Say Hi to Laddie!

Say Hi to Laddie!!!!

He came to live with us today. He's very skittish, not being around kids very much and all of our commotion so it will take some time. He and I sat on the swing for awhile tonight, watching the kids swim and I think he is going to be fine.

And of course I've been hatching eggs!

I chose mostly my Cuckoo Maran eggs because they are a beautiful dark brown. I also chose a couple of Americanas that were crossed with my Maran rooster. Two years ago I crossed Americanas with a Barred Rock rooster and got hens that laid really cool olive eggs and some even had brown speckles.

I hatched a couple of those too. Here are the empty shells that hatched. The two olive ones are from those Americans/Barred Rock crosses that I love so even though I only got nine to hatch I'm very happy.

Here's the first one hatching but it was upside down in the egg so I had to help it a little. It cried and cried til I opened it up a little. It was a little too bloody to open all the way so I was going to wait til the morning but when I got up it was out! Very cool.

The only bad thing is that now I can't tell them apart.

There is one that is definitely smaller so it has to from the pale blue egg.

Fishing Report!

Kevin started fishing in earnest out at my mom's lake and he has been catching some good ones. This was a really big crappie. At first when I saw the picture I thought it was a largemouth.




My BIL Tom caught this nice bass. The beer can is for a size comparison. Of course they took no measuring tape with them. The crappie was definitely a Fish Ohio fish.









Kevin caught this nice bass too. Don't know how big, again no tape or scale.

He was really surprised when he reeled in this northern pike. He didn't know that they have had a stocking program there for the last 30 years.

He, of course, didn't keep the bass or the pike or even the giant crappie but.....

He did keep some from the next trip last weekend. A nice perch, I made him put it back together so I could take a picture, he had already started cleaning it before I took it.

And I think he said that this was a black crappie.

Bunches of fish for dinner.

And if you notice, he is cleaning them on the table in the kitchen. Don't tell my mom or my sister. My mom thinks it is against the law to clean fish in the house and the table that he is cleaning them on is my sisters. He put down plastic and plenty of newspaper so there was no mess at all.

I think one time my dad cleaned fish in the house and he scaled them. The end result was a kitchen full of mess. Kevin filleted his so no resulting scaly mess.

Yummy!

Til next time,

Beth

PS. Hopefully I'll get off of my lazy behind and post more often. I have a post all ready with pictures of the rock wall progress but never got the energy to sit and write the words. Some of the pictures were out of order and it's hard to change them around so I got discouraged.

(Here's a picture of me that Kevin just took while I was working on this post, check out my helper.)