New and eggciting!

I've been a bad blogger. Like so many others I read, the late summer beauty and weather has taken me captive and kept me away from my computer keyboard. My outdoor hobby's have rendered me completely blog blocked! I am here now though with a few updates and announcements.

First... I am extremely giddy with excitement over our newest addition to our family. In 2 weeks, I will be picking up our new.... Silver Laced Cochin henS. Thats right, I said 2. Its nicer to introduce both at the same time. I will be sure to show you pictures!

Image by keltickelton via Flickr

Also, we are very excited to have had found some time to get back into our hiking hobby. We have in fact updated our gear and begun an extensive training regimen preparing us to do the Davis Path and to hike the Franconia Ridge. We will be spending night(s) out there and enjoying the air. I have been a rather large pig and stuffed my body with food non stop since the day I quit smoking so my body needs some time to recover and shed the baggage. Last weekend we hiked Cardigan Mountain by way of the "Holt Trail" which is a bit more difficult than the other trails up.


My husband and friend on our descent.


A picture on our way up.


Harry (dave) and I doing the "trail Ninja" pose.

The Brady Kids To to the Mine

Recently Dave and I have gotten back into a outdoor activity that we have always enjoyed, we have started hiking together. We are planning some big hikes up a few mountains this month so we have been training for it by walking as much as possible. I really think hiking is the only form of exercise that I can do without getting bored. Before I know it, an hour or 2 have gone by.

When we first purchased the land at Shmoopywood, some of the neighbors had told us about the abandoned mica mine at the top of our mountain. I have always wanted to go up there but I was afraid to go alone. There is an old abandoned road on the other side of the river and today we decided to walk up that road and see if it leads us to the mica mine!

The road was fairly steep for the entire trip. It was great though as there was not too much overgrowth. We did not have to blaze a new path just walk up the road. It took about an hour to get to the top and then the road just ended! We were so bummed. We decided to take an alternate route down the mountain. We spied a small logging road off in the distance and after about 20 feet of walking that, we ran into the old mica mine!


We found an old truck!

Some sort of bucket

The steering wheel has long since been taken or eroded but the steering column remains!

A building with a door (cool hinges) we think it may have been the privy!

I dont know what kind of rock this is, it was like marble.

This bottle was discovered half buried! There is some bleach left in the bottle! We took it home and did some research, its a 1951 Clorox Bleach bottle. We also got a can of pipe tobacco.


After a thorough exploration and a promise to return we headed back down the mountain. We did make a short stop to admire a log cabin in the woods that has been abandoned.

I love these walks we have been taking, it helps me get in shape plus I feel like I am getting to know him and my surroundings much better. We saw countless moose and deer prints as well as scat. We chatted and laughed and we even worked up a good solid sweat!
I challenge you to have yourselves a walk around your neighborhood, woods, town and see what you can find that you had not seen before!

Hola! Yes Hello!

Image by jcbwalsh via Flickr

Greetings from New Hampshire! I have been gone it seems like forever but now I am back! We had a vacation while some family visited us from the south so we got to do all the fun touristy things that you don’t really ever do because you live someplace. We got to go to the Polar Caves which is something we have been talking about doing for quite some time now. One of my favorite things to do in the summer is visit a local petting zoo, which we did with the kids, it was great fun! It really made me wish I had goats of my own though! Someday I will, you mark my words.

The dogs are doing great, I have decided to take a little break from Great Dane rescue for a while. I just have had such a crazy year this year and feel like I need to give my family, friends and myself a little bit more attention than I have been. IN order to do that, I had to let something very important go so it has been really hard dealing with that. My dogs are well though. We had Django’s ultrasound/Doppler/echo today and it actually went better than expected so thank God for that.

The chickens are big! Its hard to tell but I think that all of them are laying now. We get about 7 or 8 eggs every day with only 10 hens I think that is pretty good! Our 4 Black star lay DAILY and the other 6 probably only lay every other day. I think the day that I get 10 eggs in one day will be amazing!! We have been letting them free-range a lot more lately. They love it and it has definitely made their eggs tastier and more bright orange! The only bad thing is, they are new layers so we don’t know when OR WHERE they are going to lay. I found an egg in the lawn the other day. The dogs ate that one! I am hopeful that they will all start to lay in nest boxes though and then we can free range more often!

So that’s really it for us, I hope all is well with you. I am sure there will be more updates coming! Including the saga of the trail cam!
:D

So i leave you with a picture of my daughter and my cousin enjoying the baby goats.