Redneck Hillbilly Search

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Animal Adoption and Rescue

There was a request for animal adoption and rescue type items on the Zazzle message board so I put these few items together from some of my photos for the extra promotion.

A dog from the neighbourhood





A beautiful pitbull with an "off the chain" message.


and a Stop Puppy Mills greeting card with this photo I snapped at a community event a couple years ago.
(you have to click it to read the inside)




And of course, our two lovely dogs are featured as well!


We adopted our first family dog RED, a mixed breed rescue mutt, as a young puppy  from a small breed rescue organization in Corpus Christi, Texas. She's a senior now and enjoying her last few years on this happy earth with people who absolutely adore her. (us)




Our second dog, BLUE was a purebred puppy which we bought at 12 weeks old from a reputable breeder.


Redneck Beer Belly

I've been getting a little rounder around the midsection the last few years, but I've noticed the growth has been accelerated somewhat since I started working as a brewmaster cooking beer at the local U-Brew.

There is nothing better than a nice, crisp, cold, refreshing beer on a sunny afternoon after the farm chores are done. Aaaaah.  It's only 9 am right now, so unfortunately I'll have to postpone the experience for a few more hours yet.

The habit has been wreaking havoc on the waistline,  and the BEER is to blame!

So I whipped up this funny tee the other day for those of us who acknowledge the cause of our blossoming bellies.




I figure the arrow tip should point to the top of the belly, no matter how many beers have gone down the gullet and regardless of how big and round it may be. :D

There's gotta be a redneck or two out there who could use this!

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Camera Withdrawal

The littler kidlet went away for the weekend on a camping trip with a friend. I miss her already and she hasn't even been gone for 24 hrs. Sigh.... but this post isn't about her, or I'd have titled it "Daughter Withdrawal."

Did you just look up to see what I titled this? ;p

  She took one of my most prized material possessions with her. I have two favorite *things*, that I'm never very far away from. One is my laptop, which of course I am plugged in to right at this very moment.

The other is my camera.
Oh how I miss that camera already.

It's not a very special camera. It's not even a DSLR. It's not even a cannon or a nikon like everyone owns, but a Panasonic. To top it off, it's not even the latest panasonic, or the best panasonic, or the most expensive panasonic.  It's probably a couple years old now, and a dinosaur by camera standards.

It's a Panasonic FZ-18. A "Bridge" camera. A little more than a point and shoot, but not by much. It does have the dslr look to it,  a leica lens, an amazing 18x *optical* zoom, a comfortable grip and solid feel to it, and can accept filters and specialty lenses. I don't have any special filters or lenses but it's neat to know I could if I wanted to (lol)  It's not a compact which would be easier to haul around everywhere with me, but not so big and bulky that it is a PITA. I think it's the perfect middle ground for a novice photographer like myself who really wouldn't know what to do with a DSLR anyways.  

Since it's not here with me right now, I have of course noticed all kinds of things so far today that I could be taking pictures of. The cattle in the field, with sunlight on their backs. Click. The plants and flowers in my garden that are really starting to wake up, Click. The robin busily building a nest on the front porch from strands of animal bedding soaked in urine and coated in cow manure.... ok maybe not that last one.

Cold sweats. Shaking and Nausea. I'm sure that's what I can expect over the next three days before it's back in my arms once again.

Just.....3......More..... Days.

Different Kind of Visitor

Imagine my surprise when I walked out into the livingroom in the wee morning hours the other day and saw this little beauty clinging to the front window.  I haven't looked it up to see what the full name is, but it's the well recognized red headed version of a woodpecker.


These little peckers are bigger than I expected up close. Here it is trying to remain absolutely motionless, hoping I won't see it. So instead of turning on the radio as usual, I quickly tip toed away to grab my camera.

One of the dogs came out shortly after to assume her position on the couch (she's an excellent furniture warmer) and didn't even notice the terrified bird who craned its head to see what it had just heard moving around on the other side of the window! It flew away shortly after I snapped this one!


There are so many amazing things you can see if you just slow down long enough to see them.


Monday, May 17, 2010

Garden Time!

The garden has been rototilled this way and that way probably a half dozen times now. Then Mr. Redneck Hillbillies got in there with the tractor and spread some of last year's composted cow manure and bedding, after which we rototilled it again. The soil is nice and fluffy, healthy and rich looking, and begging to be planted!

This year I'm going to skip planting stupid brussel sprouts since they were space hogs and very dissapointing. I'm planting twice as much brocolli since it did very well for me last year, and I might try growing some garlic. There will be 2 packs of corn again, spacing the seeds a little better so that hopefully all of the stalks produce two ears. One type of potatoes should do since taters are so cheap to buy. I'll also be buying a flat or two of  some started seedlings including a  couple space saver cucumbers, a few roma tomatoes, a couple beefsteak tomatoes, and some jumbo cherries, along with a couple hot and a couple sweet peppers. I made some extremely awesome relish and salsa last year! Yes, that's cheating by buying starters, but the local growers do a much better job than I do. :D

Oh! And some beans of course (green and yellow wax) to fill up the freezer and lots of sugar snap peas where you eat the peas and the pod! mmmmmm I can hardly wait. Most of those don't even make it out of the garden.

I'd say 70-80% of our subscribers to the youtube videos are there for the gardening type stuff, so I'll have to get out there in the yard and wander around with my camera, talking to myself! I always feel so silly doing that!   Those people that subscribed to see the Mr's cool toys or our farm animals will have to skip over my long and very boring garden tours for the next couple of months!

