Construction by Kristin

Although there are many things I do well, building things is not one of them. Never hand me a hammer and expect something usable to come from my efforts. In fact, it's entirely possible I will end up with an unusable, exploded thumb.

But if you need something cobbled together out of cardboard boxes and duct tape? I am your woman.

Luckily for the chicks, a bigger home for them fell within my scope of building. That is, I could duct tape some pieces of cardboard to one of the old drawers we took out of the bunk bed to make the drawer higher and voila! A chick house.

I even found one of the dividers for the dogs' crates and taped that on one end of the box so that the children had a viewing end. That also has the benefit of keeping one end of the box open for better air flow.

And for better photos.

On the other end, with a solid piece of cardboard there and the heat lamp, the chicks can get into a warmer area if they feel cold.

See? Not only am I a general contractor, I am an architect. And I didn't have to pick up a hammer.

Welcome to the Hatchery

I'll just start off with the picture everyone is waiting for: The fluffy chicks.

Taken right after I put fresh paper towels down in their tub, because otherwise it's just too nasty to show the world. Birds are gross.

I've never used an incubator before to hatch eggs, but we have fertilized eggs, thanks to our mean rooster that terrifies the children, but apparently fulfills his natural duties. A. was starting to talk about making a homemade incubator, but the temperature and humidity have to be within a very small range for the chicks to form correctly, and I was worried about cooking the chicks or something in a homemade incubator.

So then I looked into buying an incubator, but I could see right away that you definitely get what you pay for with incubators, and I did not want to spend hundreds of dollars on a good one.

And THEN, Jack's preschool teacher mentioned she was thinking of borrowing an incubator from one of the other teachers. This is one of the incubators they use at the school to hatch chicks with the kids every year, but obviously, that was not happening this year. So I offered to keep the incubator here and take care of the eggs given to me by the preschool teacher, along with thirteen eggs of our own.

It seemed sort of unlikely that putting the same eggs I eat for breakfast into a heated styrofoam box would result in chickens, but I took the leap of faith that is artificial incubation.

This incubator was a really nice one. Not only does it have a thermostat and temperature regulator, it also has a humidity read-out (although it required some experimentation to figure out how much water to put in at what intervals to keep the humidity at the right level). 

And most importantly, it turns the eggs automatically.

The eggs have to be turned so the forming chicks don't stick to the side of the egg. Without an automatic turner, I would have had to turn every single egg at least three times a day.

I could do without that kind of commitment. I found it hard enough to keep the humidity levels at the right place.

Anyway.

After ten days of incubation, the eggs can be candled. This is just shining a light through the egg, and is how you determine if the chicks are actually forming in there or if the egg is a dud. As you might guess from the name, this was originally done with an actual candle, although the best method in the modern day is using the light on a smart phone.

I found that really funny.

Anyway again.

The light from the phone showed us that all thirteen of our eggs seemed to be developing, and only two of the preschool teacher's eggs were. I removed the non-fertile eggs, leaving 15 eggs still in the incubator. And then, ten days later, I woke up to cheeping in the kitchen.

CHIIIIICK!

Chicken eggs are supposed to take 21 days to hatch, and that little dude (or, I hope, dudette) was early. It spent a lonely day in the incubator with nothing but eggs for company until the next chick started to break out just before the children's bedtime.

Of course, I let them stay awake to watch it hatch out all the way:

It took the chick about half an hour to get all the way out, by which time I was reeeeally tired and the children were reeeeally hyped up.

By the next morning, there were three more already hatched out and one more working its way out. We watched that one hatch out all the way, too.

Newly-hatched chicks are really not cute. They're pretty wet and unappealing, actually.

One more chick hatched out later that day, bringing our total to seven. 

They're supposed to stay in the incubator until they're dry, so I left them in there until that night and then transferred them to their feed-tub brooder in the kids' bathroom, leaving the remaining eight eggs in the incubator.

It's possible for chicken eggs to hatch as late as 25 days, so I'm going to leave those eight in there until tomorrow, although I don't really think they're going to do anything.

