Why We Have Chickens...

Pedal boy, pedal

Friday the 22nd was the annual St. Jude's Trike-a-thon at Kohen's daycare. They do a nice job with this fundraiser and the preschoolers love to bring their wheels to school. I had an ASD consulting day, so I took an early lunch to run over and check out the action. Kohen did great. He has three trikes in his garage, but chose the old classic to take for the trike-a-thon. This trike was a rummage sale purchase by Grandma Butchy, and is older than me! The previous owner even had a license plate with her first name "Jennifer" on the side of it that we couldn't bear to remove. Kohen managed to complete 23 laps around the building, and had fun every second of it.

Garden 2009

No longer nameless...Meet Emma, daughter of Ella and Bam (get it L, and M?) L&M is our local fleet store in northern Minnesota, a common stop for our family!

Our garden, looking from north to south, the milk jugs are covering pepper plants. Here's hoping for much green to cover all that dirt!

Feel free to skip this post if you are uninterested in every seed growing in my garden. I have discovered that I use this blog much like a personal journal. For me in this tech. age it is much easier to click than flip through pages, plus, I am a much faster typer than writer (darn left-handedness!)

We have added two raised beds to our gardening this year. The idea was to harness some of the heat that is lost from the underground water lines to the house. For those that do not know, we heat our house and water with an outside wood boiler. This is our attempt to extend our short growing season. In the raised beds we planted: three amish paste tomatoes, 1 green heirloom tomato, chinese 5-color peppers, dakota popcorn, and three types of eggplant- ping tung, yellow thai egg, and diamond.

In our large garden we have six more tomato plants (heirlooms I started from seed, first year for that.) Hopi Pale Gray winter squash, seed onions, spinach, sugar ann peas, danver carrots, golden sweet peas, alaska peas, an assortment of lettuce, rainbow swiss chard, early russian and de bourbonne cukes, purple podded pole beans, minnesota midget muskmelon, dill, red stuffing peppers, King North peppers, yellow scalloped and yellow straightneck summer squash, black beauty zucchini, onion sets, and watermelon. We also have another small bed that currently contains two rhubarb plants, and many weeds. We are eliminating the weeds and planning on planting the pumpkins there so they can trail into the lawn. I still have a bunch more hot pepper plants that I will pot and try to sell at the farmer's market. I also have to figure out a spot to plant all of the flowers I have started.

Look Alike

We are in the midst of a tooth crisis. Kohen has his first loose tooth. Actually two, and the permanents have shown through his gum behind his baby teeth. I am having problems dealing with this. Kohen JUST got these teeth (Ok, it was four years ago, but in mom time that was yesterday.) On Friday when he mentioned that he had a loose tooth, I brushed it off to him listening to older kids at daycare. But, Friday night corn on the cob was on the menu, Kohen's favorite. He couldn't eat it, I then realized why. I admit, it made me tear up to think of this milestone in our lives already. His two bottom teeth are as wiggly as can be.

So began the weekend of obsession. Wiggling, pushing, dental floss tails hanging from Kohen's mouth. Currently, Koe is wandering through the house with a length of mint dental floss tied tightly around his loosest tooth. Not sure what we are waiting for, but the wait goes on.

After dinner tonight I asked Kohen if I could take a picture of his baby teeth before they start disappearing. The photo is above, notice he didn't bother to clean dinner off his face first! Well, Isaiah decided he needed to get in on the action and tried to show me his teeth too. After loading the pictures on my computer I took a second to notice how much my boys are beginning to look alike. Both adorable, and obviously brothers.

My Memorial Day weekend has been one of accomplishment. We finished planting the garden, and Nate and I spent two hours today hauling the last of the hay nearer the pasture, picking up trash, and getting our outside area looking summerlike. Four more days of students, one teacher work day, and then the summer begins!

Do you need to be sleeping to see the tooth fairy?

Small Blessings...Lambing Finale

Some late pictures, these are Bunny's twin ewes born 8 days ago. Look at the size difference!


Bunny and her girls, this morning. Growing and doing well.

Ella's little girl.

Ella and the newest ewe lamb. Ella fleece looks rough because she is one of my line that we could roo, pluck her fleece. I need to pull out the remainder of last year's fleece, which shows up lighter brown on her body.

Our final lamb of the season was born last night, to Ella and Bam. She is a beautiful black girl with some random flecks of white. I noticed yesterday morning that Ella's bag had filled out a lot. Ella was our worry-causer. She is a yearling, and is smaller than I would like her to be. I think she is destined to be small, mainly due to the traumatic incident when she was a young lamb. You can revisit it here. We were concerned that her small stature would cause lambing difficulties.

Worries unfounded, Ella lambed in the pasture, unassisted over night. Isaiah decided he was too hungry to sleep at 5:30 this morning. After I had him settled with some milk and cereal, I surveyed the pasture from the window, looking for Ella. I spotted her in the middle of the pasture, with a small black lamb standing beside her. A quick holler upstairs to rustle up my husband to watch Isaiah, grab the cell phone, and camera, and I ran down the hill. As I approached the baby was nursing, good sign. She was also dry, though a bit dirty. Ella must have decided to lamb in one of the shelters that are still dirty from this winter.

