And Then There Was a Cool Front

My absolute most favorite season of the year is fall.  It's refreshing, dry and cool.  And after a summer of sweating even in a swimsuit, we've all been ready for a change to hit the air. (Because I totally cannot rock a swimsuit while buying groceries. Or in my own backyard, for that matter.)

Yesterday, a tiny cool front came along and threw us all into a tizzy.  Suddenly, everyone was scrambling to be outside for every activity.

Let me tell you something, fall changes people.  And animals, too.  Noodle and Hopers suddenly acted like alien children who liked each other.  And wanted to be with each other!

Weird.



They did all school work outside.

Sherlock was supremely happy with this idea because it meant he would be spoiled to death every waking moment.

 



And carried around as if he'd permanently lost the ability to walk. Or had suddenly turned into a very hairy infant.



Hopers took this photo.  She likes to steal my camera.  More and more, the photos are not of her thumb. *Sniff* My baby's growing up!

Don't be fooled by her momentary solemn expression. Poppy suddenly becomes "crazy dog" when cool weather appears. She runs around the yard at full-on torpedo speed, clearly overjoyed for some good weather.

The chickens are also really glad for the temperature drop.  They told me so, of course.



...and I thought my butt was fluffy!

I did manage to entice the children inside once in a while for important things like showers and using the bathroom.  Hopers decided to finish her sewing project she's been working on lately. Pajama shorts!  And yes, she wore them for the rest of the day.  And yes, the color combo with that shirt kind of hurts my eyes, also.

And then there's Noodle.

...who is so, so........... well, almost a teenager!  Plus, I think I need a new time machine because mine doesn't seem to be working.

My alien-invaded children set up a tent to sleep under the stars tonight.

You'll notice Seth is conspicuously absent from these photos.  That's because he's in the woods hunting things.  Yes, fall makes otherwise normal, non-rednecked men become camo-wearin', bow-totin' crazy people.


I, of course, am not crazy. At all.

Whatsoever.

 

Happy fall!

Keeping Kittens Alive, and Other Things to Do Today

About a month ago, a new addition occurred in the chicken coop.

No, it's not more chickens.

This new addition came when my dearest husband decided to bring home a darling little pop-up camper, given to him by a generous friend.  The cost of the camper?

A kitten.

(Cue dramatic music)

What happens when your husband wants to get rid of the rats in his barn and then visits friends with a cat that had kittens.

Let's pause for a moment and surface to reality here people.

1. Two out of four people in my household are allergic to cats.
2. My husband has always declared he hates cats.
3. Our precious, beloved doggy, Poppy, loves cats..........for dinner.

Who, me? I'd never hurt a fly!

And so, based on these three facts alone, normal, sane people would just accept life as it is.  Harmonious and cat-less.  Who needs to complicate things, right?  I can think of a fistful of reasons as to why I'm not a complicated person, but the fact that I now have a cat, a dog, 31 chickens, 2 snakes and 2 kids under my care doesn't plead the case very well.  (We ate the pigs and sold the goats!) Not to mention, I would've never guessed my husband would be the one to instigate this latest bout of insanity.  

Meet Sherlock.

Ha! I laugh in the face of danger!

Sherlock currently lives in the chicken coop.  His favorite activities include hiding from the chickens and then springing out suddenly upon a hen, only to get pecked in the face.  He's learning quickly who's the boss.

Trapped between Mary Poppins and Florence Nightingale!

The goal is to have Sherlock one day be an Ultra Rat Killing Machine in the barn (otherwise known as a barn cat) while having a healthy respect for our feathered, egg-producing friends out there.  At first, he only stayed in the chick brooder, a screened cage in the coop that allowed him and the chickens to get used to each other visually. We are slowly allowing him more freedom.  At night, he has free roam of the coop, and I have even found him snuggled up, sleeping, with a broody hen in a nest box.

Sherlock hiding.  Little does he know, Shirley the Rhode Island Red is stalking HIM!

The true test of whether or not we can keep a cat comes down to Poppy. Her sweet, humanity-loving demeanor turns into wide-eyed insanity whenever she encounters any animal trespassing on her property.  Heck, it doesn't even have to be her property.  (Remind me sometime to tell you the story of why we don't bring her to the beach anymore......seagulls!!)

Squirrel?!?

So now we are smack dab in the middle of trying to train an old dog new tricks.  Like, don't eat the kitten, Poppy, or you'll cause a bunch of little girls to cry for weeks.  I have to give her some credit.  She's actually doing really well so far.  No kitten murder to report.  

We have introductory sessions between them.  "Poppy, this is Sherlock.  Sherlock, this is Poppy.  We like you both.  Please be nice to each other."  I light candles and play soft music while serving them tea in the parlor.  They talk about the weather and avoid eye contact.

