"Sprummer" in the Hollow

It's not even officially Summer yet, but the garden, critters, and occasionally, the weather, are all in Summer mode.

Those 3 or 4 days we had of 90+ degree heat we had a few weeks ago seemed to put our raspberries over the top. We've been getting a pint per day as of late, and they haven't even hit their stride yet. I think I'll be making a LOT of jam this year!

The strawberries are doing good as well, but tend to fall victim to the slugs and roly-poly bugs if not picked the second they become ripe. Thankfully, the duck yard is directly next door to the garden, which keeps the slugs and bugs in check, though a few still get through and leave their unmistakable mark.

The pumpkins, beans, carrots, sunflowers and watermelons are all up and looking decent. The potatoes are growing like gangbusters - we need to hill them up again!

The snow peas have finally bloomed, and will hopefully have their first fruits ready by this weekend. Besides a little Sungold tomato or a sun-warmed raspberry, snow peas are my favorite garden sneaky-snack. ;)

The pollinator bed is taking a little longer than usual to get going. The borage, not surprisingly, has reseeded itself con mucho gusto, to the point where I may have to pull a few out to ensure that my breadseed poppies, calendula and phacelia have half a chance at making it.

The lemon balm and spearmint have all but squeezed the chamomile completely out of the tea bed, meaning that a minty-reckoning is overdue. Since none of our critters are terribly fond of the stuff, and I have waaaay more already dried and put up that I could ever need for tea, I think I'll be offering up cut mint & lemon balm this weekend to anyone who is willing to take the stuff.

As for the critters.... OY.

The ducks are doing well, but their egg production is down due to thieving ravens. We're looking to add a net or some sort of barrier/deterrent to the duck yard/Quack Shack to keep the hungry little buggers at bay. Especially since we want to hatch out some babies, which we learned the hard and heartbreaking way, are also a favorite food of hungry ravens. :(

The chickens are doing well. Ruby the Easter Egger took off for about a month and came back with a single little black and yellow chick. We're calling her Garnet, though he/she is still way too small -and fast! - for us to get a good look at in the hopes of accurately sexing him or her. I suspect that Garnet's papa is our Cuckoo Marans rooster, Godzilla, which would make Garnet, if she is in fact a she, an Olive Egger pullet. The other gals in the flock seem to be falling prey to chick envy/baby fever and have been trying to sneak off to raise families of their own. Wrangling our stubborn laydies has been more challenging of ever as of late.

Just hatched! "Kotori", Japanese for "small bird". :)

Our quail flock is expanding! We have ten 5-week old babies, and another four 1-week olds coming right behind them. We'll be hatching out more later this Summer, but the ducks have dibs on the incubator next.

The bees are humming along (see what I did there?)! We have three top-bar hives and one Langstroth, and as of last week's peek, all are looking healthy and full o' honey. Beekeeper Bill says that we should be able to pull some honey at the end of this month! These were all new packages as of this Spring, and they're off to an awesome start owing to everything blooming so early this year. Let's hope that our luck (and theirs) holds.

The goats are happy. We're down to just our two old ladies - Sophie and Chardonnay. They're doing a pretty good job of keeping goatlandia mowed down, and will soon be the recipients of a big windfall of blackberry vines just as soon as Bill and I can find the time to bushwhack the chicken yard. There's never enough time for everything!

So, that's about that. The critters seem happy, the garden seems happy, and the lawn and weeds are out of control, as ever. Life is busy, but good. :)

Playing Catch-up

Birthday season, for the most part, has come and gone, allowing us to focus a slightly larger portion of our time and money on gettin' 'er done around the house and farm. A few developments since I've last posted -

I think she thinks she's invisible.

*Blueberry, a Muscovy hen, has made the executive decision to go bat-crap broody, and sit on a fairly-well hidden clutch of eggs. She's rarely off the nest, but based on the few quick glances that I've had of the clutch, I'd say she's got at least 15 or 20 eggs in there. If you happen to be one of our egg customers, this may help explain why the duck eggs have been fewer and farther between these past few weeks. But...

