I am positively gleeful that my good friend, Lauren Scheuer (author of the delightful Once Upon a Flock) is part of my blog tour! When she comes to visit with have a very good time, our dogs play, and we drink a lot of coffee. Which is why I always forget to take photos. But Lauren, always with camera at hand, does take photographs. Go to her blog, Scratch and Peck, to see and to enter a giveaway for The Farmstead Egg Guide and Cookbook.
Today, Melissa at Tilly’s Nest is helping me to celebrate the release of The Farmstead Egg Guide and Cookbook. Melissa and I connected over the internet, and since she lives on Cape Cod, we’ve been able to meet several times in person. She’s a creative and positive person, and I’m so happy that she’s on the blog tour. Tilly’s Nest is having a book giveaway. Stop by to enter!
What with the snow and the bitter temperatures, we’re behind in our ready the yard for springtime chores. Although it still looks like the dreary days of winter, the bluebirds don’t seem to care. They’ve returned. We feel like hoteliers who don’t have our rooms ready for guests. Yesterday, Steve bundled up and cleaned out the bluebird houses in our meadow.
Some years, when he’s cleaned out the debris from the previous summer, mice have jumped out. This year he didn’t have to evict anyone, but he did remove the old nest so that the bluebirds could build anew.
Last year’s nest was beautiful. The bluebirds had used chicken feathers!
I recognize these feathers. They are the soft feathers that the Ladies shed when they were maturing pullets, as they grew their own adult coats. They molted them last spring, just as the bluebirds needed feathers for their nests. I wonder what the bluebirds will use this year. There are no soft feathers, but there is a lot of cozy goat fur. We’ll have to wait until next springtime to find out.
The horses are shedding. They are itchy. They roll. Did I mention that it is mud season?
Here Sister is showing off what mud season looks like at a New England stable.
X (the ex-steeplechase horse) has managed to get his entire right side, and all the way up to – and into his ears – muddy!
Mica has gotten his belly and quarters muddy, but has kept his long forelock golden. Still. Really. What a mess.
Libby proves that just because a horse has on a sheet, that there’s no protection against mud season.
Tonka, however, is the exception to the rule. He does not like rolling in mud. He does roll, but only in pristine snow. This is what he looked like today when I led him out of his squishy, squelchy, muddy paddock. This photo was taken before I groomed him.
Even his white markings are white. Amazing. Unheard of.
Thank you, Tonka.
The first stop on the Farmstead Egg Guide and Cookbook blog tour is with the Chicken Chick. She’s giving away a copy of my book. Stop in here and enter.
