We're still here, I promise!!!

Wow, two months since the last update - apologies, apologies!!  Yes, we are still busy, keeping up with the changing seasons.  Here's what we've done in the last two months:

Chickens
On November 3rd, we harvested 6 of the cockerels.  We worked through the first one together, and it took us about 45 minutes.  Then we split into an assembly-line - Jordan got stage one (kill and pluck) and I got stage two (gut and clean).  We worked very well together, and I'd definitely call the day a success.  on the 10th, I started prepping a stall in the barn for them to move inside for the winter - first I blocked it off from the brooder stall, then I built a roost, followed by the Cadillac of nest boxes.  The wall on the aisle-side of the stall was only 4' high, with 3' of open space above it, so I put up some chain-link fence to keep the chickens in and the larger predators out (although it would be difficult for anything bigger than a small cat or an ermine to get in that side of the barn anyway).  The chickens moved in around November 17th, and we harvested 5 hens on the 23rd.  We sold another 5 live hens to Matt and Tessa to keep their new Buff Orpington rooster company, so that left us with 2 roosters and 8 hens, and they started laying on December 5th.  We are currently averaging 4 eggs a day, which is pretty darn good considering they are getting waaaaay less than their preferred 14 hours of light a day.  1 roo (YO) and 3 hens will be off on a road trip soon, and we'll keep the remaining rooster (YR, now named Foghorn) and 5 hens to keep us in eggs and hopefully hatch some chicks in the spring.

Clockwise from top left: The new roost; the new awesome nest boxes;the first egg; and, one of the delicious cockerels (Dad named him Crispy).

House
As I mentioned forever ago, we got a new roof this summer.  So far it has been holding up very well.  My only complaint is that the snow keeps sliding off the roof, partly due to our wacky weather (more on that later), and it keeps bending the flashing around the chimney.  It has already been fixed once, and we had more snow slide yesterday, so it may be due to be fixed again after New Year's.  However, that should get sorted out in January, as we just need to get a few snow stoppers installed.  So far, there has not been any water in the house (except for a tiny, tiny bit coming down the outside of the chimney, which is likely related to the aforementioned bent flashing).  Aside from the chimney issue, the sliding snow has been both a blessing and a curse: the weight doesn't stay up on the roof (yay!) but we have to be super diligent about shovelling off the deck, to avoid the leaky logs issue we had last year (boo!).  Plus it's a very noisy process, and it shakes the whole house and wakes me up when it slides at 4 am.

Clockwise again: Jordan and Dad working on the roof; the whole crew out, with Dad and Bob on the roof, Jordan rocking the barbeque, Larysa weatherproofing plywood, and Mom had run to town for supplies; closeup of the new roof; and, the back of the house.

Weather
The snow has been sliding because we got a HUGE amount of snow over the course of 8 days (we had two snowfall warnings, the first dumping 47 cm, and the second depositing just over 15cm.  These values, however, are what the airport got - I'm 100% positive we received waaaaaay more - the first snow left enough that it was over my knees!) and we then got rain.  Then we got more snow, and it has rained for the last two days.  UGH!!!!  The driveway is a mess, the snowbanks are gigantic, and the deck is soaked from the rain.  It will turn to ice when it freezes again, which should be sometime in the next two days, if the Weather Office is correct.  I've heard from multiple people that we've already received 75-80% of our annual snowfall.  Nicola at the Rescue gauges snowfall by the distance from the snowbank to the bottom of the barn's eaves.  Last year, we had a lot of snow by that standard, because the snowbank was touching the eaves and the snow couldn't slide off the roof any more.  This was last March.  When I was there Monday, the snow was already touching the eaves in one spot.  So yes, we've had a lot of snow.

A beautiful sunset from last weekend; heading to work the morning of Dec 24th - it's quite beautiful with fresh snow and no one about; you know it's cold when the kittens are cuddling on top of the fireplace; and, Zim providing a reference for how much snow slid off the roof after the first huge snowstorm - this was after I had tunnelled through to the deck.

