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.