WHERE OH WHERE HAS THE TIME GONE, OH WHERE OH WHERE CAN IT BE?

I just looked back and realized it has been WAY too long since I posted, what was I up to?

Well let's start with the awful chicken murders. yes, we have, for the first time in 9 years, predators attack our flock.  It as awful, each day I'd find another chicken missing it's head or gone.  Then after many attempts at fixing the fence, electrifying the fence, locking them up at night, putting out a flashing light at night, live traps (all I caught was my cat) and sitting in my car with a shotgun (ok I didn't have a shot gun, but I thought about it), nothing worked. One afternoon we saw a fox walk right into the pasture in the middle of the afternoon!  We also figured out that the thing that just bites off the head is a weasel.  So not only did we have one evil predator - we had two!

The last night they got some free food was the last straw.  I went out to lock them up, and there were 4 hens, killed!  One still breathing but with his neck covered in fang marks (or what ever weasels have).  I was pissed!  I locked up the remaining chicken, the one remaining duck and my friend's two ducks (lucky he never got them!) I was babysitting and put a message into my friend to see if she would take them for a week until I went down to Illinois to return the ducks to their summer home on the pond.  She agreed.

I left her my one remaining chicken and took my friend's duck and my remaining duck down to Illinois the next weekend and placed them on the pond.  poor Uno!  She had no idea what to do!  Compared to her little kiddy pool, this must've looked like an ocean!

So now my little old chicken run is barren and sad.  I so miss the laughter of the ducks and the sound of the chickens when they announce how happy they are they laid an egg.  And now no eggs!  Not sure what I'll do now, perhaps wait until next year to get some more because I don't want that darn weasel or fox to come back.

THESE CHICKS ARE HOT! *update*

Time lapse of nearly 2 months and how fast a chicken grows!

Dec 15, 2011

Dec 15, 2011

Jan 15, 2012

Feb 8, 2011

Yes, they grow REALLY fast! Now my trouble is - when to put them out side with the other chickens?  

They don't have quite enough feathers on them just yet, and they are not making too much of a mess down there in the basement of the granary.  I am planning on turning off the heat lamp soon - soon after this 10 degree cold front moves on!  It's been such an amazing mild winter with temps sometimes reaching the 40's - 50's that I could've moved them out doors a while ago, but they were just too small.

As much as I love this winter - I am afraid we will be paying for it this summer in hay prices and dryness, low water tables and so on.  Maybe we'll get a huge downfall of rain in the spring to make up for the lack of precipitation this winter.  I'm ok with that. I like not having to dress up like an eskimo to do chores.

But for now, my new baby chicks will have to stay warm under their heat lamp.  Next week it's supposed to get back up into the 30's, plus of course they will have more feathers by then too. 

: )

THE NEW CHICKS ON THE BLOCK ARE HOT!

Due to an overabundance of chickens at their farm, our friends, Jay and Renee Mallek, decided they didn't want to keep the new chicks that their hen hatched last week.  They gave them all away and we got two of them.  I'm always looking to increase the flock and since we lost 5 ducks and 5 chickens to some predator this summer, I am running low.

Hard part is - hens shouldn't be getting broody this late in the season because whose gonna keep them babies warm?

Well, I just so happen to have this wonderful little granary that we fixed up into a house for Bob's dad and thus - it's heated.  Lucky chicks get the whole basement.

the chicks in the plastic bin, they already miss their Moma

I put one of the 'walls' over the pen so they don't hop out

Right now I put them up into a plastic bin and will move them into the four-sided, portable enclosement I made several years ago as they get a little bigger.  Just the two of them in there and a heat lamp, they will be fine.

I told Renee that if they are roosters I will be returning them.  We'll find out in about 6 months if they start crowing!

But they are really cute anyway!

Speaking of broody, it made me think of how amazing animals are at being so adaptable to whatever comes their way.  They don't 'brood' over something that 'happens' to them, they seem to just think to themselves, "Well, what am I gonna do about it?"  And they move on.

It's this acceptance of change or "problems" that is so difficult for some people, and paying attention to what animals do makes it so much clearer to me.

But what is "acceptance?" It can be one of the hardest concepts to understand (think serenity prayer), but achieving it can be difficult. 

We are all creating our lives every second of time, and every thought we have or decision we make throughout our day affects the whole of whom we are.

If you can think of yourself as the driver of the car of life, the one you are now creating, the whole world opens up to you; the roads are endless! What's better than to create the best life you can for yourself? Time to get behind the wheel and drive, baby! Road trip!

Everybody has the same lessons to learn—they simply appear to us in different ways. If you are feeling sorry for yourself for something "bad" that has happened to you,  it's okay; there is nothing wrong with taking some time to feel sorry for yourself or your situation. (Lord knows - I have!) That tends to bring you back to clarity. But what does matter is how much time you spend in that energy and how long it takes for you to pick yourself up and take action toward acceptance and moving on. Being in acceptance does not mean that you settle for a situation. It means that you are at peace with it, and that is when you are fully in your power.


I've never met an animal that didn't understand this concept or that wallows in their misery.  They take what life hands them and move on.  Who couldn't learn from that?


