Needs Must Yard Farming

A few pictures to make up for not having a new blog up and done in so long.  ****** contents deleted by me, the First Amendment needs more teeth **** A pile of rex hides.  Soon to be a lovely lap blanket.  I love having things like this, just a pile of lush pelts.  Makes me feel rich indeed. Sewing a new microwave rice pad so that, perhaps THIS time, I will get to keep it!  The sewing machine is the 1800s one I found thrown away and have finally got back into working order at last. ****** contents deleted by me, the First Amendment needs more teeth **** Amanda's birthday cake, baked by herself from scratch.  And very nice it was as well despite the mess in the background.  Ah well, its a home, not a showplace, after all. This is the bunny that Amanda made and stitched onto her pillowcase.  It was supposed to hide a stain but I think a few more bunnies are needed. The vegetable called Celtuse is flipping fantastic!...

Spring in the South brings on a second Fall as the Live Oak trees drop all of last years leaves while growing their new ones.  As leaves on the roof are a big bad no no I dragged out the ladder today and clambered up to sweep them off. A ladder + roof + kids = more things dragged up onto the roof to replace the leaves than even I was expecting. Amanda and Simon spent hours playing at being vets on a roof which gives me my big brave mummy badge of the day.  Our roof is WAY lower than many of the ones my brothers and I played on as kids but all of me wanted to keep yelling "Be CAREFUL"!!! instead of saying "have fun". Two milkshakes, chocolate chips, many couch cushions, paper, art supplies, the vet box and many bed buddies all got to go onto the roof as well.  Best of all?  The kids put it all away when they were done.  How cool is that?  Amanda sitting on couch cushions writing up the blood results in the sunshine....

SPRING HAS SPRUNG!!! This is just a brief, Spring has Sprung update on the yard farm.  The incubator has 71 quail eggs in it, due to hatch in 12 days.  Last week we took 28 chicken chicks out of it that are now keeping Butters company on the porch.  Sadly TK, Amanda's bunny, died of injuries sustained when he fell off of a table when playing with the cat.  As rabbits hide any weakness (prey animals are like that) we thought he was getting better but sadly, that was not the case.  As the table was only 18 inches high it should not have hurt him any to fall off of it but as they use to rocket round the porch so fast he must have been doing about 80 mph at the time.  Butters kept him company through the 4 days he was poorly and misses him hugely. The pregnant sow gave us four lovely baby boys.  Mother nature loves to give me boys, I once hatched 7 eggs only to get 7 roosters.  Did I need any roosters?  Did I heck! Last summe...

Spending Christmas with the kids - it was my turn this year - was lovely.  I spent several days leading up to the day making their stockings (wet felting) as we had lost last years in the move and anyway, in my attempts to remove all fabrics from our lives that are not 100% natural fiber, I probably sent them to a charity shop sometime this year so needed new ones anyway. The stockings were such fun to make that once done, I went ahead and made myself a pair of slipper shoes using my "shades of green" wool.  Soled with scraps of leather and finished off with a band of rabbit fur, they look fantastic and are so warm that I can only wear them on really cold days.  Florida has so many of those, doesn't it?  The finished stocking.  Wet felted with needle felted letters and finished off with white rabbit fur. As the kids were sick on the run up to their Christmas school break I didn't get the chance to make their presents when they were at school....

First, a quick sorry that I didn’t post anything last month, but I was kept mentally and actively busy trying to get my court case - aka the Freedom File - ready for filing. Once I had my stuffed-full file-box of tricks already, I went online to look for free legal aid. I learned my circumstances were considered bad enough for me to get some free legal advice but were not bad enough for me to actually get any real help. Story of my life really. My Freedom File box.   ****** contents deleted by me, the First Amendment needs more teeth **** Now for something completely different! Devin recently informed me he wanted PROPER HAM for Christmas dinner and Amanda chimed in with "Roasted CHICKEN, Mummy!" - and I thought … OMG, is it Christmas ALREADY!?! We had eaten all the pork in our freezer, so on went the computer where, after a short Craigslist search, I found five pot belly piglets available. Having ordered feed two weeks before, I had just enough tim...

AKA Boring Bunnies! Well, that's what some people (who shall remain named Mumster) call them! If chickens are gateway livestock, rabbits are pure crack.  Totally addictive and you simply can't have just one or two.  Even when you think "Just one more, I can stop at that!" you are soooooo lying.   Like for an alcoholic,"One drink is one too many and a thousand are never enough."   That's rabbits! Amanda, Simon and Flower.  Flower is due to give us babies (called Kits) this week. Now, a bit of back story to put today's rabbits in their proper place and order ... We - mum, myself, two younger brothers and my grandparents - (granddad being an ex-pat Brit, specifically a Geordie), lived in Merry Olde in 1989-1990 and at that time found it to be the most expensive place to live in the WORLD!!!  And, as only Mum and I were totally happy there, we all eventually up sticks and moved back to the States. As I said, mum and I w...