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Our House: Now and Then

Our next-door neighbor offered us a portrait of the house made from an old photo. We're not really sure when it's from, but it's recent enough that there's an electric meter, but old enough that there was a full barn and silo in a location that now has full-grown evergreen trees.

Here's a photo of the house the weekend we bought it. It looked a little scraggly back then:

House


Here's the old painting. We took out the front door because there were no steps attached, but clearly they were there at some point. And look at those windows!

House Painting


There's no longer any trace of that huge barn behind the house, or the silo. Kind of wish we still had them around. Not that I have anything to fill a silo with...
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Evolution of a Chicken

From this...
Baby Chicks


To this...
Chickens


And finally, this...
Chickens
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Prints at the Shelburne Museum

We went on a class trip to the Shelburne Museum -- the kids were asked to make prints from styrofoam sheet and printers ink. The trick was that you had to write your letters backwards so they would come out the right way on the paper.

Here is Trevor working diligently on his drawing:

Shelburne Museum


And here is the finished Trevbot 2000. (Someone should let trevor know that the year 2000 has come and gone.)

trevbot
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On our way...

The leaves are turning this weekend -- it's a great show if you have a chance to take a drive through the Adirondacks.

Trip to Albany - Foliage


The last few trips to NJ, we've been breaking the ride into two days with Albany at the center. It takes longer, but there's less chance of someone falling asleep at the wheel at 1:00am.
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HFCS is great! Snap at your friends!

I was cruising through Everyday Food this month when I saw this ad. It really put me off. Word of mouth marketing is an incredible and unpredictable tool, but to suggest that we should put down our friends sarcastically for sharing information is just nasty.

I am a big fan of dry humor, but I would never speak to a friend this way. I might ask her reasoning or give my own opionion, but to cut her down like the example given is simply mean. The corn syrup lobby must be on some kind of sugar high.

hfcs_ad.jpg


Hello,

Your advertisement on page 41 of the October 2008 issue of Everyday Food gave me pause. Suggesting that typical Americans sharing information over daily activities is wrong because we're not experts is condescending and distasteful. I shouldn't have to wait to speak to a doctor before gathering information about a product or ingredient and sharing it with my peers.

Many busy mothers are glad that our friends to pass along important information that we may have missed in the constant flow of news, e.g. product recalls, e coli scares, etc. The example response in your ad -- of a woman using sarcasm to refute her friend, is mean-spirited. This is no way to increase support for your product.

Clearly, there's a reason the phrase is "you catch more flies with honey" and not "you catch more flies with high fructose corn syrup."

Tara Liloia
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Applesauce Station

Making Apple Butter


There's a moment while you're making apple butter when you hit the applesauce stage and you have a choice to make. Will you take the easy road, stop here, and make a batch of applesauce, or will you continue along that hard road of six more hours in front of the stove and make the apple butter?

Making Apple Butter
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Cooking Class

I ended up winning the Seven Days photo contest with 37.8% of the popular vote for my sliced carrot picture -- thanks to everyone who voted!

First prize was a gift certificate to a New England Culinary Institute cooking class. These are hands-on classes for members of the public, taught by chefs from The Inn at Essex, where classes are held.

On the day I received the gift certificate, I popped over to the "Chef Inn Training" class schedule and found a breadmaking class for the following week that wasn't going to be offered for the next few months. I called for a reservation and there was room in the class (I didn't think to ask how many people had registered).

A few days later, I was on my way to Essex for my bread class. As you know, I'm bread-challenged, and I've managed to bungle every loaf of yeast bread I've ever made. Well, do you think Chef Kerry cured my bread deficiency? Judge for yourself:

Bread Baking Class
Clockwise from top left: hazelnut-raisin dinner roll, everything bagel, grey salt bagel, plain pretzel, black salt pretzel


It didn't hurt that I was the only registered participant, and I had the kitchen to myself. I asked a boatload of questions and I specifically checked on what I might be doing wrong with my yeast. Chef Kerry had many helpful tips, and she encouraged me to do most of the steps in the recipes myself after a quick demonstration.
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Rain on your face

It's not easy to get a photo of the back seat when you're driving, but I had to try. Trev opened his window in the rain and leaned back to catch drops full in the face. He isn't asleep there, he's just enjoying the sting of the rain on his face with the tiniest hint of a smile, which is so awesome.

Feeling the Rain
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Softball... ouch

The ILM Southpaws were soundly beaten by the team from the north end of the island. They showed up in uniforms. That should have been a clue.