*We have another half-dozen layers just around the corner! The Khaki Campbell girls are now almost 8 weeks old, and have been integrated into the main flock. They seem to have unanimously chosen Kiki, our black Swedish hen, as their mama. "Keeks" seems mostly indifferent to her new brood, but to her credit, does not seem to mind overly much that they follow her every move. Kiki's fella, Tombo, thought he hit the jackpot when his harem grew by six laydies overnight. Alas, he was too... er... vigorous in his attentions and traumatized the heck out of the Khaki girls. And so, Tommy-boy is living in the ducky bachelor pad chicken tractor for now, where he can see, hear and chat with his gals, but not have direct "encounters" with them. He'll stay there until - a) the Khakis are fully mature, b) he learns how to be a gentleman, or c) we re-home him. We'll play it by ear.

Kiki and her little 'uns.

*Our eleven 8-week old chicks have also transitioned into living with the main flock. So far, so good.

*We've been averaging about 10 chicken eggs, and 1 or 2 duck eggs per day from the laydies.

*I planted a whole bed of carrots this past weekend. Half are Cosmic Purples and half are Red-cored Chantenay. I also started a second plot of Watermelon Radishes.

*The new beehives are doing pretty well. The Langstroth hive started to build a bit of cross-comb, which Billy cleaned up, but other than that, everybody appears to be settling in nicely.

*We're gearing up to make our first batch of soap of the season - Dandelion & Honey, provided that the bees don't begrudge us a little of the sweet stuff. The next batch on deck is Sugar Pumpkin & Spice, with homegrown pumpkin. :)

*We've had some fun and different bird sightings over the past few weeks - male and female Rufous Hummingbirds, California Quail, and a very vocal Raven.

And that's about it, I think. I need to get crackin' in the garden this coming weekend - cilantro, spearmint and kale are on deck fo' sho', with chamomile, thyme, calendula, breadseed poppies and borage to follow soon after.

Today's Take - 3/18/15

Whoopsie - birthday mania sort of got in the way of my posting for the past few days. But we're done with that until next month, when the birthday crazy train comes back around. In the mean time, I'll try to hold up my end and faithfully record the Hollow's happenings. :)

The plan I had for putting my slacking Ameracauna hen in the chicken tractor? That didn't happen. Instead, we put the 8 new laying hens that we just bought into the tractor and set them to work tearing up weeds for us. I think the results speak for themselves -

Day 3 - the tractor has been moved twice.

Not too shabby, eh? In addition to the yard work, they've laid us half a dozen eggs so far as well. Pretty good considering that they just went through a pretty dramatic life change.

On the same day that we got the new layers, we also got a mated pair of ducks from the same farm. The drake, "Tombo" is a beautiful I-have-no-idea-what-breed, but, in the way that good looking fellas so often are, seems to be a bit of a jerk. Whereas his lady love, "Kiki" a Black Swedish, is sweet as can be and a faithful layer of huge, pale blueish-grey eggs.

Between Kiki and the 'scovy girls suddenly deciding to lay, we've abruptly gone from no duck eggs at all to 4 per day. And in August/September, our 6 Khaki Campbell ducklings should begin laying as well. That's the thing about farming - you can go from feast to famine and back again just like that - which is why we don't take a second of it for granted.

For the record -
*Duck eggs - 5 (must have missed one yesterday!)
*Chicken eggs - 6

In the garden -
*Bill weeded 8 beds
*I planted 4 short rows of Watermelon radishes, with the plan to start 4 more in a week's time
*The peas we planted about three(?) weeks ago are finally starting to poke their heads up!

Baby Goats!

Chardonnay has her babies on January 6th - one boy and one girl. And I was so sure that she had at least three in there! D'oh!

At 2 days old - the dark kid is the doeling, and the tan fella is our lone buckling, Cocoa.

After fooling me several times, Chardy finally, actually went into labor right around dinner time on the 6th. Farmer Bill was up the hill to feed and came scrabbling back to tell me that Chardonnay was delivering her 2nd babe. We all trucked back up the hill to check on everybody, help Mama dry everyone off, iodine their cord stumps and give them their first dose of colostrum/vitamin supplements. Chardy came through like a champ and her babies are healthy and beautiful!

