A Lovely Winter's Day

Brrrr!  Cold this morning, 6 degrees fahrenheit when I went out to do chores.  The pumps were frozen for the first time (at least, the first time I tried to use them) at both henhouses this morning, but I was carrying warm water from the house.  Yesterday, the birds in the old henhouse did not go outside, and I realized they are way too crowded in there.  Unfortunately, there is one missing today... our littlest turkey, Helen, died this afternoon.  I found her last night, and she appeared to be dying then... she lasted until shortly after noon.  Both she and Rosie were coughing when they came here... and we dosed them with VetRx.... and the coughing and discharge stopped... but something else was obviously going on with her. 

 

Rosie appears to be fine, and was out in the pasture with Jackson just a bit ago.

 

Remember what I said about quarantine?

 

Here is the beautiful Lilly Ann, as the sun was coming up this morning.  Something caught her eye at the bottom of the pasture.

 

 

I moved around behind her, and as you can see, she was still staring intently.  That's the brush pile in the bottom of the pasture, but there is a wild corner where Troy's, ours, and the Spehar's property all meet in the corner.

 

She later ran along the pasture fence to the east, barking and jumping.

 

 

 

If you look directly into the middle of this, you'll see Jackson peeking out saying

"How cold is it out there?"  As a matter of fact, no one but the six young roosters came out yesterday... and they froze all day.  Today, at about noon, I looked out and all the birds except the very small ones from the big henhouse were out in the pasture. 

 

 

I found Fluffernut, in the middle of the top of the henspa.

Tonight she is roosting in between two of the bigger hens on the top roost, where she can keep very warm.

 

 

Abby Lynn has been helping me with the farm chores today, and was getting worn out. She came in this afternoon and took a nap on the big bed while I made potato soup.

 

 

While the soup cooked, I transferred my recipe pages from an old binder to a bigger binder... as you can see, the meatloaf recipe there has been used numerous times.  It's brown sugar meatloaf from Allrecipes.com.  YUMMM.

 

Keith and I remarked at dinner how we have almost stopped using cookbooks.  I have probably 40 of them, and can't remember the last time I used one.

 

 

Lilly is just beautiful in the sunlight!