Christmas
Merry Christmas, everyone!!!!  I hope you are all healthy and happy, and that you have created some fabulous memories over the last few days.  A few days before Christmas, we bought a new truck - Happy HoHo to us!!!  Our old truck has become increasingly unreliable - Jordan was on his way to work one morning (the morning of the huge snowstorm, actually) when a brake line blew.  He was able to pull into a gas station and call me for a ride, but it set off a chain of horrible events that included the car being temporarily out of commission (popped the belt, again...) and ultimately required me spending the entire day sitting on the bench at the mechanics' and missing work entirely.  The dash lights come on when they feel like it, the steering is loose (in my opinion), and it's a good day when she starts.  Couple this with the fact that the car has almost 300,000 km on her, and we knew we needed a reliable vehicle to get us through the next few years.  Jordan found this truck online, and he'd been drooling over it for a month when we decided "well, let's go see if this is even in the realm of possibility..." and we walked out with a set of keys to a 2011 Ford F-350 gas-fueled 1 ton, crew cab, long box, gigantic truck.  I am happy to report that I drove it and both my nerves and the truck came out unscathed, and that involved backing it out of a driveway in a cul-de-sac, and backing it in to our driveway, missing the concrete lion, the carport, AND the car.  Win!!!  I'm a pretty good driver (one non-fault accident in over 10 years of driving - and the other driver had a suspended license) but I will admit that knowing where my corners are has always been a weak point, so I was tremendously proud of myself to get it in and out of both driveways without touching anything else.

Zim and I had Christmas dinner with David, Kim and her family (and Pongo and Doodle, of course), and it was great food, great people, and a great time all around!  Jordan and I had a fancy dinner last night consisting of homemade vegetable-stuffed cannelloni with After 8s for dessert (which I think is our only Christmas tradition).

NEW TRUCK!!!! :D

Other Odds-n-Ends
I've been crocheting dishcloths like a madwoman - it keeps my mind off the snow.  Today I pulled out the sewing machine and the serger and fixed up some items for Kim, and I'm going to try making a pair of slippers out of an old sweater as soon as I'm done here.  With winter now truly here (we didn't get snow until late November) all I want to do is create cozy things (via crochet and sewing) and bake.  I've managed some baking, making my famous oatmeal cookies for the cookie swap at work and contributing mini eggnog cheesecakes to Christmas dinner.  I'm confident that there's still at least 2 or 3 months of winter, so I have lots of time yet.  A coworker picked me up a pair of snowshoes, but I've barely had time to use them as I've spent some time every day clearing snow (I'm so, so, so sick of snow).  I had hoped to get out last weekend and cut a few boughs to make a wreath like I was taught last year, but the snow clearing got in the way of that plan.  Zim loves it, of course, and continues to jump and "catch" the snow as we shovel.  I've started clicker training Zim in anticipation of an obedience/agility class in January (thanks Kim!!!!!) and for the first few days Zim was terrified of the clicker.  I would click, and he'd get all sad and run away.  I tried to balance introducing him to a new situation without scaring the wits out of him constantly by clicking once, handing him a piece of food, and letting him eat the rest of his meal once he had that first piece.  It's been successful, and in the course of a week we've gone from cowering and running away, to looking at the clicker with interest and responding to requests with minimal nervousness.  Gentle persistence has won :)  I had previously clicker trained Molly, which worked great until she decided she wasn't food motivated any more.  Mander, of course, is incredibly motivated by food, so I started training him this morning.  Luckily, I have two different styles of clicker and they make a slightly different sound, so I can train Zim and Mander independently without getting the other confused.

That's about it.  It's safe to assume that the Year in Review and Goals for Next Year posts will both be slightly late, but I promise to have them up by the end of January.

"Good morning!"