I'm excited to get out there growing, and also for the opportunities to photograph all that lush green garden goodness this year for my latest pet project stores (Redneck Hillbillies and Country Corner) at Zazzle.

Time to get my hands dirty!

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Flowers Flowers!

Mother's Day just passed, and my lovely sister bought me a lovely bouquet full of lovely flowers.

What a sweetie she is - I'm not even her mother and yet she bought me flowers.

Sigh. I love my seester.

Anyhow, in this bouquet there happened to be some pretty pink carnations, some daisies dyed blue, and some large creamy white lilies. (I could be wrong on some of the varieties, but in any case they are pretty.)

I took photos of all of them (of course.) .... and uploaded a few of them.... (of course) and made some products with the images. (of course for the THIRD time!)

I stuck them in my Country Corner account since there ain't nuttin redneck about these flowers!

These are my favorites:






My mom would probably love that one because it's pink. I'm not a pink person, but if it has to be pink, well at least there's some nice shades in there.


Frosted Blue Daisy bag
Frosted Blue Daisy by CountryCorner
See other canvas bags by zazzle.com


The blue is more my color. Especially a nice bright blue like that.




Black and white makes anything look elegant, don't ya think?







and this awesome photo my daughter took of a single chive stem with a blooming flower head  was made into a mousepad!

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Redneckiest Redneck

Y'all know who you are!

We tend to think we're only a little bit redneck, (and a whole lotta hillbilly) ... but others might have a different view.

Something redneck for a change.

Not just a little bit redneck either. The redneckiest kind of redneck.

(How many times can I get the word Redneck in here, ya figure? That's pretty Rednecky enough for the SEO I figure )

Here's one item that I pushed through the queue. Fully customizeable with your own text, or you can just use this example and personalize it with your own city and state/prov.




Forget the cutesy stuff. That's for pansies. And us redneck ain't pansies! Try this one on for size at the next neighbourhood baby shower for a real hoot and get a chuckle or two from the redneckiest redneck daddies.

Good Neighbour Gone Bad

  Thankfully there is a road separating us, since I cannot begin to imagine what else we'd be dealing with if we shared a fenceline.

  Burying a few hundred pounds of bones and waste trimmings from his beef farming operation 50 ft from our well wasn't quite enough for this fellow. We pissed him off and awakened the beast by calling the health authority who made him clean it up. Since then, he's driven his massive steel tracked machinery on the pavement repeatedly infront of our house, threatened that he'd come over and kick the Mr's ass if he was 20 yrs younger with a few dozen expletives,  and dropped a tree directly over a gas pipeline running through our properties.

The latest is the infected cattle he sold to our fenceline sharing neighbour.  He's known for "farming the farmer" - and he's farmed this newb alright.

We've only been cattle farming as hobbiests for 4 years now, and are learning as we go. Thankfully we haven't lost an animal yet. A few of them have had pnemonia and could have/should have died but they pulled through. We dealt with raging pinkeye infections last year that almost cost two animals their vision (thanks to above mentioned bad neighbour farmer). At the time he couldn't be bothered to warn us that he'd bought sick animals at the auction and that in no time at all it'd be on our little farm. He was kind enough to come help us doctor them up afterwards, I'll give him credit for that.

We aren't sure what these animals have - multiple crusty sores that almost look like warts all over their heads. Many of them crawling with the flies that will transfer the infection to our side.

Mange? Ringworm? Either of those would be devastating since they are both extremely contagious, can remain on a farm long after treatment and could even possibly infect humans or our dogs.

 Hard to "Love thy neighbour" these days. A shame all the way around.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

My Other Doggie

Just because Blue was so prominently featured in a post a couple days ago - I figured I'd better give my other dog some publicity also.

This is my sweet baby, Red.

She's a mixed breed rescue dog that we had flown home to us from Corpus Christie, Texas. (We're in B.C., Canada!) This was our first family dog, and none in our own country would do, apparently. They had named her Red Rona - but on the petfinder listing it was cut off and just showed RED. Over the looooong wait until she could be with us the name kinda stuck. So Red she was, and Red she is.


She's 8 or 9 now, and starting to show her age these days, but she'll always be my baby.




No, I didn't take up painting, or pen and ink sketching or anything of the sort. I still can't draw worth beans.
This is another photo I digitally manipulated to resemble something between a watercolor painting and a charcoal sketch with colored pencils.

What do you think?

Monday, May 3, 2010

Once you go Black

This has got to be my new favorite design, thanks to a couple cattle farming  folks who apparently liked it enough to buy variations of this on some Tshirts and Hoodies. 






YAWL! That's what I'm talkin' 'bout!

This is our Bessie - A black angus (possibly X) heifer  calf who is not only the smartest heifer in the herd, but  now the one who will most likely  meet the butcher last. :D

I kissed a....

Remember these?

I Kissed A Redneck! buttonKissed A Cowboy sticker

Not that I will ever understand WHY, but some people actually kiss something other than rednecks and cowboys. (shaking head)  I know, right!!?

So I whipped this up the other day in a template format so kissers and kissees of all types can be represented.


I Kissed A ... Personalize with your text! apron
I Kissed A ... Personalize with your text! by RedneckHillbillies
Many more aprons available online at zazzle.com


of course available on a whole whack of different products.
http://www.zazzle.com/my/products/public/cg-196830553310278125&rf=238230363642556504