WOUNDED!

Ok so now I know that when using a drill...keep your fingers out of the way. I can tell you it is not fun drilling a hole in your finger. (ok it was not a drill bit it was a phillips head bit but it still hurt like heck....all I can do is hope that I washed it good enough and put enough neosporin on it to keep it from getting infected.

So since I am wounded and the pain is shooting all the way up to my elbow....I am going to take a break and until the ibuprofen kicks in.

Dakota and I were working on fixing the chicken roost when I got hurt. We took loose the roost and added legs and raised it flat. Peggys husband said that chickens prefer to sleep side by side instead of below other chickens. Because it is now high up they will need a way to get up so I cut some rungs, and drilled holes in them. Then I was screwing the wood rungs onto a board and the drill slipped.

So here in a little bit John will help me finish. We will round off the 1x1 perches with a knife. We will see if the girls and Studmuffin like it better.

Then I will (with a plastic bag taped over my finger) clean out the chicken house while John works on the compost pile.

It is about 40 degrees outside but wind is about 40mph!!!

Out front is a small tree and there was something around it that prevented me from mowing there ....stumps....rocks.....etc. So that was where John got started first. It took him and Jayden about an hour of digging and here is what they found. Also they found about 5 ft of a large tree root and stump. They dug and sawed and sawed and dug. Now maybe I can keep it mowed.

Then they took a break and he and Jayden worked on rails on the tree house.

Ok I will update later. I still have to go feed horses, go to buy The Sand Lot for the kids to watch tonight, and then come back and do laundry, dishes and clean the house.

MOTIVATION! I NEED MOTIVATION!!

Ok you know me by now. I need a list. Here is what I realistically wish to accomplish this weekend....

1. rent a 10 ft u-haul....with this I will go to Home Depot and buy...9 2x10s to build 3 more raised beds. Also because I don't have enough finished compost I will need to buy some bags of top soil, peat, sand and compost. I will get my helper before I do this to do the heavy lifting.

2. Buy one fruit tree or 4 grape vines and get my helper to plant them.

3. Bomb for bugs

4. clean the chicken house

5. clean my house

6. Sunday the family is coming over because that is my daughter in law's last day in town. She goes back to NC on Monday and takes the babies with her! :(

On the way back home with the lumber I want to stop and get the rest of the rabbit poo. While my helper is here I will have him spread out all the half finished comost, add water and pile it up high. Then start another pile with the new rabbit poo and the 2 bags of goat poo and some kitchen scraps.

But for tonight. I am drinking coffee, playing on the computer and will pick up the kitchen and living room, and go to bed. It is cold out. I will build a fire in the morning.

REALLY RELAXING EVENING

Well I left work on time for a change and was home at 4:30! With a very stressful day behind me it was hard to let it go. The temp outside was 78 degrees and the birds around the house were in full song.

I cooked a little dinner, then went out and watered the snap peas. They are really growing. Then fed and watered the chicks and chickens.

Then I walked around and picked fresh grass until I had two big handfuls and dropped it in the chick pen, put up the screen front to the cage, turned over a bucket and just sat and watched the fun for about a half hour.

Chickie football is so much fun. And the sounds they make when they have a piece of grass in their mouth sounds just like "GET ME GET ME GET ME!"

Then I went to the store and found a really nice new shirt on clearance for $13 for work tomorrow.

Right now I have Peggy's blog up and hidden just so I can hear the frogs on top of the cricket sounds outside. Maybe it will make my froggies wake up.

I am really ready for spring but man I bet it will be hot here.

2ND ENTRY TODAY....NEW POTS AND PANS

I FORGOT TO SHOW YOU. HERE IS THE SALE I GOT LAST WEEK AT MACY'S. THE LAST TIME I GOT A NEW SET OF PANS WAS SEPTEMBER 28, 1980. YOU GUESSED IT...A WEDDING PRESENT.

HERE IS WHAT I HAVE NOW...ONE GOOD CAST IRON AND THESE...

THEY ARE IN THE TRASH NOW.

New Egg Layer?

