Yes, that’s the word for today: bountiful  boun(t)əfəl  adjective 1. large in quantity; abundant. “The ocean provided a bountiful supply of fresh food.” 2. giving generously “This bountiful God has thought of everything.” synonyms: plentiful, ample, abundant, copious, profuse, bumper, fulsome, inexhaustible. Of all those synonyms, I really enjoy the word bountiful. Over time, since the early 16th century when utilization was plentiful, the use of the word – in every day language – had been on a steady decline; until around 2010, when it began to enjoy a resurgence of mention in popular culture. Does that mean that the general outlook of the populous became more positive? I like to think so. Read on for our example of a bountiful day. Continue reading →

Blowin’ in the Wind

…as they say in some circles. I know I harp on about the wind all the time, and I’m going to again – so just skip it if you want, but we did have an exceptionally windy weekend. The winds were predicted at 30 mph, and we had gusts that were truly Gale Force. The poor littles, Roman, and the Ducks had to be inside so much because the winds were trying to lift them off the ground!  At one point, on Sunday afternoon, we were out changing water, filling up the feed – just letting them run around for a bit – and we had a pretty good gust come up that harshly blew the Delaware chickens’ feathers all higgledy-piggledy. We both were wondering why they even wanted to be out in it, paused a beat and, as the wind completely ruffled a hen from behind, at the same time, said: “Well, whatever blows your skirt up!” It we rather funny; we thought that’d be a good name for a post, and tried to catch this in action. To try to show what exactly we saw, I’m up loading a a video and the one photo that we were hoping would capture what was happening.  I know it was one of those “I guess you had to have been there” type of things, but just watch the video.  We’ll load it at the bottom of the post. Continue reading →

Well, I promised I’d try to report the bad as well as the good. So, here is the news… this morning we lost two more of the Delawares (the white, sometimes brown chickens that are in their teens as this point). We’re not sure why, but they stuffed themselves behind the Kennel that the Specks are in, then they suffocated. One of the reasons may have been that they were trying to get warm. We’re just not sure… there were three back there, one atop the other – only the one on top survived. So, that leaves us with 13 Delawares- we’re not sure if one was the rooster we ordered or not – still coming into their own and it’s difficult to tell at this stage.  Continue reading →