She's Spreading A Little Sunshine Once Again

I feel a little sheepish getting two awards in the same week and from the same gal to boot.  But, shoot.  The way I see it is that life is short--and it can pretty much suck sometimes--but when a little bit of good comes your way you better grab a hold with both hands and hang on tight.  So that's what I am gonna do. 

So, thank you very much, Miss Willow, for this lovely award.  Once again you have brightened up my day.  Blessings to you, love!

Here are the rules:

1) Place the award on your blog or within your post.
2) Pass the award on to twelve Sunny Bloggers -- those whose positivity and creativity inspire others!
3) Link to the nominees in your post.
4) Tell the nominees they've received the award by commenting on their blogs.
5) Share the love and link to the person from whom you received the award.

And here are those blogs and their people who bring a little bit of sunshine into my life:

1)Deep Inside My Broom Closet
2)Hibiscus Moon
3)Life in a Cordwood Cabin
4)Little House in the Suburbs
5)Living the Frugal Life
6)Moontides
7)Octoberfarm
8)On the Way to Critter Farm
9)Plant Journeys
10)Ship Full Of Pirates
11)Small Farm Girl
12)Sunny Side Up

So enjoy ya'll.  And remember, I know some bloggers don't do the tags and award thingys--and that is totally cool--I still love ya anyway.

Waterfall Cub Scout Hike

Last Saturday, my friend, Mary, came along with Tino and I on a Cub Scout hike in an area near where we live.  The weather was perfect and the scenery was just gorgeous but in some places the trail was very muddy and we had to keep a close eye out for poison oak because it was EVERYWHERE!

My friend, Mary, in the foreground in the blue coat and Tino in the center of the picture in the dark sweatshirt

If you look in the above photo the little guy standing to the left of my son is only 3 years old and he was such a trooper.  He walked the whole way with nary a complaint the whole time.

Tino

There was a beautiful stream flowing alongside much of the trail. 

Mary and Tino

The Cub Scouts

The gentleman is the right of the photo above is such a nice man.  He is a wealth of information concerning the names of plants and what they can be used for and he has the patience of Job when he is talking to the kids.

Another shot of the hikers and the stream

This is a waterfall that is actually at the beginning of the hiking area (we did not share the waterfall with the Cubs until after the hike as we knew we would never be able to pull them away from it to do the actual hike, LOL)  It is so pretty.  I know it is hard to see but that dark area to the right of the waterfall is actually a cave.  The very nice gentleman I was talking about earlier led the Cubs in and showed them around with his flashlight.  Tino loved it!

Tino standing at the mouth of the cave with someone else behind him a little bit inside of it.

And this is Tino standing up above the waterfall.  I looked away for a moment and almost had a heart attack when I looked up to where he was.  Of course, I had to snap a picture before I hollered to him to get the heck down from there.

Miss Rocky

Miss Rocky is still with us.  She is still mighty sore but she seems to be doing pretty well.

W...T....F!!!!!!!

Do any of you know about this shit?  Pass this YouTube video around.  They aren't using any Vaseline folks but we are definitely getting f*cked.  Excuse my language but I am livid.  I know people who have lost their homes or who don't know if they will be able to keep them from one month to the next.  And to know that these people are so callous just makes my blood boil.  Our tax dollars bailed these banks and business out so that they would not go under.  Did they then turn around and offer help to the homeowners?  Not hardly.  How can these people live with themselves? 

A Sweet Surprise

What a surprise I had this morning when I logged into blogland and discovered that Miss Willow over at A College Witch's experiences had included my little blog in an award she was passing along.  

The Beautiful Blogger Award!

How cool is that?  And little did Miss Willow know that I really...I mean REALLY needed this right about now.  So thank you m'Dear, from the bottom of my little ol' heart.

Now, there are rules that go along with this award and here they are:

• Thank the person who gave you this award
• Share 7 things about yourself
• Pass the award on to 15 bloggers who you have recently discovered and who you think are fastastic
• Contact the bloggers you have picked and let them know that they have received the award

  So, first things first. 