My turn for a mystery egg. After I gathered 3 eggs after work, I was moving some piping closer to the garden in preparation to use as tomato poles, when I spotted an egg in the outside run.

This egg is almost white it is so light. Not small. I haven't had one this color before.

Also I turned off the heater, one heat light and the white light tonight in the chick house. It was over 80 because it was 80 outside today. When I turned off the white light the chicks instantly lay down and went to sleep. It was like group narcolepsy.

I took a peek at my grow box and this is what I saw.....

According to the Old Farmers Almanac I will be able to plant my tomatos on March 7 as the prime planting date per the moon cycle. The squash are not up yet but they will be out on March 26. I know I am late with snow peas but I will still give them a try. The sugar snap peas outside are doing ok but not as good as the snow peas in the box.

Right now I need to plant broccoli, lettuce, I MISSED THE POTATO DATE!! (kind of...I am still in the window), spinach, and swiss chard. I had better get after building new raised beds. I believe I need at least 5 more.

March 7 I will be planting tomatos, pumpkins, cucumbers, and beans.

It is dry so far this spring. That could change next week but I am going to get a run of gutter and some rain barrels and start collecting rain off of the hen house. I suspect a dry year. We will need to mulch heavily.

FUN WEEKEND

My chicks are getting big. Look at the wing feathers.

And this fuzzy pic I took with my phone....this is the first fellow to fly up on the roost.

My sister came over and brought her Boston Terrier. His name is Stuey. He didn't chase the chickens but found them very curious and they found him terrifying. I am surprised I got two eggs today.

I am very excited. My grandkids who are visiting from NC have an uncle who is 12 years old who lives close to me. He is very strong and can dig holes lightning fast.

I hired him to come over and dig 6 holes and help me plant the blueberries.

Kailyn was supervising.

She decided to stir up the water with a stick.

After we got the blueberries in the ground we soaked newspaper in water and laid it around the bushes and in between also.

Then we covered the whole area with partially composted rabbit manure.

I sure hope they do well. I want at least 18 plants but maybe more. Blueberries freeze well and are very good for you. I bet I can can them too.

Then the kids played a little while on the tractor and on the swing. Off to McD's for some food and fun and then on home to the other grandma's house.

John is saving money to put a motor in an old truck by the time he is old enough to drive. I think I have enough work for him here to buy that motor by then.

GLOOMY SPRING DAY

Well I am not going to work today. I slept in late! 7:30! It felt so good. Then I got up, started the coffee, fed kitties, went out to feed the chicks. You would not believe how they have grown. They are eating me out of house and home. They are getting feathers and are very much roosters. I can't wait until it is warm enough to open up the outside part of the turkey run so they can get fresh air.

No eggs yet....a little early. But I still have about a dozen in the frig.

I came in to find that my sourdough starter...which I fed last night...had spilled over onto the counter. This starter is doing very well. So.....

I mixed up a batch of sourdough biscuts. They are rising right now. When I put them in to bake i will make some honey butter to go on them and a couple of scrambed eggs with ketchup. (ok don't knock it til you try it!)

It is 53 degrees outside and won't get much warmer than that. But it feels good. It is one of those temps that is not hot and not cold. Just right to work outside.

I don't have much planned for today. I will put on my clothes and take a bucket out to the field and pick the growing green weeds for my chickens. I love those orange yolks when they eat greens.

Then I plan on cleaning the front and back yards, still have some things to add to the burn pile. Then I will take my wheelbarrow out to an old round bale of hay I had here for Sweetheart and bring a load to the chicken house. I am going to line the boxes with hay so it is nice and soft for the girls. They have been very nice to put out the eggs they have.

Then clean the chicken house and that is pretty much it. I sure wish I had a truck. I would like to go get some more wood and build about 5 more raised beds for the garden.

With a truck I could pick up so much free stuff from craigs list. (yes I am a packrat...got it from my Pop)

Well it looks like winter out but the birds say otherwise. The front and back yards are full of all sorts of birds and they are singing spring songs. It sounds really wonderful.

Studs and Seeds!