And then again last night, Sidney did practically the same exact thing. Bill noticed two little new, wet babies at feeding time and came back with the report that we had two new pretty little girls.

The twinses!

Sidney and her darling doelings.

It is highly anticipated that Blue is also expecting shortly, but as she tends to be rather rotund on any given day, who knows for sure?

Three girls and a boy so far. YAY! :)

Today's Take - 7/13/13

I thinned the Cylindra beets a little more today. I think that my "helper" at the time may have decided to put in two seeds per hole, because that's what I'm seeing a LOT of. So we may have some slightly deformed beets coming up. Oh well, it's all good!

The pigs managed to completely undo their string of hot wire, so lucky Mr Bill got to go out there and straighten that mess out, a task for which I do not envy him. The smell down by the pig pen is getting intense. I'm wondering how exactly we determine when they've reached slaughter weight. Do you just eyeball it, or use a weight tape, or...? when the time comes I know that I'll miss those squeaky little pigs - stink and all - but I also know that their meat will come in mighty handy in the coming year. Organically raised meat is crazy expensive and I can't wait to take a break from having to buy it for a while!

The Turkey Boys seem to be settling in fine. In the evenings when I go out to water the garden, I can hear their little ascending whistle-y peeps coming from their run inside the coop, floating all the way over to my little ears in the garden. :) Here is a video of some young Bourbon Red Turkeys that sound remarkably like our Midget whites -

Tomorrow is scheduled to be our first soapmaking day of the year. Bill pasteurized and froze the milk this afternoon, tomorrow, it's go time. I'm 99% sure that we're going to do a double batch of Homegrown Lavender, since if we can only get one type of soap made in time for the Love our Local market, we want it to be one that is sure-fire awesome. ;)

Busy, busy!

Goat Milk - 1/2 gallon
Eggs - 8
Cylindra beets - 2 pounds, 12 ounces

Bees!

Meet the newest residents of the Hollow, 40,000 honeybees. :)

We're installing them in their hives now. The rain is not ideal, but we're hopeful that we've made the transition as easy as possible for them. As soon as the weather clears, these gals had better get busy visiting our fruit trees!

Critter Update - 4/20/13

Today four baby goats went to new homes! Both of Sophie's kids, Sidney's boy and Hope/Liberty's (I can't keep them straight) girl. The folks who took the goaties brought us a few chicks too. We now have six Light Brahma/Americauna chicks being fostered by our silver-laced cochin, Lacy.

Since kid-fest '13 began, we've sold 1 doe in milk and six babies so far. Hop & Liberty are on hold for another family, pending Hop's little guy's successful weaning, and one little wether and one little doeling are earmarked for one of the hub's co-workers, who will be trading us turkeys for the two kids.

Since Sid & Soph are still well in-milk, we'll start our much-anticipated milking tonight. Chardonnay, who was the last to deliver, is still nursing her twins for another few weeks, but will eventually also be a milker for us this year.

I can't wait to make cheese, soap and cajeta again with our milk, and I'm sure the pigs are looking forward to having a belly full of milk-soaked bread and pastries each evening for dinner too.

Besides the joy that is the influx of milk made available to us by weaning off and selling a few babies, I also  very much appreciate the reduced feed and hay bill, and the lessened impact on our pasture. At our fertility/baby boom peak, we had 20+ goats on this little piece of property, which is waaaaay more than it could sustain. We're grateful to the babies for bringing their Mamas into milk for us, but we don't plan on keeping more than one this year. It'll be one of Chardy's babies, who are so identical that I can't tell one from the other. Pictures forthcoming!

Today's Take & Critter Update

Well, it appears that we may have two goat mamas left to kid instead of just one. Brother...

Scarlet & her bud, Thea, were checking out the baby goats and new piggies, when they saw Blue sitting all by her little self in the middle of the pasture. They went by to say hi and said that they swear they saw kicking in her ever-rotund belly. My knee is well enough now that I can take an occasional hike up to goatlandia, and so off I went to check out my Bluey girl. I wish I'd taken a picture! Her girth alone might not have been enough to convince me that she was pregnant, but a gander at her lady-region has me feeling pretty confident that she's extremely pregnant.

