The Timmies

A few weeks ago, a very nice woman saw my post on Craigslist looking for a white leghorn rooster.  She had a young one, and I met her to pick him up.  The white leghorns are smaller than our others, and very sweet and tame.  Addison named this little guy "Timmy".  Well, although Timmy seemed happy as can be, he must have been bullied by the others.  On the first night, he "flew the coop" and we never saw him again.  The next day, the kids spent hours out looking for Timmy.  I half thought we would find him hiding in the barn... but, no such luck.

I called the woman that gave us Timmy, and she did have two more.  I told her we would take both of them.  So, after a chicken deal in the parking lot of Haverties, we took the new little guys home.  This time, we kept them caged for a while.  Addison began referring to them as... "The Timmies".  So, now we have to "put up the Timmies" and make sure to feed "The Timmies".  They are super sweet and friendly.  I know we won't need two leghorn roosters, but for now, the kids are enjoying playing with the friendliest chickens in the yard.

First Hatch!

Much to the delight of my anxious kids, our chicks hatched last week!  Out of an initial 22 eggs, 19 hatched.  One of the chicks died after "zipping" (where they peck a long series of holes in the shell).  I'm not sure what happened to him, but he must have gotten stuck.  So, we ended up with 18 chicks!  That's a great success!  Within 24 hours, we had chosen 5 to keep and sold the other 13.  Now, we just sit back and wait to do it all over again in about two weeks!

It's been pretty exciting around her lately... I mean, even more so than usual.  The weather is finally beautiful, the kids can romp around outside, Asa has taken an interest in BMX and now has his very own bike to take to the track as soon as we get him a helmet, and the first clutch of eggs are starting to break through their shells!

When we reached 6 dozen eggs in the fridge, I knew I had to kick things into gear and start selling some eggs.  Last week, I sold 9 dozen.  This week, I decided that we need to sign up weekly deliveries, in order to help me calculate how many I have to sell.  So, starting next week I have four dozen claimed per week.  I have slots for 2 more dozen.  Eggs are collected, cleaned, put into cartons, and taken to the church when I pick Ivey up from school.  So far, so good!  In all the craziness, I even loaded Asa, Ivey, and Olive into the van and headed on a Craigslist run, bringing home 6 more laying hens to help meet the demand.  Now, we are getting a minimum of 12 per day.  Not too shabby.

Indoors, Jeff helped me make a homemade incubator out of a styrfoam cooler, a $10 water heater thermostat, an old computer fan, and ceramic light fixture with a 25watt bulb.  Add some hardware cloth and a thermometer/hydrometer and you're done... or done-ish.  You do have to sit and fiddle with the thermostat, light bulb combo for a good long while before you learn to make it work together.  What you have to realize is that the hot water heater thermostat is made to have a 6 degree swing.  It won't turn off or back on until the temp has changed by 6 degrees.  Well, that doesn't work in egg hatching.  So, after some trials and a bunch of brain power, I placed the thermostat directly above the light bulb... so that it is touching it.  Then, I positioned the fan to blow directly on to the bulb... which does circulate the air throughout the cooler, but also works to quickly cool that hot light bulb down.  The end result was that the light bulb comes on, heats the air in the box to a good temp, but the hot bulb is actually hotter than the air in the box.  So, the therostat registers that it is at the upper end and shuts off.  Then, that hot bulb cools off quickly from the fan, so although the rest of the boys if fluxing between 99.4 and 100.6, the light bulb has a much wider swing.  The thermostat was effectivly tricked, and we have a toasty incubator for $24.

We aren't using this one as a full blown incubator right now, it does not have an automatic egg turner. But during the last 3 days of the setting, the eggs are in "lock down".  They aren't turned at all, and they need a slightly higher humidity than before.  So, my homemade bator is now our hatching bator.  I just move over the eggs that are ready to go into lock down, clearing up the other bator for another set of eggs.  One day, I will most likely build a homemade bator that is big enough to hold a $30-$40  turner.  For now, I have my hands full.  We still have a brooder to make (I think I've figured this out... we'll see...) and we have to get our heads around who we sell and who we keep.  This sounds like work, but this is the fun stuff!

