Lovely crocus!

The crocus in my woods is out in full flower! It's so pretty against the brown leaves.


In this little stretch of wood edge I have many crocus, daffodils, and irises planted. Only the one crocus is up so far but there are many more poking through. I just need a few days of warmer weather and sunshine...and penned up chickens!


I love my chickens, but I'm a bit mad at them right now. They won't stay out of my flowerbeds and they've been eating off all the tiny buds coming up! I know I'd have more flowers if they'd quit picking them off. They were also dustbathing and digging big holes in the mulch in one flowerbed so I had to put wire over the top of it. We've been having this problem only because we hadn't finished the chicken yard fence yet. It was mostly up, but one stretch still needed wire. We had to abort construction last fall due to bad weather arriving. And it wasn't an issue in the winter since the chickens were blockaded in the coop to keep them warmer. And even on nice days when I let them out, they didn't venture far in the snow. But now with the snow gone and my delicate spring flowers coming up, I can't have them running loose (although them loose sure decreases the feed bill). Last night we finished the fence. So now I am looking forward to more flowers But I did notice one particularily able hen outside the pen this morning...I think I'll be clipping some wing feathers later!

What a difference a week makes!

One week ago, the snow was still pretty deep out in the pasture. Now, after a week of 40's and 50's and a little rain, most of the ground is bare, with the exception of the north facing slopes.

I wish that my new header pic was what spring looked like here right now, but unfortunately, that is a picture from last spring, taken in April.

This is what it looks like right now...dreary and muddy.


Today, we had sleet and some hail with thunderstorms. The horses stood under the bare leafless oaks for shelter. They could have stood in the shed, or under the dense pines (at least they have leaves!). Why they choose the places they do is beyond me. The dense pines are also on the same side of a hill that the oaks are, so they'd be blocked from winds coming from the same direction.


These pictures are from a week ago now already. Momma hen is pretty protective of her rapidly growing chicks. We started out with 6, but right away one died, and I think it was my fault. I think I startled the hen and she stepped on one chick. Then about a week and a half ago, the smallest chick suddenly went missing. I had them in a large wire dog kennel in the main coop area. I think the smallest one squeezed out of the cage and happened to find his way outside of the coop (I had left the door open overnight that night), and since it was below zero, I'm pretty sure he didn't make it. I found no other sign of him in the coop anywhere.


The rest of the chicks are doing great. They are really feathering out and growing up.


They are no longer in the large dog kennel. I moved them to the other half of the coop so that they could have more room.

Winter's end

Even though the ground is still snow covered, the end of winter is in sight! Forecasted highs in the 50s and 60s (YAY!!!!) for the rest of this week promise to get rid of the remaining snow very quickly!

The horses bask in the sun at morning's first light.


Later, they are found napping while Chico stands sentinel.


Griffin and Kachina are so comfortable that they lay flat out while Chico guards them.


Later on, I saw Griffin get up and stand for a while and Chico laid down with the rest of the herd.

There is still a lot of snow in the pasture, but on some of the south facing slopes in our yard, there are bare patches of ground! Of course, they were found by the chickens today!


Most chickens I've ever seen really dislike snow. They won't walk in it if it is deeper than an inch or two. So, when the weather was nice this winter, I had to shovel a small patch outside their coop door so that they'd come out and get some fresh air. I didn't have to worry about shutting their fence door because there was no way they'd wander. Too much snow! But on this day, I did close the door, and even so, one determined hen found her way over the fence and ran across the old hard snow (hard because it had settled) to forage bird seed on the bare patches of ground around the bird feeder.

We are all excited for spring!

Chicken lover

Yes, I am a chicken lover. I can't explain it, but I've always had a fascination for birds, especially chickens. We built a fabulous chicken coop this summer for our house (so that we could have chickens in our back yard instead of at the farm). I ordered some chicks early last spring and they started laying eggs last fall. I like a variety of egg colors in my egg cartons, so I choose some hens for their attractive feathering, and others for the color of their eggs. Gold campines lay white eggs, cuckoo marans lay dark brown eggs, Welsummers lay dark brown eggs, and blue-laced red wyandottes lay light brown eggs. We also have a couple hens from our old farm yard henhouse and they are mostly mixed breed hens, but they are good layers. We have 19 hens and 2 roosters. We currently get around a dozen eggs a day and our extras go to family and neighbors.

So we do have a colorful carton of eggs.