Two of the seven chicks are going to the preschool teacher, leaving us with only five chicks. I was planning on putting new eggs into the incubator and doing it all over again, but now one of our hens appears to have decided to go broody.

So maybe she'll do it for me. But if she doesn't, I can go broody myself, with the help of some modern machinery.

We Have Chicks!

And I hatched them myself!

Okay, so I didn't actually sit on a clutch of eggs myself until they hatched, but I did manage to successfully use an incubator for the first time ever to hatch chicks.

We have seven. They are very cute. Pictures and story to come when I don't have to spend the day on Zoom school meetings . . .

Until then, you can go read this thing I wrote for Kristen-with-an-"e" about going grocery shopping less frequently. (Of all the things I ever thought I would become an expert on, that was not a thing I had ever considered. Life sure is funny like that.)

Waiting on the World To Change

It is currently 31 degrees, dry, and windy. But when I get up tomorrow it will be snowing. And it will continue snowing most of tomorrow and tomorrow night.

I was not dreaming of a white Thanksgiving, if only because it makes animal care so much more difficult. They still need food and water, even if their hay is covered in six inches of snow and the outside tap is frozen. And even if the power goes out, which is a distinct possibility.

So I took some measures to ensure that no matter what happens tomorrow, I can feed and water our growing menagerie without too much aggravation.

First I placed a large tub in A.'s office--which has a door leading directly into the shop--and filled it with water. That way I'll have plenty of water to put in buckets for the horse, chickens, and dogs, with or without a functioning tap or water pump.

No one needs to go in and out of that door anyway, right?

I used some rocks to secure a tarp over part of Samson's hay in the pasture, because it's not under cover and if it snows as much as they think it will, he might have a hard time getting to it. I might have to dig the tarp out a bit, but at least once it's moveable, I can just flip it off to uncover the dry hay underneath.

For the chickens, I cooked a couple of the greenish pumpkins from the volunteer plants. They'll probably stay in their coop for a couple of days, and having food for them to peck at keeps them from pecking at each other.

And finally, for the humans, Poppy and I made chocolate chip cookies.

I suppose we could eat some pumpkin, too, but cookies sounded much more appealing.

Okay, Mama N. I'm ready as I'll ever be. Bring on the Thanksgiving snow. (But not too much, okay? Thanks.)

In Which the Ladies Start Pulling Their Weight

The hens--all two of them--finally started laying on Sunday.

The home eggs next to the inferior store eggs are small, but mighty.

I feel slightly less resentful now about having to trudge out to the chicken coop in the dark every morning to bring them their container of scraps and cup of purchased food.

On the same day, Jack decided to let the chickens out of their yard, which allowed us the opportunity to teach the puppies not to chase the chickens, no matter how fun it might be.

They were not convinced. They weren't sorry, either.

And in related news, the other lady in the house--by which I mean me--will be starting to earn her keep tomorrow. At least partially.

I'm going back to work.

It has been eight years since I did freelance copy editing for pay, and thirteen years since I left my house to go to a job.

I wasn't looking for a job, but I figured one would find me eventually. That's the way it goes in a small community. With a limited workforce, it's inevitable that every able adult will be expected to contribute in some way. 

In this case, it was the school that asked for help. They had a huge increase in enrollment this year*, which is great, but the teachers are over-extended. The superintendent asked if I could help a couple of days a week as an "Educational Assistant." I think this is probably what we used to call a teacher's aide.

Anyway. I don't know exactly what I'm going to be doing, other than serving as another adult to supervise children, but I'll be working at the school on Mondays and Wednesdays when all three boys are at school. A. will be watching Poppy on those days.

A. just finished up his training to become the school bus driver, as well, so starting next week he'll be driving the school bus. Which means that on Mondays and Wednesdays, the entire family, including Poppy in her car seat, will be riding on the school bus. A. will bring Poppy home with him on the bus on the days I'm working, and then back to the school in the afternoon to drive us all home and drop us off before he continues on to drop off the rest of the kids.

Lots of adjustments to be made, and new routines to figure out. Wish us luck.

* Which means they went from 28 K-12 students to almost forty, plus thirty online students. So we're still not talking your average public school, but it's a lot for teachers that were accustomed to classes of three or four students.

