo at left) and sets just a gorgeously in the evening (see final photo). Chickens adventure out and come back to roost in the evening. The Goat Boys play their silly goat boy games. Animal visitors come and go; some have made a home here – not that we really want them. shall we have a little look at what I’m talking about?

This past Tuesday we had dinner with our neighbors, Lance and Elise. They let us test out a smoker by eating one of our chickens that they so deliciously smoked! They have a Traeger and Sue is interested in checking them out. So Lance gave her a lesson on how it worked by cooking for us. Elise also made potatoes, egg plant soup, and Watermelon juice! Delish! The chicken came out perfectly. Nice and juicy with a crunchy skin. We may be looking for a used one soon. Everything was so very good. Yum! We took a few things too. And we talked about looking after their place while they are gone to her son’s wedding. Those are things we did.

Sue has been working, working, working to get the weeds under control at the dinky house. We’ve moved our processing operation over there, and we have a processing day planned for Saturday. We may have two people helping us this weekend. If that works out, then we should be able to do things even faster. That’ll be wonderful. That’s what we have planned.

Little Miss Frizzle – the Silky that Sue rescued/adopted – has a home with all the chickens over at the Goat Boys. She’s finally coming out of her shell and out of the coop. We’ve seen her several times outside being a regular chicken girl. Sue’s thinking of locating a couple more so she won’t be all by herself. If you know of someone who needs to re-home a Silky, please let us know. Overall, we think the Goat Boys enjoy having their chicken friends back; although, in the very beginning they were afraid of the mamma and her little babies. I went one afternoon to give them their snack and found them up on their sleeping platform, crying out for a savior, because the mamma and chicks were inside the goats’ house and they were too afraid to come down. They’ve gotten over that now. Silly boys.

Our latest animal visitors have been Sonoran Gopher Snakes. While we want to encourage their presence, to keep down the rodents and to discourage the presence of rattlesnakes, we don’t want them anywhere near the little chicks. Sue found this guy in with the chicks on Wednesday afternoon. She was able to catch him and let him loose elsewhere on the property. Then, just this evening, she found a smaller one in the enclosure – not in the coop, but close by. This little one was way to fast for Sue to catch. We hope they are after the gophers, and mice, and hopefully squirrels (the unwelcomed ones who have made their home here and steal our fruits and veggies). They just need to stay away from the chickie babies.

As I mentioned, we are planning a processing day for Saturday, so please keep us in your thoughts as it is always a long and difficult day. I may, or may not be writing after we’re done… no telling which day it’ll be. Until then, as always~
Thanks for reading!