The breeds we have are not known for being broody (willingness to hatch eggs), but every once in a while, you get a hen who is really in touch with her instincts and she gets the urge to set and incubate a clutch of eggs. We haven't had such a hen for several years, but this winter, one of my Welsummer hens decided she wanted to have her own chicks. So when I noticed her in the nest box all day several days in a row, we decided to give her some eggs and see if she'd hatch them.

I gave her a batch of 8 eggs that had been laid that day (not hers, a mix of the other hens), and blocked off her with a wire dog kennel so that other hens wouldn't interfere with her. I candled the eggs halfway through incubation and two were not fertile, but the others were dark. I threw out the unfertile eggs.

On Saturday, 21 days later, I was greeted by a chorus of cheeps!

Momma hen eyes me suspiciously, but she's actually a very trusting hen and lets me photograph them.


There are six chicks total, 3 are grey, 2 are brown speckled, and 1 is black. Our roosters are a gold campine and a blue-laced red wyandotte, so it is uncertain if any of the chicks are purebred or not, but it doesn't really matter. They are so stinkin' cute! And momma hen is doing a great job with them.


She pecks at food to show them what to eat, and they watch closely!


I threw a piece of bread in there to try to entice momma out so that I could get some pictures of her chicks, but she just reached out and pulled it close.


She ripped it to little pieces and dropped them in front of her chicks. They jumped in to feast. One little grey chick grabbed a chunk and ran to the next box over to swallow it in peace.


Even though he had a huge piece, he managed to gulp it down!


They are just so cute, and I am so excited to be able to watch momma hen nurture her babies.

One month left!

Wow, I noticed that it's been well over a month since I last posted anything. Sorry about that, but I'm not really doing all that much with my horses right now. In fact, the summer has been so hot and uncomfortable that I'm not doing much of anything outside right now.

As of yesterday, I have exactly one month until my due date! So I guess, baby girl could come anytime now! I should post some updated pics, but I haven't taken any lately. I think I need to remedy that. I am definitely getting a big belly, but it's not too out of proportion yet. This picture is from a trip we took to go cherry picking and hiking in Door County, WI last month when I was about 7 months along.

I've seen some pregnant women with hugely protruding bellies. But, this is my first, so my stomach probably holds her in a little tighter. I promise I'll post some pictures of my current belly and of my growing horses soon!

I visited Cody at the trainer after she'd been there for a month. Cody looked great. She was fit and had settled into the training routine nicely. The trainer showed me everything she'd been learning, including how well she was doing with riding in the arena with other horses. She is also neck reining okay. Neck reining good on one side, but having a little difficulty sometimes with turning to the cue on the other side. Even though I didn't really want to keep her there another month, the trainer was very persuasive about wanting to keep her and further her more. Finances were the biggest reason I wouldn't have wanted to keep her there...I really wanted to just get a month on Cody, then possibly send Griffin to her in the fall. But my husband and I discussed it and since Cody is a forever keeper horse, while I am looking to most likely sell Griffin at some point, it is more economical to invest in Cody, since we know we will use her, she's already a great horse. But with Griffin, we are not even likely to get the cost of training back out of him if we do sell him...so, the decision was made to keep Cody there another month. Griffin's training will be delayed another year, since we still have not managed to get the round pen up this year anyway. And when we do, I've decided that I will do all his training, instead of sending him off. That should be do-able, since I won't be pregnant anymore by the time I get back to him! And now, it is almost time to pick Cody back up. She gets to stay an extra 5 days though because the trainer called me last week and said that Cody had caught a cold that was lingering, so she was going to give her 5 days off. This year has been a really bad year for respiratory infections...I've seen several cases of pneumonia in cows when I've gone out with the dairy vet. It's just been so wet and warm this year. Thankfully, Cody doesn't have pneumonia, but she does need her rest.