Poppy and the Chickens

Like most toddlers, Poppy is a big fan of routines. Particularly if it's a routine that she knows well enough to dictate the steps. In her case lately, that means taking care of the chickens in the morning.

She wakes up before the sun, and before the chickens. But as soon as the sun starts to come up--around 6 a.m. these days--I tell her it's time to go let the chickens out and she heads straight to the door to put on her pink boots.* Then she goes to the refrigerator to get the container of chicken scraps and waits at the door until I open it for her.

After getting down the steps and into the enclosed porch, she leads the way to the shop, wherein lives the commercial chicken food. Once there, I fill the container of food for her, and we switch containers; she carries the commercial food and I carry the scraps.

I would rather it was the other way around, because the container of scraps has a lid on it and is therefore much less likely to spill all over if she falls over a rock or into a hole or whatever.

But she wants that open container of food, and she will have it, by God.

No one's telling THIS girl what she can and can't carry.

To be fair, in the two weeks or so that we've been doing this, she's only tripped and spilled the food once, which is pretty good for a kid who's not even two yet.

Anyway.

Once we get across the back pasture to the chicken coop, I open the outer door to the pen, and we both dump our food into the chickens' pan.

At which point she always announces, "Dump!" with great satisfaction as she suits the the action to the word.

Then she exits the pen and I open the door to the actual coop for the chicken rush.

Best to stay out of the way of those birds when they're headed for food**.

As soon as the chickens are released and eating, she heads back to the shop, puts the container back in the bucket of commercial food, takes the empty scrap container from me, carries it inside to the kitchen, and puts it back on the counter, thus completing another successful morning of chicken care.

Pretty soon I bet I can just send her out on her own to do it. 

* Which, incidentally, she can do all by herself. As the parent of any small child can tell you, this is pretty much the Holy Grail of children's shoes.

** Unfortunately, the gray chicken formerly known as Lucy appears to be more of a Lucius and will probably not be with us for long, because I have no interest in having two roosters.

Our Temporary Houseguests

Cubby and Charlie brought home some chicks from school on Monday.

Surprise!

Well, it wasn't a surprise to us, obviously. The chicks started out as fertilized eggs in incubators at the school, and Cubby in particular was keeping us apprised of their progress every day. I had to sign a permission form for Cubby and Charlie to bring some of the chicks home. So we knew they were coming, we just didn't know how many we would be getting.

We ended up getting four. Their names are Little Man, Little Princess, Buttercup, and one other that I can't remember. They were out in A.'s shop while the weather was warm, but as the weather took an abrupt turn to the very-not-warm yesterday, they are currently residing in the children's bathroom.

Poppy in particular was thrilled that the chicks appeared inside our very house.

They will, however, be going back in the shop as soon as it warms up again, because chicks smell. Yuck.

Our long lead time to this exciting event allowed A. to start repairing the old chicken coop at the back of our property. It's just a wood frame with sheet metal over it, and there were quite a few gaps that a hungry fox would have no trouble climbing through.

This being A., of course, he didn't just buy some more sheet metal to patch it up. Instead he decided to fix it with mud and stones. Because that is what A. does.

The nice thing about a project like this is that it doesn't require any power tools and is thus a good project for the children to help with. And they are more than happy to do so.

Do you know of any child that wouldn't enjoy sanctioned mud play?

Of course, some are more helpful than others.

But all enjoy the splashy fruits of their muddy labors.

A. began by just mixing straight dirt and water together--our dirt has enough clay that it will hold together this way after drying thoroughly--before deciding to add a small amount of Portland cement to the mixture to increase its strength and resistance to moisture. He put in an outer course of stones with space to pack in the soil mixture and will keep building in this way until he reaches the roof, I guess.

This is the first course of stones.

This is very heavy work and is going slowly, but even what they've accomplished so far has gone a long way to securing the coop. There are no predators that are going to get through a foot-thick wall of solid stone and mud.

It'll take awhile to get it all done, but in the meantime, the chicks are luxuriating in their bathroom sauna. 

Now we just cross our fingers that we didn't end up with four roosters.

