Farmer Kate figures a few things out

Oh joy! Oh rapture! Did you see that? I managed to successfully upload a video! Do you know what this means?!? It means that you guys get to see my stupid little farm videos! Aren't you thrilled? Admit it, you on sitting on the edge of your seating, awaiting the next installment of RunAmok excitement!
Well, what it really means is I am now super-psyched to blog more often. More often than say, never. Anyway, to pick up on the Memorial Day fluff mystery, here are two videos that I uploaded to youtube, because it didn't work when I tried to put them here, and maybe they are too big.


Fluff 1


Fluff 2

Rain, rain, come and stay, go away another day

It wasn't a new experience, per se, but it's been so long that it felt new. Yesterday I was reacquainted with rain. And not just the annoying sprinkling, make-you-feel-more-sweaty kind of rain. Honest to goodness, thunder booming, overflowing the gutters, pouring down rain. Cats and dogs rain. This kind of rain:

It was all too much for Roosty, our pacifist rooster, who likes to hang out near the house, away from Major Deadly, the mean rooster, to likes to be mean.



Come on, Roosty! Get out of the rain! Don't you have a shred of self-preservation left?



There, that's better.

Anyway, it was all so exciting and delicious and refreshing, after weeks of no rain, that I found myself out there in it, laughing and taking pictures like a fool. But I learned something very important. Something I will take with me to my grave:
On a stormy summer day, it is much better to go out and splash in puddles, than to stay in with a thunder-shy dog wrapped around your feet. Especially when that dog happened to ingest a ridiculous amount of pork grease the day before, and is making you gag with his dog-ass stank.

Today, I learned that sometimes you have to just stop being hot and miserable and whiney in your dirty, hot house, and go for a boat ride with your family.

Yes, you WILL cool off, and instantly be in a better mood.

Toaster Oven Smores

You know what you can make in the toaster oven? I'll give you a hint:


Since our favorite lighter of campfires chose bedtime over smore time on this particular evening, we improvised. With heavenly results. Observe:


Maybe Emmett likes smores a little TOO much?

Memorialness

What's more fun than waking up to snow falling on Memorial Day? When it only looks like snow, but it really some strange fluffy stuff floating around the yard. I wish I could upload the video I took, just in case you weren't in the vicinity of Lambert's Cove last Saturday morning. However, I seem to have created said video in such a way that makes it impossible to upload. You live and learn.
Turns out it was the seed pods from the poplar tree, but for a few uncertain moments Emmett and I felt like we had been transported to Pandora.
There was also a really cute video of Emmett conducting the "source of fluff" investigation. Maybe someday I'll figure out how to upload it.
In the meantime, you'll have to make due with this shot of Hunter decorating the veteran's graves at the cemetary across the street.
"Thank you, Sir!"

Easter Puppy

I don't know if it's the added nutrition, or just feeling springtime in the air, but Dogwin is up to his old egg-hiding tricks.














Luckily, I noticed it before I sat down on the couch.

He also hides treats for the kids.















I'm sure it doesn't help that I introduced him to the wonders of farm fresh eggs. Shut up, it's good for him. Or maybe it's because we keep his toys in an old egg basket? Hard to say. All I know is if we leave a basket full of eggs within doggie reach, we come home to presents hidden just about everywhere. Is he saving them for later, or are they little gifts for us? it's probable he's just bored. Or trying to mess with me. But I think he's going to save me a lot of trouble this Saturday night, when I leave my colored eggs in a basket on the floor and go to sleep.

Here comes the eggs again

"Hon! come look at this one!  Look at that color!"  My husband is obsessed with the eggs. Almost as obsessed as I am with my after-school dog walk (I've been known to literally step over dog puke on my way out the door.) 
But who can blame the guy?  We decided against artifically lighting them this year, and our ladies are a few years old, so they stopped laying all together in late fall.  But in mid-January, they started up again.  They aren't quite at full production yet, but what they lack in quantity they are making up for in perky, bright orange-yolked amazingness.  Oh, they are beautiful. 
I asked the hen whisperers if eggs are really better quality after the hens have had a rest, and the answer is sadly, but believably, no.  They are the same old eggs we were getting before they took their break. (Maybe the shells are a bit thicker than during full production, when they can't take in enough calcium to keep up with the daily egg production.) It is just that we've missed them so.  And it seems like a little sign of spring, proof that the days really are getting longer.