Farm Fresh: Wanna-be Chicken, Goslings on the grass, New Rabbit Kits

Our Muscovy duck is not doing the dance, but she seems to be saying: I don't wanna be a duck. I don't wanna be a duck. I just wanna be a chicken. Bock bock bock.  She is laying her eggs in the hen house now. Without any prompting from us she has been going in there every night.  I thought maybe she wanted to set on her eggs, but so far she is just laying and coming out in the morning. 

A lot of the poultry are moving to new homes this week.  The meat chickens went to freezer camp.  The year old layers (4 Khakis), big sister A's young flock (5), and my 3 week old goslings (10) & ducklings (7) all moved into the big hoop house on Sunday. 

We are keeping the youngest bunch separate for a week or two.  They just moved outside and I don't want the big ducks to pick on them.

They are spending their days in the tractor to keep them safe from hawks and such.

Big sister A's ducklings have about half their feathers in now.

The turkey poults are only 3 weeks old, a little young to be outside, but they moved out anyway.  They were flying out of the brooder and pooping in the basement. They took over ducks' old house.  The guinea keats will eventually join them.

This turkey is named Eagle.  He likes to perch on children.

And just in case the poultry were not keeping us busy enough, we have a new litter of bunnies to play with. They are just 12 days old in these pictures. 

There are only three.  Five were stillborn. We think it was because their was a heatwave the day before they were born. At least the mama is okay. She fed eleven kits last time, so these three are super roly poly and well-fed.

They are the first litter of kits from the show rabbit - Jack Jack.

Farm Fresh: Rainbow Rangers go to Freezer Camp

 We received our 25 Rainbow Ranger chicks March 8th.  May 27th (around 12 weeks old) we butchered 18 in about 2 hours.  Kids helped. Friends came to learn and practice. We prayed over the chickens, that death would be quick, and experienced again a tremendous gratitude for the animals we eat.

Here is a good picture that captures the overall scene. We hung or used a killing cone on the tree, scalded in the large metal trash can, put it in the plucker, eviscerated on the tables, and then into my iceboxes to chill for 24 hours.

Scalding at 155 degrees Fahrenheit -- I had pots on the stove to add boiling water and bring the temp back up half way through.

My good friend loaned us her plucker. It worked incredibly well and saved tons of time.  

I spent a lot of time demonstrating the evisceration part of the process. 

 

Family Schooling: Class Fair Co-op School Party

Monday was the last day of Co-op School. We had the class fair. Brother M's dance class did some performances:

 Baby watching the relay races:

 They divided the kids into teams and each one had to do different projects/challenges.  Their were prizes at the end.  I was taking pictures for the whole co-op so I did not get a lot of good pictures of just my kiddos.

A's team on the snap the  ball into the basket game:

Farm Fresh: Escape Attempts, Nesters, and Guinea Fowl

Well, one thing led to another (wet bedding, wet cardboard & bored pecking) and the goslings made themselves several escape routes from their brooder into the basement proper. 

 Funny enough none of them decided to do more than pop their heads out or take a couple steps outside.  Ducks like to stay together and I guess geese do too. Unlike with the chickens, where I am always herding stragglers, my older ducks always stay within a few feet of each other and all go into their house together at night.

 Needless to say, it was time to move the older ducklings (big sister A's flock) out of the wading pool brooder and move my young flock in. Pretty easy - since it was just right next door.  The older ducklings spent a week in the screened poultry tractor by day and in a play yard inside the duck house by night.  Now they can mingle safely. They go out and come in with the year old ducks.

 The turkeys are excellent flyers and can all perch on the edge of their brooder. If only the weather would warm up then I could put them outside soon. So far they mostly are just perching.  They make a loud peeping when they accidentally fly out to the floor and cannot get home. Then we go downstairs and help them.

  Here are the new Guinea Fowl:

 I know. I know. What?! another bird?  But hubby wanted these too.  They are very independent and will probably not want to come back into their coop ever again once we let them roam.  But they eat tons of bugs, way more than the chickens even. And since ticks and lyme disease are getting worse every year we thought it would be good to have some tick troopers. I bought these "extras" from a friend, just 3... And we will see how they do.

 Big sister A with my work boots getting ready to bury a pretty little dead bird we found next to the garden fence.