The Excitement of Poultry

Yesterday A. and Jack accompanied me to the Big Village for a status check on the baby (status: still there and healthy, still hanging out until further notice) and we happened to pass the farmers market. I've never been to this farmers market, so we decided to stop.

I'm so glad we did, because the very first table I came to had pastured chickens for sale.

YAAAAAAY!!!

That was literally how excited I was. I mean, I didn't literally shout "YAY!" in the middle of the farmers market, but I was shouting joyfully on the inside.

With the exception of the occasional rooster from Ms. Rita or A.'s random desire for fried chicken, we haven't had any chicken since we've been here. It's a pretty much non-stop rotation of pork, beef, and lamb, with the occasional dinner of tuna patties or eggs when I need a break from the parade of meat.

I know. It's not as if I can't buy chicken. Except that I . . . can't. I will occasionally pick up a package of chicken thighs or whatever at the grocery store and consider it, but then I remember that I get grossed out by store-bought chicken and pork (oddly enough, beef is okay--not good, but okay) and I don't buy it.

I just can't stomach a factory-farm chicken now that I've had real chicken. So, no chicken. Until yesterday, when I saw that sign for pastured chicken.

The farmer was charging $3.25 per pound, which seems like a lot only if you're accustomed to paying $.99 per pound at the grocery store. For a pastured chicken, that's actually a pretty good price. I remember seeing chickens at the enormous, fancy farmers market near Blackrock that sold for something like $25 per chicken, which is a little much for me. By comparison, $13 for a chicken seems like a pretty good deal.

Especially considering how excited everyone is to eat it. A. kept going on about how great it's going to be to have a roast chicken. I announced our forthcoming chicken dinner to the children this morning and Cubby and Charlie were all, "Yay! We love chicken! We haven't had chicken in a YEAR!"

Slight exaggeration, but not too much.

Even poultry is an event at our house. We probably need to get out more.

The Sad Tale of Mr. Lonely

This morning when Jack, Charlie, and I took our regular walk down the road to visit our neighbor's chickens, our neighbor--Ms. Rita--happened to be out working around the barn and she asked the boys if they wanted to see her new rooster.

Now, Ms. Rita already has a rooster. The new rooster was more or less dumped on her because no one else wanted it. It's not unusual for roosters to find themselves unwanted, as I well know, but this particular rooster had a sad story. Whoever had owned it hadn't provided any coop for it last winter. You absolutely cannot do that in this climate without killing or damaging a chicken.

In this case, the rooster's comb, toes, and spurs froze off. Poor thing. I don't even like chickens much, and I still felt sorry for it.

His lack of spurs and toes (meaning no talons) meant that he had no means of defense. So Ms. Rita couldn't put him in with her chickens, because if the other rooster attacked, the new rooster couldn't defend himself. That's why she was calling him Mr. Lonely, because he was in a big dog crate by himself in the barn.

Ms. Rita raises animals mostly for food, so she's not sensitive about the ultimate demise of animals, but she doesn't like to do the killing and butchering herself. I had mentioned before that if she knew anyone who needed to get rid of extra chickens and didn't want to deal with them, we would take the live chickens away.

Away to my stockpot, of course.

And this is why A. was walking down the road at 4 p.m. today holding a live deformed rooster by the feet, trailed by three small boys and a very interested dog.

More than one car passed him during his woodchuck walk home. I can only hope we provide some entertainment in what was a quiet neighborhood before we moved in.

The Rewards of Just Being Yourself

Soon I will have many quarts of chicken stock made from a 100% free-range chicken that I did not have to raise myself, and all because of my unashamed woodchuckiness.

See, what happened was, I was talking to a couple of other mothers at the St. Martin's Day celebration at the preschool this week, and one of the women mentioned that her daughter's young chicken flock is turning out to have a few roosters. Chickens are often sold in what's called a "straight run," meaning the hatchery just gathers up a bunch of chicks without trying to figure out their sex (which is kind of hard to do at only a couple of days old, anyway) and you just wait for them to mature to see what you end up with. 

So this flock is just now getting mature enough to tell the sex, and there are some roosters. There is one particular rooster that is of course the prettiest one, and also of course is the most obnoxious. This seems to be a corollary for males of every species.