Actually, we've been doing a very slow, daily move toward togetherness.  We hold the kitten and have the dog sit or lay down.  We pet them both and tell Poppy calmly and sweetly about 8 million times that she is a good girl.  This seems to be working.  They sniff each other. They roll their eyes.  No one gets too excited.  Today, I let Poppy watch as Sherlock walked around in the barn.  She chose to stay where she was for the vigorous belly scratch she was receiving.

Sherlock was glad.

I was glad.

Then I was sneezing.

Sigh...Can't wait to do it again tomorrow!

Bert and Ernie

An interesting phenomenon has happened around our little homestead.

It's called Farm Animal Multiplication.

When a family can go from having a few little chickens hanging around, to an absurd number of chickens, to a sudden influx of all kinds of other creatures showing up--F.A.M. has occurred.

It happens.  I've seen it.  A totally documented phenomenon.

Bert and Ernie, the goats, recently joined us.

Perhaps they'll stay for a while.

Keepin' Up With the Chickens

For all two of you who have been keeping up with my chicken adventures, you'll be glad to know I have updates!  I'm sure you have so many questions, like, "Just how many chickens do you have, anyway?" and "Have you looked into medication for this problem?"  Hopefully, I can answer these and more today.

You may remember our little group of chicks that we hatched from eggs in an incubator.  They are now about eight and a half weeks old now and we have whittled them down to three chicks.  By "whittling" I mean giving them away, since the alternative meaning would be really gross.  We gave away Penny and Smoky because we felt 99% certain they were roosters.  We also think Checkers and Uno are roosters, too, leaving Nugget as the only female we managed to get out of the whole batch.



Uno

Checkers

Nugget.
Yes, she has a beard and fluffy ears.  She's a little sensitive about it, so don't bring it up around her.  I keep telling her it's fine, it's just an Easter Egger genetics thing, but she doesn't listen.  Ah....teenagers.

You must be thinking, "Why don't you just keep the roosters?"  That's a whole story by itself, but the main reasons most people don't want roosters are:

1. They crow.
2. They fight with each other, sometimes to the death.
3. They have a weapon--a spur--that grows on the back of the legs, and they'll use it on you if they don't like you.
4. They don't lay eggs.

Now, these are not necessarily all my reasons, but they are good ones.  There are also benefits to having one rooster per 8-10 hens:

1. They protect their ladies from predators.
2. Hens are happier and lay eggs better with a gentleman around.
3. They can be just as friendly as a mouse if they have the right temperament and are raised by hand.

We recently sold Benjamin, our bantam Old English Game rooster because of reason number 3 on the first list.  He was becoming mean, mean, mean...even drawing blood a few times on Seth.

Too bad he was so purty.  He had to go though.  Not to mention, I have Checkers and Uno, who are completely sweet and docile and will let a child carry them around the yard, who can fulfill their rooster-ly duties in another month or so.

We still have his little harem of ladies out in the barn.  They have all finally started laying.  Between the 7 of them, we get three or four eggs a day (little eggs, since they're little chickens!).

The Seven Dwarves.  Eating scratch feed I threw down for them. 

And then.....

Let's see, that's three teenagers plus seven hens...that's 10 chickens we have living out in the barn.  But wait!  There's more!

We have babies too.

They live in the house, in one of those big blue storage bins.  Sometimes, they get to play in the yard. They're extremely cute.  Check them out:

Charlotte. She's a New Hampshire Red.  She is very sweet, learned how to fly out of the brooder very quickly, and will one day be a rust-red-colored chicken.

Mei Ling.  A Silkie. Hopers picked her out.  The tiniest little chick you ever held, she feels like holding a dime--a warm, flapping dime.  One day, she'll be a little ball of fluff.  Kind of like she is now.

Qi Qi ("chee-chee"). Also a Silkie.  Noodle picked her out.  Silkies are known for being good pets, their funny looks, having an extra toe on each foot, and not being able to fly because of their unusual feathers.

Charlie and Violet.  These two are Barred Plymouth Rocks.  They look almost identical, and are the same size, except that Charlie has white eye makeup.

The Golden Laced Wyandottes.  These two are older than the rest of the chicks by a week (they're 3 weeks old).  They balk at being held, but will one day be beautiful with lacy black and gold patterned feathers.  Meanwhile, they're scraggly, skittish, and I haven't come up any good names for them.  Any suggestions?

Miss Comet.  A Golden Comet.  She is super sweet and calm and I know she's a girl for sure because boys of this breed are an entirely different color. YAY!

