Chickens, and mulched terraces.

Of all the things we got done this weekend despite the rain, mowing the lawn wasn't one of them, though the rain was why it didn't get done. The rain also made the necessity of doing it all the greater. It's amazing just how fast our grass grows. That said, while I covered most of what went on I missed a few things, and didn't get all of the photos I wanted to share for Tuesday.

An hour here and there.

I figured I'd start with Boris and his hens. He dragged himself all the way over to the garden and back to the ramp a couple times yesterday. He's still badly injured, but it doesn't look like he's going to die of his injuries. Even if this is how he lives the rest of his life, he's earned sticking around and us giving him care for the rest of that time instead of us butchering him for meat as we usually would for a non productive animal on our property.

A break for beauty, and a whole lot of chicken changes.

In between the storms that have been rumbling through the area dumping water in copious amounts, and bringing cold temperatures, we've had some gorgeous weather come through. We try to make sure we take the time to enjoy the beauty around us every day, even in the dark days. On days like this though, it's easy to appreciate even the most mundane parts of our home. In this case, even our regular trouble, the driveway, has provided real beauty to enjoy. Even with the pauses for beauty though, we have plenty going on.

Happy rabbits eating greens.

It's the time of year where the rabbits can be fed mostly, if not exclusively on greens from the yard. I've been putting as much greenery in the hutches as I can, though I probably shouldn't have started with the favorites and moved to the less favorite as I have. Favorites right now are plantain and raspberry/blackberry plants. They eat the raspberry and blackberry stems and all, barely anything was left of the stems even except the woody center. I'm being very careful about what goes into the hutches this year because of a couple of reasons. First is last year when I accidentally poisoned a hutch of babies, and caused the deaths of a couple, the other is a friend with rabbits who has recently started having kits die off on her, sounding like poisoning. Being careful seems to work out, and the greens save money And make the rabbits happy at once, double win. 

To my love, and awaiting new life on the homestead

I'm going to start today with some recognition for my lovely wife, the Lady of the House. Today it's been a year and two days of marriage, almost ten years of being together. Without her support in my life not only would the homesteading blog not exist, the homestead wouldn't exist. A lot of what makes my life good is, or is supported by her presence and encouragement. And obviously, without her we wouldn't have our lovely Critter. Really though without her I never would have started homesteading even with the opportunity. Even without that, she's my favorite person in the world, so here's to as many more years together as we can. Below the cut I'm going to go into the rest of what's going on in our world.

Thinking about chickens and what we're doing.

Of course on a post mostly about chickens I'm going to start with a bunny photo because they were being adorable when I came out this morning, and wanted attention. Of course, that meant I gave it to them because when they want pettins, I want to give them pettins. They're looking good, growing fast, and eating everything in the world that is provided to them. No wonder they've grown so well with eating how they have. But now over to chicken discussion.

A whole variety of things going on, but mostly chicks.

There are a lot of things going on around the homestead right now, but this post is going to focus on the chicks because they're adorable. The other things that will be touched on in this post include more work on barn tear down, the seedling swap, and fruit trees. I'm going to start with the "Other" part of this post before getting to the adorable. Well, getting more to the adorable than the chicks Above.

Hot weather, healthy kits, a broken egg, and asking for rain.

Having missed Spring entirely, or so it's seemed for the past few days, it was nice this morning for it to look like it might rain. We'll see whether it does or not, but I am hoping we see some good rain today. The kits have been sprawled out at the hottest part of the day getting the best of the breezes we have up the hill. Without that the weather would be much more unpleasant, and in the valley where I work, it is that much hotter and less pleasant. I've been taking my exercise during lunch so I've come to really appreciate getting home to the slightly cooler temperatures and winds.

As you can see Above Dawn is just as gentle to, and protective of her daughters kits as her own. The three in with her are doing well, and should be getting moved over to the bigger hutch shortly. A few weeks straight of sickness has slowed so much down.

Learning about Critter care, and the Monster egg.

 Today is another day pre arrival of the Critter, and we've settled into the routine of being on alert and are trying to just keep ready to go without stressing out. It has actually given us some time to have a lot of good experiences, learn a lot, and for the Lady of the House and I to read a lot about the impending Critter care. For instance we went to the Cloth Diaper Swap & Shop put on by the Simple Diaper & Linen service  which ironically has a longer title than URL. The beautiful pallet arbor bench Above is from the art space near the swap and shop.

We for a very reasonable price managed to get enough more cloth diapers to have a sufficient stock rather than a just barely feasible stock. We also got to observe the Cloth Diapering 101 class which was very comforting and gave us a lot of ideas about what we needed to know that were accentuated and helped by advice from friends who have cloth diapered. We are now a lot more confident in what we're doing, and while that may be an illusion, we'll take it, delusion can be very useful.

A lost litter, and a distracted life as we wait

Right now I'm not going to beat around the bush, our focus is preparing for Critter's arrival. Trying to organize the house, get a solid inventory of what we have and what we need still in terms of small person care. By the by, if you've never had a small person come into your life before, it's a lot. Especially if you want to minimize the environmental impact you're going to cause with a small person, and try to feed the small person well.

Chickens, wood, and babies. Now with pictures.

As promised, today we have photos from around the homestead. We've finally been letting our chickens wander the property and do their thing, and they are quite different in behavior than the chickens we had around before. They don't have to be coaxed to come to garden beds with scratch, they're curious, and they are an unruly bunch that make quite a rapid impact on the grounds.

Times of transition, preparation, and change.

Sorry for the late post today, I didn't get things done last night, so I had to wait for having breaks at work to get things done, and the Lady of the House was kind enough to get me some photos to share with you all. Right now is sort of an awkward time as we among other thing wait for the last litters of the year to be born, continue to try to breed Twilight, and the garden dies down. Digressing for a moment, let's talk about Twilight before we get back to everything else

Quick hit: Ice, bunnies, and an eggstacy of eggs

It's cold, icy, and I'm working way too much so this is going to be a very short post without too much to say. The young kits are doing well, and while their mom Sunshine doesn't like me bothering them too much she's gotten used to it. They aren't as friendly as kits as I'd like, but a large part of that can be attributed to the fact that I haven't had time to handle them, and it was too cold to do weight checks. In the future I'm going to really try to push for handling if there aren't weight checks, but that means figuring out a way to keep kits warm and healthy when being handled when it's REALLY cold.

Oddly enough it's been warmer lately than it was earlier in the winter and fall. The difference is and why the work on the new hutch has stalled is the snow, and more importantly ice all over the place. 3" of snow, no problem, a good solid 1" of ice Is however a problem. Combine that with a really insane work schedule lately and I just haven't been able to get anything done. Barring being bad at sleep I think I've spent about 10 hours at home awake this week, and 7 of that is morning wake up, and farm chores.

On the other hand, we do have some really pleasant things happening. In particular Dora, the smallest of our chickens has gone on an egg laying binge. We were just thrilled to have Some eggs before she knocked off for the winter, but she's just gone and laid 6 eggs in the first 7 days of egg laying. This time I cheated and took the photo of the eggs against a white background so you can see how blue they are without me actually enhancing the photo at all! You can also see why I'm not working on the hutch since that's the bottom wire.

Sorry for the short post today, this is going to be my 4th, 14 hour work day in a row. I'll try to have a solid quality post Thursday, but no promises.