chicken butt adventures!

wow!-11 days of being snow bound-unable to drive up our driveway. we relied heavily on neighbors and sleds to bring things in-thank you rhodie for groceries and the use of your dryer and birdsong and glenn for chicken feed! we live on top of a hill-the boys and neighbor kids had a blast sledding all the time. my dryer broke and we couldn't use the clothesline-i would haul wet clothes up hill to rhodie's-and then ride it down in the sled dried-yee ha! what a fun ride! only took a few seconds to ride down it was so fast!!!we've been getting caught up on our schooling but i've been so worried about ruth-our sick hen. she has lived in the laundry room for 2 weeks i put vitamins and echinacea in her water, fed her lot's of healthy food but no egg in 2 weeks-that's bad. egg binding can kill a hen. and trying to help her get that egg out can give her a heart attack and kill. so-i figured either way she could die. never, never, never in my whole life did i ever think i could do what i was about to do- lube up my fingers(gloved) and stick them up my chicken's butt!!! wow- i felt for stuck eggs and lubed her all up inside and then massaged her stomach toward the vent.(butt) i was trying hard not to remember old john waters films that dealt with x-rated chicken scenes-i'll spare you the details!!!
afterwards i put ruth to bed and expected her to be dead by morning- low and behold-maybe it was the fingering or maybe it was the canned salmon i fed her that day- but she looked great the next day-and she layed an egg!!!!oh happy day!!! i plan on reintroducing her back into the flock tomorrow night. i will stick her in the coop after the others are asleep-hens can be nasty.

during the big storm my boy liam turned double digits-the big 10(shit!) we weren't able to do much but today-he was in heaven we went to town!!!!! and hit some yard sales-he got ootles and ootles of his kinda things-old stuff-bottles,tins and insulators-he was in heaven here's a box of old bottles he got for one dollar:i won't bore you with all his scores-but i will bore you with some of mine!!!! one place we went to was a sale from a deceased mountain man- i scored handmade leather shoes: for 3$
hand sewn fur pants for 5$a jesus, mary and joseph pendant for my catholic mother-i wore it to spinning saturday later in the day-wonder if anyone noticed-most folks know i don't follow the faith of my upbringing- though i still love the icons and myths.now here's a real score:a good day was had-and now it's late and need to get off le machine-but it was great to get off the hill and shop and go to spinning saturday-haven't been there in ages. saw lot's of old friends and met new ones!!! too bad i forgot my camera!!! there was so much beautiful color happenings going on!!!