We could not have asked for a better day than the Saturday of our 2011 Fall Festival open house.  I don’t know who enjoyed themselves more: the visitors or me!

Son-in-law Bo worked on my carder so it would be in good shape to build batts.

The store was set up for customers to feel and purchase our animals’ fibers.

Aspen and Pinyon tried to figure out who all these people were who had invaded their space.

Spinners spun in the shade.

The balloon twister made sure everyone had hats…

And swords and shields.

Kids played.

We ate Papa Ken’s fantastic soup and cornbread.

(Nobody took a picture of the soup?)

Selected animals did their duty in the petting zoo.

The chickens acted like none of us were even here.

Visitors wandered and toured, and listened to me talk about our Vision for 2012 at the Fancy Fibers Farm.

It was, quite simply, a wonderful day!

Thank you very much to my children (Mandy & husband Bo, Jamie Leigh , and Ge’mar), and my grandchildren (Lizzie, Ally, & Georgia) for all their work cleaning things up to get ready for company to come over!  Thanks to Fran for all the wonderful pictures, and…

Special thanks also to my brother, The Welder, and Helper Bob, for making some significant repairs to the car damaged front fence, the storm damaged big barn, and our old house, The Shepherd Shack, on fairly short notice.  Your talents do not go unnoticed at the Farm!

If you’ve read my (off and on again) blog, you might have read about our chickens.  We keep about 30 chickens for eggs, and just for fun.  City people don’t know how chickens can be fun, and just shake their heads at us when we say that, but hang around the chickens for a while and you’ll see what we mean.

Recently, our chickens started gathering up by the house in a big clump every afternoon.

It took me a while to figure out why they were there, but ultimately it dawned on me that the water coming out of the air conditioning compressor drain was cool.  They were standing there with their feet in the water and mud in order to stay cool.

Today, however, when I walked by I noticed that a few chickens were standing there even though I had turned the air conditioning in the house OFF.  No air conditioning, no cool water.  But they were still standing there, waiting for the water.

I felt kinda bad for them, so I got them a trough and put a little water in the bottom of it.

They were not impressed.  Several of them jumped up on the edge and looked down in it, but they wouldn’t get in.

So I tried something else.  We have a sprayer on our hose that never quite shuts off.  In order to shut the water off, we have to turn the valve off.  I turned the valve on and set the sprayer down so that it would drizzle water onto the ground in the approximate location of the drain pipe.  Not much water, just enough to give them a little water and a little mud.  Before long, all was right with the world again in the chicken world.

A few of them even got themselves little drinks of water from the hose.

And one of them took a nap.

Those chickens!

When you live in a barnyard, and it’s hot as blazes, you do what you gotta do to cool off. You stay in the shade, stand in front of the fans, drink lots of electrolyte water, and…. Find yourself some cool mud.

Yup, mud.

Here’s how it goes for the alpacas. Rascal climbs into the water trough, cushes, and displaces lots of water over the side. This makes mud. (No rain=no grass.)

The other alpacas take advantage of this by folding their legs up under then and cushing in the cool mud. Yippee! Alpacas with muddy legs!

Here’s how it works for the chickens. The air conditioning compressor by the house has a drain of some sort that drains cool water into the ground. This makes mud. (Remember prior note about no rain?)

In the late afternoon, the chickens come into the yard and stand in the muddy water. Nothing dumb about our birds!

I’ve not yet had the need to go join the animals in the mud. However, if the electricity goes out and I’m not answering the front door, you might want to walk out back and start looking for mud!

The weatherman’s “Wintry Mix” (translation: sleet, snow, and other yuk) that greeted us this morning required that we adjust our usual feeding arrangements. I was super glad DH was here to help do some of the heavy lifting as we moved feed troughs around.

The boy goats ate in the small chicken coop. (It’s important we be able to lock them up so that the other animals get to eat.)

The alpacas ate in the barn. Both animals got hay-from-a-bag today.

The sheep and girl goats ate in their shelter, more or less.

Only the rabbits, snug in their weather-tight, insulated building, wondered what all the fuss was about.

As for me, I stuffed rabbit fur in the bottom of my boots, put on my knitted hat, leather gloves, and insulated overalls, and was quite snug myself.

And the lion laid down with the lamb, or in our case, the alpacas laid down with the chickens.

Alan came over this morning to do some de-constructing for us. Our small chicken coop had this wooden structure in it that, for lack of a better description, looked like a set of bunk beds. Ken wanted it gone, so Alan tore it out.

Just look what he found.

We don’t have many chickens that lay white eggs, so I’m guessing they’ve been there 2-3 weeks. Wish I’d known it!