Category Archives: the homestead
Chickens!
In March I bought 9 baby chicks from a local feed store, I was told that they should all be hens….well, not so much. Out of nine, 5 ended up crowing and one died. So as of Tuesday we only had 3 little chickens left. Now I didn’t go to all that work to only have 3 chickens, and I really didn’t want to go to the trouble of raising a bunch of chicks again. I want eggs, and I want them soon!!! So I looked through our local classified ads and found a lady that was selling 5 month old hens close by. So Wednesday night Dadzoo picked up 4 for me on his way home from work!!! Yay Dadzoo!!!
Here are my new chickies, aren’t they purdy!
Since they are all different colors I decided to name them. Starting from left to right we have: Dolly Madison, Martha Washington, Lady Bird Johnson, and Mary Todd. (Do you see the theme?) My yellow chicken isn’t pictured, but her name is Lemonade Lucy and my two little black hens are Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. They got those names yesterday, they are about the third of the size of these new birds but think they need to show the new guys who rules the roost. They run around pecking at the new birds (those stupid little girls) and I know as soon as the big birds get tired of it they will be able to take the Tweedle sisters heads off.
The lady I bought the chickens from gave me 10 eggs from her flock. They eggs came from the the types of chickens that she gave to me. I am excited for my birds to start laying, look at the rainbow! That one egg right in the middle is a pretty light green, my 4 year old said “Our chicken lays Easter eggs!” (The green is hard to see in the picture)
And look at this fabulous brown speckled egg.
On another note. I finally got something out of my garden! A basket full of salad greens; spinach and little lettuce and baby chard. Yum!
A Morning Ramble
I was up most of last night with a restless baby. So when I woke up at 6:30 I tried really, really hard to go back to sleep, but I couldn’t, I was just wide away. I got up and made a special treat for breakfast and just enjoyed the quiet house. I took a short walk outside, I love the gardens in the morning, and decide to take a few pictures to share.
A whole lot of nothing
There has been very little going on at our house as of late. We are just plugging along.
I am getting ready for the “big dig”. Around these parts we are at little to no danger of having a hard frost, so it is time to get the gardens going. My springtime efforts were a major failure. This spring was very cold with only a few warm days here and there. Then when things started to be consistently warm the cutter worms made short work of my peas, cabbage and lettuce. (That is why you haven’t seen any pictures of them for a while) So with a quick prayer of thanks that my family doesn’t depend on my gardening efforts for food I am digging in for the summer. I already planted my onions and potatoes, which are new to me this year, and yesterday I got carrots, cabbage, lettuce, spinach, boc choi, broccoli and beets planted. I am waiting for bean, cucumber and basil seeds to come in the mail, and I will be picking up tomato plants at the nursery tomorrow. I am hoping that Saturday I will be able to get the squash in too, I am planting two types of summer squash and a bunch of winter squash that I should be able to store in my basement. I will be planting cheese squash, Butternut squash, Queensland squash, and two types of pumpkin and orange and white variety. If I can just keep the critters away from my crops I think this will be a fun year for gardening.
My very favorite part is about to begin too. I love, love, love my flower gardens. Tomorrow I am going to the nursery to buy tons of flowers. My flower gardens are my pride and joy and I can hardly wait to get everything planted. I will be posting pictures, when I have pictures to post!
The ‘ol Homestead
It has been a busy few days down on the old homestead, with the spring work and all..
Not that I live on a homestead….
or a farm
or a ranch…..
or even a bit of land that is zoned for any of that stuff….
So I guess if I am going to be honest I would have to say….it has been a busy few days in our little slice of suburbia. (I wish I could stay homestead, or farm or ranch or a bit of land that is zoned agricultural)
We worked our little tails off this Saturday, I was cracking the whip! We aren’t going to have another Saturday that we can do yard work until the 24th, so there were a lot of things that needed to get done. Dadzoo built my final box garden, and we planted 64 potatoes, I am hoping for a nice crop this year. He also fixed sprinklers, sprayed dandelions, edged flowerbeds, planted an apple tree (my mothers day gift) and a half a dozen other odd jobs. Anyway, I am so thankful for a good hardworking husband!
On another note, about 6 weeks ago we bought 10 chickens, they were all suppose to be hens. Well, 4 of my hens started crowing. They were really quiet crows at first, kind of funny really, like a teenage boy trying to get his voice. Then they got louder and louder and finally yesterday morning they woke me up at 6 am. Yes, 6 am! Now if we lived on that homestead, I wouldn’t worry about it so much, but we live in a very suburban neighborhood and I am sure the neighbors wouldn’t appreciate a rooster crowing at 6 am. So yesterday evening Dadzoo and a fellow homesteading neighbor dispatched the 4 roosters. And you know something, chickens really do run around with their head cut off, kind of crazy!