Our permanently portly, Princess Blue

She didn't have any discharge happening, but, as happens with most extremely pregnant animals, it looked like her bum-bum was going to explode. :\ We definitely didn't plan for her to ever kid again, but if all of this is just fat, well, then I'm really worried about her, because then the bulging-bum-thing would require a visit to Dr Natalee to see what on earth is happening inside of Blue.

Chardy is also nice and fat, and pretty well bagged up, but no discharge yet, so, going by her history, she has at least another 24-48 hours to go yet.

The piggies have settled in well. In less than 24 hours they managed to root up all of the grass that had been growing in their pen. They also inhaled the slops I made for them, which featured such culinary delights as Kid Milk Replacer, freezer-burned apple slices and onion bagels. Yummmm!

The Guinea hens have settled in well too. They are in their own closed section of the coop for now, until they know for sure that this is home. Some websites suggested that I leave them in for up to 6 weeks before letting them out to free range. Boy, that seems like a lot to me, but then again I'd hate to see them up and fly off on their first time out. We'll leave them in for a few more days at least. No eggs yet from the Guineas either. I sure hope that we get a few before Easter. How cool would that be? ;)

Today's take-

*Eggs - 6

Piggies, Birds and Disbud-a-palooza

This was a very full weekend for the residents of Boggy Hollow. First of all, two of us turned a year older, which, hot on the heels of a knee replacement surgery does not tend to make one feel Spring Chicken-y, generally speaking.

In addition to the clicks on the odometer, we managed to cram a whole lot of farm stuff into those 48 hours.

Firstly, Bill finished building a pig pen and pig house on the site of our first (completely flopped) garden, in the bottomland. Plants didn't grow well there, but we're hoping that piggies will.

Secondly, we bought ourselves some piggies. We got two gilts and a barrow, also known as two girls and a castrated male, 6 1/2 weeks old and already weighing 30-odd pounds apiece. They are mutts, essentially, being primarily Berkshire/Duroc crosses, with a little Yorkshire somewhere in the mix way back. They're fairly mellow little things, who managed to root up the grass in their newly built yard in a single evening.

Against the advice of some, Scarlet has decided to name this motley lot Baykin, Porkchop (Choppy) and Prosciutto (Shootie). I personally have no doubt that any inadvertent sentimentality for these gals & guy will go out the window just as fast as the first whiff of frying bacon (or Baykin) finds its way to my kids' snoots.
These will not be the first animals that we have harvested for food on this farm, but these will be the first that we will have raised for expressly that purpose. I certainly hope that knowing that going in will make it that much easier to harvest and eat these lil' oinkers. For the record, the pigs cost us $95/each. 95x3= $285

As if our dances with pork weren't enough for one weekend, we also were gifted a pair of strikingly pretty/odd Guinea hens. These gals are useful in guarding and alerting our chickens to the presence of the nasty coyote who killed Cotton and who keeps dropping by. I'm not sure if they'd defend our flock or just raise the alarm about a predator in the vicinity, but either way, these gals are a very welcome addition to our rag-tag flock.

Per Wikipedia, Guinea fowl are voracious consumers of fleas, ticks, lice and other insect pests, and will keep your coop and garden relatively bad bug-free. That's a pretty sweet deal, no? I have to admit that I'm also quite in love with their super-cool polka dot plumage. I think that Bill could tie some really cool flies with those feathers!

And as if that weren't enough to fill up a weekend, we also enlisted some help getting our 9 baby goats vaccinated, disbudded, and (where applicable) castrated. The gal who came out to do the deed was kind enough to show Billy the ropes, so that maybe next time we can do the disbudding and banding all by ourselves. For the record, the gal charged $15 per kid for the disbudding/vaccination (with our meds)/castration. x9= $135

Just to clarify, because I feel kinda like I need to justify our descision to disbud, we personally do not care at all whether our goats have horns, but since we're looking to sell these kids to folks, possibly within Olympia city limits, where horned goats aren't allowed, we thought it prudent to go ahead and have the babies dehorned. We also went ahead and castrated all of the bucklings, since one uncontainable buck is plenty for this little farm, thankyouverymuch.