7 Things About Me

1. I dream about one day owning my own small farm--complete with animals, livestock and crops
2. I have always wanted to write a novel 
3. I suffer from panic attacks but I can usually talk myself down from them when I feel one coming on
4. When I was very young I had a recurring dream about living through a very large catastrophe of some sort--I could never remember the whole dream upon waking up but my mother told me that when I would have one of these dreams it would literally take her sometimes a half hour to get me to wake up.  She would be telling me that "it was alright" and I would wake up screaming "what about the other people?"  The dreams eventually stopped and I still cannot remember what exactly happened in them.  Past life, maybe?
5. I am a hopeless romantic.
6. I am terrified of spiders and snakes
7. I do not make friends easily and I do not have a ton of friends...but the ones I do have I have had for many, many years

The Bloggers I Am Passing This Award Along To

(and I do understand that some bloggers do not do awards--and I totally respect that--so if you do not choose to participate please know that I still think your blog totally rocks!)

1. Chickens in the Road
2.  Lizzy Lane Farm
3. Apron Strings
4. Chronicles of a Country Girl
5. Divining Women
6. Dog Trot Farm
7. Food Renegade
8. From the Country Farm
9. Heart of a Cowgirl
10. Homegrown Evolution
11. Iris Awakened
12. It Blows Here
13. Knock off Wood
14. Pumpkins and Toadstools
15.  Shade & Sweetwater

Now I just have to let all these lovely peoples know.  I promise to fulfill the rules of the award and get this last part done asap.  So, again, thank you Miss Willow.  I appreciates it.

It's Been A Bit Rough...

This week has been a difficult one.  On Saturday I discovered that one of my beloved hens had a horrible injury to the back of her neck.  You wouldn't even have been able to notice when she was just walking around but when she walked over towards me and lowered her head to try to eat and her neck feathers fell forward, there was a big old gaping hole all the way to her spinal column.  I couldn't believe she was still on her feet walking around!  I quickly picked her up to examine the wound more carefully and I was just horrified.  It was AWFUL!  I was sure that I was going to lose her.

I boiled up some salt water and when it had cooled, used it to thoroughly wash the wound.  I was sure Rocky would fight me on this but she just sat very still--probably a bit in shock.  I then dressed the wound with some triple antibiotic and ended with a good slathering of honey.  The poor gal is still with us and is drinking and eating--although not as much as usual.  I have her separated and quiet and will keep her that way for a while yet.

Now, after I had doctored her up I began to try to figure out who the culprit was.  My hens have a gated area that I close up at night but during the day they have full run of our whole side yard area.  I thought I had made a good enough barrier to keep the dogs out but it turns out that it was not good enough.  I really trusted my dogs as I have a little hen that has a twisted beak that I bring up to the main yard all the time so that she can eat without being pushed out of the way by the other hens.  The dogs have NEVER bothered her and she is a really easy target.

Well, on Sunday we had to leave the house to run some errands and when we returned I happened to spy my Kelpie dog come skulking through the barrier to the chicken yard.  I hollered at her and then hurried to investigate.  It was awful.  She had killed my other Barred Plymouth Rock hen.  I found her poor lifeless, headless body hidden away in one of the flowerbeds.

If Juno (the Kelpie) was not my son's best friend I may just have sent the mutt up the river but because of his love for her I instead just threatened her with the loss of her life if she ever even looks at one of my chickens again and I installed a completely new gate and have made sure that she cannot get back there again. 

I continue to nurse the other Plymouth Rock and I really hope she pulls through.

 I have also been sick and not getting much sleep because I seem to need to cough my lungs out every night for most of the night.  Not fun.  So I am walking around in kind of a fog right now.  I just feel a bit numb. 