So now you have the low-down on the chickens.  That brings us to a total of 18.  For now....
I met a lady the other day who had 49.  That makes me totally sane in comparison, right? No need for medication yet!

Although, I did see a Chocolate Cuckoo Maran chick online that....

*Ahem*

Stay tuned for more chicken adventures!

Warning: Cute, Baby Chickens Ahead

Back in the middle of January, my dear friend over at Self Proclaimed Happy handed us the keys to to a bright future filled with eggs, eggs, eggs.  Yes, she had given us two fistfulls of chickens, and we were on our way to chicken craziness.  They have been fun... Entertaining... Cute...

Eggless.

Unfortunately, the majority of our new feathery flock are too young for egg laying.  Knowing it will be soon, we stare instead at the one mature hen in the bunch.  She smugly returns the stare and keeps her eggs on back order.

Meanwhile, we were convinced by my same dear friend that incubating some eggs would be the perfect way to pass the time.  I agreed, not knowing that our chicken craziness was about to ramp up to a whole new level.

Enter, the babies:

This is Number One.  Hatched first, from a brown egg, this chicky is bossy and learns everything first just to show off in front of everyone else. 

Just to be fair, they were all late at hatching.  Given the correct conditions, it should take 21 days.  This first baby didn't enter the world until Friday evening, February 15th--at 23 days.

This is Number Two.  Mostly black, with a yellow belly and a white wing feather, this baby came from a white egg.  Extra fluffy and extra cute.  Hatched the same night as Number One, a few hours later.

This is Number Three.  Hatched from a white egg, baby Three looks a little like a chipmunk from behind.  Number Two had just escaped the egg minutes before and helped this one along from the beginning.  If you haven't seen the video yet, don't.  You might end up with pet chickens like me.

Number Four, chatting with Number One, using Number Two as a pillow.

After that, Number Four came in the middle of the night.  We awoke the next day to an extra chick flopping around in the incubator.  The poor little guy really was floppier than normal though.  He had a leg problem and couldn't walk.  I did my best at researching the problem.  I taped his legs and toes with various methods, but I cringed at the thought of the girls getting too attached to a chick that might not make it.  In the end, we decided to bring him to the St. Francis animal rescue where he will be rehabilitated and adopted :-)

Number Five.  Hatched on Saturday from a white egg. Totally mellow, fluffy, and sweet.  Has an overall coppery glow, which has led us to begin calling her Penny.  Hopefully she's a she, or we will have an awkwardly named rooster.  (Meanwhile, we continue to tell the kids we can't name them.  Do as we say, kids, not as we do!)

Number Six. Hatched late Saturday night from a brown egg--day 25--this baby needed a little bit of help to get out of that crusty old egg.  She'd been stuck for nearly the whole day at being partially hatched, so I used some tweezers to "unzip" her the rest of the way.  Then, Noodle, Hopers, their two friends and I all watched as she struggled her way into the open.  Number Six doesn't let her "last hatched" status keep her down.  She's the loudest, doesn't care much for Number One's bossy attitude, and thinks I have chicken nuggets in mind every time I pick her up.  But, she has feathers on her feet, so that makes her cool.


So, in the space of a few days, we went from this:



 

 

 

 

 

To this: 

To this:

To this:

Come over and visit them at your own peril.  I don't recommend looking closely at them.  I really don't recommend picking them up, either.  If you do, you might become just like us....

Chicken Crazy.

Thanksgiving Camping

For the last several days, I've been living in a tent, cooking over a fire, and not bothering to brush my children's hair. No, we didn't suddenly become vagabonds.  We celebrated Thanksgiving!

Our tradition, going back since I was a kid, has been to pack up and slip away to the woods for several days during this special holiday. No one has to worry about hosting a fancy dinner at their house (or even cleaning it for that matter).  No one has to answer work email or phone calls (no cell service).  Nothing but God's creation, plenty of play time, and of course, lots of food!

This year the involved families were: ours (Me, Seth, Noodle, Hopers, and Poppy the dog), my parents' family (Amie, G-Daddy, Tobi, Tabi, Teegan, Tate, and their 5 dogs), and Seth's sister's family (Jena, Dave, Kirsten, Katelyn, David and their two dogs).

We went to Aiken State Park in South Carolina. Originally, I was skeptical because 1. it wasn't booked up for Thanksgiving like every other state park in America, and 2. most of the reviews I read said it was "quiet", which in my mind translated to "ugly and boring."

My skepticism was for naught.  It was gorgeous. The landscape reminded me of the rolling, hilly woodlands of North Florida. The park boasted of two small lakes and a winding little river passing through it.  We soon discovered that, yes, it was quiet, and no, it was definitely not boring.

