Tea Party

One of Mary's friends (Lyla) invited her over for a tea party this week. Mary looked forward to it for several days. They did it up with cucumber tea sandwiches, chocolate covered apricots, tea cookies, biscotti, and Earl Grey tea. They used her grandmother's tea pot and cups.

Angle grinder = good

Bought an angle grinder tool this week. Just used it to sharpen a spare set of blades for my bush hog. Worked well. Very nice tool for sharpening blades, axes, etc.

Cold temps here this week

We had morning low temperatures of 37, 36, and 41 degrees on the farm this week. On the coldest morning the dew drops on the roof of my car were solid ice and there was a thin layer of frost on my windshield. The days turned out to be sunny, clear, and warm. Just delightful weather.

Chicken update

The chicks are all doing well, we still have all ten of our golden comet hens. We built a little pen for them outside and they spend a few hours outside every day. The chicks still are living most of the time in our kitchen in a big water trough with a heat lamp. We plan to move the chicks outside for good in the next week.

Garden

Over the weekend I used the tractor and boxblade to rip up some ground for a garden. Tonight we have a guy coming with a tiller to till the garden up for us. We measured the garden last night, it is 68' x 26'. We might make it a little bigger. A couple of days ago Debby took the kids to the fruit and berry patch and they picked strawberries. Debby bought 50 strawberry plants which will go in our garden. Debby and the kids have already started other plants for the garden.

Fireflies and stars.

Last night I finished up chores late and it was getting dark and the sky was very beautiful with lots of stars. The fireflies were out in good numbers, blinking away in the fields surrounding the house, looking a little bit like stars themselves.

No more prisoners!

This week I built a landing board on the breeder loft and made an opening so the breeder pigeons could go in and out. The weather has been beautiful and my other pigeons just love to come and go. My breeders are my most valuable birds, most have never flown before, several were acquired from other lofts. Giving these birds their freedom is risky as I might lose some. However, at this point I have enough good birds so I don't need to worry about losing a few. So far so good, all of the pigeons now have their freedom throughout the day, I do close up the lofts at night.

Cashless society

On my recent trip to Vancouver I saw several currency exchanges in the airports and in the city, however I did not get any Canadian currency. I did not use US currency either, these days I rarely have cash. I just used my credit/debit card, it is accepted just about everywhere and worked fine during my visit to Canada.

International Blogging

I'm in Vancouver, BC for PAC09 with about 1400 other particle accelerator nerds from around the world. I've never been to Vancouver before, it's quite nice, right next to the Pacific, beautiful snow capped mountains, and lovely weather. This picture was taken with my cell phone yesterday as I was going from the airport to my hotel via taxi. Nice scenery.

Dance Recital

Mary is taking dance classes and has been preparing for the Arts in Motion Spring 2009 dance recital. It was a really big affair, with several performances held at Roane State Community college. Good pictures will soon be added. The production, costumes, set, music ... everything was superb.

$100 mouse

A week ago it warmed up a little and we decided to turn the AC on at the house for the first time this year. The AC would not come on, the system made heat but no AC. So we called to have someone come out to fix it. Chris, the repairman, removed the service panel on our outside AC unit and we were greeted with the sight of a dead mouse. Chris said this was the first time he had seen a mouse get into one of these, they are sealed up pretty well. We have some determined mice on our farm. Apparently the mouse got in, chewed through a low voltage valve reverser control wire, and later was electrocuted on a high voltage terminal connection. Chris repaired the wire, charged up our freon, and our AC was back in business. Fortunately the weather has been mild and we have not really needed any AC yet. Our deductible for the service call was $100.

Chicks!

After John's birthday party we stopped by the farmer's co-op, I needed to get a few T posts. We walked in and saw these cute chicks. We ended up buying 10 chicks, a heat lamp, a drinker, two feeders, and 25 lbs of chick starter feed.

Suburban meets Odyssey

Just after John's birthday party (which was great by the way) at the skating ring we were involved in a little mishap. Our Suburban bumped into an Odyssey in the parking lot, the bumper on the Suburban got a little scratch, the Odyssey's radiator was punctured so it needed to be towed. No one was hurt, fortunately we've not had any accidents in many years.

Spee and Claire

Spirit, we call him "Spee", is a growing boy and enjoys taking naps, especially on a nice spring day. Mary is petting him, Morgan is guarding the situation.