One of our cockerels recently started crowing.  Then another decided to give it a try.  It's been an amusing few weeks of strangled squawks in the morning as I walk to the coop, but they would be very shy as soon as I pulled out my phone to get a video.  However, last week, I was victorious!

And this morning, he finally emitted a complete crow, with both notes at the end!  Good job, chicken!  I'll try to get that on video this weekend.

Of course, that also means that we have to hurry up and harvest the cockerels that we won't be keeping.  They're getting progressively aggressive with each other, and once they reach full maturity their meat gets tough and takes on a different flavour.  We'll give it a try this weekend, once we assemble all the supplies.

And sadly, this fellow is destined for the freezer.  However, I'm confident that YR and YO (the two we will be keeping; one for us, and one for Hal and Cathy) will soon pick up this morning greeting.  They are named based on the legbands they were assigned; I weighed each cockerel a few weeks ago and gave them all a yellow band as I went.  There were three over 5 lbs, who each got an extra band: YB (Yellow Blue) just squeaked over the 5 lb mark by less than an ounce, and YR (Yellow Red) and YO (Yellow Orange) were both over 5 lbs 3 oz.  Going back to my "large chickens make more large chickens" theory, those are the keepers.

This past weekend I also picked up a load of hay for chicken bedding over the winter.  I had hoped to get straw, but as there aren't many grains grown around here, I couldn't find any.  Luckily, Nicola (from the Rescue) has some hay that has too much clover for horses, so she's selling it at the low, low price of $1 per square bale.  There's two reasons this is awesome: 1. That's the cheapest price I've found; and 2. The money goes to the Rescue!  So I took the truck down to where they're being stored, and managed to stack 20 bales in the truck.  I've never stacked hay before, so I studied some stacking schematics the night before.  However, as I loaded the first bale, I noticed a problem: the diagrams were for long-box pickups, and ours is a standard box.  Hmmmm.......  Some quick refiguring and I was picking, tossing, and stacking again.  In the end, 20 bales is a fairly respectable number (I could have fit two more bales if I'd had longer straps!) and I made it home without any of my load shifting, loosening, or falling.  SUCCESS!!!!  To anyone who does this regularly, I'm sure you're thinking "Look, it's an ignorant city girl trying to hack it, how cute!" but I'm mighty proud of myself.

And Zim enjoyed the opportunity to jump and climb and sniff all the bales:

And of course, he had to inspect my work when it was done:

Apologies for the terrible lighting in our barn!

Now, for a bit of back-story:  Two years ago, we lived just down the road from the Rescue.  One fall day I got a text from Nicola, asking if I was able to come help stack bales.  At the time, I was having problems with my wrists (an old work-related injury) so I knew I wouldn't be any help.  However, it gave me a goal: get enough strength so I could help with haying.  This year, I have been thrice successful in meeting that goal: we helped Matt and Tessa get their hay in, then I spent an evening helping Nicola, and now I've loaded and unloaded a stack of bales for us.  So while it seems like such a trivial thing ("So you stacked some bales, so what?  I stacked 3000 this year.") it's a milestone for me, and one of the reasons I'm so darn proud of myself.

In other news: still working on the soffits/fascia, but we installed some pot lights (did I tell you this already...?) and they look amazing.  We noticed that our front window is no longer sealed, so we bought some thermal curtains to get us through the winter, with plans to replace it next summer.  We still haven't tilled in the garden, and we are supposed to be reaching lows around -8 this week, with snow at some point (I've stopped paying attention to the forecast - it's always wrong anyway).  I've plugged in the light in the pumphouse on a timer, as we woke up one morning to discover that it was +0.5 degrees in there.  Yikes!  The last thing we need right now it to have something go sideways with our water.  This morning it was a toasty +18 in there - about as warm as the house.  Awesome :)

Now, in order to encourage you to make this a two-way conversation (instead of just me, rambling into the wind): What is on your to-do list to get ready for winter (or summer, if you're in the Southern Hemisphere)?

Just a quick update!

