Plum Creek Creations

I have recently opened an etsy shop called Plum Creek Creations which you can visit at http://www.plumcreekcreations.etsy.com/. I have been busy creating jewelry for the shop lately and have been having a blast doing it! My beads and wire and findings have actually pretty much taken over the living room!

Rainbow Reverie available in my etsy shop for $19

I'm not sure where my ideas are coming from, sometimes I just see a bead I like and design around it. Sometimes I pick a color or two and go from there. Tate loves looking at all the beads and seeing the finished jewelry. I may have a budding designer on my hands, as long as he didn't inherit his dad's colorblindness!

Imperial Elegance available in my etsy shop for $19

All this jewelry-making has put all other works-in-progress to a standstill. I haven't crocheted in quite awhile, but I really need to get back to it, as I have several ideas for Christmas gifts. It's kind of difficult to believe how quickly the holiday season has been sneaking up, with the high temperatures we have been having.

Earth Goddess available in my etsy shop for $19

Things have been so busy around here lately. Cleaning up from the floods and doing a lot of refencing is most of it. Three baby goats have been born in the last few weeks, and a couple does are due any time now. Helga had a boy, named Nitro, and Hester had a boy, Wrangler, and a girl, Cherokee. I have to get out and take some pictures!

Springtime Fantasy available in my etsy shop for $19

www.plumcreekcreations.etsy.com

Idyllic Iowa

Joe, the kids, and I took a drive today in the Jeep and I couldn't resist taking some pictures of these cows. They looked so content to ramble around the hillside. Tate loved the brown calf and keeps asking where it went. Tate was the reason we stopped in the first place, as he was worming his way out of his seatbelt and we had to stop the vehicle to get him to put it back on.

Joe thought Tate was talking about the cream-colored cow, because he was asking "Es bloun cow go, Mama?" and Joe interpreted it as "blonde cow." Tate loves riding in the Jeep, even more so today because Joe took the windows out so we could all see better.

There have been some beautiful sunsets lately and I have been quick enough with my camera to capture some of them. It's nice to have had mainly clear skies for about the past week. Things are finally starting to dry out!

With the warm weather finally here, I have been working on shaving the Shih Tzus fur. Chester looks so handsome with his fresh haircut-he probably feels a lot better, being a black dog. So far I have Chester and Kolby finished, and Bailey almost done. So that just leaves Josie, Daisy, Violet, and Zoie.

I finally figured out where Big Stripe's litter of kittens under the trailer is. I found a hole in the plastic that holds the insulation, so I took my camera and stuck it in the hole and took a picture. Sure enough, I saw a kitten, so I stuck Big Stripe up there to get all the kittens to come out and took some more pictures. As far as I could tell, there are 3. She has started moving them to the barn today; I saw 2 of them down there and actually caught and pet one of them, who tried and tried to bite and scratch me, but eventually he calmed down a bit.

I have also really gotten into dyeing my own yarn with Kool-Aid. I bought a bunch of undyed wool for socks, and also some worsted weight, and I have been doing some experimenting. It is really easy to do and nearly impossible to screw up. The pink with bits of green is to make something for myself, though I don't know what, yet. The blue, orange, and green is to knit some socks for the boys. Now if I could just stop dyeing more yarn and actually knit or crochet with the stuff I have done :)

Enough Rain Already!

We've had three floods in the last couple weeks, the one last night being the worst of all of them. The water came up very quickly around 11 last night, luckily Joe went out back to feed the puppies and saw the water at the bottom step already. We've never had water this high in our five years here. The current washed some of the puppies under the deck where they were struggling to keep their heads above water.

These pictures are from the floods on Memorial Day and the Friday after. The floods from last night were gone by morning, so all I got was after pictures. After saving the puppies, we had to move the older dogs to the garage because their pen was also underwater. Then I looked in the hog lot at the front of the barn and saw about a foot of water. I ran to the barn with a flashlight and we moved all the baby goats to the camper. The older goats we left because they were standing on a ledge and were only knee-deep in water. The horses were in the back of the barn and were also knee-deep in water.

The two horses in the back were too scared to come into the barn because they couldn't tell where the big step was, so I had to wade out in hip-deep water in the pasture to get them. I ended up tieing them in the barn so they wouldn't go back out there. One of the goats went out and almost drowned when the current caught him where it was really deep, but he managed to swim out of it without my help. I put all the chickens on the wall in the barn- they were soaked to the skin.

This morning when we woke up, the floodwaters had receded. We were fine and all our animals were safe, but we lost a lot of stuff. All our firewood for next winter is gone, though we found a small portion of it down the road about a half mile, along with one of my big cages, which is in the ditch. About a mile away in the ditch we found one of my raised beds for the garden. Our big farmgate from the backyard is nowhere and our big plastic barrel is really far away in a field. (We think it is- it's too far away to tell for sure.)

Our roads are all but washed away and the gravel from them fills the ditches. Bridges have huge holes in them and a lot of roads in our county, including ours, are closed, ours has been closed since Memorial Day. We have more rain in the forecast this week, which is about the last thing we need right now. No one has had a chance to clean up and make repairs much from one flood when the next comes along. I think eastern Iowa deserves a break!

More Babies!

Glory finally gave birth on Monday, surprisingly enough, to a singleton. Glory was huge and I thought she would have twins or triplets. She had a little doeling, who is pretty good-sized. She seems almost as big as Avenger's babies, who are a month older! She is very pretty and I've never had one this color before, so she's definitely a keeper! I've decided to call her Durango.