I think we were the loudest ones there.

Tate, Teegan, Katelyn, and Jena

We played a few games of impromptu football and soccer.

Hopers, Tabi, Noodle and Tobi

The kids roasted marshmallows pretty much any time they thought about it...which was whenever they were awake.

Dave and Seth

The guys channeled their inner manliness and spent lots of time hunting down wood and chopping it for the fire.

Seth and Poppy (left).  Poppy and Kirsten (right)

Poppy enjoyed camping as much as the rest of us because she got lots of attention.

On day 2 we found a big tree to play in.  It was my dad's idea: create a zip line for the kids.  You know whenever my dad thinks about trees, it means my husband will end up in the top of one.

Dad brought all kinds of climbing ropes and gear to play with.  Everything was super-duper rated for holding up huge things.  Like Tabi.

Me making a harness for Katelyn (left).  Seth trying his own harness (right).

I learned how to make a harness out of a single strap, some knots and a carabiner (Dad researched it and taught me). I became the harness queen, tying and untying straps on children as they took turns on the zip line. Seth thought it would be faster to use a ready-made harness, but after OW OW OW PUT ME DOWN he decided not so much.

Noodle, takin' a crack at it.

Everyone took a turn flying through the air and loved it.  Well, not Teegan and Tate.  They declined in favor of staying close to the ground.

Hopers

Katelyn zipping toward Tabitha. Aghhhhh! Tabi moved just in time.

I decided I needed a turn on this crazy contraption. I whipped up a harness for myself (I knew all those hours of knitting would pay off!) and clipped in.

Me, David, Hopers, Katelyn, Tobi, Noodle, and Dave

The kids thought it would be a breeze to pull me up to the highest point.  (They ended up needing a little help.  Darn you, apple pie!)



Wheeeeeeeeeeee!

Next to our zip line trees was one of the lakes.  Did I mention this place was gorgeous?  I managed to hold down a couple of girls for photo ops.

Noodle

The girls.  Aunts. Cousins.  Tobi (9), Noodle (11), Hopers (6), Kirsten (13), Tabi (7), Katelyn (10).

On day 3 we found the other lake and decided to do some fishing there.

It was pretty, but the only thing we caught were frogs.  I think someone lied when they said the lake was stocked with catfish.  Either that, or the catfish were smaller than the frogs.

Hopers enjoying herself while Noodle pouts about the fishing.

We hung up our fishing poles in favor of a little canoeing.  There were canoes for rent to either paddle around the lakes or to take down the river.  My gang, plus David, were the only ones brave enough to travel a river in 55 degree weather, so we rented two canoes and jumped in to our little adventure.  We brought Noodle's i-pod with its waterproof case with us to take pictures.

The river was beautiful, the water was freezing, and Noodle was REALLY nervous about the boat tipping.

Me, Noodle and Seth were in one canoe.

David and Hopers were in the other canoe. 

Being split up, we lost sight of David and Hopers for a while, as they were the first ones in the water.  As it turns out, Hopers wanted to race us, but they spent a good amount of time getting stuck in low branches!

Every night, we settled around the fire after eating (way too much food).

Noodle, Seth, Tobi, and Kirsten

The kids took to drawing and playing hangman in the sand by the fire and singing songs...

Tate and G-Daddy (left).  Hopers (right).

...and making silly faces....

Jena and Teegan

...and telling stories....

...and giving the doggies some love.

Even with the temps getting down into the 20's on the last night, we all stayed cozy in our tents thanks to the great invention of the space heater. 

G-Daddy with Tate's frozen pants that had been left out to dry.

The kids all got along amazingly.  The food was out of this world.  We had our feast, of course, on Thursday, with turkey, fried fish, ham, sweet potatoes, broccoli casserole, macaroni and cheese, winter squash casserole, baked beans, rolls, green bean casserole, and pies.  Then, on Saturday night, we had a chili cook-off between the three families.  Jena made Green Bay Chili, which is a sweet and tasty beef and bean concoction served over macaroni noodles.  Mom made vegetarian chili with a side of "Noodle's Chili" to please my picky daughter who doesn't like onions and bell peppers.  I made venison chili, which has become a mainstay around my kitchen in the winter.

It was a really great trip. One of my top favorites ever, I think.  The kids are all begging to go back there again next year.  However, today is Monday. I am home and in the throes of a two-ton-truckload of laundry.  The kind of laundry saturated with campfire-smoke-knees-in-the-dirt-playing-hangman-loving-on-doggies for five days.  I am inclined at this moment to ban all camping forever! 

Good thing my laundry memory is short and my love for tradition is tall.

Happy Thanksgiving!