"It is well to remember that the entire population of the universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others." A.Holmes

Thursday, July 25, 2019

Our New Herb Garden

 This is a sphere our daughter-in-law, wife of our youngest son, welded. She welded this sphere out of horse shoes our son removed from horses to replace their worn horse shoes. Every amazing item our beloved daughter-in-law welds is composed of used horse shoes she has to clean of rust and dirt before she can even begin to create her works of art. There is a whole lot of hard and very dirty work involved in simply making the horse shoes usable in her horse shoe compositions.

 My husband built the pergola in the background last year. This year he made an herb garden. The main feature of our new herb garden is the two spheres welded by our daughter-in-law, and the herbs.
 We are going to mount the spheres on tree stumps from our woods, soon.

 The herb garden also borders the driveway and our front yard. The sidewalk divides the herb garden from the front yard and walkway from the driveway.
 My old cat Miss Marple likes to sun herself in the new herb garden.


Even more is going on in the back yard and gardens. Our deck was rebuilt last year, we are in the process of making an outdoor kitchen/cooking/eating area now. Life in this part of Washington is coming to terms with the high and dry summer heat and learning to live with it and love it.We will have a covered eating area near the barbecue and smoker.This corner of our new (replaced) deck is where I've placed pots of herbs and flowers that will be moved later when our outdoor kitchen is done. My new chicken house is the building seen here in the background.

Life here has been glorious, we're so happy and blessed to live here. We're enjoying the many blessings of being near our sons and their families and also, now that we're retired , we're enjoying and appreciating the ability to set our schedule and time for ourselves. ( Hey, if we want to take a nap or just kick back and read a good book, we can !)

We have made many changes to our new home and farm for the better. We've improved our pastures, made vegetable and herb and flower gardens. My husband has invested much time and money in making our bee yard better for the bees and for increasing our honey production. Our poultry yard provides more eggs than we can use, but we're able to share the bounty with family and neighbors. My sheep have increased beyond my wildest dreams simply because sheep really do thrive on pasture ... amazing ! My husband and I love our new home more than we could have ever anticipated and I am thankful beyond what I can express. God is so good !

Monday, July 22, 2019

I Have An Incubator & I Know How to Use It !


Ducklings, chicks, quail, and hopefully soon pheasant, all incubated and hatched in my new incubator. Here is one of many ducklings I hatched out this spring.
My new incubator ! It monitors the temperature and humidity and alarms go off if either deviates from the settings that provide the most success for incubating and successfully hatching poultry , quail, and pheasant.
Ducklings emerging from their eggs after 28 days of incubation.
These are the parents of my ducklings ~ they are purebred Pekin ducks.
Here are 3 of the many ducklings I hatched out of my incubator. All have now been sold to families desiring ducklings as pets or egg layers.
I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to incubate and hatch out their own poultry.