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Family: We’ve have been getting used to our new arrangement of taking and picking up my friend’s little girl from school. It is actually working out well and little man is smitten with her…the feeling is mutual at her end too. I have been working at losing some weight and inches to help with my hernia. I had to raise my headboard 4 inches and take a muscle relaxer at night, but am feeling much better. Sunday dadabean’s mom is coming to take little man back to Alabama for a 1-2 week visit. As little man has never been away from us more than a couple days we are at loss as to how to deal with this. I am sure he will have a blast and the grandparents are excited, but we are anxious at this end. We have not told little man…he would worry us to death about it, so he will be pleasantly surprised when she pulls in the driveway. We are enjoying our little car and so far are sharing it quite well with each other. I can make a whole tank of gas last a month, since I don’t really go that many places.
Bicycles: Saturday we are going to take some of the forest roads on the bicycles. I have been itching to do some riding and if we can take it easy it won’t bother me much. Little man is now able to push off by himself on his bike, so hubby is planning to take him to some trails when he gets back from his visit to grandparents. We are trying to teach the little girl how to ride without training wheels, unfortunately it has been raining so we have only gotten one day at it, but she was doing rather well and enjoying it.
Chickens: Salt, a golden neck polish, game mix has taken Dipsticks place in the rooster we keep. Salt has a better disposition and doesn’t mind being handled. Dipstick is also getting a little too rough with the hens and pullets. Pepsi has hatched out 3 babies, Neva (who is a George baby), Sara, and Stinker (who is a Zanzibar baby). We are excited because we have been wanting a Zanzy baby for a while now. As Sara gets older we will be able to tell who she is from. Neva came from a big egg and is the color George was as a baby. Stinker has five toes like Zanzy.
Knitting: I have completed one of hubby’s socks and am halfway through the cuff on the second. I am using double pointed needles and am getting quite a good handle at them. I will be doing a lot of knitting with little man gone, so I should be able to finish the sock and hubby’s hoodie that I put down in frustration. With exercising more, I am more tired and weak, so I haven’t been able to do much knitting. I am getting more energy, so I will probably be able to actually do some today.
Well that is all for now, hope everyone is doing well.
Ok I have now switched to riding to the library in the evenings now, so that I can leave little man at home with daddy. Which means I have only 2 days that I can come, Tuesday and Thursday. The heat index is reaching to around 110 and up, so it is best he stays home. The heat wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t so blessed humid, but one good thing about the heat is I burn more calories while riding.
Chickens: We have had some hawks hanging around our house since they discovered they could pick off the neighbor’s chickens (got two of her babies ’til she figured it out). Hubby and I have to remember to bring the pellet guns out when we give the chickies their scratch. The hawks tend to come for a small time in the morning and in the evening. Luckily, we haven’t loss any of our chickens to them. We now have over 70 chickens…you would think we would get this addiction under control…. 
Most of those will be butchered due to the fact they are baby roosters. We have had a lot of babies given to us as well as a few of our own being hatched out. George (who’s baby Buffy ate) is now the proud mama of 3 silkie mixes our neighbor gave us to hatch. Dandy (who decided she didn’t like hubby’s tone of voice and flew at him) has a beautiful grey baby. We believe the baby is a blue cochin. Little man lost another tooth (3 so far) and got another chick and recieved a free one from the lady at the store when she heard about our tradition.
Bicycles: Despite the heat I have picked up my riding. I have been slacking and am noticing the effects of being a bum. Hubby got a Schwalbe tire for his bike. He had been out of commission for over a week due to a flat tire. Little man got his new bike for his birthday and loves riding it when he can. He is a little short and needs help starting off, but once he is let loose he does wonderfully. His bike can go on dirt trails, so hubby is going to attach the trailer to his bike and strap little man’s bike to it and take him on some trails.
Knitting: I gotten to the edging part of hubby’s hood and have taken a break. It is giving me fits, plus I need to work on some Christmas gifts. I can’t believe it is already the middle of June. I still have to order more stuff for other gifts. Fingers cross that I get everything done.
If all goes well I will be able to come and devote an hour to the blog. But for now, time to go battle the heat.
You would think by not spending time on the computer- except at the library- that I would have hours of free time. Not happening. I have been on the go all this week…visiting the library twice. So here is the run down at our place.
Bicycles-Hubby got a flat on our way to Wal-Mart during the weekend. He turned around and then used the scoot to finish shopping with us. It turns out that the slime patch didn’t do its job. This got us talking about alternatives to flat tires and has us seriously considering foam inserts. We found a place online that has our size and we can get them in a lot of different colors. The down side is that the minimum order is $200 dollars which equals 20 tires. Still in the decision process…Ups is that we would have spares when the tire eventually wore out, I could have green tires to match all my frog stuff-he would choose red, and it would mean no more flats. Downs is that is a lot of money to save up and where do you put 16 extra tires?