Anyway.

The woman mentioned that this rooster had been stalking the home inspector who came to their house and kind of scared the man, though the rooster had not yet displayed any signs of aggression to the family.

So I told her about our ill-fated Welsummer rooster and how the aggression only escalates. I also mentioned the roosters we were given by the MiL's co-worker for disposal after they had gotten too difficult to handle.

Basically, I announced that we are the final resting place for all asshole roosters. Or rather, my stockpot is. 

I am the master of party conversation, yes.

It's cool, though, because this woman's mother is the MiL's cousin, and I happen to know that one time a rooster jumped up to spur her--the mother--while she was walking across the yard, and she grabbed it in mid-air and broke its neck. 

Bad. Ass.

I figure if you grow up with a lady like that, you're not going to be disturbed by the fact that I enjoy cooking mean roosters.

Anyway again.

Two days after this conversation, I got an e-mail from the chicken owner saying the rooster had started getting aggressive with her and wouldn't back down even when she kicked it, so we could have it if we wanted it.

YES.

Now my chicken stock supply for the winter is assured, and all because of my total ineptitude with polite small talk. 

Woodchucks win again.

Sometimes It's Okay to Forgo Photos

How are your counting skills, my lovelies? Probably better than a certain almost-four-year-old I know, who is convinced that eleven comes after six. I can sort of see the confusion: Eleven, seven . . . they rhyme.

ANYWAY.

Point is, it's time to start the lamb count. Yup. The first lamb of the season was born two days ago, so the current lamb count: One--a male. And eleven ewes left to deliver.

I do not have a photo of what is reportedly a very jolly black lamb. I say "reportedly" because I haven't even seen it myself yet. What? He's ALLLL the way (fifty yards) in the upper barn. And it's muddy out there. And I have a cold. Wah.

You will, perhaps, be more forgiving of this photo-less update, however, when I tell you what else we have hanging around that I also did not photograph. Literally hanging--in the shed--are the two lambs that will need to be cut up this weekend. I don't have pictures of them, either, but as they're significantly less cute than a newborn lamb, I'm sure you don't mind.

I also don't have pictures of last night's butchering. A. continued his bloody theme by butchering two random roosters given to us by a co-worker of the MiL's. This is the same woman from whom we got the asshole rooster last summer. She had three more roosters from eggs hatched in the spring, which is of course two too many, but she couldn't find anyone to take the extra chuffy two (IMAGINE THAT) and she couldn't bear to butcher them herself. Tired of the havoc (and injury) these roosters were creating in her otherwise peaceable flock, she hired out A. as a hit man. A hit man paid in free-range chicken. There are worse payments.

Works for us. We're almost out of chicken stock.

So A. skinned and gutted the roosters last night, and THEN he got to work skinning the raccoon he caught a couple of days ago.

Now aren't you glad I don't have pictures, after all?

A Serious Oversight

I can't believe I took this picture a month ago and never posted it:

Baby eating watermelon, omnipresent dog, and chickens. Picture perfect, indeed.

Thank God I found it and finally posted it. The world needed that photo. Obviously.

A.P.D.--The Irrational Fears Edition

We've been losing hens lately to a fox. At least, we assume it's a fox. All I see in the morning is a big swath of loose feathers on the ground, but pretty much only a fox is smart enough to figure out that first thing in the morning the chickens are out, but the dogs are still shut up. Two hens have disappeared.

We haven't been shutting the door to the chicken coop at night, so that they can come out first thing in the morning, which is actually before we wake up. Obviously, I have to shut them in now.

So last night I went out to round up the chickens. I found two on the roof of the coop. Real smart, hens. I used a stick to prod them off the roof and into the coop. Not, of course, without some chasing of the one rebel hen around and around the coop a couple of times before she finally ran into the coop.

That just left Penny.

Penny is our old hen. We've had her about seven years now. She's taken to "roosting" at night on the ground behind the dog pen. Penny is about as far from aggressive as a hen can be. She's quite unlikely to peck or kick or flap or do anything else unpleasant when picked up.

