Krystal

Can you tell I love to have my picture taken?

Left to right: me, my mom and Grandmama Pittman.
Left to right: me, Grandmama Morton, my mom, Grandmama Pittman

I have been on vacation for most of the past week after a super-busy couple of month at work.

This is a short film that my cousin wrote, directed and starred in.

My cousin, Mittie, made a website for her artwork. Check it out :)

I'm moving the bulk of my cooking posts to our new farm blog. Since cooking is such an integral part of the homesteading experience, I want to include my cooking posts with all our other homesteading information. My original cooking blog will remain open for any fancy projects that may not fit in with homesteading.

We moved our "farming" blog to a new site and posted an update! http://chandlersgrovefarm.blogspot.com/

A Stormy Night in Eastern NC

Lots of Projects...

Garden Salad

Crazy Kitty

It's been a rainy weekend. Yesterday it rained for a while, the sun shone for a while and then it would rain with the sun shining. Today it has pretty much stormed on and off all day. As a result, both border collies are soaking wet and are locked in the kitchen so our whole house isn't soaking wet. As you can see, Angus is pretty sad that he can't be in the back of the house with us.

Cute baby radish!

This is a normal egg:

This is a monster egg:

This is a normal egg (left) and the monster egg (right) side-by-side:

Sunrise over the chicken yard:

 I was named after my paternal great-grandmother, Mama Gladys (She was Gladys Delane and my middle name is Delane). When I was little, she would call me "Pigeon." She died on Mother's Day when I was 10.

 

A long time ago, after Mama Gladys died, my grandfather, had to have surgery to fix a problem with his bladder. My grandfather was a farmer and a painter and was not used to sitting still inside. When he had this surgery, his doctor gave him strict orders to stay inside and stay still. One evening, he was tired of this and he went outside on the porch to look at his fields and possibly to ponder what needed to be done, knowing that he should be inside resting. As he was standing there, disobeying his doctor, a pigeon landed on his arm. He recalled his mother and how she used to call me "Pigeon" and he went back inside. From what he told us later, he took it as a sign of his mother telling him to go back inside and do what he was supposed to.

 

I saw a pigeon today when I was stressing out about something at work and this story came to mind.

<--A random baby dove in our yard

Silly Chickens

A trip to my in-law's to visit the animals (and take them some hens)

Starting our gardens

Easter Eggers are laying!
The

Wow, it's been a busy couple weeks!

This is a busy time of year at work so I've had a lot to do. Lots of employee meetings both group and one-on-one that will likely continue for at least the next month. I enjoy being busy and it makes the time go by quickly.

At home, we've been working on our gardens. Our first garden is planted and we're watching things sprout. We're working on a second vegetable garden bed and a strawberry bed under our shady pear tree. I hope to have the strawberry bed finished this weekend and a good start on the second veggie bed this weekend (Along with mowing the grass). At some point, I think Matthew is going to post about what we've done in our other blog. (I'll post links if he ever does).

The chickens are thriving. We're getting about a dozen eggs a day. We now have two roosters and 15 hens. 3 of the hens are Easter Egger hens which means they have a blue egg gene and, from what I understand, can only lay blue to green eggs (not brown), so we think they are not laying yet. I'll post pics as soon as I have some of any blue eggs.

I haven't had much time for WoW lately. The free time I have has been spent watching TV, playing Rock Band or playing the Sims, mostly. I'm looking forward to seeing some of the new things in WoW that went in with the new content patch once things calm down and aren't so crazy busy.

This weekend is our monthly family pot luck dinner. I'm going to be taking a Quiche Lorraine. Maybe I'll be able to post that on my cooking blog this month...last month's cake turned out to be a disaster...hehe

My family came and visited me at work yesterday and my silly parents, of course, took pictures...


Me and my dad



My mom, my grandmothers and me

Thanks Mezamashii for the quiz ;)

We finally have eggs. The hens started laying today and we have three eggs. The chickens are now five months old.

We aren't really supposed to be going out to eat...must less fast food...but, it's such a dreary, cold and wet Sunday morning that we thought it would be quicker and easier to go to Hardee's for breakfast rather than trying to cook something ourselves (also given the facts that we had no milk and that our oven is still broken).

 

We went to Swansboro and saw that Hardee's was rather busy so we went further down the road to our ATM to get cash so that we could go through the drive thru. We got back to Hardee's and got in the drive thru line. The truck in front of us pulled away from the speaker and we pulled up. Silence. No greeting. Nothing. We waited for about five minutes and Matthew decided that we'd go inside. 

 

The seating area inside was busy but the manager was taking the order of the only person in line (until we got there and then the line filled up again). We walked up to the counter and the manager turned her back on us to help fill some orders, never saying anything to us. She, then, proceeded to put the drive thru headset on her head and take orders. Never once even looking at us...much less saying anything.

So, we walked out. We went to the grocery store and got bagels for breakfast.

 

I did hear one of the employees say to the manager that they were short-handed this morning. And, I understand that this means that those employees that are there have to do extra work to cover for the missing person. However, if you are a customer service employee (or manager) and you can't look at the customers in line and say "I'm sorry but could you hold on for just a minute while I do x," then, you probably need to reconsider your occupation.

It's a beautiful weekend here. 70ish and sunny. Four days ago, we had a covering of snow...gotta love NC!

This past week was superbusy and went by really quickly. I've finally passed through my six month probationary period at work so I'm taking this Thursday and Friday off so that we can go back to Clayton and hopefully fix the house enough where we can put it on the market. Paying for it is killing us.

Today we are working outside pruning our pear tree and work on another compost bin (I also finally updated my food blog). and tomorrow we will hopefully put my good stove in the house. The stove that's in here was put in when the house was built in 1976 and it was still working just fine until last Sunday when the heating element caught fire and went out when I was preheating the oven to make biscuits.

 

Don't forget that Daylight's Savings Time begins tomorrow at 2AM! Time to spring forward!

 It's going to be a long week. Yesterday was a large orientation class that took all day to prepare for, do and process paperwork for. Today, I dealt with employee death benefits from 8am to noon. Then, had a boring meeting about health insurance renewals all afternoon. Also, for those of you that have benefits that require beneficiary information. Please please please keep this information up to date. It's really difficult to have to tell someone's family that you never changed your benefits and your ex-significant other is going to get your benefits rather than your kids.