Jeff did make me a fabulous mobile chicken coop.  My "chick mobile" has roosts and a good door to hold them in at night.  Nesting boxes that open from the outside so no one has to actually go inside the thing unless you are the one laying the egg.  I need to paint it, but it already looks great to me!  As of now, we have 3 buff orpingtons, 2 barred rocks, 3 white leghorns, 4 Rhode Island Reds,  and 9 red stars.  We also have a lone Aracauna rooster and a Buff Orpington rooster.  In the next few weeks, I will be trying to get a setting together of straight buff orpingtons and straight white leghorns (assuming my white leghorn delivery comes through!).  Yes, I'm addicted.  It's just so fun!

Day 18 was on Friday, and I moved each egg from one incubator to our homemade hatching box.  The temp is still looking very steady, and tonight, we already have 5 little chick-a-dees cracking through!  It's so weird to hear peeping coming from inside an egg.  Everyone is totally excited to see what strides are made over night. 

In other non-chicken related news...

Asa is interested in BMX, so we found him a bike today!  It needs new tires and tubes, but it's in pretty good shape!  Hopefully, I can get him out there to practice this week... assuming I can get him a helmet... hmm... I need an assistant!

 Olive is walking a lot more now.  It's still not her primary mode of transportation, but she is trying to on her own more and more.  Whenever Ivey comes near her, Olive goes ahead and drops to her knees.  The poor girl knows she's about to get knocked over.  Those two are going to be quite the pair.  I see daily boxing matching in my future.

Egg Candling

Jeff is finishing up my new chicken coop, and I will post pictures soon!  I absolutely love it, and I love the 14 new hens that we have pecking around the yard!  On my birthday, I decided that the weather was just too fabulous to do our school work indoors.  So, we headed for the yard, with all of our books and a white board.  We did spelling lessons with sidewalk chalk, read out loud to each other in the grass, and enjoyed the preview of Spring!

We now have one barred rock, some buff orpingtons, white leghorns, and red stars.  We have one Americauna rooster and I just brought home a buff orpington rooster in hopes that we can make some little buff orpington chicks in the next hatch!  When the new rooster came here, our Americauna rooster kicked his little butt all across the yard.  It was an honest to goodness cock fight.  In the end, the new guy ran into the woods.  We couldn't find him that night and we were sure he was a goner.  The next day, we looked to no avail.  We went to run our errands and when we were driving home, we saw him!  He was pecking around the church next door.  I let the boys out and they corralled him back home.  After a night or two in a separate pen, the two roosters now live together pretty well!

Today was my first attempt at egg candling.  We are 4 days into our incubation, and I believe I can see the tell tale blood vessels in a few of the eggs.  Most of our eggs are brown, so I am having a hard time seeing through the shell.  We do have a light egg that I could actually see the little dark spot which is the developing embryo!  I'm not sure how many of these eggs are actually gestating, but I do know that at least one or two are!

Asa is completely excited about our first hatch, and he counts down to March 21st each day!  I'm hoping that my candling abilities will improve, and I hope that I can find a way to see more clearly through these brown shells!

Busy Beavers

Back Property Line

Yesterday, I was able to go out to the property and tromp back in the woods without a kid strapped to my back.  Jeff and the boys had ventured to the back corner and found where beavers had been hard at work on various dams at the mouth of the pond.  The mouth of the pond, and a small corner of it, is on our property.  It seems the boys traded the "beaver dam" at our last house for many real ones!

This new area that we found is absolutely beautiful!  I don't know if we would be able to cut a drive all the way back there, but it would be awesome.  I definitely want to keep these beautiful creeks free of large farm animals, so the kids can explore and play!