But I still put on a coat to cover my arms and gloves to cover my hands before I picked her up. And that is because I have a quite irrational fear of being pecked.

Logically, I know that a peck from a hen isn't going to result in any serious damage. This is an animal I outweigh by over a hundred pounds. There's no reason to be afraid of it.

But I still cover up, because fears are often irrational. And that's why I was wearing a heavy winter coat and work gloves to carry a docile six-pound hen thirty yards to the chicken coop*.

Now it's your turn to confess: What fears do you have that you know are irrational but you just can't help?

* I was doing this in the lead-up to our third very violent thunderstorm yesterday, two of which featured some significant hail. We didn't sustain any notable damage--other than the fact that our gravel driveway essentially washed away--but not everyone in our area was so lucky.

Regicide

When I told you about our new Welsummer rooster, a couple of you mentioned your own unpleasant experiences with Welsummer roosters. The exact word used, in fact, was "jerk."

Ours wasn't a jerk. He was a complete asshole.

First he flew at A., who promptly thrashed him in the hopes that would teach him a lesson.

Then he jumped at the MiL, who chased him off with the help of the dogs.

At this point, I told A. the rooster was going to have to go. He was obviously too chuffy for his own good. Or rather, for MY good.

And then he attacked Cubby in the dog pen, spurring Cubby (slightly) on the back before I could chase him off by whacking him with the shepherd's crook. I had to hit him hard multiple times to get him to back off.

A. cut off his head today. I plucked him, A. eviscerated him, and he's going to be our Mother's Day dinner. That'll learn the bastard.

Spurring my son was the wrong move for him, obviously. Bet he'll taste good, though.

You tried to tell me. And so I will now add my warnings to yours: Avoid the Welsummer rooster. Unless you're a fan of aggressive assholes.

The King Is Dead, Long Live the King

A few weeks ago, the rooster that survived a fox attack disappeared. We figure a hawk probably got him. Or maybe the fox came back for seconds.

Whatever was his undoing, there was no doubt our small flock was rooster-less.

Hens will lay their eggs without a rooster around, obviously, but if there's to be any hope of fertilized eggs for natural reproduction? Yeah. Gotta have that rooster. Plus, roosters kind of keep free-ranging hens in order, herding them around and making sure they all go into the coop at night.

We didn't make any great efforts to secure a rooster immediately, however, as there was no urgent need. Plus, it is a great truth in the chicken world (and really, in any animal world) that there is always a surplus of males. It's not exactly hard to find a rooster someone wants to get rid of.

Sure enough, last week a woman who rides the bus with the MiL mentioned she had four roosters. That's three too many. She got them from another woman who couldn't bear to kill any of them.

We're all about eating our excess roosters, but not everyone is so pragmatic, I suppose. And lucky for us, because that's how we came to be the new home for a pure-bred Welsummer rooster.

The Welsummer is a Dutch breed, which is funny because A.'s family is very, very Dutch (ancestrally speaking, that is). And did you know the Kellogg's rooster is a representation of a Welsummer rooster? I didn't, but I do now.

There is no doubt the new rooster is very striking. Luckily, he seems to just be visually striking, and not literally striking. Rooster spurs are no joke, and there's always the possibility that the reason a rooster is being given away is because he's a mean bastard. I haven't seen any sign of that yet, though, so we can hope we got another good, safe rooster.

And of course, he sure is purty. You know, for a bird.

Look out, ladies; there's a new sheriff in town.

Far Be It from Me To Leave You Hanging

Because I know you were all out there pounding your desks and yelling at your computer screens, "But what about the rooster?  Did he make it?  WE MUST KNOW!"

Or maybe that's my imagination again?  Whatever, I'm happy to tell you that the rooster has been steadily improving ever since returning from his attempted abduction and this morning, I heard him crow.  It was sort of a weak crow, but it was a definite sign that no damn fox is going to get this rooster down.  You think you can kill a rooster by breaking his bones and puncturing his throat?  HAHA!  He spits in your wily little face, fox.

