golden dome on new years eve

Pippi

kids at work

Over the past week we had two GIANT loads of crushed ledge delivered and have been working to improve our driveway. Even the kids have pitched in...

a nice family photo. courtesy of Dave

and we shall call you "fish face"

Evie turns SIX!

Evie's official birthday was Friday, but the festivities ran from Wednesday until today - I am sure it makes her Aunt Sarah proud!

AJ tries his hand at flip-shot

Evie convinces Dave to play "Sweet Caroline"

aaron hikes hunger

Some beautiful photos from the summit of one of our local (less than 10 miles from home) hikes. We are headed out this morning for a family hike with the Browns, to take advantage of the fantastic Labor Day weather!

back to the blog

With Aaron starting back at work last week, I guess that means it is time for me to resume blog duties...

We had a great summer, and have plenty of photos to post. I'll start with some particularly cute shots of the kiddos are dressed up for cousin Kurt's wedding in mid-August, featuring AJ's first tie and some new "sparkly sandals" for Evie.

a couple of vacay photos...

(mostly for those of you not on Facebook...)

Summer vacation, new addition, etc

It's been another blog hiatus. I'm off for the summer with the kids, and back on the blog. We've had a couple weeks of traveling, camping and vacationing, but now we're back in VT for the next couple months and ready to catch up.

We took the kids to DC last week to revisit some old stomping grounds and reconnect with some old friends. We picked up another family member on the drive home. We lost Oakley a few weeks ago... while we weren't sure we wanted another pup so quickly, we also didn't want to pass up the opportunity to train an addition while I was home every day for two months. This cutie is Winnie, she's an 11 WEEK old husky mix.

flowers a-plenty

garden's galore

So far this spring, Aaron has built three new raised beds and improved the sub-standard bed I built last spring. Some neighbors have graciously allowed us access to their pile of well-rotted horse manure so that we can fill what has been (re)built. And I have been planting - peas, broccoli, lettuce, spinach, chard... and last weekend we also created a strawberry patch! Hopefully everything will weather the frost predicted for tonight - here's hoping it is the last of the season.

our growing (and shrinking) flock

Right now we have three different groups of chickens around High Meadow Lane - our layers, a small group of cornish x, and a much larger group of "colored range chicks".

The layers have been with us for the better part of a year - but last week we suffered our first casualty. It appears that a weasel (or close relative thereto) got in the fenced pasture we have set up for the ladies while we were at work. Fortunately (knock-on-wood) the offending creature has not been back since. We have also set out some traps, just in case.

The cornish x, which I have posted photos of previously, are now about five weeks old - and should be ready to "harvest" at the end of the month. As you can see, they have spent the past few weeks working long and hard at getting fat, ugly, and perhaps less-obviously delicious.















The colored range chicks were hatched on April 22, and are a slower growing meat bird. We hope to have them outside within the next couple of weeks.

spring is bustin' out all over

Three years ago for Christmas, Sarah gave our family some apple trees and blueberry bushes to plan at the site of our new house. This year we have our first blossoms on some of each!!

another rasied bed

Aaron continues to expand our summer garden opportunities, adding a second, larger raised bed last weekend. Tomorrow we will work to fill it with topsoil and compost... The kids and I spent a couple of hours this afternoon planting peas, spinach, onions, broccoli, and radishes - basically filling the first box!

what a difference a week makes...

Our meat birds are growing rapidly, as would be expected. Whether or not you can tell from the photo, they have already more than doubled in size. In pretty short order here they will start to grow faster than their feathers can keep up with - what could be referred to as their "ugly stage". Although truth be told, it is pretty much all down hill from here in terms of their looks.

cornish rock

We picked up a small batch (six) of meat birds this morning. They are somewhere between 36 and 72 hours old at this point, and will (unbelievably) be ready for harvest by the last week in May or first week in June when will they weigh 6-8 pounds! (It almost doesn't seem possible right now...) We also have about 35 "free range" meat birds coming later this month, which gain weight slightly more - taking 10-12 weeks to get to that size. Aaron and I are both really looking forward to eating meat raised here on High Meadow Lane again soon.

pinwheels