Chickens and Poison Ivy

**Picture warning....there are a couple of gross poison ivy pictures at the end of the post!!**  :)


A little over a week ago we decided to up our chicken flock by four.  After buying the chickens we brought them to the back of the house and let them go.  Only then did we realize that we had made a bit of a mistake!  They would have no idea where to go in the evening!!

I guess we just thought that they would know where the coop was by osmosis or something!!

Anyways, we realized that we needed to round up the chickens and start them out in the coop.  Easier said than done my friend!!  Boy howdy were those girls flighty!!

On top of the new girls being skittish, one of the old hens was MAD!!  I tell you, she was squawking up a storm.  She followed Farmer Willie around the yard yelling at him for about 30 minutes.

 

Well, the new hens were sooooo fast!  They were running everywhere!!

So imagine us all running around trying to catch these four hens that absolutely do NOT want to be caught.....Oh wait, I can help you imagine it!!  I snapped a picture! :)

After chasing for a while, one of the farm cats decided he would help, so he started running around trying to attach the chickens.  This led to squeals from the peanut gallery and a new sense of urgency to catch them!!  My sweet germ-a-phobic DD #2 even went running into the brush to try and help get them.

So FINALLY we were able to get all four into a temporary coop connected to the hen house.

Of course, two of the older chickens thought it was really interesting to watch the new ones inside the run!!

Well, you know how I mentioned DD #2 pitching in and even going into the brush to try and save the chickens?  Well, I should also mention that she is EXTREMELY allergic to poison ivy and going into the brush, while well intended, ended up being a REALLY bad idea!!

Two mornings later, this is what she woke up to!

One more day passes and it progresses to this....

My poor baby girl!  All she was doing was trying to help!!

Well, her reaction just kept going and she ended up with blisters.  One area of the blisters looked like this....

Soon, she could not move her fingers because of the blisters, so we headed into see her pediatrician.  They cut the blisters opened and cleaned them out really well!

Ended up she had the equivalent of 2nd degree burns due to her reaction.  It has been a rough week and weekend for her, but praise the Lord, she seems to be doing better now!!

So the lessons we learned on the chicken poison ivy day are:

1.  When you get new chickens, start them out in the coop for a bit so they know where to come home to at night.

2.  Play with your cat for a while before you go chasing chickens, or he will think it looks fun and try to chase them with you!

3.  Don't go into the brush if you are allergic to poison ivy.

4.  Roosters help protect hens from playful cats!!  We got one the next day thanks to our awesome neighbor!!

I M.E.T. Him on Monday - Me??!! Director of a Home School Co-p

About 5 1/2 years ago, we were members of a fantastic home school co-op of around 80 families.  The director had done a great job for many years but had decided that it was time for her to move on to other things, so the search for a new director began.

I happen to have just been asked to serve on the board, so I began to pray, along with everyone else, that God would provide the right person for the job.  As I started to pray, I started to feel a slight nudging and hear whispers saying that I should volunteer.

Well....let me give you a little background info....I am NOT a leader!!  Never have been and never will be.  I am a great follower and worker, but definitely not leader material.  I am completely unable to see the "big picture" and heck, I can barely keep myself on task when I just have one thing to do!

Then add to this the fact that the year before, the Lord had been teaching me that the world does not revolve around me :)  I know, it was a shocker for me too!!  I had come to realize that I am selfish and prideful and was about at the bottom of the pit regarding this lesson.

And finally....there was no way in the world that I would volunteer myself!  I mean, how pompous would I look to imply that I could actually do the job!!  Nope!  No way!!

Time passes...tick-tock, tick-tock....and the whisper gets louder and the nudging turns into pushing!  I realize very clearly that the Lord wants me to volunteer.  So I am driving in my car taking a meal to a family with a new baby and I am praying.  I get a bit angry at the Lord for asking me to do this and I verbally said...."God, why would you ask me to do this when You spent the last year showing me how inadequate I am?"  and God said clear as a bell to me...."Because now you will know that it is Me doing it, not you." 

Well, I started bawling in the car!!!  I mean the total ugly cry!!  I dropped off the meal and went home and called the appropriate people and volunteered for the job.

All of this to say that a few months later I was serving as director of an 80 family home school co-op!!  And boy was the Lord right when He said I would know it was Him, because it was all Him!!

I did not have an easy time from the get go.  I don't deal with conflict well and I despise confrontation!!  But He got me through it. 

I served for 2 1/2 years and I can tell you that it was one of the most tumultuous times of my life.  It seems like during my term everything that could go wrong did!  But the Lord was swift to provide joy and peace, a great support system, and a tangible presence in it all. 

Looking back, I have to say that I am sooo glad that learning experience is over, but I also must say that I would not trade it or change it.  During that 2 1/2 years the Lord changed me and changed my heart.  It was a whole lot of lessons in a little bit of time!  Plus, I met some fantastic people!!

Just another example to teach me that though His ways don't always match up with my ways, His will always be the best way!!  :)

Uninvited Guest!!

On graduation day we had an uninvited guest show up!!

Some of the girls were outside preparing for the party when one ran in saying that a snake was crawling towards the stack of chairs.

Of course we all had to go outside and check it out!!  Lo and behold, he slithered his little (HUGE) self into the stack of chairs.

Well, around these parts, we kinda like snakes.  Well, the ones that won't kill ya if they bite ya!!  They eat mice and I do NOT like mice!!

So we thought we would just convince him to keep on moving and head back into the woods.  So we started kindly persuading him.  Now, at this point we could not really see him well to identify him, but by the markings we thought he was either a rat snake (good guy) or rattlesnake (bad guy).  That being the case, we came armed with a hoe and a shotgun.  The hoe was to push him out from the chairs and the gun was in case he was of the bad guy variety!!

As we (Farmer Willie and his brother Gun Slinger) went through the chairs, the little (HUGE) guy got a little spooked and decided that the best place to be was in those chairs.

He did come out once and try to bite Farmer Willie, but FW was quick footed and in a brilliant display of agility, hopped out of the way!

Fast forward about 15 minutes and we finally proceeded to throw all of the chairs to the side and FINALLY nail down our slithering friend.  We then determined that we thought he was a good guy and we would rather get him to go back into the woods as opposed to kill him.

Now keep in mind that all of this is happening about two hours before the guests arrive!  It totally knocks me off of my planned schedule!!  But hey, I dealt with it :)

Okay, so imagine 75 chairs thrown all over the yard and the little (HUGE) guy still not going away.  Oh, you might also imagine the eight pairs of eyes stuck to the glass windows watching and the occasional shriek we here from inside the house.

Because of his stubbornness, it is finally determined that we are going to have to shoot him.  I mean, what kind of graduation would it be if he hung around and nibbled on our guests ankles??!!

So Gun Slinger and Farmer Willie take to the task of eliminating him.  Which they did.  Then we found out that he had eaten the two baby birds that the girls had tried to rescue earlier!!  Circle of life!!

Just one of those exciting little events thrown into life to make it a bit more adventurous!!

Boy are we having a lot of snakes though!!  We see about one every 2-3 days.  Yesterday DD #3 had a ribbon snake, about 3 feet long, crawl across her flip-flopped foot!!  This will totally help my cause of making her and her younger sister wear closed shoes outside!!

Wish I had a picture of that one to show ya!!  :)