ILM Southpaws Softball Team


We have exactly one year to improve our game so that we don't lose by double digits. And next year, I hope the other team discovers that there is another gender besides male.
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Our Canine Visitors

Found Dogs


These little guys may look cute, they may even act playful, but they are chicken chasers beneath those puppy dog eyes.

I was working on the computer the other day and I heard the tinkle of one of the cat's bells. I reached down to pet her and felt rough fur -- it wasn't a cat. A dog had wandered into our kitchen! I dragged her outside just in time to see her mate chasing Norrin through the yard at top speed. Norrin had a good lead and zig-zagged through the field to keep the dog away. He finally sprinted high up into a tree with the dog jumping at him down below.

While Norrin was running, Trevor and I grabbed garden stakes and the hose to separate the two in case the dog caught up with him. We set up Miss Chicken's wire cage and grabbed the slower, female dog and put her inside. By this time, the male dog was chasing chickens around the yard with much flapping and screeching.

We grabbed the second dog and put him in as well. Once in the cage, both dogs just sat quietly. We moved them into the shade, gave them a dish of water, then set about finding all of our terrified animals. Norrin wouldn't come down out of the tree, until he was absolutely sure the dogs were gone. Ten of the chickens were cowering in their coop, but three were nowhere to be found. While we were searching the yard, one snuck back into the coop. Who knows where he was? We found one under the house and the third, Pam, was hidden so well between the barns that I didn't even find her when I searched there. I saw her timidly sneak back out a couple of hours later.

On our way to St. Albans, (and with all of the animals put away), we decided to let the dogs out so they could wander homeon their own. After all, they wandered here alone. Bad move. These dogs were clearly not used to living near a road. They immediately ran full-speed into Main Street, toward biking tourists and oncoming cars. People who saw them leave our yard were yelling at us to get our dogs. I don't think anyone believed it when we said they weren't ours, so we gave up and penned them again.

At St. Albans we bought them a small bag of food. And when we got back they ate up the huge plate I poured out, then scoured the grass for dropped pieces. We emailed our neighborhood and managed to find the owner in about 30 minutes. They live down the driveway that's so long you need a car to wait at the bus stop in the morning -- no wonder they were clueless about traffic.

Dogs, chickens and cats clearly do not mix.
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Miss Chicken's First Egg

Miss Chicken (who won't stand still)I must admit that despite this post's title, Miss Chicken has laid eggs before. Just not with us. You see, she's an adopted hen who comes from a neighbor's house. She used to fly up into the loft of their barn to stay out of the way of an overzealous family dog until it burned down this summer. Without a place to hide, the dog came after her one too many times. Now she's been moved a few houses down to our place to mingle with our flock of twelve.

The photo is blurry because Miss Chicken doesn't sit still much, and unlike the chickens we've had from babies, she's flat-out against being picked up at all. She's a different coloring than the dominiques and the reds; I'm venturing a guess that she's a Delaware Blue Hen. She has the black head with gold stripes that I've seen of that breed in photos.

It was a trick getting her introduced to the existing flock of pullets (non-laying hens). She stayed in a cage in the yard while the other birds got a good look, but every time one ventured near the bars, she'd give them a swift hard peck. One tenacious dominique got herself a bloody beak from a particularly bad attack. And once, I saw a smug Miss Chicken with a mouthful of feathers as another pullet ran away squawking and flapping.

Miss Chicken (her name from before we adopted her) was out of sorts and hostile for the last week, but she was finally docile enough to be let out with the other birds a couple of days ago. She found the highest nest box and made herself comfortable. Clearly, the spot meets with her approval because she's begun to lay eggs again.

Miss Chicken's Egg


They're tiny compared to supermarket jumbo eggs. The yolks are bright and thick, and the shells are a pretty tan/salmon color. Just a couple more months and the dominiques will start laying as well, then the reds after that. With a baker's dozen eggs coming in a day, we'll be looking for people to take them off our hands. I'm going to need that extra fridge I keep putting off.

Anyone remember when I originally said I wanted two chickens?
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Miss Lois Passes By

Dave and I were at a neighbor's house when he stepped away to answer a phone call. He came back with exciting news, the replica 1862-schooner, Lois McClure, was rounding the side of Isle La Motte on her way from Quebec to Burlington. If we got outside quickly (the neighbor lives on the west shore of the island), we would see her pass by.

Not one to sit and watch the world go by, our neighbor invited us down to the dock and we hopped into one of his boats for a trip out to meet the old girl. (Now I say "hopped," but it was a trick getting into the boat with the lake so flooded from rain. His actual dock is under water, so we had to pull the boat up into the muddy shoreline and climb through the water to get in -- I'm glad my standard outfit is Crocs and capri pants. I didn't get too soggy at all.)

