Grandson Owen

This is Owen sitting in my lap listenig to my heartbeat.

Do you notice the dreamy look on his face?

That is because he is just like his cousin Aden was and he will fall asleep if I lay him on my chest/belly with an ear to my heart. I hope he doesn't outgrow it as fast as she did though.  She caught on quick that laying on Grandpa's chest = nap.

.

 

But then my stomach rumbled !

And here he is looking over Grandma's shoulder

This little guy isn't always serious, but it sure is difficult to get a good picture of him smiling, they always end up a little out of focus because he is a little wiggle worm. Of course the fact that my dead camera decided to come back to life with a zombie like existance and only takes about 1 out of 20 good pictures doesn't exactly help much either.

Some of his first solid food...rice cereal.

And more today.

Waiting for the next spoonful,  I think he likes it.

After his cereal I was showing him some of the photos I had taken of him and we were picking out a few for this blog.

He wasn't too happy with some of my choices, especially the almost nude ones with just his diaper on!

So, I let him pick out the ones he wanted to show you.

He was much happier then, and didn't even put up a fuss when Grandma took him for a nap.

Yup, Grandkids ARE the reward for letting your children live.

"Why DID the chicken cross the road?"

I went online to find an answer to this question. Here is a small part of what I found:

The exact origin of the riddle is obscure. Its first known appearance in print occurred in 1847 in The Knickerbocker, a New York monthly magazine.

The joke is reportedly codified into law in at least one municipality of the USA.

A Quitman, Georgia ordinance prohibits chickens from crossing the road.



Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road?

EXPLAINED

This joke is perhaps one of the most often quoted Q/A style jokes, but often people fail to realize exactly what they're saying. The joke is so internalized in most people (at least in North America) before they have developed the critical skills necessary to understand the joke, that years later when the development of these skills has finally borne fruit, many fail to re-examine their understanding of the joke.

For reference, the joke is as follows:

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?

A: To get to the other side.

Here's how to understand the joke:

This joke works off the fact that the answer, "[t]o get to the other side," is self-evident. To clarify, imagine this joke being prefaces by a slew of similar jokes, but with different, more absurd punchlines. For example:

Q: Why did the cow cross the road?

A: To go to the moooooo-vies!

Q: Why did the bunny cross the road?

A: Because a car was coming!

Now, we attach our subject joke. Notice how this new context affects the punchline:

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?

A: To get to the other side.

The unexpected, patently obvious answer stands in stark - and, it is expected, humourous - contrast to the other jokes. I speculate that the genesis of the chicken-joke lies in some situation such as the one illustrated above, but over time the original context of the joke was lost, which left the chicken sadly decontextualized.

This joke has become so decontextualized over time that many people don't even know what they're trying to say when they reference the joke. I have observed this joke cited as an example of bad humour1, as "the first joke"2, &c. It is not a side-splitter, it's true, but in its proper context I'd say it's funnier than the jokes that preface it, in the manner of the "Orange you glad I didn't say banana" punchline in the well-known "Knock Knock" joke is the payoff to all the banana "jokes" that have come before. Further, it is highly unlikely that this is the original joke, as humour must have existed before the existance of roads, and perhaps even before the Gallus genus (e.d. : chicken species).

WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?


Answers by the famous and infamous:



Plato: For the greater good.

Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.

Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.

Hippocrates: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in it’s pancreas.

Jacques Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!

Thomas de Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.

Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.

Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.

Oliver North: National Security was at stake.

B.F. Skinner: Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.

Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.

Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.

Ludwig Wittgenstein: The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.

Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.

Aristotle: To actualize its potential.

Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken nature.

Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurence.

Salvador Dali: The Fish.

Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.

Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.

Epicurus: For fun.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.

Johann von Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.

Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.

Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.

David Hume: Out of custom and habit.

Jack Nicholson: 'Cause it (censored) wanted to. That's the (censored) reason.

Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road?

Ronald Reagan: I forget.

John Sununu: The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation, so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the opportunity.

The Sphinx: You tell me.