Just a super-quick, text-only update, as it's been over a month (oops!!  Sorry everyone!!!!!).  It's been a busy month (when was our last NON-busy month......???) but we're enjoying our last few days of a 12-day vacation, so I am puttering, and jumping from task to task, and spending more time relaxing than has become the sad norm lately.

So, what has happened in the past month?

Chickens

Our birds are doing well.  Their last weigh-in was almost three weeks ago, and they averaged just over two pounds.  Two weeks ago, one of the cockerels started attempting to crow, which was quite amusing.  I tried to get a video but of course, he got a little camera shy and kept quiet as I peered out the pop-hole (chicken door) of the coop willing him to try again.  They continue to grow well, and are friendly and really enjoying the scraps from the garden harvest.

Garden

We've only got one thing left in the veggie garden: a shallot from Kim that I hope will give us some seeds before dying.  We got our first frost on Sept 16th, and what I believe was our first freeze on the night of the 25th (which was the night we got back from our travelling... more on that later).  Before we left, I harvested the potatoes and the turnips.  The potatoes were great (except the Cariboos) but the turnips should have been harvested much earlier, and were thus very large and wormy.  We had already eaten the few carrots that came up, and two harvests of peas (with lots left for seed).  On the 18th, I built a frame for the corn and draped a frost cover over top.  I covered the last of the peas (for seed), the three cabbages, and the lone, tall shallot (which involved pounding a long piece of steel into the ground to hold up the covering, providing the perfect opportunity to use the post-pounder my brother built for me - it works great!  If ever you need a post pounder welded up, Bob's your guy!).  When we got home, the corn was still half covered and the post and the tallest shallot spear had poked through their covering, but the peas and the cabbages were still snug under their frost cloth.  I harvested everything but the shallot: the peas were picked and laid on a pie plate to finish drying; the cabbages were chopped, blanched, and frozen for later; and the tiny ears of corn are in the fridge waiting for me to try to "make" baby corn out of them.

Roof

Our huge, ginormous project this summer was the roof.  I won't get in to too much detail, but we ended up doing more work than we anticipated (as we had hoped that the roofing company would do whatever work needed to be done).  However, this encouraged my whole immediate family to come up for a visit, so we had 6 of us here some nights, which was absolutely great, especially because I finally got to meet my brother's girlfriend, and I adore her.  Dad, Jordan and Bob did most of the work, with Mom, Larysa and I passing supplies, running to town, and doing odd jobs from the comfort and relative safety of the ground.  This roof has been a huge source of stress since it started leaking in January, and it is still not 100% done (as we still have soffits and fascia to install).  But the structure has been checked out (by three men congregating on the "falling" corner of the roof, and it didn't move an inch!), the insulation redone (and we are already noticing a huge difference!!!), the strapping and sheeting completed and the new roof tiles were installed on Thursday.  Yay!!!!  Once the last bit of work is completed, there will be many sighs of relief all around, and we anticipate not having to worry about it again while we live here (as the roofing tiles come with a lifetime warranty).

Vacation

As I mentioned, we are just back from a vacation to Ye Olde Stomping Grounds to visit with our families and take a break from the stress of the house.  The main focus of the trip was to attend Jordan's Dad's wedding, and it wasn't a dissapointment: the wedding was intimate and beautiful, and the reception was lively.  It was absolutely wonderful to visit everyone, as it had been over a year since our last visit.  And we got to visit Ikea!!!  We came home with an island for the kitchen (which we had been planning since our last trip), an entertainment unit (which we started planning two days before buying it), and an under-cupboard light for above the sink (which I have wanted since we moved in).  I also planned a dinner to get together with my friends, and it was a success, with friends from high school and one of my previous jobs coming to say hello and catch up.

I'd also like to send out a huge THANK YOU! to Tessa, Matt, Ellie and Caleb, who kept an eye on the chickens while we were away - they have chickens as well, so I didn't worry one bit about our birds while we were gone.  Sure enough, they did a fabulous job!