We rode out to see Lois; none of her sails were up, and she was being pushed along by a tug, but she was stately nonetheless.

Lois McClure


Three other neighbors rode out to meet the schooner as well. It was quite an event among the historical society crowd. We followed her to the end of the island, keeping an eye on the storm clouds gathering to our west. After a soggy dismount, we were back on dry land, just in time for the rain to arrive.
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Candy Bar

This is the test run of the candy buffet for Trevor's birthday party at the end of this month. It needs a little "oomph" before it's ready -- some pedestals and filler decorations -- but it's a good, solid start of edible sugar treats which will turn twelve pre-teens into raving lunatics before I send them off to play in the pool and shoot each other with water guns.

Candy Buffet


I read the idea on the Hostess with the Mostess blog. Trev walked by my laptop, saw the picture, and asked if he could have one at his birthday party. With dollar store glassware and candy, the layout wasn't all that pricey. For a fancier party, I'd do a color theme.

Hey, you only turn ten once. And... um, because we moved towns right before Trev's birthday last year, he didn't have a party at all. That's a glass full of mom's guilt in that second bowl to the left, I think.
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Nature Camp

Last year, we moved to the island too late to attend the Recreation Department's Nature Camp, but we made sure to get a spot for this summer.

Nature Camp


On the first day we made quill pens and journals, hunted for insects and frogs, and learned about ant lions. Trevor and his buddy dug holes in the ground and set pitfall traps for insects. They also hiked, made castings of animal footprints, had a scavenger hunt, and more. It was a fun time in what has otherwise been a rainy and thundery summer.
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Chicken Love

One thing you quickly learn about chickens is that they do everything together. One comes out of the henhouse and all of them run out after her. Another decides to go back in for a drink and they all frantically scramble back inside.

Chickens


The eight big Dominiques follow me around while I'm outside puttering. Between the cats and the chickens vying for my attention, there's barely an animal-free place to set my foot.

Baby Chicks - Take Two


The little guys, four in all, tend to follow Trevor. You can watch him take the trash out with a little line of four baby chicks trailing behind him.
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Dave & Trev at Fisk Farm

We were at Fisk Farm on Sunday to hear three young classical musicians play -- and, of course, eat tea and cake. There's an overlook at the back of the farm that drops off into Fisk Quarry. It's an excellent spot to view the quarry, or just sit while digesting double chocolate cake and lemondade.

Dave & Trev at Fisk Farm
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Garlic Pickles

When the garden decides to throw a metric ton of cucumbers at you, there isn't much you can do other than make pickles. A few years ago, we made a couple of jars of fridge pickles -- but they need to be kept cold and they take up a fair bit of room. This year, we tried cooked pickles.

Garlic Pickles


I didn't have one perfect recipe, so I mixed a few lists together. I didn't realize it was critical to have alum stored in the spice cabinet, so the pickles weren't as crunchy as they could have been, but they were garlicky and briny and good.
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JFK Rose

This is the JFK rose that I planted from Jackson & Perkins this year. I've been buying plants for my Dad from J & P for years and they have a reputation for excellent quality.

JFK Rose


The rose plant blossomed nicely with three pure white blooms, and I'm glad I took this photo when I did. The montrous storm we had battered them to pieces just a few days later.
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Localvore Dinner

I went hunting in the garden in the rain and managed to find a few edible items, even though we've seen mostly cloudy days (if not hurricanes). Everything was from our garden, except for a couple of items.

Roasted CSA potatoes with chives.

Localvore Dinner - Roasted Potatoes with chives


Squash blossoms stuffed with ricotta and parmesean.

Localvore Dinner - Ricotta-stuffed squash blossoms


Balsamic salad with lettuce, tomatoes, CSA peppers and baby onions.

Localvore Dinner - Tomato, lettuce, pepper and baby onion salad


Sauteed baby carrots and baby leeks. (Hooray for thinning!)

Localvore Dinner - Baby carrots and baby leeks


Cupcakes with strawberry-cream cheese icing (strawberries from our neighbor's garden) and iced tea with mint.

Localvore Dinner - Strawberry Cream Cheese Cupcakes


Localvore Dinner - Iced Tea with mint
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Grass and the things that hide in it.

We've given up on mowing the field this year and it's getting tall enough to hide a boy.