I feel bad that I haven't spent much time with my horses lately. But I see them everyday. I try to give them all scratches when I fill their water tank, but sometimes they are not all down at the barn. However, lately, I've noticed that they are spending a lot of time in the barn trying to stay away from flies, and the few times I've seen them out the pasture, they've been really irritated by flies. I've been trying to avoid putting fly stuff on them because it always inadvertantly gets on me too, and I don't want to expose my unborn child to pesticides. I have wiped fly stuff on them before the farrier comes though. But they were being driven so crazy that I decided I needed to get out there and get them all wiped/sprayed right away. I decided to try spraying them because it's faster than wiping and easier for me, since I don't have to bend over to get to their legs (hard to do now that I'm so big), However, I always fear that spraying means more exposure to me, especially if the horse dances around a bit while I apply it. I decided to risk it anyway. None of these horses have been sprayed since last summer, and Catlow can sometimes get a little dancy about it anyway, so I was concerned...but they actually all stood perfectly! I know that they knew the spray makes the flies go away. I did Catlow first, and she did jump at the first sound of the sprayer, but then stood perfectly still, and I did every inch of her whole body. By the time I was done, she was standing in complete relaxation with her head low and her eyes half closed and didn't even move an inch after I let her go (I caught them all in the barn and sprayed them in there). One by one, I got every horse. And I swear when I got to Griffin's turn, he was waiting for me to get to him because he approached me, I haltered him no problem and he didn't move a muscle the whole time I sprayed him. Kachina was last, and even she didn't move around at all. Darn smart mustangs. They impressed me today. They didn't forget a single thing about being sprayed with fly spray from last summer. After everyone was thoroughly coated, I was so amused by the look of utter relaxation and bliss on their faces. For the first time in a while, they had no flies biting them! And I don't think I got any spray on me. I made sure to stand upwind, and since they were all standing so still, I didn't have to worry about getting on the wrong side of the wind.

We've been working on quite a few projects around our house this summer.

The garden is giving me tons of tomatoes now.

I've started canning. So far I've canned lots of green beans...

..,some jam (jalapeno-apricot jam is so yummy), and a batch of stewed tomatoes, including cherry tomatoes.

Next I am going to try canning salsa. I've already dug up all my onions because they were finished growing. Most were kinda small because the soil is not the greatest in our garden. Broccoli is giving us lots, carrots are big enough to eat, although I want to let them keep growing till fall. And we have a couple ripe squash already! We ate a delicata and a japanese curry squash just the other night and they were awesome. I need to get some pictures up of my giant hubbard squash. I haven't tried to pic any of them yet, but they sure are huge!

Another project that goes along with the garden is our cold room in the basement. We started that this spring, and with the hot muggy weather, it became fun to work on it in the cool basement again, so we just finished it this week. It will be a great place to store all our squash, potatoes, onions, carrots, and canned goods!


The garden has been a big project, but we also put in a flowerbed with a retaining wall near our deck. It turned out to be a huge project because we got some advice from a professional landscaper friend, but we are finally done with it! The yard was really tore up for a while. All this equipment is part of Todd's irrigation business, but it came in really handy when we were digging out the wall and filling the bed!


Finished product!


Because we put in the flowerbed, we then had to reseed in our yard because it got all tore up, so we are currently in the process of getting some better topsoil in from some of the cow pastures so that the grass will grow a little better than it had. We'll get some good topsoil for the garden too before we plant next year.

Another project that turned out really well was putting a door on the back side of our house to go into the laundry room. We had a local contractor do that and also build a small deck off the back door. This door will be so convenient for entering with dirty/manure-y clothes. Plus, the deck is big enough to put one of those circular clotheslines on so we will try to save energy by line drying a lot of our clothes. And I want to do cloth diapers with the baby, so the line will come in handy with drying those too! And all just out the back door!

The back door will also be convenient for accessing the chicken coop that we are still working on getting finished. The chicks and turkeys are rapidly outgrowing their little pen and are ready for their permanent coop. We just need to get that done now.




And of course, the last big project that we are working on is getting the baby's room ready! My sister's are throwing me a baby shower this weekend, so that should be a big help in getting ready, but we do already have a crib, a changing table, and some dressers.

So, I promise to get some pictures of my 8 months pregnant belly, and some of the horses up soon. Griffin has grown so much, both in size and in his attitude toward me - he's actually become quite trusting of me without me even doing anything with him. I'm really excited to work with him, once I'm no longer pregnant and the weather cools off. I'll also try to remember to get pictures of Cody at the trainer when we go visit her next.

Flowers and new chicks!

The last catch-up post is about my flower beds and new baby chicks. First off, if you want to see cool growth, check out teh first post I did on my flower bed on May 13th. I had seeded some beds in with wildflower seeds, and then spot planted a few annuals and perennials to add flowers until they would come in thick. On May 13th, there were little green sprouts, but they were still tiny little things then.

Check them out as of last week!