That's the majority of our news.  I'm sure I will discover more when I start sorting through the pictures, so watch for another post in the near future (hopefully not a month from now!).

Proper update

Okay, time for a proper update.  Sorry for the delay, guys - it's definitely project season, and we got a big one crossed off our list a week ago.  That's right, the chicken coop/run is finished!

This year we are focusing on fixing up the house, so there's been a lot of "make do" when it comes to other projects.  When we decided to do chickens, we knew we could set up a brooder in the barn, and that's what we did.  But we knew we couldn't keep them in there forever, so shortly after we got them, we had to come up with a coop and/or run.  I searched the internet (wonderful tool that it is) for something sturdy, affordable, simple to build, and big enough for about 25 chickens.  That's a tall order as far as chicken runs are concerned - most of the projects online are great for 8-12 chickens.  However, I was able to find one, made out of conduit tubing.  (We made a few changes: it would be 3 feet tall instead of two, and we'd use the chain link fencing I picked up at an auction instead of the landscaping wire and chicken wire.)  It looked easy enough to build, and we easily found the parts we needed at Home Depot.  Once I started building it, things started going sideways.  The chuck fell off the drill press as I was setting it up to use it for the second set of holes.  The cordless drill ran out of juice after drilling two holes.  The heavy-duty corded drill Dad gave us could easily drill the holes, but I needed to start them with the cordless drill because I couldn't hold the big drill in one spot long enough to keep it from wandering off the side of the pipe.  We went through three drill bits trying to drill the holes, and by the end of it, we couldn't get the chuck of the big drill to hold the bit to drill all the way through the pipes, because the drill bit was tiny (we just needed to pre-drill the holes for the self-tapping screws... which will easily self-tap through sheet metal, but are a little harder to get through electrical conduit).  When we got enough holes drilled to start putting it together, the conduit elbow plates weren't strong enough to hold it square, so there were saw horses and scrap wood and wire and a few blue words involved.  By that point, I was realizing that this design just wasn't going to work for us.  So, plan B: we'll follow the same plans, but use 2x4s instead of conduit.  This added a few days needed to stain all the pieces, but once everything was ready, we were able to get the run together in a day.  It's not perfect, but we know what to do differently next time (for example, use plate brackets instead of mending plates to build the frames for each side of the run).

We also picked a pre-existing structure to modify instead of building a new one.  After surveying what we had available, we picked one of the old grain buildings.  It still has the feed tag stapled inside: Coop Poultry Premix (oh, the irony - from chicken feed to chickens for feed).  This also gave us a chance to practice framing, without a whole structure depending on our skills.  We sorted out the modifications we needed to make, measured everything three times, cut all the materials, stained what needed it, and started piecing it all together.  We ran in to a few snags (of course), but a quick change of plans and a few more pieces of 2x4 and we got it put together.  This took about a day.  All told, we had  the pre-cut and stained pieces together in a weekend.

So, we started with about a dozen 2x4s, three sheets of plywood, some chain link fencing, screws, fence staples, a salvaged window, some screening, and a few assorted hinges and latches.  Oh, and this building, which is about 70 square feet:

Sorry for the terrible picture - I didn't bother to take a photo of the building before we started, so this is a still shot from a video.

And after a few days of measuring, cutting, staining, hammering, and screwing, we had this:

We added a tarp for a few days because it was +30 in the afternoons, and that side faces west, right into the sun.

The waterers and feeders inside the coop.

The chicken door on the bottom, and the window on the top.  The window has screening, and I'll add chicken wire too. I can also add a ramp for the chickens, but they're enjoying hopping over the sill. 

"Sup?"

Of course, the chickens LOVE it.

Zim likes it too :)

As you can see, the chickens continue to do great.  They are averaging a pound and a half, and they love to be outside - to the point that we have to pick up each one and put them in the coop each evening.  Mind you, it's not that dark out when it's my bedtime, so maybe if it was darker, they wouldn't be so reluctant to head in?  Either way, they've been stuck in the coop for the last few days, due to a bear in the area and a few days of thunderstorms.  Hopefully this will also impress on them that the coop is home, not just the run.

