Brace yourselves.  There are pictures of me in this post.  I try to avoid showing my non – photogenic self here, but Neve got hold of the camera this weekend.  I do love seeing things from her perspective.

We still haven’t built our goat shed.  We’re running out of time – let’s pray the nice weather holds so we can get it done!  Instead we had to clear out all the old scrub pines that threatened to fall on the house during the snow storm (I figured all it was going to take was one good rocking thunderstorm this spring and they’d all be down for sure – most likely on the goat shed).

The animals thought we were chopping up their snacks into smaller, bite – sized pieces.

The bonus is we’re getting more sun in their space now, so we’ll be less likely to wind up with a mud pit back there.  Anyway, chopping down trees is a lot of work and it’s time consuming, and it really stinks when you hire someone to do it for you and the guy never shows up.

I’d now like you to know that while I was typing this Oona brought me the sponge from the kitchen sink – she and it were covered in soap suds.  I have no idea how she got it.

Besides massive deforestation in our back yard we also added to our chicken flock.

We got one Barred Rock hen (the black and white one there) and five  Black Star girls – they are a cross between the Barred Rock breed and the Rhode Island Red breed.  That means they’ll be fantastic egg layers.  Emily and Maddie named them in the car on the way home.

They are: Sandy, Angie, Chewie, Miss Endive, Panini and Lady Gaga.  I named two of them.  Guess which!

In honor of bringing home our new girls we combined our two coops and pens into one.  Everybody is out back together along with Jerry and Milkshakes.  Now they can free – range over a large area and still have the protection of an electric fence (the guard llama doesn’t hurt, either).

It was sunny and in the 60’s all weekend and we definitely were feeling the spring fever.

Before Neve commandeered the camera she chased down all the chickens, trying to hold every last one of them.

Emily has given up eating chicken completely and won’t hear of me raising any meat birds.  I’d have to do it without her help or involvement of any kind if I went that way.

Milkshakes is like a puppy  – she follows us all over, wagging her little tail and asking for pets.  She and Oona were getting along famously – she even ate out of Oona’s hand – until Oona started waving a stick in her face.  Then all bets were off and Milkshakes decided that butting Oona would be better than eating out of her hand.  I had to keep them separated after that.  Don’t wave sticks in pregnant goat’s faces.  Apparently, they don’t like it.

She’s loving my attention here, but what you don’t see is that I am holding her back from running after Oona in order to knock her down.

Mr. Roo is starting to feel better, but he’s still the low man on the rooster totem- pole.  I’ll feel better about him once he’s put back on some weight.

Neve took this picture of Oona and I find it hilarious.  You can see the dirt and snot and crud on her face and her chopped – up hair  and her broken front tooth that turned grey (she’s seeing the dentist this week about that).  True , unadulterated Oona.

That was our weekend in a nutshell.  Minus the full – on hissy fit I threw over the state of the house.  You know how it is – you spend every day cleaning up the same messes and looking at the same crap that no one cares to help you with.  Every so often, it really gets to me and I have to leave the house and go to the farm store for awhile and buy new chickens and then go wander around Target until I feel better.  And then I go home and clean up the mess that made me feel so crazy and overwhelmed to begin with.  It does no good, of course, because my kids are very, very good at their jobs of slovenliness and filth – making.

There’s consolation, though.  It’s bad for my waist – line, but it’s an oasis of serenity I discovered just this evening.  Why, oh why did my Southern friends not ever tell me about Buttermilk Pie???  Why did I have to wait through 13 years of life in the South to find it?  I’ll tell you – I may be a Yankee girl through and through, and I may have New England stamped all over my heart, but nothing – and I mean nothing – compares to a love affair with Southern food.  It’s like being welcomed home with a warm blanket and fluffy pillow and assurances that you are fine, the world is fine, and everything will always be fine, as long as you EAT.THIS.PIE.

Really now, I wish my time on teh elliptical machine didn’t always hurt so much, because now that I have added this pie to my repertoire I am going to be needing to work off beaucoup calories.