Trevor Hiding


The cats like to play hide and seek with each other in the hay. They often come trotting out of the high grass with a frog dangling from their mouth by one leg. I've seen Miley stun a grasshopper, at which point a chicken ran over and grabbed it then skittered away. Sometimes it's like wild kingdom around here.
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Medieval Feast

Trevor and I have been learning about medieval times this summer. Last week, he and a friend prepared a feast for their parents at our house with authentic medieval dishes.

There were a lot of things to be cooked, so I prepped anything that needed chopping, boiling, or other prep work before the kids arrived. Each plate held the ingredients for one recipe. It's amazing how similar a glass of honey (right) looks to a glass of beef stock (left).

Clockwise from the top left:
Tart of Ryce (rice pudding) - orange juice, butter, egg yolks, sugar, rice, cinnamon, ginger
Meat Pyes (meat hand pies) - raisins, dates, prunes, vinegar, salt, pepper
Pyneade (pine nut candy) - honey, pine nuts, spices
Ember Day Tart (quiche) - grated mozarella, sage leaves, onion, raisins, eggs, spices
Almondegas (meatballs in soup) - beef broth, butter, spices, egg yolk, wheat flour, green onions

Medieval Prep


It took two hours for me to prep everything and the kids and I finished cooking 30 minutes before the parents were due. All in all, the decision to do a little mise en place was a good one.

Medieval Food


The Ember Day Tart was good, a sweet and savory mix of raisins and onions. The pyneade, though it reached hard crack stage, didn't stay solid at room temperature. The meatballs in sauce were good, but most other things were overcooked, even though we followed the directions to a tee. And the kids had fun making fruits and vegetables out of marzipan.
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Storm Aftermath

July 08 Storm


A roof is more effective when placed on top of a barn, but this location has merits too. Modern art installation. Deterring 4-wheelers in the field. Sadistic children's playground.

The sky behind the twisted metal is still dark from the passing storm -- the one that took down trees all along our shoreline and left the southern half of the island with power for days.

A rare photo of an evergreen grabbing a quick nap:

July 08 Storm


If a pair of sneakers hanging from a power line indicates a crack house, a window screen folded neatly over the line means a house where the owners will try to sneak zucchini into your car while you're inside talking.

July 08 Storm
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Trapper Trevor

Alburgh Independence Day Parade


Trevor was a trapper again in this year's Alburgh Independence Day Parade. Unlike last year, he wasn't sitting in the main canoe on the trailer, instead he carried a cardboard canoe with a friend. That wool hat looks hot, but I bet the boots were comfortable.
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Coconut Batidos

Trev and I found a few batido recipes in his Delicious Drinks cookbook the other day. Batidos are sweet, cold Cuban milkshakes made with condensed milk -- which keeps indefinitely in a can in hot weather.

We tried mango and coconut -- the latter was the favorite. By the way, canned mangoes are quickly surpassing their fresh counterparts in my estimation. They're guaranteed ripe, they taste identical to fresh, and they keep for months on the shelf. Any time you want a mango, pop open a can and fish out a half. Not fresh or local, but so gratifying when you need an instant hit of the tropics in a recipe.
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Carrot Love

Sliced Carrot


Remember my post in April expressing inappropriate love for my mandoline? Now I think I love it even more.

I entered the photo above in the 7 Nights foodie photo contest -- and I'm one of the finalists! Go vote:

http://www.7dvt.com/hotshots-finalists

You know which photo is mine...
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Pick-Up Sticks

Pick Up SticksTrevor and I played a rousing game of extreme pick-up sticks the other day. In extreme pick-up sticks, you're allowed to attempt to startle the other player with yells or make them laugh and shake the sticks.

The set was from the dollar store and the instructions on the package didn't match the set. It said that green sticks were worth ten points, but there were no green sticks. Red sticks were worth three points, but every stick had a red stripe on it. We made up our own scoring and proceeded to scream and laugh through three games. Then it got out of hand and the sticks became poking devices, which is when we were shut down by the feds.
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Norrin, the amazing transgendered cat.

Norrin
Photo by Bryan Christopher


When we picked up baby Norrin from a nearby farm, we asked for a male cat (having heard that two females will fight). The farm owner took a cursory look at Norrin's rear end and pronounced him a male, and for the six months since then, we've been calling Norrin "him."

We started to get suspicious around the time that Miley went into heat. Norrin copied all of her wailing and writhing -- albeit less enthusiastically. And when we brought them to get fixed last month, the verdict was clear: two girls.