I let Joe name Avenger's two doelings: Rubicon (Ruby, for short) and Sahara. So now we have a couple Jeeps to add to the Dodges! They are growing like weeds, but can still slip out the cattle panels to munch on greener pastures.

They are very comical to watch when they're jumping off things and butting heads. They also like to sleep in tires like Durango does. Gives them a little buffer from the horses and other goats. At least until it gets dark and the chickens roost on them like they are in a football huddle.

I moved Hermione's kittens to the barn after she killed one of the chicks. She left them there for a week or two, but the other day moved them under the front steps. I took them back to the barn, but she brought them back again, so there they stay. She puts them inside a hole in the landing before you go in our front door at night because there is insulation for the trailer inside to keep them warm.

Their names are Sugar, Spice, and Henry. Henry is the one that was almost dead when I found her. She must remember that I was the one who saved her, because she's the only one that purrs for me so far. Henry is silver tabby and white. Sugar and Spice are dilute calicos.

Mother's Day Presents

Here are my two new additions I got for Mother's Day! The brown and white pinto is a gelding named Elvis and the brown with blonde mane and tail I named Diamond. Elvis is so tiny- his back only comes to mid-thigh on me, and I'm pretty short. They are both sweeties.

They both lead very nicely and come right over to me whenever they see me. I have them separated from the other horses for a few days while they get used to each other. All the horses meet at the shared fence and "chat." Stetson is wound up about the newbies- I need him to calm down a bit before I mix everyone together. Stetson thought he could sneak in with me while I was feeding them, but I was onto him. He wanted to see the new horses more than he wanted his grain, which is very unusual for the horse I affectionately call "Big Butt."

Diamond looks a lot like Cinders- I'll really have to look twice. As a matter of fact, when I brought the new horses in, Cinders immediately ran to Diamond- maybe they are long-lost sisters or something. Diamond one has one eye, but it doesn't seem to affect her at all. Some of the goats were scared of the new horses, including Lester, who is my resident bully. Both horses are very kid-friendly, as they came from a home with 7 children, so my 2 shouldn't faze them a bit!

Barnyard Buddies

When I took a stroll outside to take some pictures of my animals for this post, everyone was laying around in the sunshine. They are as glad as I am to see the weather finally warm up. All the chickens and some of the goats came over to me to see what I was doing. They try to beg treats off me all the time. The other day it was some thawed strawberries that had been in the freezer too long, and the days it was raining, I had been giving the chickens worms I found.I mowed some grass today and threw it in the pasture for the goats and horses, so they were happy. The lawn sweeper picked up a lot of the corn stalks that washed into the yard with the flood, so they got some of that, too. The baby goats are in a dog kennel in the front yard that's on wheels, so when they eat all the grass, I move them along. They are busy cleaning up weeds and grass in my garden for me while also fertilizing. It's a win-win situation!

A bunch of the goats keep escaping the barn through some fencing they tore down, so they have been keeping weeds and grass down in the back near the barn. They don't go very far and always come back on the run when they see me coming. They don't want to miss out on grain! I store my livestock feed in a Rubbermaid garbage can, but they started figuring out how to get the lid off and were helping themselves, so I had to also bungee-strap the lid down.

The other day I found some kittens in the barn. The mother had forgotten she had them and left them laying all over the place out in the open. Two didn't make it, two were very hungry, and the other one was near death. He was cold and couldn't move much. I took them and the mama cat and locked them up in the camper and she started feeding them. The one that was cold couldn't nurse- he was too weak, so I took him in the house and warmed him and gave him some baby formula. That livened him up enough that I could take him back to his mama. She took him back and has been taking care of them ever since.

They are now starting to open their eyes. They are very cute and I'm glad that so far they are doing well. I love calico kittens the best! The calico cat in the picture at the top of this post isn't the mama, she's just one of my favorites. The mama to these guys is a tortoiseshell and the dad, Sheila, is striped and white.

For the time being, I am keeping the mama cat and her kittens in the same camper as my baby chicks. I have been feeding the mama very well so she won't mess with the chicks. I don't think she will- she moved her kittens as far from them as she could. So this is working for now. I guess I've got more baby animals than I know what to do with!

To share with other farm girls and to learn about the Farm Girl way of life visit: http://www.maryjanesfarm.org/

More babies!

My thirtieth birthday was April 19th and with the flood I never got around to blogging about my birthday presents from Daisy! She gave birth to 5 adorable puppies in the wee hours of my birthday. What a good girl! They are growing so fast and should be opening their eyes very soon. Chester got the job done once again! He could care less though- once the fun part of the job is over, that's it for him!

They are all very nicely marked and have the cutest little faces! Zelda's puppies are growing quickly too- they have had their eyes open awhile now and are getting around pretty well. They are going to outgrow their home in the bathroom soon! Which is good, because I want my bathroom back!

Last Friday, the same day as the flood, I got my baby chicks in the mail. The mailwoman actually called me from down the road because by the time she got out our way, the road was flooded, so Joe took the Jeep down to pick them up. I had the camper all ready to go for them- I call it Mama's Chicken Shack, though I use it for other baby animals too.

I received 4 bantam cochins, 2 of which are the red ones in the picture, the other 2 are dark. The other five black ones are Barred Rocks. 5 of the yellow ones are Rhode Island Whites and the other 5 are Delawares. I ordered from Ideal this time, and was very pleased with their service and selection. The chicks are thriving and starting to get their feathers. Tate was so excited when the box came because they were all peeping like mad. I asked him what was in the box and he said "Acksuppies!" which is what he calls birds so he was pretty much right!