So, that was our weekend. Even with having had goats and a whole mess of chickens for years now, something about bringing pigs and exotic birds into the fold makes this farming-thing suddenly seem super legit. I am going to do my level-best to keep good, accurate records about how much this pig adventure costs us, and how much meat we end up with for our trouble. I'm really, really hoping that between excess goat milk, bakery outlet scores and garden/kitchen scraps, that we'll be able to feed these pigs up, on the cheap. Come harvest time, which we guesstimate will be in August or September, I'll have to crunch the numbers and see how much this experiment cost us. More importantly though, will be whether or not this pork tastes ho-hum or crazy delicious.

Only time will tell!

Today's take:

Eggs - 8

Wearing my Housewifey Hat

I've been thoroughly domestic today. It's raining buckets outside, so it's not as if I had much of a choice whether to work inside or out, so I've stayed in and fiddled away.

I'm making 2 loaves of applesauce cake, one with raisins and one without; and using up the last bit of pureed apples that were left over from making my "Apple Pie in a Jar" schnapps experiment. It really is the best applesauce cake ever. Who says that vodka has no place in baking? ;)

I've also been running laundry 24/7. I am stunned anew each time I get this far behind, to see, all in one pile, the absurd amount of clothing we own and manage to dirty up.

I'd like to have been able to add knitting to this list of things I'd been pecking away at today, alas, our newest household member, a Great Pyrenees mix named Rex, seems to have a propensity for shoes, computer cords and yarn of all things. He has straight-up chewed to shreds two skeins of yarn and one knitting project, needles and all!


The tragic sight that greeted me the first morning after Rex came home with us. Who ever heard of a dog with a thing for yarn?!?

So instead of knitting, I've been reading and snuggling this big, white bear of a dog, and listening to the rain pound down between rotating loads of laundry a trying to keep half an eye on the pooch at all times, lest he eat every last shoe in the house.

It's never boring here and never too easy, but always, always different.

El dia de los Pollos

I probably mangled the Spanish, but what I'd meant to say way "The day of the Chickens". Does that sound like a bargain bin children's book or what? ;)

Today started with Bill & Liv butchering Thunder-chicken. We tried multiple times to re-home him via Craigslist, but in the end, had no takers. He was such a pretty boy, I'd hoped that he could've gone off and made some harem of lonely hennies happy, alas it wasn't to be, and so soup he is.

We also delivered our 26 three week-old chicks to their new owner and made just a few bucks more selling them than it cost us to raise them to this point. That's farming for ya. We're lucky to have made anything, I guess.

We still have the 10 six week-old "babies", and plan to raise them up for meat. Though I'm slightly tempted to keep a hen or two, just to see if they got their mother's blue egg gene. How cool to have a frizzled, crested, blue egg layer! :)

Alright, enough bird nerdiness for one day. Mama Bird - out.

27 minus 1

Our final chick count was 27 hatched, 26 of whom have survived. Our little one that passed was born with congenital deformities of his legs and feet, and was unable to walk or stand much, and essentially just failed to thrive. I guess that it's a blessing, really, but I always feel bad losing a critter, even if it is for the best in the end.

On the bright side, I got my naked neck frizzle! We have at least one little Turken chickie who is starting to grow some whirly wing feathers. Happy. :)

We discovered my little dream baby when Scarlet and I were undertaking "butt patrol". Pics of the baby (not butt patrol!) are forthcoming. Right now the poor little monkey is rocking back and forth in a corner, actively trying to repress the memories of his first aggressive bum-cleaning.

22!

That's more than half of the eggs in our incubator that have hatched so far! We haven't lost a chick yet either, though we have one little guy who is struggling, so we're keeping our fingers crossed.

Four more in the incubator have substantial pipping. I hope that they bust out of there soon!

Meanwhile, the smell coming off of the incubator is gnarly. It's not a rotten egg smell, per se, but it's still pretty nasty. Please hatch, bambinos, so Mama can clean that thing and put it away. :P

On the edge of my seat...

waiting for my babies to hatch. They've started peeping well, and so far two have small pips in their shells. I need to go to sleep, but I don't want to miss a thing!

