This has been a pretty 'ho hum' week. Most of the snow is gone, but it sure feels like winter out there. 35 degrees and rain. The rain hasn't started yet, but we are supposed to get up to an inch or so. Yuck! We have lots of mud already. My daffodils that were 4 inches tall in early January have completely disapeared. I hope they will come back and bloom. The cold weather really did a number on them.

The log splitter that E has, has been giving him fits, so this morning he took it back to the repair shop for them to try again. This is only the third time it has been there this winter! As soon as it gets warmed up, it starts to choke down, and will stall under a load. He has tried everything he knows, so maybe they can figure it out again. Third time is a charm, right?

My poor horse, Solomon. Somehow he has got a nasty gash on his face about an inch above his left eye. It has only torn the skin, there is no damage to his eye, but it sure looks bad. I couldn't find anything in the run-in shed that was protruding, like a nail or anything. Don't know what happened to him.

On Monday Taco (barn cat) is going to the vet for an evaluation. He has a large growth on his head above his eye. It is getting bigger and is now forcing his eye shut. His eye isn't involved, except from the weight of it above his eye. The vet won't take it off without looking at him first. We will see what she has to say about it. This growth is about 2 inches long and as big around as my thumb. It is centered about half way between his ear and his right eye. It has only come up on his head since about October. It hasn't seemed to bother him until now, when he can't open his right eye. So we will have it looked at on Monday.

I have been planning to make some Corn Cob Jelly since before Christmas. I didn't have time to get it done in time for Christmas gifts. I just today got it done. It is so pretty to look and it tastes good too. Ed likes it and his step mother has asked me for it. She absolutely loves it. It has a fruity taste, but different than anything else.

It is still winter!! I wanted to wake up this morning and find it 50 degrees! No such luck! It is SNOWING! EEEK! I hate winter!

When I woke up this morning, ED was MAKING waffles! He had his Mayberry cookbook out and was stirring up a waffle batter! That is a first! They were good too, with butter and maple syrup. Yum! (I usually sleep in on Saturday mornings.) Getting up at 5:30 is for the birds, at least until there is some daylight.

An update on the missing chicken. Our next door neighbor (the one that owns that awful dog) came over carrying a garbage pail, and said guess what I found? She had found the hen, over by her barn. There were no marks on the hen, that stupid dog just killed it and left it. Played with her I would guess. But that dog is GONE now. Thank goodness!

Did I mention that I hate winter? We have had a very hard time trying to find sawdust for the horse stalls. Last weekend we went to Rural King and bought some pelleted bedding. You have to spray them with water, then they expand and fill the stall. I had never used them before, but they smell so good and they really expanded to fill the stalls. But they are expensive so this was an emergency measure. We had tried to get someone to haul us some sawdust for weeks, but they couldn't or wouldn't. But yesterday one of the two guys finally could get some and brought it and dumped it in front of the barn. When we got home we started shoveling, and shoveling, and shoveling! It was a huge truck load! More than we could get in the barn! And it was full of chips and splinters and pieces of wood.
We shoveled all we could and the rest is still sitting there! It may last us until next October. But now we have plenty of bedding!

E has just opened the kitchen window and is trying to do away with a chipmunk that has been coming to the birdfeeder. He hates those little varments. All morning we have heard one in the walls of the house, chirping away! Now he hates them even more, because it disturbed his nap!!

I haven't been on here for quite a while. It just seems that there is not much to write about, but I will try to catch up a little.

The weather has been nasty, therefor I've pretty much stayed in the house. Yesterday it sleeted ALL day, then last night we had two inches of snow on top of an inch of ice! EEEK! But today the sun is shining and everything is sparkling and glistening! It is so beautiful! It was 9 degrees this morning and has at least warmed up into the teens.

The horses stayed inside yesterday, and we turned them out while we cleaned the stalls last evening. They ran, bucked, kicked, and farted and had a grand time, then came inside again for the night and had their supper. Today they are out for the day, enjoying the sunshine.

When Ed went to feed the chickens on Monday evening, he discovered that something had pulled the wire away from the side of the chicken house and one of the hens was missing. It was his favorite hen, a very pretty black and white one. There was no sign of a struggle, no feathers anywhere in the pen or the chicken house, no blood, no NOTHING! There were canine prints (dog?) in the snow, but not much. No sign of any thing! I walked out into the pasture, behind the barn, in the back pasture, looking for tracks, and there was nothing. Then, I found a few scratches in the snow, about 20 feet from the chicken house and 3 white and 3 or 4 black feathers. There were some marks in the snow, that would have come from the wing tips hitting the snow. There was no blood, no nothing else. Ed went to the house and called our next door neighbor and she said she bets she knew who it was. One of her dogs. But she said she had seen a strange chocolate lab running around here that day too. But back to her dog, this dog chases her horses something awful. That dog is a bad one and she very well could have been the culprit. Since there were no tracks anywhere else, she could have walked back to the neighbors and no one would have been known she was here. The neighbor came over check it out, and she said she will find another home for her. She called later that evening, and said she had. Ed was upset enough to shoot that dog on sight! Even without actual proof that she did it!! In the years that we have had chickens here, this is the first time we have lost one.

Here are a few photos of our recent activites and the ice.