~ When life hand you a pile, think "Woohoo! Fertilizer! ~


it's the only thing a farmer can do.

I FORGOT TO COLLECT THE EGG YESTERDAY

Yes, that's right the egg.  Not the eggS, just one egg.  It's winter and my little hens, all 25 of them refuse to lay except for one hen.  I don't know who she is but she lays every day.  The others say - "that's too bad, it's cold out here!"  And i don't blame them! You can 'force' hens to lay by lighting their coop, because its the daylight hours that tell them to be laying, not the temperature outside.  But it takes energy to lay eggs, energy they need to keep warm, so i never forced my hens to lay in the winter.  One, because its not natural and two, because if they did, what the heck would i do with all the eggs?  Plus i would have to be out there to collect all the eggs about 3 times a day, otherwise they freeze, which gets kinda ugly, and not fun for me to get bundled up like an eskimo three times a day, twice is enough.

So i had a frozen egg this morning.  I also forgot about the eggs i had out in the fridge in the barn.  You see refrigerators are meant to cool, not keep a set temperature so when the outside of the fridge is colder then the inside, it stops working.  Then the inside freezes, (it took a while for those here to figure that out), and thus: my eggs froze.

CHICKEN ~ SHA-WING!

The other night I went out to gather up the horses and put them to bed, and as i was walking up to the top of the hill, I noticed a black blob, perched upon the roof of the pole barn.  Thinking to myself,  wondering what this could be: an eagle? a crow? perhaps one of the chickens?

Sure enough, one of the hens had somehow gotten up on top of the pole barn and was thinking this is where she shall perch for the evening. Not good, when we are expecting 30 below wind chills.  She needed her friends to keep her warm.  So i gathered up a rake and walked over underneath where the hen perches and gently bumped her in the rump.  She didn't move and my next thought was, "Gosh is she frozen to the roof?"  Because, honestly that would make a huge mess trying to pull a 6 pound frozen chicken off the roof of a pole barn, or what if just her legs came off?  Then i would have this legless chicken that i would have to babysit all day, hand feeding her grain, pushing her around in a wheelchair (do they even make them that small?).... just not fun.  So i tried again and pushed a little harder.  She flew up, over the length of the chicken run, coming ever so close to the fence line, but, i am assuming, that because she didn't want to land in the four feet deep snow, and she decided at the last minute that the fence wasn't right either, she landed on a piece of yarn that had been strung across the top of the chicken run this summer to prevent hawks from taking off with my hens.  Now yarn has a way of loosing its strength and tautness, and over the summer, it had began to droop way down towards the ground, nearly half-way. So, landing precisely on this ever so loose piece of yarn, with no tautness and no strength, this hen found herself in a most compromising position: four foot deep snow below her and only a weak string in which to be on.  Well, the chicken decides that flapping her wings is a good idea, for security and perhaps loftiness but it ended up pushing her forward and back on the piece of yarn like a child's swing in the playground.  With each swing forward, the hen would cackle, "Ba-caw, be-caw!"  Now imagine this: a chicken, swinging back and forth on a piece of yarn, swings forward, "Ba-caw", swings back, swings forward, "Ba-caw!", swings back, swings forward, "Ba-caw!"  I nearly peed in my pants i was laughing so hard!  And because of this belly laugh, i couldn't manage to pull my phone out in time to video tape this incredibly hilarious event.  Darnit!  That would've made good fodder for a ~ blog!  I guess I need to find a point and shoot camera with a video option, tie a strap around it that fits around my neck and carry it with me whenever i go walk somewhere around the farm, because inevitably, there is always a good laugh or a good story waiting to be documented.

SNOW - AGAIN, BUT THIS TIME MOTHER NATURE IS SERIOUS!

Yes, i awoke this morning to hear Bob telling me of the impending snow storm and below zero wind chills. yay!  But I woke up and chose to be happy today so it didn't bother me.

Its nasty out there!

I went out to feed, and realized that i probably should get the stalls ready in the stables for the horses for the next two nights, since the weather channel predicts -30 wind chills for tomorrow night.  I noticed Spice was trembling when i gave her her hay, so i brought her into the goat barn and put her in the extra stall there for the day.  Today the horses should be good, i will give them an extra feeding to keep warm tonight.

I went out and got the stalls ready, filled up the heated water buckets and turned them on. Fixed the latch  on the door that leads out towards the garden and put in each stall a good helping of hay, so when i do go out there to bring the horses in, its already done.  Now you may say what's the difference?  Do it now or later but, for me doing it in the morning seems easier.  I know, but that's me.

I also went to re-cover the small hay bales that are out in the stables because they had fallen down off of them, and noticed that the hens that have been getting out decided they should lay their eggs on top of the hay bales.  I found about a dozen and half.  This happens sometimes, when they get out they like to find 'other' spaces in which to lay their eggs.  I've found them in many strange places over the years.

So after being out there for about an hour and half, Bob calls me on my cell to find out if I am ok.  I just laughed, i was wondering how long it would take him to call.

But its all ready out there - the horses will be warm and safe for the bitter cold nights.  So glad we got thoses stables done years ago.