I also was able to check out all the work that my three boys have been up to lately. Sure enough, the kitchen is completely gone.  Jeff had stacks of wood that we will use to build a barn further back in the woods.  Getting rid of that house, building a barn, and cutting a driveway over the creek(s) are all things we can try to get done while we are in a holding period to build.  Jeff found culvert on Craigslist, so we have something like 47 feet of huge pipe just waiting to be used.

Newspaper Insulation - June 13, 1959

The Joy Of Destruction

In the last month or so, Jeff and the boys have spent a good bit of time down at our property. As is typical with us, we bought the land with a great vision. It seems we have the ability to ignore the complete ruin something is in and envision it as something completely different. Well, with this piece of property, even I had a hard time seeing past the mess.

I did not have the same "love at first sight" feeling with the land that I did with our old house. The first day we saw it, we drove to the end of a dirt road and stopped in what Jeff described as "shanty town". A full grown turkey literally puffed up and wanted to fight us. Chickens and ducks ran around everywhere. I took one look at the dilapidated old nothing of a shack, as well as the surrounding area, and decided that there was nothing left for me to see.

Luckily, I have a very persuasive husband. When we first pulled up and saw what was a house long ago, we were on a very small section of the property. Jeff drove back beyond the depressing structure and managed to take me back to see the rest of it. I couldn't believe he actually got me out of the van. Just as he suspected, I opened up a bit once I was out walking the property lines. The hardwoods were gorgeous and I saw spots that I would want to clean for pastured chickens, turkeys, maybe a cow or other animals that could join an intense rotational grazing plan. I could start to see it... the paddocks, the fences, the chicken tractors, the possibilities. Now, mind you, all of these ideas are coming up a we walk through an overgrown disastrous mess. We didn't see all 25 acres, but we saw most of it.

This was taken when we bought the place.  Ivey was a baby.  I LOVE the look on their faces in this shot!

Work doesn't scare me. Regret scares me. We have two goals with this move. Goal #1 is to build a great home with our own hands, in whatever alternative manner that can get us in with no additional debt. We've looked at everything from permanent yurts, concrete structures, shipping container homes (a possible winner), building with cordwood, bagged earth, hay bails, and the choice that has Jeff currently enamored, timber framed homes with wood that we mill ourselves. Goal #2, to be able to raise more of our own food. Instead of milking my two fabulous does, Gretta and April, why can't I also milk a small Jersey cow? Why can't we raise heritage breed pork and my own turkey for Thanksgiving? I would love to know exactly what the food in our freezer was fed and how the animals lived.

Right now, we are in a goat milk slump. Both of our girls started drying up a few months ago. We bred them last month and they are due in April and May. It's very annoying to now have to go purchase 3-4 gallons of milk per week. Heck, the kids had to readjust to the taste and consistence of cow's milk. One day, I would love to have a better system down. Not just for us to provide for our own needs, but to be able to have a place where the family could come for holidays and where I can give homeschool field trips. The public health educator in me, and the homeschool teacher in me, get themselves all fired up just thinking about the possibilities!

So, all the dreaming aside, Jeff and the boys just finished tearing down the kitchen, pulling it over with a truck... much to the delight of all of my boys and the dismay of the hen that was laying eggs in there. Asa and Addison spent a day pulling off siding with the claw of a hammer. Don't all seven year-olds do this stuff? There's a long way to go... a very long way to go... but wheels are in motion. It's not the destination, but the journey, right?

I Got Your Back

It's official.  Farm chores facilitate team work.  Although only one boy has to do the outside chores each week, they have made a deal with each other.... the inside-chore-doer goes out to protect the outside-chore-doer from the roosters in exchange for reciprocal protection the following week.  So, this week they headed out, Asa with a squirt gun full of water and Addison with a large cane that he calls his "staff".  Problem solving... check.  Working well with others... check.  Learning responsibility... check.  My work here is done.