In other news, the gardens are doing good.  Strawberry season ended last month, but the raspberries are still going strong - I've harvested at least 8 pounds of raspberries this year from the pre-existing canes.  The veggie garden is starting to produce well too: the corn is flowering, we've already had a side of peas with dinner, the turnips are ready to come out (judging by Tessa's), the cabbages are starting to form heads, the few carrots that sprouted are getting tall, and the potato plants are huge.  I planted eight lettuce seeds and none of them sprouted for weeks, then suddenly *tada* one lettuce popped up in a row.  And Kim gave me a shallot that she found sprouting in her cupboard, so I'm hoping to get seeds - it's huge!  (And yes, I'm practicing "lazy gardener's cover cropping" - it's working well!  Clover actually makes a good ground cover between rows, and we can just till it under when Fall comes, where it will compost directly into the soil to energize it for next year.  At least, that's what I'm telling myself!)

Click to make it bigger :)

We've had two days of 'severe thunderstorms' - on Sunday, it hailed for 10 minutes, and it was good-sized hail too.  Most of it was pea-sized, but some pieces were the size of a nickel in diameter.

Sunday

Sunday.  10 minutes after I took this, the sun was out.  Go figure.

Our poor cabbage!

Other than that, there's not much new here.  The Exhibition came through town last weekend, and Jordan and I met up with Kim and David on Sunday to watch the first three-abreast draft horse pull in Western Canada.  The teams were beautiful and powerful, and the two best-behaved teams were the final two in the running, with the winners pulling 14,500 lbs.  I spent the whole time swooning over one team, made up of Percherons - they made it up to 13,000 before the teamster pulled them from the competition.  And they were so well behaved!!  After the pull, we caught the pig and duck races and the dog agility show (and they invited kids to run the course as well at one point, it was awesome).  Jordan picked up a '77 Caprice to restore, he's been enjoying tearing it down.  Almost all of the interior is out (including the carpet), and Kim found us an engine stand at a garage sale that we picked up for $30.  We just need a hoist and then he can start taking the guts of the car out.

We are hosting a BBQ for my coworkers this coming weekend, and then my parents are up for a bit (hopefully they are bringing my brother too).  We are working on sorting out a problem with our roof - you'll hear about it when it's all sorted out and taken care of.  And, hopefully, we find some time to relax in the coming weeks.

Quick chicken update

Just a short post to get us through until I can put together a proper one...

The chicks are now officially chickens.  Many have lost all of their fuzz, and a few just need back feathers.  Tuesday is weigh-in day - I put the scale on the floor, watch until a chicken climbs on, and record the weight.  After I get 5 weights (with caveats: the same weight will not be recorded twice, and the weight of the biggest and the smallest birds will not be recorded) I average them.  Last night, at the age of 6 weeks, our average weight is 18.14 oz - just over a pound.  Awesome :)  Then, out of curiosity, I tried to weigh the biggest looking birds I could - the largest cockerel is 23.8 oz, and the largest pullet is 23.9 oz.  That's a solid pound and a half each!

I've been mulling over which ones to keep - Hal and Cathy (the great hospitality, advise, raspberry and other assorted plant providers) would like a rooster and three or four hens, and we are thinking of keeping a few to regenerate a small meat flock when desired.  I'm thinking of keeping the biggest chickens (tall people usually have tall children, so logically, plump chickens should hatch more plump chickens), and breaking any ties by factoring in attitude as I don't want angry, unsocial birds.  Even now, some birds are friendlier than others, although I try to interact with most of them when I pop in every day.

And they're getting friendly with Zim:

Most of the time both Zim and the chickens are moving - these are the best three pictures I've gotten in the last two weeks.  The bottom two are from last night.

