It was nice today. No.. it was really nice today! The temperature actually got up to the lower 50 degrees and it was sunny! I saw a saying the other day that made me smile mostly because it was so true! The saying said that you know that you live in Iowa when the weather finally gets to 40 degrees and you can leave your coat at home! How true is that! Like I said it was in the 50’s today and after work and I saw more than one pair of shorts on the street in town today.
As for us? Now don’t get me wrong – I LOVE that winter is almost over, but after saying that you have to take some bad with the good. The bad part of the spring thaw is that the roads get so ‘greasy’. If you are not familiar with that word – you might have never driven on this type of road either.
When you hear someone say that the road is greasy, well it means that when you’re driving down the gravel road you really have to be watching and careful the whole time. Because if you’re not – well you could very well get pulled over to the ditch and possibly even go into the ditch with your car. Why? The frost is starting to come out and it makes the road .. well greasy. And when your driving on it the road kind of sucks you where ever it wants to take you and in most cases – it’s going to be the ditch. And once you’re going, you just have to hope that your car is going to stop .. like soon! This is kind of a season of it’s own in the country and it normally doesn’t last too long. It’s all part of the spring thaw. Soon the roads will be good and the next thing that we’ll all complain about it how dusty they are!
With the warm weather another spring tradition happens on our farm. The chickens get their chicken coop door open and they’re free! It’s always funny to watch them for the first time of the season and especially the new 5 little chickens from last year. This is the first time that they’ve been out in the yard since they came to our farm, and I had to laugh how they acted. Most of them did a good job just checking everything out and soon was kind of running around. But the little chicken that I call ‘The Mayor’ wasn’t sure at all what was going on. The Mayor was so used to bossing the other little chickens around and because he was so fast and little, for some reason they let him. But now in the open farm yard – well he was not looking so tough. He just stood by my feet for most of the time that I was outside and I don’t think he liked being out in the fresh air one bit! Once the sun went down, the chickens all did a good job going back into the coop for the night. Then Daryl went out and shut the door back up to keep them safe. We sometimes get fox or other animals visiting us during the night and well that’s a fast way to thin down the chicken population if they’re not locked up. Here’s a picture of some of them that I quick snapped when they were checking out the dirt and seeing Sam the Peacock again. The rest of our chickens decided to head for the cow yard to see if there is any fresh ground corn on the ground that the cows didn’t eat. It’s funny because it’s been maybe 3 to 4 months since they got locked up and once the door opened – these chickens shot across the yard like they were in the Olympics. Have you ever seen a group of 10 chickens running as fast as they could? Believe me … it’s hilarious!! 
But the best part of the day is when the door bell rang and it was Mom carrying a big pan of homemade beef noodle soup! AWESOME!! I’m not sure what I did to deserve a delivery of homemade soup – but hey I’ll take it.
And the photo of the day? Well it’s a good representation of how our dogs also like the nice warm weather. It’s just too bad that their days of coming into our living room are pretty much nonexistent for awhile!
Happy Dogs! Dirty yes, but happy!!
loved the pics of the chickens and of the dogs! looks like everyone had a great time. our dog loves the warmer weather and we have to wipe her down when she comes in the house or we would have quite a mess. she’s a big dog too, so there’s lots to wipe down! haha.