How nuts would it be if I went to bed and woke up to every last one of those 42 eggs hatched?

:)

Chicken & Eggs Update

The chickens are on night #3 of their antibiotic regimen. No new chickens have fallen ill, so this course of tetracycline and electrolytes will hopefully fix anyone who might have been a bit sick, and prevent any other chickies from contracting whatever the mystery illness was.

The one thing that we're sure that it isn't is Fowl Pox, which is what took two of our bantams last year. Before our vet was able to rule the fowl pox out, I was really stressing and kicking myself, half convinced that that must be what was making our hennies sick. Fowl Pox is a nightmare - not only does it spread like wildfire from native and migrating birds to livestock birds, killing them fast, but we actually have the flippin' vaccine for it in our fridge, but just haven't got around to administering it yet. Well this was a wake up call for sure. As soon as these antibiotics are done and everybody is on an even keel health-wise, it's shot time!

We've collected 14 eggs so far since we've had to stop eating our eggs. We have them on the porch, as the weather has been cool, still deciding whether or not we want to toss them, hatch them or decorate them.

Two days ago I was begging people to take eggs off my hands, and today I had to turn a egg buyer down. Bummer! I'm as sad about them not getting to experience our amazing eggs as I am about having missed an opportunity for a sale. Ah well, we're doing what we have to for our babies. God & weather willing, there will be more eggs to come.

The eggs in the incubator are on day #5. The yolk no longer moves freely through the egg, the blood vessels are quite visible, and the size of the air sac (in the point of the egg) has increased. If I remember correctly from our last foray into incubating, somewhere around day 7-10 the babies will actually start to react to the candling light, and move around a bit. So excited!

I also can't wait to see if we end up with any frizzled chicks in the lot. Curlie gets around, so the odds are decent. :)

Shoot me a comment or email if you are interested in hatching eggs or some of our (hopefully) 20 mutt layer chicks. They're due to hatch in 16 days!

*Update 9/18/11* I forgot to mention yesterday when I posted this that Bill made 1 1/2 gallons worth of Feta on Saturday, and 1 quart's worth of cajeta. :)

Today's Take 9/12/11

Chicken ups and downs today. Junebug, the Australorp hen is still unwell. This is day three of her illness/egg binding. Liv and I tried to help her out by oiling her vent to grease the skids a little, to no avail. She is very weak and not eating, though still drinking. She has passed a very small amount of poo, but without much force, leaving her a bit pasted up. I cleaned her when I applied the oil, but overall, I am not optimistic. :(

In contrast to Junebuggy's distress, we had a very pleasant, very surprising gift from Huckleberry the Americauna hen. We found her hidden in the shrubbery on a nest of 18(!) eggs. I also found two more eggs in another nest, so we now have a very full incubator, and a broody hen with a grudge against her nest-raiders. You can read the full story of the unexpected eggs over on Girl Gone Granola.


Behold, our bonanza! :)

Goats Milk, 72 ounces
Eggs, 5 (for eating) 20 (for hatching) :)
Tomatoes, 6 ounces
Handful of sugar snap peas - YUM!

For the Record, week of 6/6-6/12/11

This has been a mostly sunny but mild week, weather-wise. A few little showers here and there - just enough to keep things growing but not ruin anybody's day. ;) As a result of our sunny but not hot weather, we've all found ourselves with a little more energy, and have been spending more time outside working.

Scarlet has been, as ever, my number one garden helper. Today we planted 36 Yukon Chief corn starts, 1 row of French Breakfast radishes & 1/2 row of Red-cored Chantenay carrots. Coming up next are the wax beans and pole beans, which have gone nuts under the grow lights and are ready to go in the ground and do their thing.

I still need to find a place to shimmy in some beets. Maybe between the rows of peas & beans?

