Archive | October, 2016

Trout Lake Camp

31 Oct

In the middle of October, Jared and I along with several other youth leaders headed out with a bunch of senior high schoolers to Trout Lake Camp.  Aleah, Sophie and Hudson went to their friend’s house of choice while we left for the weekend.

Weekend retreats are an amazing way to connect and form relationships in ways that would not happen throughout the course of an entire year.  Sleep deprivation, slime fights and football tournaments all have a way of bonding.

Here are some pictures of the slime fight:

After the slime fight, everyone took a plunge in the lake to de-slime themselves.  We have a hearty youth group since many kids took multiple dives into the freezing cold October waters:

 

The zipline was another bonding experience- many had to overcome their fear of heights to enjoy this adventure:

I do believe we have been the champions for three years in a row now.  Thankfully most of the football team comes on this retreat =)

Love these kids and am thankful we get to escape to this place a few times each year

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Sad Turn for the Chickens

22 Oct

For a few days a chicken here and a chicken there were disappearing.  Sometimes they go rogue and try and live in the woods but they eventually come back to roost in the coop.  We would count the chickens at night and slowly but surely their numbers were dropping.

There are many possibilities as to what could eat the chickens up here in the northland.  We lost a chicken to an osprey a few years ago and some other predators include: coyote, wolf, owl, eagle, weasel, pine martin, fox etc.  Since we didn’t know what was eating the chickens and the precautions against an eagle and a weasel are quite different- Jared set up the trail cam to see what was eating our poor ladies.

Unfortunately we had to go out of town for the weekend, so we had to hope our ladies could survive long enough for us to get back home.

When we returned we had a couple fewer chickens but some more answers.  Three answers to be exact.  A mother raccoon and her two babies.  Here are some pictures of the sad turn of events.

This hen was ironically named Racoony because of her black and white plumage, and here is a picture of her happily walking around outside the coop.

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Next up is a picture of Racoony in the mouth of a Raccoon.

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Four chickens now rule our land instead of 14.  RIP ladies, we are sorry you aren’t here anymore and even more sad our egg production is down to one or two eggs a day.

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