And this week, they are even taller and starting to flower - just a few poppies and the perennials I'd planted right now, but I expect that in a few weeks, the bed will be vividly bright with color! Almost every tall plant now has flower buds on it and they are totally overshadowing the annuals that I had planted. I will have to take another picture of them now...I'm waiting for a sunny day to show them off now.

The bed in the back of the house is even more grown up than the front bed.


I had also put together some planters with various annuals, and now, a couple weeks later, they have just filled in with flowers and really look beautiful.



I have the best time checking on my flowers daily.

And my other project has been the arrival of our baby turkeys and chicks that we'd ordered in the mail!

The turkeys arrived last Thursday.




I ordered 3 each of 5 varieties: Bourbon Red, Royal Palm, Naragansett, Black Spanish, and Broad-breasted White. All 15 of them looked perky and healthy when they arrived, and I made sure that each one had found the water and drank. But the next morning found one turkey dead, a broad-breasted white., I looked them over, and the rest looked okay that morning, but I had to leave to ride with the vet. When I returned home that afternoon, I found two more that looked very weak: one of which was actually losing his balance and falling over onto his back. The other just looked really lethargic. I immediately started feeding them both electolyte solution from an eyedropper. By evening, the royal palm that had been falling over was actually looking better (he wasn't falling over anymore, but he was still looking lethargic). The bourbon red that was very weak, seemed the same. I was able to get a lot of electrolyte into him, but I could tell by the wrinkled skin on his feet that he was just too dehydrated. I couldn't get enough water into him. Then I noticed that one of the black chicks was looking lethargic too, so I immediately started giving him electrolyte. I thought I might be able to save him because it seemed I was catching him early enough before he got to dehydrated and he started out actively taking the solution from the eyedropper. In the end, the bourbon red and the black chick succumbed and died. The royal palm with the balance issue miraculously made a recovery and he is doing much better, although still not quite as active as the other chicks. But he's now eating and drinking on his own. So I lost three and I'm now down to 12. I think the rest are going to make it. The healthy chicks are extremely fiesty and think that I'm their mom. They come running over when they seem my head peer into their box and they voraciously peck at my fingers looking for insect treats (I feed them caterpillars and horseflies that I find).

The chicks arrived a day after the turkeys on Friday. My mom picked them up from the post office, since I was with the vet. All 30 chicks were perky and healthy and as of today (5 days later), they are still going strong and healthy and growing like weeds! We ordered 5 each of 6 breeds: two meat breeds that are the slower growing cornish crosses (5 are white and 5 are red), Welsummer (a dark brown egg layer), Cuckoo Marans (another dark brown egg layer), Gold Campine (an attractive white egg layer), and Blue-laced Red Wyandotte (a beautifully feathered light brown egg layer).





The chicks are not quite as tame as the turkeys, but then, I've never had chickens become as tame as turkeys do. Turkeys really imprint on their handlers, while chickens don't seem to do that. To tame chickens, you have to actively hold them and get them really accustomed to you. Turkeys seem to imprint on you by default. Because of that, they are so fun to play with. They respond to your voice and when you let them out to forage as chicks, they'll follow you everywhere and inspect everything you get your hands on. They are so fun.

The chickens really seem to have more of a fear instinct with strange noises and people...strange, since I think chickens have been domesticated longer than turkeys.

The chickens that we end up keeping from this batch will make a really nice egglaying mix with our current flock of mixed brown and green egg layers. It is so fun to get eggs that are all colors of the rainbow in your egg carton. And there is really nothing like home raised eggs in comparison to store eggs. Once you've actually had farm fresh eggs from chickens that are fed a varied diet (not just strictly formulated chicken feed), you will never go back. Their eggs have such great flavor. In comparison, store eggs have no flavor at all, and store yolks are usually pale yellow, where as our chickens have rich yellow-orange yolks that are not at all artificially enhanced.

We love our chickens and their eggs.

Chicken dinner

Well, I should have posted this a couple of weeks ago when we had this event. But hopefully you can still enjoy it now...if enjoy is the correct word. Remember those cute fuzzy little chicks I hatched out in May? Well, they have now become chicken dinner! My mom, dad, roommate Jen, and my grandma all had a fun afternoon catching and butchering about 35 chickens. It was quite fun. It was also my roommate's first time with butchering anything, but she really wanted to learn how to do it (she likes to be self reliant and eco-friendly), so she did it! And she did great and surprised herself.

Chicken dinner

See the facebook album for pictures of the event. They shouldn't gross any of you out, but do be prepared to see plucked chicken (dead of course).