And then there were 26

We lost Chirpy last night. Everything was status quo last night before bed; still sleepy, but I reminded him where his food was and he ate with enthusiasm. Went I went out earlier today, he had died. We buried him under the pine tree that gave our farm its name; this was both practical (we don't want to attract predators) and sappy (I wanted something I could remember him by).

I'm a little rattled, but we knew there was a strong possibility that Chirpy wouldn't make it. We did what we could, between the semi-isolation unit and the medicated water. But, as you know, Chirpy was a weak chick from the start (with his umbilical problems). Due to his required extra care, I kinda got a bit attached to the little guy; I knew it would be hard to slaughter him (plus with the need for medicated water, he was no longer anywhere near organic, and I had concerns about eating him), but I knew that I didn't want him to be part of a small reproducing flock (if we decide to take that route) because he'd pass on his problem-prone genes. In a way, I'm glad we didn't have to make that decision. But I also already miss the little fluffball.  He was the tamest of the chicks, by far.

Luckily, the other chicks continue to thrive.  I am considering trimming their flight feathers, as they are learning to run and launch themselves across the brooder.  One of these days, we'll go in to the barn and we'll have one (or four) outside of the brooder completely.  Yikes!  They're hilarious to watch; as they get bigger, they have started to challenge us as well, puffing up their chests and pecking at our fingers.  Little rascals.

In other news, I got a preemptive tetanus shot yesterday afternoon, and today I feel like I've been hit by a truck.  I'm achy, I'm lethargic, and I just want to sleep (but I can't because my back and shoulders and neck start to ache if I lay down for too long).  I'm really hoping I feel better tomorrow; I still need to get the chicken run/tractor built.  Today, I managed to: fix the hose, cutting out the part that Jordan ran over with the lawn tractor ("I thought I could make it... I guess not") and putting in hose ends; weed a bit of the garden (still only one carrot, and four cabbages.  Sigh.); add another two-way split to the hose connection at the house, so we can now run three hoses; make bread (in the breadmaker; cheating, maybe, but it's better and cheaper than store-bought bread); and cook supper (I know!  I'm shocked too!  But it was a one-pot meal that took less than 45 minutes from start to finish).

And now, I think I'm going to put the chicks to bed, and head to bed myself.  I'm wiped out, even after a great sleep on Thursday night.

Our 'special needs' chick is still very special... and other random bits.

So, for a fun change of pace, let's move through this post chronologically instead of by storyline like usual.

We had another great weekend.  Friday was town day, Saturday..... I don't even remember Saturday, but I'm sure we got something done.  Sunday was beautiful.  I attempted to hook up the water in the longhouse, and ended up lighting the inside of the wall on fire, so..... it can wait for another weekend, I'll try again on Saturday.  (Luckily, it was more "hot embers" than "raging inferno" so I was able to drill a hole in the wall and spray down the inside with a squirt bottle, until I couldn't feel any more heat.  Sheesh, that was exciting.)

Every morning and night, I check on the chicks - the morning is a quick "hello!" and a heat lamp adjustment, and I feed them and water them at night.  Sunday night, I was impressed by how feathered our chicks are getting:

12 days old.  Reminder: you can click any of the pictures to make them bigger.

And they're starting to sprout combs!!!!

Still 12 days old

Monday morning, I noticed how long the grass in the barnyard is when I lost Zim....

Zim.....?  He's that black spot in the center - this was taken from about his eye level.

We also found out that Diamond got adopted!  She's ridiculously camera shy...

No, Diamond, don't run away, having your picture taken doesn't hurt...

The tree swallow chicks hatched last week, and on Monday they were extra enthusiastic about getting some food...

"Mom?  Mom!  what's for lunch?"