Chickens-Girls are still sitting tight on the eggs. I get to candle them tonight. We ran out of our natural de-wormer, so we had to give the chickens some that we had bought. This meant we couldn’t eat the eggs for a week and I left the eggs for a couple of days. It enticed a couple more hens to go broody, but we broke them up do to the fact we have no way to protect them out in the open. Great thing is that today we can start collecting the eggs again. I ordered the natural de-wormer again and we should be getting it soon. The baby chicks are growing so fast and Snowflake has become such as sweetie sitting on our laps. She is becoming long and lanky and we think she might be a modern. I told hubby that if she is we are renaming her Thoroughly Modern Millie. He laughed. We went out the other evening and didn’t get back until dark. To our pleasant surprise the last of the babies finally put themselves to bed. Yeah.
Knitting-I am about half-way through the front side. With all my running (I should say riding) around I haven’t had much time to knit. Although, I did take some time yesterday to work on it. I am printing out the pattern since I can no longer just look it up. I will also be printing out some other patterns that I will start on when I am finished.
Kittens-Are growing like little weeds and can walk around pretty well now. They come and attack feet when we come in the storeroom. Coon is long-haired and has wide feet. We are going to fix and keep everyone. I am looking into options, but it looks like it will be one a month, starting with mama. It won’t be much longer and they will be eating kitten food.
Well my time is running out…more next week.
OK our computer went kaput on us, so that means weekly trips to the library for a long while. We are still undecided if we are going to get another computer or just travel ourselves to the library (5 miles away) once a week. Upside of no computer is less electricity draw, more time with family, no Internet bill and more bike time. The down side is that no pics on the blog for awhile and no convenient pop onto computer when we have a question or want to research something. As I don’t have much time today I will just give a quick run down on things at our end.
Chickens….We almost have all the babies introduced out into the big flock. We have 4 more which we will be adding this Sunday. We completed the new brooder, but I lost all my pics when the computer died. It has 2 separate sides, so that 2 hens can go broody now. Ginger Ale and Buffy have decided to give each side a try. Ginger the banty is on the larger side sitting on 8 eggs and Buffy the standard orpington is on the small side sitting on 5 eggs. Go figures. The babies are to beginning hatching on the 18th of May. Unfortunately, Ban didn’t work out and we had to butcher him. Moppett has a new home with a family that is absolutely smitten with him.
Bicycles….We have been riding more here lately and are enjoying our new trip computers. We compare what distance we thought we had with the distance actually done and are surprised. There are some we thought we went longer and was actually shorter. There are some that we thought were shorter and are actually the same distance or longer. Now our plan is to go back over all the trips we have done and remeasure them. Little man is getting taller and hubby had to adjust his seat higher on his bicycle. Little man has even ridden on his bicycle to the park with us. He is doing really well.
Knitting…I am on the second strip of the front side of hubby’s hoodie and working steadily. It is going much faster this time. I should have the front side completed in the next week. I have been drooling over knitting catalogs and have a few of my next projects planned out.
Our kittens have their eyes open and are toddling about. Little man’s loose tooth is getting closer to being pulled. Not much else at the moment. See ya’ll next week.
As you can see here, Tal and I went on a grocery run, to Dollar Tree and Mal Wart. This is probably the maximum amount I can carry with his 30+ pounds on the back. I had to put him on first, then load the groceries around him. I have a special bungie cord I carry along now to keep the front wheel straight while I load the front rack. 
This is the load. Those are 3 litre bottles, a little heavier than I am used-to. The bird seed will be mixed with scratch feed for the chickies.
It feels a little strange, pulling out onto Crawfordville Highway with a bicycle loaded to bear with groceries and my son, with huge pickup trucks and SUV’s all around us. We aren’t the only ones here that use alternative transportation means, but there certainly aren’t many. One elderly lady has an electric-powered three-wheel bicycle, and rides all over the county with it. That thing can book! I don’t think I could keep-up with her if I were to try. She appears to cruise along at about 20mph. I can attain 21mph, but with a good tailwind in third gear. I have seen one family walk to the store with their wagon and park it at the bike rack. Otherwise, it’s just the odd person on foot.
I know that attitudes are changing in this country about our fuel usage and folks are wising up to alternative transportation, but being in a small town in Northern Florida, it’s hard to tell by looking around. I know that auto and truck traffic on Crawfordville Highway hasn’t lessened any that I can see. People will tell us that it’s so good that we ride our bikes everywhere, but they don’t want to try it themselves. Since when did people get so lazy?
cyclingchicken
dadabean