Passing through a portal to home and a restful evening...

We have some new laying hens this year. The coloring of the Golden-laced Wyandotte is so striking and lovely. It’s not quite a new breed for us as we do have older Silver-laced Wyandottes. The new breed is the Black Astrolorp. Read somewhere that the Astrolorps are not heavy scratchers so we thought that they might make a good free range bird. An Astrolorp set world records for egg laying, one hen laying 364 eggs in a year! Purportedly, they are great brooders and are friendly and calm. The golden laced Wyandotte also have a reputation as being a docile bird. The colorings of the two breeds coordinate so well together, with the Astolorp being jet black with black feet and beak and the Wyanadotte as you see pictured.

Sunset news

One of the greatest joys and lucks we have on the farm is a clear view to the west. We are so thankful to have this never ending source of beauty and wonder in the form of sunsets. In our family, early on, one of the young ones called the unobstructed view "the sunset news." Only from the mouth of babes. So now we can often report that the sunset news is... beautiful. This is an older picture from when Finnegan was still alive- there have been countless glorious sunsets since but this is still one of my favorite pictures. The thought that this view could easily be obstructed by intensive industrial development is a sad and scary one.