 And finally one of our hens decided to go broody.  I was expecting it to be one of the buff orpingtons, but it was one of the araucanas (who, btw, are never supposed to go broody, they being super egg layer stock).  She had only 3 eggs under herself so I added a few more.  We candled them after about 5 days and only saw one that was obviously developing and a couple others that looked promising. Baby L loves to climb in the coop and keep "Mama Chicken" company. She pets her and so far Mama Chicken has been more than fair.  But in the last 2 days baby L has been taking an egg out and inevitably dropping it outside, at which point I can see the half developed embryos that are now dead. It's very frustrating.  I hope that Mama Chicken can hatch at least one chick so she gets the hang of it and can see the fruits of her 21 day setting.

My Dash - Week 17

This has been a very cool rainy spring. The boys were supposed to go on a father and son camp-out Friday night. They got all packed up and then it started pouring and we had thunderstorms in the night. They decided to stay home and have Chinese food and movie night with the girls. With all this rainy weather big sister A and brother M have gone out a couple of times just to run and be in the rain. That reminded me of how we used to have dancing in the rain parties as kids.  The first time we did it was at Goomie's house.  I remember thinking that the neighbors would think we were crazy.  From then on it became a summer tradition.  Whenever their was a downpour whoever saw it first would call the rest of the siblings to run outside and dance. Our porch in the Easterbrook house was covered, so a couple of times we even put music on through the window on the front porch. But that was not really necessary. Sliding around on the wet grass, acting crazy, and getting soaked was more than enough fun in itself. We almost always had friends over in the summer too, so they had to do it with us.

Pro Photos from our visit to NY

 

 

 

 

 

My Dash: Week 16

It's getting hard to remember which stories that I have already told. :)
I have been thinking this week about the kids' perspective on mom being different than a mom's perspective on how she did or is doing. It is hard to know which of the many moments that we spend together each day are making an impression.  What is their overall understanding from all these tiny daily events going to be?
Looking back, my overarching perspective on my mom as a kid was that she trusted me. She let us be independent in a way that helped us find ourselves.  One early memory is of making mud pies at the E family's house with no bad reactions from mom.  Also gathering "beautiful" shiny black rocks (tarred asphalt of some kind) from the newly repaved roadside, which I washed in the sink - that was at the landau house. I remember her letting us make experiments in the kitchen.  Messy experiments like trying to figure out how to make Reese's Peanut butter cups with chocolate chips and peanut butter.  Now I think of what a big pain it must have been to clean up all those little bowls of melted peanut butter with various mixins.  She let me try out my sewing with her scrap fabrics and later with her quilt fabrics. I wanted to take a quilting class with my friends so she took me to it.  She let us paint our own rooms and pick out our own outfits. My sister S had some very dramatic ones. One in particular I remember, involving a black cape and red swim cap. She let us have friends over all the time and took us to friends houses. We made good friends because she did lots of driving around. I spent several weeks one summer at my cousins house 2 hours away and she drove and picked me up both ways. And when my best childhood friend moved away in middle school she drove 2.5 hours each way to drop me off for many long weekends with them.  She let me get a job before I was able to drive and trusted me to ride my bike there and back. She trusted us to be good examples, like when P said he would not watch an R-rated movie at one of his school friend's houses. And later as teenagers our house was a favorite place to hang out because she trusted us to make good choices and also bought massive amounts of teenager foods like hot pockets, oreos, and ice cream. And she did not micromanage our eating.
I also remember thinking a lot that my mom was proud of me.  I know we always rolled our eyes, but mom was our best cheerleader and "bragged" a lot about this or that great thing that we had done or award that we had won. (Still does :) She wrote us little encouraging notes. She is dramatic and made a big deal about successful report cards, honor rolls, student of the month, and our first everything...
 Love you Mom!

Family Schooling Summary: Holi Party and Hiking

The kids were invited to an amazing holi birthday party this week and had a blast.  Here they are getting instruction on the rules - don't throw in people's eyes etc.

 The first minute - getting started...

 Then all out in a cloud of running kids and color powders:

 Baby L leaving the fight to come hide in a safe place.

 The big kids were nice to the littles about it.

 Baby L decided to bomb my boots - probably knowing that I had no powder to attack her with.

 

 

 Popsicles instead of birthday cake - All the kids cheered!

Big sister A went on a hike for activity day girls this week:

Last day of A's cake decorating class this week: