Ear Mites

So starting to get settled back into farm life and I found that Lovie has ear mites.  Warning these photos are "gross" according to Sky.

This is after her 1st treatment of Canola oil (I didn't have any baby oil on hand and found a number of people who used veg oil with success) with some honey because a number of people said they had great results just using honey watered down so I thought worth adding some too.

I am trying very hard to not use any hard meds.  I am following a schedule I found online and I am hoping that it works.  As you can see there is a bunch of oil around her hear because the first dropper full went every place when she moved at the last minute. 

Keeping my fingers crossed that everything heals up quick!

New experience

I am pretty open to trying new things.  Especially food, I will give anything a chance once.  Our neighbor is gearing up for hunting season and making sure he has lots of room in his freezer for a wide variety of meat.  Today he brought over some Cougar meat his wife cooked up yesterday for us to try...I took a bite and thought it tasted pretty good, a little tough but nice flavor.  I was doing just fine until Shane meowed and I had a hard time swallowing after that!  The boys LOVED it!!!  They want Shane to get a Cougar.  If he ever did get one I would HAVE to have the hide stuffed for the living room...

A few years ago I saw a bumper sticker:

 FYI:  Not sure about house cats but Cougar taste more like beef.

Back but no time to rest...

We are back from our Oregon vacation.  One question...I shopped for groceries, planned meals, cooked, cleaned, did dishes and laundry...Is that still a vacation?

No time to deal with vaca pix I have a bunch of Chanterelle mushrooms from the woods across the road.  I need to find some recipes! 

Last time I made hamburger and mushroom gravy over mashed potatoes, which was very good but I need something new.  The mushrooms are growing fast and Vic has been getting GALLONS of them every day!  Brady loves to go mushroom hunting with Vic...anything that makes it possible for him to use his new prized pocket knife!

Tonight we are eating up the last chunk of Salmon that Brady caught on our trip.  Fishing wasn't so good AGAIN this year.  I am hoping the local season is more productive. 

Hope everyone has a wonderful Labor Day Weekend!

property

So I was looking at some photos of our property today and I have a couple favs that I wanted to share.

Here is a little family crossing our creek.
 

This is the road down to the river along the creek.

I just love this old gate!  One of my favorite things on the property!

And the big tree by the river is amazing!  Standing next to it is our friend Dom to show just how big some of the trees are around here.  Some days I wish I could just sneak off and hide down here.  Vic and the boys think this should be the location of the boys tree house but I think it should be the location of Mommy's tree house...NO BOYS ALLOWED!
 

more eggs and a new door!

The girls gave us 11 eggs yesterday and 10 eggs today.  As you can see another Americana started laying green eggs today!

Now isn't that a beautiful egg basket?

 

 Today I also finally got a new front door!  Shane repainted the screen door, although the screen itself has not been fixed and the new door has not been painted I think it looks great!

Now I just need to decide what color to paint the door...I was thinking just painting it the same beige the house is painted but I can think about it for a few days.  I know something like red is popular but I am just not sure about that and if it is painted the dark brown of the trim you won't see the pretty screen door details as well.  What do you think?

Little addition

So in an effort to keep the boys from getting too attached to the baby bunnies we got Nugget.  He is a dwarf bunny and should only be about 4 pounds full grown so he will always be small, cute and cuddly.

 

Nugget is about 8 weeks old.

He is use to being held so he is already easy for them to handle.

 

When the boys are playing with the bunnies Shane tells the boys to "stop playing with your food".  So little Nugget can take most of the cuddles and hopefully it will help them not beg to keep all the other bunnies!  Course the boys have already asked if we can get a female too.  They have plans to breed them and sell the babies to make money...they are always trying to find ways to get money, they are just not willing to work for any of it!!!!

We have been getting 8 eggs a day the last 4 days!  Course I forgot to send some home with my mom when they left this morning...(sorry Pam, I'll try to remember next time they come over)

Here are the turkey girls among the chickens, they just had their evening snack and will start getting ready for bed.

The turkeys like to spend time in the chicken coop more than their turkey coop now that they have free range of the area.

 

Here is Sozo with her babies piled up in the corner.  The red stick is from some beet greens that the Sozo was enjoying as her night time snack.

Here is Lovie giving herself a little bath before tucking the little ones into bed.  Also you can see her one all white bunny.  The other 2 white ones have dark ears, noses and tails just like their daddy.

 

Here you can see one eyed Willey.  The infection is gone but as I suspected he will not have a functioning eye on the right side.  Doesn't slow him down though.

 

Rosey stretched out as her babies run around.

The house is painted just have to finish getting all the plastic off the windows and I will try to get a good photo of it posted soon.  I am having a hard time getting things done today because my right thumb got slammed in the car door this morning.  From the cuticle to the end it is all shades of purple.  I have been tempted to do as they did on Deadliest Catch and put a hole in the nail to relieve the pressure.  I hope it will feel better by morning...fingers crossed!

Taking control

So things have been feeling out of control lately and I decided I needed to take a little control of my life.  I took my mom to get her hair done today and asked if anyone had any openings and one did so.........

I am donating 2 bunches of my hair.  Each bunch measured about a foot when curled up and about 15 inches when pulled straight.  I always just have my hair up in a bun and decided it was going to do more good going towards a wig for someone in need of hair.

Health issues

Hello all, we got some bad news today, about 15 years ago Shane had a tumor removed from the left side of his head which left him hard of hearing on that side and he has had more and more trouble hearing lately and went to an ear, nose and throat specialist in Seattle today and the tumor is back.  We are hoping to have the surgery scheduled early in September.  Really don't have any more information except when he went into the doc in Spokane 2 years ago he should have been able to tell the tumor was growing back and we could have taken care of things when we had medical insurance!  And didn't have a 2 1/2 hour drive to a specialist! 

Once we have an exact date for the surgery I will try to find someone who can stay here at the house with the boys so I can drive Shane back and forth.  Last surgery was on an out patient set up and unless they find something strange in the cat scan they took today this time should be the same.

I told Shane this might be a good time to try and quit smoking because last time he was drugged up and slept for the first week.  Maybe something good will come out of it...

1st blue/green egg!

the egg is more of a green color...Guess Rocco is not a rooster either!  That was the last Americana seen in the coop before the egg was found.  The lower pic shows the egg with one of Queenie's white and Gogo's brown eggs.  That makes 7 eggs today!!!