Mr. T: If you saw me coming you'd cross the road too!

Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.

Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.

Molly Yard: It was a hen!

Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.

Chaucer: So priketh hem nature in hir corages.

Wordsworth: To wander lonely as a cloud.

The Godfather: I didn't want its mother to see it like that.

Keats: Philosophy will clip a chicken's wings.

Blake: To see heaven in a wild fowl.

Othello: Jealousy.

Dr Johnson: Sir, had you known the Chicken for as long as I have, you would not so readily enquire, but feel rather the Need to resist such a public Display of your own lamentable and incorrigible Ignorance.

Mrs Thatcher: This chicken's not for turning.

Supreme Soviet: There has never been a chicken in this photograph.

Oscar Wilde: Why, indeed? One's social engagements whilst in town ought never expose one to such barbarous inconvenience - although, perhaps, if one must cross a road, one may do far worse than to cross it as the chicken in question.

Kafka: Hardly the most urgent enquiry to make of a low-grade insurance clerk who woke up that morning as a hen.

Swift: It is, of course, inevitable that such a loathsome, filth-ridden and degraded creature as Man should assume to question the actions of one in all respects his superior.

Macbeth: To have turned back were as tedious as to go o'er.

Freud: An die andere Seite zu kommen. (Much laughter)

Hamlet: That is not the question.

Donne: It crosseth for thee.

Pope: It was mimicking my Lord Hervey.

Constable: To get a better view.

P.E.T.A.:  We must raise the road and install tunnels to provide safe access for the chickens.

George W. Bush:  It had the WMD's.

Barrack Obama: In hopes of getting our Government Healthcare Plan.

Roseanne Barr:  "Burp" What chicken?



After hours of study I stll had no answer to the question.
But even more important to me was to find an answer to my question: "Why do MY chickens cross the road?"
They dislike the traffic very much.  The shrubbery is the same as I have growing on my side of the road.  There is no evidence of them laying eggs there.  So why do they cross the road????
                                                                                

Well I Know why "Goldie" did.

To bring home her friends.

simple sunday

One day, maybe I too can say this!

But not for a while yet.
Yesterday it was: Take care of the animals, eat breakfast, load up the truck with rakes, pitch fork, and other impliments of destruction, comense picking up brush piles, stacking branches for kindling, cutting limbs off downed trees, sawing up said trees, piling wood and branches onto pick-up, unloading pick-up and stacking wood, repeat ad infinum....until so tired and sore it hurt to think.
Put chainsaws, axes and machetes away.
Take care of animals in near darkness.
Pray to God the pain meds kick in soon and WORK!!!!
Make a very quick, very late supper.
Sit down to eat and THEN wish we had put it all in the blender, because we were too tired to chew.
Zone out in front of the TV and watch whatever was on the channel the TV was on because it hurt too much to reach for the remote.
Watch muscles twitch and spasm instead.
Go to bed, toss and turn, moan and groan, repeat every other second for the next few hours because it is impossible to find a comfortable position and too tired to get out of bed to get more pain meds.
Finally pass out in the wee hours of the morning only to be woken up a couple of hours later out of a horrendous nightmare by the dogs wanting to be let out for their morning constitutional.
Only twice as sore as when laid down to sleep.
Take stronger pain meds.
Wait an hour for the dogs to come back in and the pain meds to kick in.
Go back to bed and try again to get some sleep.
Wake up a couple of hours later to another glorious morning, sore and with a drug hangover from the pain meds, decide today to "take it easy".
The dogs had woken Wifey up to go out about an hour after I had let them in. She had already taken care of the animals and was preparing breakfast.  Evidently her pain meds worked better than mine and she had gotten some restful sleep!
After breakfast I got busy repairing and repainting our fresh eggs for sale sign while she started laundry.
Then I had to repair the clothes line which had broken.
Next I hooked up the set of discs to the lawn tractor so Wifey could disc up some of the garden spot. The results were less than satisfactory so we gave that up and Wifey decided to run the lawn sweeper instead.
While she was doing that I fabricated a hay rack for a rabbit pen out of some old stock fencing (it's supposed to rain tomorrow so I will make more for the rest of the rabbit pens then).
Then I proceeded to dismantle the wood stove chimney to clean it.  (About this time my step-mother came over for a visit, I let Wifey entertain her, she needed the rest). The pipes were full of creasote deposits so I needed something to scrape out the inside of the pipe, I proceeded to fabricate an appropriate tool for the job (now I will be able to finish the job with a chimney brush).  I replaced a rusted out elbow and decided I needed a new bracket to hold the outside pipe in place because I plan on extending the hieght of the chimney. I also have a few modifications to make on the inside, but that will have to wait as it is getting late again.
A quick supper of leftover homemade chicken soup and out to take care of the animals....in the dark again!
Two hours in front of this idiot box and now I am off to relax before going to bed again.
I am glad I decided to take it easy today.....Owen will be here an 6:30am!!!