I called Nate to let him know how the baby (ewe!) was doing, and to contemplate moving them to the garage. It was warm last night, in the high 40's, and both seemed to be doing well. We decided to move them mainly to keep a closer eye on Ella. So began the slow process of carrying the lamb low so that Ella could see her and follow me. As we began the slow crawl up the hill, I saw a fox come across the bridge and stand right next to the fence, watching the sheep and me. He was not scared at all and focused on the maaing mom and babe. Another call to Nate (thank goodness for cell phones!) and I continue to focus on bringing the new one to the lambing jug. The fox continued to watch, no fear of me at all. Nate ran outside and was too far from it to make a difference, but it did get the point and run off. Ella and her girl are now residing in the garage, where safety is number one!

In other news, we managed to get the entire gardens planted yesterday, but I'll share about that later.

Happy Memorial Day!

Robin in Residence

Nate called me when I was on my way home today, to let me know of the surprise he found in the chicken coop. He informed me that we must have had a robin lay an egg in the nesting box. Along with the ten typical sized eggs, was this bit of an egg. Obviously it is from one of the aruacanas, because it is light green-blue in color.

Why the picture on the stairs you ask? Was I setting my husband up for a slippery surprise? No, these were Nate's house project for this week. They are a vast improvement on the previous climbers. Think 90 year old farmhouse. Think cracks, creaks, popping nails, and wobbles. Think inferior building: instead of three stringers (the long boards that are notched and form the frame for your stairs) think two stringers, and then the triangle cut-out pieces nailed to the old log wall to form a stringer along the wall side. Yeah really, if it weren't so dark outside I would go and take a picture of what he took out. How many thousands of feet have walked, stomped, stumbled on those hazard ridden stairs? Not to mention how many times feet have slipped and butts have hit those slippery, too short treads? (Mine did last week, not pretty. Picture black and blue on a posterior region, in the shape of Australia.) I feel your grimace, right in my ***.

Ok, back to poultry news. We moved the chicks, who are now closer to chickens, out to the coop this past week. They do not venture out too far into the yard, but are happy with the extra room. We also have three duck hens setting on nests full of eggs right now. I am hopeful we get some ducklings. Henrietta, our Japanese fantail bantam, has been setting for the past few weeks, and I was expecting chicks any day. For some reason she left her nest for quite a while today, so I'm not as optimistic that there will be babies this go around. This would be the third year she has hatched out her own offspring, so I am not going to question her abilities.

2 Weeks...where to start

Blogger and I are having issues, and I cannot get these photos to move down to the proper location, sorry!

Scar's son, moments after being born.
Scar's son, one week old.

Wow, I'm ashamed that it has been over two weeks since I last posted. Can you tell that Spring is here, along with lambing, and the end of the school year? My plan is to do a few smaller posts now, instead of one novel.

In lambing news, we have added four additional lambs to our numbers, with one ewe left to lamb. Last Saturday Nate, Kohen, and I headed to the Shepherd's Harvest Festival along with Aunt Linda, but that is a whole other post. Anyway, we came home to Sunny in the early stages of labor. An hour later, we had a nice ram lamb, with spots! He is mostly white with a dark nose, ear tips, and a few random spots.

The spotted boy, fresh to the world.

Spotted ram, one week old.

Our ewes have a habit of lambing in pairs, and Scar decided she was buddied up with Sunny. She gave us a moorit ram lamb with some white on his face. We were surprised that our two biggest ewes only gave us singles, we would have expected more baby for all that belly.

Last night, Bunny decided to be a good girl and go in to labor and deliver without any notice. I walked in as she was cleaning off her first lamb, a black ewe. I ran into the house to tell Nate, and was in the house for five minutes. When I came back out she had just given birth to a second ewe lamb, this one white. She was impossibly small, and I was concerned. The black ewe was able to stand and nurse quickly, but her sister wasn't as lucky. We ended up milking some colostrum and tube feeding her, which brought her around. She is now moving around and nursing well. We kept this birth quiet until we figured that they would both have a chance, trying to avoid any more life lessons for our dear four year old. This afternoon I took him out and introduced him to the new girls. They are still making use of the heat lamp since we had snow on the ground this morning and the temperature has not gotten above 40, combined with 30 mph sustained winds. Bunny is being a good mom, and taking care of her baby girls. I haven't hauled out the scale to weigh them, but the black ewe looks to be about 4-5 pounds, with her white sister perhaps 2-2.5! No names yet, but we may call the white ewe marshmallow since the rule is to only name girls.

These new additions bring our lamb count to 12, with 7 rams and 5 ewes. All look to have beautiful fleece, but time will tell. Bam improved the bloodline of the flock. All the lambs have nice, small tails, with the exception of the Jacobs, and the Icelandic, who we banded tails on.

The garage is becoming less crowded, with Bunny in a jug, Good Mama, Marshmallow, Cream, Scar and her son, Sunny and her son, and Ella in occupance. The rest of the flock was moved to the yard between our driveway and the pasture, fenced with electronet, a portable electric fencing system. To charge the electronet, we have been connecting to the pasture fence charger. The charge proved too strong. This week we had two chickens who became intangled in the electronet and would have not survived if Nate had not found them quickly. Then, on Wednesday night one of our outside cats was killed by the electronet. A trip to L&M Fleet Supply and the purchase of the smallest charger available, has led to a bit more piece of mind.

Ella is our last holdout for lambing. She was the ewe lamb attacked by Woody, our german shepherd last year. It looks like she has some time before she goes, she just started to bag up about a week ago.

Ok, I better go play with some boys, but I promise a non-sheep post to follow.