We are also dealing with my husbands dipshit older brother who is a very manipulative alcoholic/addict who has really put the family through the ringer for the last 5 years.  There is a huge rift between my husband and his younger brother and Dipshit and my mother-in-law who just keeps bailing Dipshits ass out of the fire.

And my little sister and her fiancee just split up and my mother and my stepdad have been at eachother's throats as well.

What the hell is going on? 

Fresh

This movie is getting a lot of buzz around a lot of the blogs that I frequent and it looks like something I am going to have to see.  Check it out...

If you cannot view the embedded video, this link should take you to YouTube where you can watch the trailer directly:  Especially for you Kyddryn ;-)


Fresh Trailer

Organic or Bust...Your Budget That Is

I want to be able to provide honestly good and healthy meals for my family.  It is a quest I am on.  I know a lot more than I used to.  For better...or for worse, I am a LOT more educated than I used to be about what is actually good for us and what "they" want us to believe is good for us.  But, the problem with having this new knowledge is that now you can't continue to do things the way you were doing them before.  That "box of stuff" that used to be a major staple in your pantry--that you used to plop down in front of your family without any trepidation whatsoever--you now know is not fit to be fed to the poor dog.

So, if your are like me, you start to learn how to cook more meals from scratch.  You learn how to make your own bread.  You buy more fruits and vegetables...and you learn new ways of baiting your child into eating some of them.  You start to feel good about yourself.  Confident even.  It's kind of a primal thing to be able to feed your family from the work of your own hands.  I am WOMAN.  Hear ME roar...kind of feeling.

And then...

Isn't there always an "and then"? 

You keep reading, keep educating yourself and one day you find out that all those fruits and veggies in the supermarket might not be as healthy as you thought they were.  All those pesticides and poisons--not to mention that the blimey soil the stuff was grown in probably had no nutrients to pass along in the first place due to being so depleted of life by our wonderful corporate farming techniques.  You find out that the flour and sugar you have been baking with has been bleached and processed beyond recognition and the vegetable oil in the cupboard is actually some sort of  evil homogenated substance that no one should be consuming--let alone the people you love.

Then you learn the word "Organic" and you are instantly transfixed and enthralled.  You find your way to a new or at least new to you store that sells only organic or naturally grown food.  You feel like a kid in a candy store.  And then...

There it is again.

And then, you turn that bag of organically and locally grown spelt flour over and spy the price tag.  The needle scrapes the record, the music stops, you feel a trickle of cold sweat drip down your back.  Holy SHIT!!  Two pounds of flour is gonna cost you $15 bucks!!!????  Two pounds is not a whole hell of a lot of flour folks.  Just in case you were wondering.

That budget you have been trying to stay within just popped like an over-inflated balloon and flew out the window.  If you were having trouble feeding your family before "this health kick" (as some people might call it) how the hell are you going to make ends meet now? 

Now, I do want to say that I really do believe that locally grown, organic food is more precious than gold.  It is worth every penny that is asked for it (well, unless you are shopping at some yuppie gimmicky store that takes pride in gouging it's customers--I choose not to shop at these types of establishments, thank you very much!)  I know that these small family farmers work hard to produce food of the highest quality and I also know that it is extremely expensive in order to be certified "organic".  I am not saying that their food and products are not worth the price--I am only lamenting the fact that I am not independently wealthy enough to be able to afford to buy all of them.

It can be rough.  I ain't gonna lie.  You definitely have to set priorities.  Do I buy all organic and locally grown food these days?  Honestly, no.  I do what I can.  I try to support the local organic store as much as I am able.  My son loves bacon so I have made organic bacon one of my priorities.  I cook more organic brown rice instead of white flour pastas.  I buy organic whole wheat flour--but not necessarily the local grown stuff.  I make daily decisions a little bit at a time to change the way my family eats.  It's not an all in thing.  But, it gets closer and closer.  Is it frustrating sometimes?  Oh ya.  As Calamity Jane says over at her wonderful blog, Apron Strings, buying organic ice cream is not really what it's all about.

Any thoughts...please share.