My Flock

This is what greets me every time I step out of the house.  The chickens come running from everywhere.  Then no matter what direction I turn I am surrounded.

When they figure out I don't have any FOOD for them, they usually disperse, but sometimes the roosters start getting romantic and then they RUN......

Blackbeard and Mini-Me have formed an allience and hunt the hens.

Big Red usually hunts alone, but that can be dangerous....

A sneek attack by an outraged hen is successful.

And poor Red needs some comforting after recieving a real thumping.

And of course Goldie wants to be held too!  The roosters are still on the attack!

But what's this....competition?   Nope, she didn't even want to be touched. Shw was just using me for a shield against the Roo's

But the rest of the hens have to find their own solutions.

Can you see me now!!!

And the result of all of this mayhem....

Danni's Fettish

This post is a special request, from a special friend.

The things I won't do for my readers. 

Enjoy Danni

Hands and feet were flying....

Thats It...He's Had Enough!

Goldie

I introduced you to Goldie in my last blog. She is my very friendly hen who has attached herself to me. I can't step outside without her coming coming up to me and begging to be held. She also follows me around the yard and ends up underfoot occassionally. She just loves to be held and I have done so for as long as a half an hour and so far have never had her mess on me. She doesn't even mind taking a ride on my Amigo with me.

I think it all started out when she was a chick. We had noticed that one of them was not hand shy and often would come right up to your hand and wait to be picked up. then it would sit in your palm and wait to be petted.

Never having a pet chicken before, we really didn't pay all that much attention to it. But every now and then would take the time to play with this chick.

When she got about this size, she would fly to the top if the half wall to their pen, and step onto your outstreatched finger or hand to be petted. My wife got a big kick out of this and named her Goldie. This became a daily routine whenever my wife entered the coop, and soon others were flying up to the top of the wire fencing and out of the pen, so we had to finish the wall.

From then until the chicks were big enough to roam with the rest of the flock Goldie recieved little if any attention. Once set free to roam she became just another hen. Until about six weeks ago.

One day I was outside just enjoying the cool air after letting the chickens out and taking care of the rabbits, when I felt this tapping on my moccasins. This in itself was nothing new as most of the chickens do so, looking for bits of hay, straw or food that may have dropped on them, or just picking at the laces. (yes I know I said I do everything barefooted, but lately I have succumed to wearing moccasins to keep the build up of poo from between my toes. Must be old age setting in.) But then I felt a weight on my foot and looked down to see one of our Buff Orphingtons perched there looking up at me. I reached down to pet it expecting it to flee like the rest do, but instead she sat down on my foot and started this low clucking noise that I swear was as close to hearing a chicken purr like a cat as it could. I then picked her up into my arms remembering that little chick that my wife had so much fun with, and said her name out loud as I continued to stoke her. That started my new frienship with a chicken. Now it's a daily thing. And she even comes to the call of her name. The rest of the birds look at us like we are both crazy except for the roosters who look threateningly. At first I never hand fed her, until one day when the grandkids came over and I showed off my new pet they wanted to feed her. So now she occaisionally get a few treats.

