Saturday, December 31, 2011

The Strangest Thing!


This morning I discovered something that I have never seen before.  It truly was the strangest thing.  The kids and I decided that we were hungry for some fresh pumpkin muffins, so we chose our "bumpy" pumpkin (it is a Super Freak) that we got from my sister, seeing as all our pumpkins didn't do much this year.   I went to cut it open to bake it and.... saw the strangest thing. 


The silly thing started to germinate inside itself.  I have never seen or even heard of that happening.  As I cleaned it out the sprouts were amazingly long.


Being the "let's try an experiment" type of person, I selected 4 of the shortest sprouts.
 
Found a nice pot, and planted them.  I know it is a small pot, but all my big ones are currently put away in the barn for the winter.  If any of these silly things survive, I'll go dig up a bigger home for them.

 God's creation sure has a way of surprising us when we least expect it.  That is what I love so much about this time of year.  Seeing God in the smallest things, life in the strangest places and love everywhere. 



Sunday, December 11, 2011

Bee in the Freezer

No, I did not put a real bee in the freezer.  Our roo, Bumblebee, met the butcher block today.  He had taken on a bit of an attitude and seemed to enjoy attacking all members of our family.  Time to do with him what was intended from the start.  I have to admitt that I had never butchered a chicken before.  Scott has done a lot of ducks and turkeys over the years, but he was heading out for the late doe only season with his brother, so I tackeled this one alone.  What a process!  I do hope that it will get easier with practice and with a future chicken plucker (to be built next summer).  I started hand plucking (we have been saving feathers for my mom and her craftiness), then just decided to skin him.  Personally I don't like to eat chicken skin, but Scott does.  I guess I win this time, I just went for quick.  Now he is resting comfortably in the freezer until we decide to have him for supper.  I didn't weigh him, but he was good sized.  Next spring we are thinking about getting a bunch of meat chicks.  We shall see how things goes, but I really like the idea of raising and hunting our own meat. 

Friday, December 2, 2011

Lazy Lucy No More!

Adin with Lucy's first egg.  So excited!
On November 9 my lovely Lucy started laying and has been so faithful ever since.  One of her sisters started laying a week and a half later and since then the rest of the girls have followed Lucy's lead.  We have been averaging 4-6 eggs daily, which has been pretty cool.  A good share of those eggs have been double yolkers.  Not sure if that is just a product of the girls being new layers or not, but the kids sure have fun checking all the "huge" eggs to see if they are double yolkers.  I guess "twins" run in our family even more.  :)  Adin keeps asking if we will get triple yolkers, I don't really think it would happen, but it would be pretty cool.