Happy Valentine's Day!

Wow! I just realized it's been almost 2 months since we've updated our blog! You can definitely tell we are amateurs at this, plus we've been really busy :)

We had a very blessed holiday season, and were able to spend a lot of time with our families. As we moved into January, we worked some more on our living room (but we're still not done), and started to make plans for the 2009 farming/gardening seasons. We inventoried all of our seeds, and put orders in for 2 blueberry bushes and 50 strawberry plants. We are looking forward to growing more of our fruit over the next few years. Sarah has told Ryan if he can't find her in June, to go check and see if she's lying in the strawberry patch, gorging on fresh strawberries (her favorite food!).

In February, we've been moving closer towards making decorating decisions related to our living room. We've already had the laminate flooring picked out for several months, but colors and furniture have been up in the air. We've decided to paint our walls a pale green, and use white trim on the painted walls. On our oak wall we are just going to polyurethane it, and then use antique poplar for the trim. Early in the month we spent a Saturday furniture browsing, and have tentatively decided to go with a dark burgundy Broyhill sofa and loveseat set. We hope to get everything at least ordered by the end of the month, so we don't carry this project into our outdoor work season.

Even though we woke up to snow this morning, the inhabitants of our land are starting to think about spring. Yesterday we spent the morning outside cleaning out the chicken and turkey houses. To make things easier, we let the turkeys and chickens out to roam the yard. We were pleasantly surprised that they flocked together despite their species differences, and were throughly content to stay close to the buildings. Having the extra space seemed to inspire our turkeys to be amorous, and we got to witness the complicated process that is turkey courtship. Afterwards, Thomas, our tom turkey, seemed to be quite proud of himself because he spent the rest of the day displaying, as you can see in this picture.

Yesterday afternoon, we went to pick up a rooster and hen from Grandpa O'Hara. We introduced them to the flock when we got home. The rooster seems to be blending with the flock a little better than the new hen, but we know that it will just take a few days for them to get a new pecking order established. When we got them we had no idea what breed they were, other than Grandpa said they were rosecombs. We did some researching on the Internet, and have come to the conclusion that they are Silver-Penciled Rosecomb Wyandottes, a breed established in the Northeast United States because their small rosecombs made them better able to withstand cold winters. We are very excited to have a rooster back in our flock, and are looking forward to waking up to crowing again. Plus they are truly beautiful birds, and we enjoy the loveliness of our multicolored flock. If we get chicks to hatch this spring, it will be interesting to see what they look like.