It rained for all those many days, then last night it snowed. S-N-O-W-E-D!!!!!! We woke up to about 1-2 inches of heavy, wet snow. It wasn't that big of a deal. It's still to early to plant anything in the garden. It's just the psychological- ness of snow in May. Bleck. But it's all gone now and even though the wind is blowing strongly out of the north the sun is shining and the clouds are almost gone.

It's supposed to start raining again tomorrow. I'm not going to think about that.

I saw the coyote yesterday up close to the house nosing around the chicken coop. It was barely light so the chickens and rabbits were still sleeping. That thing was big! It was a little unnerving. I saw the carnivore off and on all day. Then at about 1:30, I saw two unfamiliar dogs chasing it back across the fields into the woods! It was gone! I haven't seen it today so maybe it won't venture back to bother our animals and we won't have to do anything drastic after all! We'll see.

We separated the turkey babies into two tubs. Now they have more room and we will hopefully not have any more picking problems. I found one on top of the tub balancing on the edge tonight. So we placed unused screens from a couple of windows over the top of the tubs to keep the young birds from fluttering out. (We can't have turkey babies running and flapping all over the house. The red puppy will find them and will help herself to turkey McNuggets!) We are almost out of the store bought food so I'll have to make a run to the feed store tomorrow. I was going to make a trip out there anyway to price hay. Our meat does will be kindling in the next couple of weeks and I need to have some warm, dry hay on hand for their nesting boxes. In the meantime, the turkey babies are eating hard boiled eggs from our chickens mixed with whole wheat bread soaking in raw milk. They are very partial to this mixture and clean the feed bowl as fast as I can put it out.

The chickens gave 9 eggs today but I found one with a very rubbery, limp shell that had the contents eaten. Hmmmmm. I guess I might need to increase the calcium in their feed. I'll watch for more signs of weak shells before I change anything. It may have just been a fluke.

The red puppy has been in trouble tonight as she has been barking and jumping on the kids and biting. None of that is tolerated by me so we went outside and had a long walk, then 30 minutes of non- stop fetch. She came into the house so tired that all she could muster was a drink of water and a couple of bites of dinner before she fell onto her dog bed. So no more naughty puppy. I think she was just needing a stretch of exercise after a long day without her family. Now she's happily snoozing in her kennel/ cave. No barking, no whining. Happy.

Since today was one of my work-away-from-home days, I put a couple of quart jars of home made vegetable soup in the crock pot before leaving for school this morning. It's so nice to come home to a warm house that smells like dinner. The soup was pretty good and the kids ate every bit.

Though it's not dark yet, it's almost time for all to go to bed and I can't wait. I'm longing for bed myself. There's nothing that can't wait until tomorrow now that the animals and kids are fed and happy.