Ok so I was trying for a cute title. I am so excited. My rooster is not gay!!! He finally figured out what the girls were for. But one of them...the little yellow hen Vanilla...sounds like she is being raped. Bless her.


Also....I got my seed starter box planted and plugged in.



I planted two rows of Beefmaster Hybrid, one row of Super boy 785, one row of Burpee Straight eight, one row of Roma VFN roma tomotos, one row of parsley, two rows of butternut squash, two rows of White Lisbon bunching onions, and two rows of Melting Sugar snow peas. I had hoped to start with heirloom seeds but my dad had a whole lot of left over seeds from his garden and they were free. Free is good.


The peas we planted outside are not doing well. I really hope the garden does well this year.


I have never had any luck with spinach. The leaves always stay small and sparse. This year I decided to try soaking them prior to planting. So I did and I planted one row outside today along with one row of white onion set. I better get after building more raised beds. If my tomato seeds do well I will need the room. If they don't, then later I will buy plants.



By gosh I am going to have a garden one way or another!

GRANDBABIES AND COUSINS

Just a note before I move to the topic today....I got 5 eggs today. 3 green and 2 brown. That brings a total to 77 eggs. I am really impressed with these 7 hens. I don't know what 2 are not laying yet but I figure soon I will be getting 7 a day. At 77 eggs...divided by 12 (in a dozen) times $3 (the cost of local organic eggs) this pays for 2 hens. Keep up the good work girls.

Counsins/grand babies. What an evening. Tonight I had all 4 of my grand babies. This was so much fun. I wish you could have seen the little girl who is just over 1.5 yrs old...trying to keep up with her bubba and her big cousins. There was not a thing she didn't want to try. Now and then she would glance at her Neena just to make sure I wasn't going to tell her no.

First the boys had to crawl up in the dirty turkey pen and peek at the baby chicks through the window.

Then Neena had to get out just one to be held and loved on.

J took special pains to make sure that little Kailyn got to give the little chickie a kiss without squishing it.

Then off to the tree house they all ran....with little Kailyn trailing behind. He legs just couldn't keep up but that didn't keep her from following.

Kailyn found a treasure of her very own. A lonely little duck.

Jayden had to show everyone how he could get out of the tree house the hard way.





This is the hot wheels ramp where lots of races are won.

And then off to the chicken house where a different kind of treasure awaited. Brown and green eggs...5 of them! They boys each had to take one in and put them in the refrig.

Then after all of that climbing jumping and running, we all sat on the swing out front to eat crackers and orange juice.

Of course they had to climb the poor Ret Tipped Photenia...I keep hoping that tree will die so I can put it out of it's misery. It is the "kid tree"...it gets climbed in and peed on on a regular basis...yet is survives...

Then the big adventure began....

Jayden was driving the tour bus and it left for Africa.....over in Africa (the orchard) we saw (pretend) Giraffe's, lions, cobras, maned wolfs, huge bats and a very fast cheetah. We didn't think we would make it back in one piece.

Then with Dakota driving (a little rough start....

and help from a big brother) off we went to Alaska....there we encountered grizzly bears, and heavy snow. We had to get the help of 3 sled dogs to dig ourselves out. Then we came across a lost cobra and had to get him back to Africa where it was warm. While there they decided to see who could run as fast as a cheetah. Jayden said he won, Lane said that he ran fastest. I forgot to keep score.

At this point everyone was tired and very hungry. So off we went to hunt Buffalo (Buffalo Wild Wings that is). With huge trays of twisted chicken, pizza triangles drinks and of course a slice of chocolate cake and ice cream to share....it was fun.

Kailyn wanted salsa on her chips. So I dipped just a tip in and she loved it. She wanted more. On the third chip the heat snuck up on her and she said "Hot!" and proceeded to blow on the chips before she ate them.

She loved seeing aunt Heather and it was a treat for the boys to see their mom at work.

Then we had to take the big boys home to a warm bath and bed. On the way to take the little ones back, my sister called and she wanted to see them. So we stopped off there so that Lane and Kailyn could play the drums, play with the yoga ball, play with the bull dog Stuey, pull all the dogs toys out and climb in the dog box.

More pics tomorrow!