Guess What?

CHICKEN BUTT!

Some Projects

We've been mostly shut indoors here for the past few days due to some unusually heavy (but very welcome) rain. That just means that we've had some down time to come up with more new project ideas! Also, we've been able to come up with some solutions to problems we knew were in the post.

After only a month, it has become quite clear that the chickens do not need to have the run of the place. Don't worry - they'll still get to range, but their "range" will be somewhat determined by us. The problem is that a chicken will go wherever it wants to, regardless of how you may feel about it. Given the freedom, they'll be in your garden, on your deck, roosting on top of your barbecue grill, under (or on top of ) your car, and so on. As much as we enjoy them, we have our limits. SO, the ladies and gentleman will be enjoying some deluxe but rather more confined accommodations in a soon-to-be fenced area adjoining the small barn. The chicken tractor will remain in use for now as well - it can be their enclosed quarters, or could be re-purposed to house new birds until they're ready to mix with the flock. We also don't quite have enough nest boxes for our twelve girls. The tractor has just two built in, so today I set up a third one inside a chiminea with a broken top that's been sitting around waiting for some good use. Here it is - no visitors yet:



Yes, there's a bucket over the top to keep the rain out of it!

I also started growing a few batches of sprouts (bean and sunflower). I did that a lot before the move, and was finally able to unearth the sprouter. Hubby had a stroke of genius, though, and thought of a way to provide me with a much BIGGER sprouter, to make many more sprouts. Off he went to root through boxes, and he came back bearing a paper safe (the type used in photography to store photo paper). It's a good sized enclosed box with built in shelves and a roll-up door on the front. He intends to fit the shelves with some screens and I'll probably need to fix the door open and hang something like cheesecloth or a tea towel over it to maintain some air circulation, but it looks like it will work. I'll let you know after I've tried a batch. For now, though, here are the beginnings of my latest batch:



Lovely, aren't they? Just a box full of sprouty goodness!

Also on the horizon - a worm farm! We need to get out and rearrange the stuff in the barn, after which we plan to set up some worm beds. I'd like to get to that fairly soon, but the weather makes outdoor projects difficult, and we'll be busy this coming weekend helping our friends dispatch some more chickens (can't say I'm looking forward to that, but hey, what are friends for?). As soon as we can work it in, I'll post an update.

Woohoo, Commerce!

We sold our first dozen eggs!

And then we sold two dozen more!

I think I like this game.

I Spent All Afternoon on...This?

My "big" project over the weekend was to mark off and start prepping Garden Bed Numero Uno. There will be many, eventually, but for now I marked off just two beds, and prepped one. The plan is to have two "banks" of 4' x 20' beds with wide pathways in between, and another wide pathway between the two banks. I basically prepped an 80 square foot area for planting, and it looked incredibly, impossibly tiny. That's actually about the same size as our entire garden was at the old house - that was all we really had to work with. Now, looking at it in the context of a much larger property, it looks so small. I can see how easy it is for people to over-plant and get into something they can't hope to maintain! Just that little area was quite a whipping, though. The dirt on this land hasn't been worked in many years (if ever), and it was just like trying to break bricks with shovel. I was actually breaking it loose with a pick ax at one point. But it's been turned, amended with some rabbit poo, covered with cardboard, chicken litter and straw, wet down and left to, uh, rot - or whatever it's supposed to do - until spring. Maybe I'll prep the second bed this weekend. Or maybe I'll look out there at the hard dirt and say "Oh, HELL no.". ;-)

And speaking of oh-HELL-no's, my rooster has started challenging me. Just Saturday, out of nowhere, he's taken to flying at me. I think we may have cleared that up for now, though, after a few swift kicks to the chest. I also find it helpful to stomp my feet and generally "loom largely" at him right from the start, before he gets any ideas. He seems to reconsider his position and head the other direction when I do that.

All's well, though. I'm in my living room working, listening to jazz, it's POURING outside (!!!) and I've got happy, nappy dogs.

I Seem to Be Getting Ahead of Myself

By many, many miles. I've lost perspective. We got into this house after a long period of waiting, and I was so excited, so relieved to finally be here. In my mind I've envisioned the place the way I want it to be. I've been making lists. Every weekend I stack the deck with tasks for myself, trying to get it ever closer to "perfect".

And then, nothing happens. Well, not nothing, but all the wrong things. Things still need to be moved from the old house. I get a bunch of boxes cleared, and more show up. Things break. It's over 100 degrees every day for weeks, so no work gets done between 11:00 am and 7:00 pm. I still have to do my job. Money is tight from the move. My husband suffers an injury. All the wrong things. My list keeps growing and never shrinking, and every time I look around, all I can see are things not done. All the things I want to do here I want to do NOW.

Yesterday a friend was kind enough to supply me with a boot to the head. She confessed that she's been in her place for two years and is only now starting on many of her "to do" projects. They are still hauling off loads of junk that they inherited with the place. Some reflection on that made me realize something - I need to sit on my hands and let things happen. It's one thing to have drive and a sense of urgency, but there are just some things you can't force. I can't change the weather. I can't make compost happen any faster than it wants to. Water will flow where it will. Even more important than that, I realized that it's probably not a good idea to finish all my projects right away, even if I could. It takes the long, slow wearing of time to transform a house into a home, and a patch of land into an oasis. They need to be broken in, develop some history with you, get to know you. If I finished everything on my list tomorrow, what on earth would I do then?

You Take the Good With the Bad...

They like me! They really, really like me! Well, someone does, anyway. Rob, over at Rob's World was kind enough to present me with this fine award (my first!) and I'm most grateful.

Now, in turn, I will pass on the love! I hereby present the Brillante Weblog Award to....


1. Brenda over at Skunky Acre Farms for showing me the way, and for always meeting adversity with good humor.

2. Lewru at Wisdom of the Trowel, for always seeking out the answers and for frequent invocation of the Triple Word Score.

3. Risa at Stony Run Farm for the sheer beauty of it. Wow.

And in accordance with the, er, rules, I'll provide a few fun facts about myself:

1. In elementary school, I wrote a story about feeding radishes to a volcano in order to make it erupt. Sounded reasonable to me.

2. All of my chickens are named Phyllis.

3. Apparently I know more Christmas trivia than anyone ever should.

Thank you everyone. Thank you, thank you. {takes a bow}

What, you ask, is the bad? Replacing the water heater at 11:00 p.m. on a Sunday, because you happened to be behind the house on the east end, and heard water gushing from somewhere on the west end. Sigh.

Meet Mama Bird!

Apparently I didn't scare her away.