I would also like to announce that there is STILL part of that mushroom in our refrigerator.  Given its size, it is perhaps not surprising that we can eat mushroom things for almost a week and still have a quarter of a mushroom left, but still.  It's the mushroom that never ends.  I dig it.  They should sell mushrooms this size at the store.  Though it is entirely possible I'm the only one who would buy them.

And on an unrelated note, we're in the process of deciding which mountain man Cubby is going to be for Halloween.  I mean, you KNOW he has to wear the coonskin cap for Halloween, right?  And everyone will assume he's Davy Crocket, but there's a whole bunch of other awesome mountain men he could claim to be.  Should he be Jeremiah Johnson?  Jim Bridger?  Or Jedediah Smith?  A.'s favorite is Jim Bridger. I vote for Jedediah, but only because I like saying the name.  Cubby doesn't care; he just wants to be some guy who traps.

What say you, duckies?  If you have a minute, go read up on those guys and tell us which one you think deserves to be honored by Cubby's Halloween costume.

Of Killing

We were forecasted to get a killing frost last night.  The predicted low was supposed to be 25 degrees, so Cubby and I went out to the garden to gather up the rest of the tomatoes, such as they were.  He thought it was fantastic that he was finally given the go-ahead to actually pick the green tomatoes, after a summer of being foiled from doing just that.  But all for naught.  It never got below freezing last night, getting only to 33 degrees at the house.  There was a little bit of frost in the higher pasture, however, which Cubby thought was very exciting.

On a less positive note, we have had some more chicken attrition.  The MiL got home from work around dusk last night and found Leda (the only dog out and not tied up at the time) running frantically in front of the fence to the ram pasture, where the chicken coop is. When the MiL came in, she told A. he had better get his gun and go see what was wrong.

When he got out there, he found a hen dead in front of the coop and caught a glimpse of a fox running off.  He didn't get a shot at it, though.  The chickens were all scattered, and still were this morning, so it's hard to get an accurate count of the survivors.  A. only saw one of the three chicks this morning, though, and the MiL noted when she was prepping the dead hen for cooking that it wasn't laying, so I think what happened was the fox got in the coop and grabbed two of the chicks plus the mother hen--which were still sleeping in the nesting box on the floor of the coop-- but hopefully none of the others.

Otty was left outside last night to run free and guard the coop from that same fox, so we hope it won't come back.  Or, if it does, she'll kill it.  The dogs are the reason we don't have a lot of problems with predators, and the only reason that fox got near the chickens is because that area had been closed off from the dogs so the sheep would stay put.  Any area in which the dogs can't patrol is obviously vulnerable, however, so we'll have to make sure they can get in there more regularly.

And that concludes our country update for the day.  Over and out.

Nothing To Do with My Kids

(It's so unusual these days to talk about anything other than those little dictators of my every waking moment--and the non-waking ones too--that I felt the need to announce it right up front.)

I may be jinxing things here by telling you this, but . . . we have chicks again.  There are three of them, and since these chicks were hatched in the coop, we have a much better chance of keeping them from becoming feral cat bait.  And before anyone comments to this effect. . . no, I do not have photos.  Maybe later.  If I manage to get the camera outside at some time in the near future.  I make no promises.

The tomatoes are starting to ripen in significant numbers.  Because I didn't really stake them properly this year and many of the tomatoes are actually resting right on the ground, I'm losing quite a few to insects and slugs, but I'm still harvesting a respectable number.  I froze a sheet pan full of whole paste tomatoes today.  That's what I'm doing this year instead of canning them.  I also froze the tomato juice I made the other day.

The freezer is my best friend this year.

Speaking of the garden, a couple of days ago I went in there to harvest tomatoes and AHHHHH!!! Dead bunny staring up at me with lifeless eyes from right in front of my tomato plants.  If the dogs had killed it, they would have eaten it, so I have no idea how it died and ended up splayed out in my tomato patch.  Maybe it died from overeating.  My bean plants.  Little bastard.  One down.

I think that's all.  Back to our regularly scheduled child-centric programming . . .

Animal Updates

I may (may meaning definitely) have been negligent in sharing some news about the farm animals around here.  Like the fact that A. sold his purebred Cotswolds.  Including Bonnie, my own particular nemesis.