Now that we've been calling Norrin by male pronouns for several months, it's hard to think of him as female. So we've continued to say "him." I asked Norrin and he doesn't mind.
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From the Garden

Garden ProduceThis is one day's harvest from the garden. Who can eat this much lettuce in a day? We're trying.

The blueberries and raspberries were part of a fruit salad for the Isle La Motte Annual Flotilla picnic. The cucumbers turned out to be fairly bitter. This is apparently a well-known problem and especially common in Burpee Picklers, the variety we planted. The bitterness can be peeled off with the skin or pickled out. I hear that Dave has a pickling recipe all picked out.

Today, the zucchini (plus others from subsequent days) is going to make it into a zucchini pie.
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Warning: Something is Bad

sirenCivil defense sirens, also known as tornado sirens, are pretty much the most useless warning devices ever invented. You hear the wail, and it means: Something Very Bad is happening, but we can't tell you where, when, or what. Enjoy!

I mention it because during this week's severe weather, I heard one of the aforementioned sirens going off across the lake in New York. I had no idea what it specifically meant. Was it just an alert about the coming storm? Does it mean tornado possible? Tornado sighted? Tornado in my back yard? Osama bin Laden at Aubuchon Hardware? Hellfire and brimstone raining down over a soon-to-be post-apocolyptic Lake Champlain?

I have an unobstructed view to the Adirondack mountains, and all weather comes from the west, so I gathered emergency supplies and watched the sky. In the year 2000, I'd like to see an automated IM, text message or twitter service to supplement the siren and tell me exactly why it's being sounded so I can decide whether to hunker down in the basement or play in the rain.
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Pistachio Salad

A friend recently gave me her collection of PTO, 4-H, and community group cookbooks. There are some neat books in the box (the Good Morning America recipe newsletter) and they span a few decades. I flipped through the 75th Anniversary Oklahoma 4H'ers Favorite Recipes book (1984) this morning and found this puzzing recipe.

pistachio salad recipe


At the title, I thought it was going to be some kind of nuts and lettuce salad, but the first ingredient is a tub of Cool Whip. All right, I said to myself, it's a dessert salad. And I went with that theory until I hit the last ingredient: 1 cup of grated cheddar cheese. Pineapple, marshmallows, pecans... and cheddar? For real real? I have half a mind to try it this weekend to see if it really works.
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Rhubarb Crisp

RhubarbI thought I had rhubarb in my garden, but I have nothing compared to our neighbor Neil.

I found some spindly little red stalks with broad leaves poking out of a woodpile last year and determined (via Google) that they were rhubarb (which I love). I harvested just enough to make a pie and I rearranged the wood pile to give them more room to grow. This year, the stalks are more robust and I might be able to get two pies from them. I was so excited... then I stopped by Neil's garden.

He asked if I wanted some rhubarb and I agreed, thinking I'd accept a couple of stalks to add to other fruit so I wouldn't make a dent in his harvest. Oh, how wrong I was. I got out to the garden to find that Neil has a fifty-foot row of waist-high rhubarb plants packed tightly together. Enough to seriously feed the entire island with some left over.

Rhubarb


I took a hefty bunch, then Neil came over and asked what I was making with them. When I replied, he said I surely didn't have enough and handed me a bunch more. They're gorgeous stalks, and they made a lovely rhubarb crisp that afternoon. There's still some in the fridge. Be right back.
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$3.39 Sour Cream

Here's the flip side of living in the most beautiful place on Earth.

$3.39 Sour Cream


What is normally a dollar at your local grocery store is three times as much at mine.
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Cherry Pie

Cherries were on sale this week, and that's as good a reason as any to stay up until midnight pitting tiny fruits that stain your hands brown and waiting for rounds of dough to chill.

Cherries


I've never made a cherry pie from scratch -- usually the canned cherries and Pillsbury pre-rolled crust is sufficient. But after pitting all of those cherries, it just didn't seem right putting them into a store-bought crust that's been in the freezer for a month.

I attempted a real cut-cold-butter-pieces-into-flour pastry crust. A real feat considering my fear of all flour-based foodstuffs that aren't cakes. It smells good. We'll tell you how it tastes after supper tonight.

Cherry Pie


In other news, Trevor was up sick every two hours last night. So I was also up every two hours last night. And though I thought I'd recovered with a little extra sleep this morning, I just realized I've been walking around for the last few hours with my button-down shirt on inside-out and thinking to myself, I thought this shirt had buttons...
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Peep

There are eight black chicks locked in my downstairs bathroom and I'm not letting them out for two months.

Baby Chicks


The cats are making sure that none of them get out.

Miley Watching Baby Chicks
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