She has learned to tollerate Bear's big black nose checking her out, and even the cat's presence while I hold her while sitting on the porch swing. And yes even my grandson's heavey handed pettings.

Here she is waiting to be picked up.

And that demanding stare. (you married guy's know this look right)

Finally the tapping on my foot.

And Grace patiently waiting her turn in my lap.



Yes she even follows me out to take care of the "Boys".

All in all, it's kind of fun to have a pet chicken here on the 5 acre farm.

GRANDKIDS

I Know it has been a long time since my last blog, and I won't bore you with excuses. So let me just start fresh.  We have been watching our grandson Owen for the last couple of weeks while mom and dad are at work.  I try to be helpful to my wife who does about 99.9% of the work.  And I just hang around being her go-fer. I go fer diapers, bottles, clothes and all of the other baby  paraphenalia.  Oh, I sometimes hold him and feed him and every now and then get to rock him to sleep.  But he is definately Grandmas Boy.  For now anyway.

  

I will get my chance later.  But for now he is a squirmmy little butterball (that grandma just adores), and that makes it a challenge to get a photo of those special moments.

Oh, soooo sleepy.......

Now I didn't forget the other two....

They were here on Monday and stayed the night.  They got to see, pet and feed Papa's pet chicken.

Goldie is a very special hen. The only chicken that I have ever raised that likes to be held and petted.

And they got to see my new bunnies.

This is 0-2.   WHY you ask?  Because 0-1 was already taken (Owen). And it's cute and cuddley, and chubby too!!!  So wifey named it 0-2.

These are the twins, they are about 10 days younger than 0-2.

While they were enjoying the pleasant weather in the back yard, my little chicken chaser Ethan, would not take either his father's or my advice not to chase the hens or tease the roosters.  Both of the children have had run-ins with my Big....Mean............

"MR. ROOSTER" .   Sadly Ethan ended up chaing a hen he thought was Goldie into the chicken run.  Mr. Rooster came running to the commotion and scratched Ethan in the back of the leg.  Scaring the daylights out of him, but not stopping him from shaking his fists at the mean old rooster.

He had another close call as his parents were leaving, but he managed to out run him.

Now he was terrified of Mr. Rooster and stayed close to Grandma or me!

Grandma and I were taking care of the rabbits and Aden kept an eye out for that "Bad Chicken" and both of them were hiding behind me!

Well somehow that SLY old bird made an end run behind the chicken coop and snuck up an us from behind!!!

Aden pushed her brother behind her and stood between Mr. Rooster and his intended victom. She got spurred in the leg for her bravery.   

I kicked Mr. Rooster in the head a few times to stop his attacks, and then had to back him down and chase him away, just to remind him just WHO was boss on this farm.

Aden was crying and wanted to know why he attacked her, she sobbed "I didn't do anything to HIM".

All of a sudden Goldie came right up to her and made a few clucking sounds.  I told Aden that Goldie was very concerned about her,  and she quieted down while petting the sympathetic hen.

The next day, the kids were walking around the yard with grandma while I was at the chiropractors, and spotted this....

an Eastern Milk Snake.  It was about a foot long and was probably a young adult as they only reach about 20 inches long.  They are rare in this area, and I had never seen one in the wild before.  It had gotten from the grass in the yard into the thorny flowering shrubs which are also full of raspberry bushes. And they were trying to catch it to show me.

Now I know this may not sound like such a big deal.  But my wife is about as afraid of snakes as anyone can be.  And for her to be trying to catch this little beast who was not only striking at them but vibrating its tail like a rattler is  truely amazing.  She had half of her body stuck into those thorny shrubs with a plastic bucket and a stick and was doing her best to get the snake into the bucket, with the two kids hollering encouragement as Dan and I pulled into the driveway.  I tried my best but the little guy got into the base of a large clump of shrubs and got away under the mulchand debris.  So we came into the house and looked it up online and had sort of a snake study lesson going on.

All in all, it was quite an exciting couple of days, for all of us.