The reason for selling the Cotswolds was simple: They had become completely unmanageable for A.  The expanded size of the flock this year meant that A. had to find other ways to get them to grass.  Luckily, we have really nice neighbors who don't mind the sheep on their properties. As long as they are contained enough that the sheep don't end up on their porches, eating their flowers.  So A. got some electrified net fence specifically for sheep and used it to set up temporary pastures for the sheep when their regular pastures were getting too eaten down.

The Cotswolds, however, found that they could run right through the netting.  Apparently the shock they experienced in the charging of the fence was temporary enough that they decided it was worth it to break out.  Which they did.  Over and over and over.  A. kept having to retrieve them from the neighbors' lawn at five in the morning. Cotswolds are also very, VERY loud sheep, so the breaking out would always be accompanied by bellowing from them because the rest of the flock wouldn't always follow, leading to much talking of the sheep back and forth.

This was obviously no good for our relationship with our neighbors.  After one particular day when they got out half a dozen times before 9 a.m., A. just put an ad on Craigslist.  Since he was selling only the purebred Cotswolds, which are not that common around here, he got a call and a guy showing up to buy the sheep within 24 hours.  A. was very sad to see them go, as they were his very first sheep and good mothers, but the guy who bought them has quite a lot of acreage and a fairly large flock already that he's trying to move more towards Cotswolds.  So we know they went to a good home.

Know what?  I don't miss them AT ALL.  The sheep flock is now quiet and well-behaved and a significant source of stress has been removed from our lives.  Good riddance, says I.

Not good riddance, however, is the sad disappearance of the surprise chicks.  They were starting to mix more with the flock, but hadn't yet gotten to the point that they were going into the coop at night.  Then one night last week, the MiL heard a late-night cat (and dog) fight and went out in the morning to find a large male feral cat dead on the driveway.  We figure it probably ate the chicks.  And then the dogs killed it.  Not a good situation for anyone.  So we are once again chick-less, though it's possible one of the other hens (or maybe even the hen that just lost her chicks) may decide to set.  We'll see.

Also, we have tons of birds' nests and babies around the house that we're currently monitoring (blue jays, Baltimore orioles, and Carolina wrens) and the dogs may have finally exterminated the baby rabbits that were eating the garden.  Plus A. trapped a large rabbit near the garden fence that had pretty much decimated everything in that corner--including my lovely beets (DAMMIT)-- so maybe my plants will be safe now.  Temporarily, anyway.


I think that's all for the animal updates.  Although stay tuned!  You never do know what animal hijinks may ensue at Blackrock in the future.

Allow Me To Get a Wonderful 80s Hair Band Song Stuck In Your Head

It's the final countdown.*  As of today, I am exactly one month from my official due date.

Let that one sink in for a minute, if you will.

Of course, if this child is anything like his older brother, he won't wait for official, but will instead make his entrance any time he damn well pleases.  In Cubby's case, that was almost two weeks before his actual due date.  So really, we're on red alert right now at all times.

I would not be sad if this child came early.  I only have two things left on my mental to-do list (in case you're interested: purging the current child's overflowing bookshelf downstairs and sending my sister-in-law the gifts for her coming baby, due a month after mine).  I even managed to clean out the enormous toy box yesterday, which, believe it or not, was actually full.  Of course, the reason I cleaned it out was because Cubby was searching for one particular small Lego piece that had fallen to the very bottom and so everything was thrown out anyway in search of the elusive helicopter blade piece.  So I figured I might as well just do the sorting and full-on clean-out.

Now there's some space for the deluge of toys sure to come for the next kid.  He will not be getting his own toy box, so this will just have to be a lesson in sharing and caring (or, let's be real, jealously guarding and fighting) between brothers.

In other baby news, there will be no photos of the new chicks in the near future, for one simple reason: I can't get close enough to them.  They range in a very large area with their mother, who sticks to brushy areas and is as flighty as . . . well, as a semi-wild hen with new chicks.  So photos are a no-go.  Sorry, duckies.  Them's the breaks.

* I really hope you watch that video, if only to marvel at the spectacular effect of male perms and eye makeup.  Men can be just as pretty as women, if only they're willing to work for it.