jenny & jake
People often ask us, rather bemused, if our dogs have ever hurt the chickens. And from stories we’ve heard, practically every household pet has attacked a friend’s chickens from time to time. But our three giant canines — Linus, Lola and Sammi Lu — have loved our chicks since day one. In fact, they approach them as part of the family…with more curiosity than aggression…even when the birds eat their dog food and camp out in their house. Last summer when we were traveling the chicks must have gotten all discombobulated with the changes in routine and started laying eggs in the doghouse instead of the coop. Michelle, who was farm sitting, said gathering eggs each day was kind of like an Easter Egg hunt. Yet despite three Great Danes sharing that big doghouse, we can honestly report not a single egg was broken. The beasts simply moved the eggs out of their way or pushed them into a corner. True story.
So we weren’t at all surprised by yesterday’s report from Tractor Supply of a Great Dane that has adopted a blind chick and its buddy.
Jake and his chicks
From Tractor Supply:
Not every chick has it easy starting out, and not every mother is what you might expect. Take the story of Jenny and Jake…
“We take really good care of our chicks during #ChickDays at Tractor Supply. Today while feeding and watering before we headed out I noticed one little chick that wasn’t acting like the others. When I picked her up I noticed she was born blind. I knew the poor thing was probably starved and thirsty…so I filled a 3cc syringe with water and sav-a-chick electrolytes and she drank the entire thing.
Knowing that she would need to be syringe fed I boxed her and a buddy up and brought her home for the night to at least try and help her…well…sometimes all a baby needs is its momma…well in this case momma is my 170lb Great Dane named Jake who has taken the chick under his “wing.” 9ccs of a chick mash dinner and more water and they’re curled up under mother hen asleep…and he won’t leave them.”
Read original post here.
soulful tables
.
.
Bookmark this wonderful site: Catherine’s Table. Created by Maureen and Mark Goldman, this family enterprise was inspired by warm, loving moments experienced around the dining table. “When I think about comfort, soul, expressing love through craft, I think about the table. It is absolutely the place for us to be,” Maureen explains. All of the “comfort crafts” featured on Catherine’s Table are made by American artists and meant to be used as part of our everyday lives. Mike and I visited Maureen and Mark’s home in December and came away with probably more than our budget really allowed, but most importantly we came away with two new friends. One of our favorite finds was this bread/cheese board made from a reclaimed slate shingle gathered from an old barn that’s long since gone. Watch a video on the artist T. Michael here.
Easter, Mother’s Day, Graduation Day, Father’s Day – there are many reasons to gather in the coming months. Here’s to celebrating all those special moments and more at your own family table.
ark time
.
.
So, it’s probably a good thing we don’t keep horses in the back pasture, right?
home stretch!
With temperatures inching up past 70 degrees in Atlanta this week, some of us are getting a bit of a spring tease. And yes, winter will remind us soon enough it’s still here, but a lot of people are going around in a happier state knowing that we’re coming into the home stretch.
NPR has released its first “Cabin Fever” playlist — a crowdsourcing effort where folks from around the country submitted happy songs that get them up and moving about. And so for these next few weeks, here it is to help beat any lingering winter doldrums.
NPR’s Cabin Fever Playlist
(Hint: log in and listen with Spotify.)
keeping the flame alive
.
.
All the snow and winter mayhem this week had us thinking a lot about warmth. When we bought the farm there was no working heater or AC. Mike spent that first long winter living in the empty house by himself, stripping walls and floors and ceilings and painting just about everything he could touch for weeks on end. In the end, we estimate about 70 gallons of primer and paint was used (and that’s just on the inside) before the old place started to come alive again.
There was no furniture at the time — nor heat — so Mike spent each winter evening huddled by a 40-year-old Buck Stove for company. That, along with an air mattress and a plastic laundry basket turned upside down for a dinner table, was about all he had. And I think he loved every minute of his solitude that winter, especially the nights by the fire.
Truth be told, I hated that hunk of wood-burning cast iron at first. Tacky. Rusty. Too country. Boy was I wrong. Not only did it keep our man warm, but it has come to serve as the centerpiece of the great room where we gather to eat, watch movies, play board games, gaze out the windows at the horses, the dogs, the pond, the deer who tiptoe into the open when they think no one’s watching, an occasional hawk, crane, even coyote, and the comical parade of wild turkeys and their babies. The old stove anchors the room — and our home — and we’ve come to cherish it. So much so that we burn fires in it almost year-round now, and when we built the little pool cabana outside we found another Buck Stove in a store’s back lot in Kennesaw and hauled that baby all the way to Alabama.
In “The Joys of a Wood-Burning Stove” (Wall Street Journal), Ruth Graham shares her own appreciation after a long winter in rural New Hampshire. “Tending to the stove has turned out to be a deeply satisfying daily ritual. Before bed, we fill up the stove; each morning, we load new logs onto the smoldering embers; in between, we stoke it every couple of hours. As long as we tend to it, the fire never dies—a nice metaphor for life….” Amen.
Subscribe to future posts