In critter news, we had a sick little goat this week. While trimming and cleaning hooves earlier this week, we noticed that Hop had copious amounts of yellow discharge coming out of her right ear. We'd noticed a week or two before that she wasn't quite acting herself, but never did see anything wrong until we had her in the stanchion for grooming. Poor girl! I took her to the vet the next day, where they flushed her ear. The vet said that there was a LOT of gunk in there, but no foreign objects. The likely reason that she got infected is because she has such small ears (as do many Lamanchas) that can't "breathe" that well. So we're giving her ear drops once per day, and are going to irrigate her ears with a solution of one part silver sulfadiazine cream dissolved into 9 parts distilled water. If worst comes to worst, she can have the opening to her ear surgically enlarged. Boy I hope that it doesn't come to that, because that sounds spendy! Our wonderful vet, Dr. Natalee, said that in a production dairy, Hop would no doubt have been culled for this tiny defect. We're just not that intense here, but it does make me think twice about ever breeding her, even though she comes from excellent bloodlines. Luckily I have a while to think it over.

We also aquired a new roo this week who the girls have named Thunder (no pic of Thunder-chicken yet, but he looks just like this guy.). He is a white-crested black polish, like Curly, but not a frizzle, like Curly, which is a good thing, because breeding a frizzle to a frizzle doesn't work out well. The feather curling gene goes haywire and produces a "Curlie" who's feathers are overly curled and brittle. So if/when Curly and Thunder fall madly in love and have babies, about 75% of the chicks should be frizzle. I can't wait!!!

The guy who raised Thunder up to this point lives in city limits, and therefore can't have a roo. So he gave us Thunder and we gave him an Australorp hen. A good trade for all concerned.

Besides all of that gardening and critter care, this week was fairly low-key. The kiddos have just a couple weeks of school left, so I'm trying to get all of my do-not-disturb type chores out of the way before I have myself a couple of shadows 24/7. I'm forgetting something huge, I just know it.

Weekly totals-
-20 eggs
-4 knit dishcloths finished

Lucky #13

Gert finally had her baby. Just one, a little girl, at around 11pm last night, Mother's Day. Kinda nutty considering that our bunnies we're born on a friend's birthday, Chardy's baby goats were born on another friend's birthday, Fritzen's on Valentines Day, and now Gert on Mother's Day. Weird!

We're still mulling over names for the baby. Bill likes Lucky, as in Lucky 13, but I'm maybe a little too superstitious to name anything Lucky.

Anyway, mother and baby are both looking good. Gert has been very protective of her little bambina, bleating and lunging at the other Mamas and babies that come to check them out. Very un-Gertie-like, but understandable for all that.

Here are some snaps of the proud new Mama and her sweet little girl -

Gertie the Pregnant Goat

For the past four months, we couldn't tell whether or not Gertie was pregnant. We deduced that she was by her increased appetite and the fact that she didn't come back into an obvious heat, but with the nature of goat bellies being bloaty and round, it was too close to call.

Around four weeks ago, it finally became obvious that Gert was expecting. Her middle is now at least as wide as it is tall, and her udder has magically appeared, chock full. Her little bum-bum area looks fit to burst, but it has for about two weeks now, so we're on pins and needles looking for that for-sure sign that it's "go time".

Jen thought she saw Gert's belly contracting yesterday, but by the time that I got up to the pen, they had stopped. I managed to wrangle her and lay hands on her sides, but I couldn't feel the babies kicking. I'm worried. I really don't want to miss this birth, since it will be Gertie's first, and since I fear (hopefully irrationally) that these kids might be in trouble.

So I slept like crap last night, starting at every little squeak and creak, worried that Gertie was delivering unattended and scared, or that newborns were wandering around the pen wet and cold. Thankfully she has held on through the night. I would very much appreciate it if she delivered these babies in the daylight hours, but I know we're on her schedule now, so I'll come when called, whenever that may be. Hopefully soon!

Pictures are forthcoming. I just got an awesome new camera that I haven't figured out how to download yet. ;\

New Digs

The baby chicks have made the move to their brand spankin' new big kid coop! And of course, today is the day that my camera decided to die, so I don't have any pictures to share of my happy chickens enjoying my husband's fine craftsmanship. :(

Billy worked his hiney off on that coop, and though there is still work to be done yet before it is officially complete, it's up and it's chock full of peepers tonight. Thank God, because the funk and dust/dander that those little buggers generate in a day is astounding, and was yucking the hot tub room up BAD. Now I get the joy of decontaminating the room of it's current smell - eau de chicken butt. The glamor never ends.