It's been very warm in the house in the evenings lately, as it's been above 24 during the day, so by about 6 pm it's at least 25 in the house.  So, I decided to hang some blackout curtains in the office, as that's our only south facing window.  I had the curtains down because I had brought home my aloes from work to repot.  So, 'hanging curtains' started at about 9:30 am and went like this:  "Hey, it's been warm in here, I wonder if it will be any cooler if I hang curtains.  Well, in order to hang the curtains, I should get those aloes out of there.  If I'm fiddling with them, I may as well repot them - that's why they're here in the first place."  *Wanders into the greenhouse to look for leftover potting soil I had mixed up the last time I repotted the aloes.*  "Sheesh, I can't find a thing in here - I know I had some mixed soil left over.  It's so hard to move around in here with this huge box in the way... and these pots of used soil are irritating, I'm always stepping around them... and I'm lucky Zim hasn't stepped on the seed-starter trays and broken them in his crazed frenzy to chase a sparrow that got in here this morning..." *Starts moving things around... eventually empties all the junk out of the greenhouse; empties the old soil into buckets to be broken up, supplemented with compost, and reused; organizes and neatly stacks the empty pots, buckets, and seed starter units; locates the various batches of mixed soil and soil supplements like peat moss, perlite and vermiculite, and stows them together in a corner; and gets all the plants lined up along the west wall.* "Now that everything is organized, it sure would be nice if I could get the auto-waterer and soaker hose set up.  I bet that piece of soaker hose would be the perfect length, but the other hose hooked up to the water system has a leak.  I know we just picked up new hose ends..." *Finds the hose ends and fixes both soaker hose lengths, since I bought a brand new one last year and promptly cut it in half, and then fixes the supply hose as well, which required using the hair dryer to heat up the hose.  Digs out the auto-waterer, spends 10 minutes trying to set it up, 20 minutes looking for the manual in vain, and another 15 minutes to finally sort it out.  Digs a large empty tin can out of the recycling, and uses a can opener, tin snips, duct tape and scissors to get the can around the wire strung in the greenhouse so the hose can be hooked over it without kinking.  Hooks up the hose, makes sure nothing leaks - success!  Wanders into the house for a drink.* "Hi Hon, what about lunch?  It's 2... I'm hungry, are you hungry?  There's not really anything to cook, and it's too hot to cook... I feel like pizza... want to order pizza?" *Spends 20 minutes deciding what to order from a local restaurant, only to discover they're closed...  Spends 15 minutes deciding what to order from another pizza joint, calls to ensure they're open, helps Hubby put everything outside away, calls to order the pizza, drives in to town, picks up pizza, drives home, and eats.*  "Okay, what was I doing?  Oh yeah, the curtains..." *Gets curtains out of longhouse, hangs them on the line to dry out a bit, grabs piece of plastic vapour barrier from the barn, mixes more soil for the aloes, and repots 2 aloes, puts two new aloe babies into fresh pots, and repots a columbine and the mock orange.*  "Yay!  It's now 6:30 and the plants are finally repotted!!!"  *Notices she is absolutely filthy from playing with/in/around dirt in the greenhouse all day and has a shower, which really hurts the sunburn she got while in the greenhouse.*  "Oh yeah, the curtains...."  *Picks curtains up off lawn and hangs them in the office window.*

So there you have it.  It took me more than 10 hours to hang some curtains.  But, the greenhouse looks great:

Plants, with soaker hose

Tidy!!!!

So, when I finally made it out to the chickens, it was 8:30.  The chicks are fast now, so when I step in to their brooder, they all run for the far corner.  Monday night, when I stepped in, one chick didn't run.  I picked him up, and noticed it was Chirpy.  "Look, Chirpy's tired" I said as he fell asleep in my hand.  Jordan said "No, he's not feeling well."  His crop was full of water - it was like a water balloon in his throat.  Just as Jordan said "Chickens can't puke," Chirpy vomited water all over his hand because we were poking at his crop.  I apologized to the poor chick:"Oops, sorry bud, I didn't expect that to happen, how's about I stop poking at you and give you a cuddle instead?"  Turns out Jordan is right, we suspect that the Chirpster has coccidiosis, an overgrowth of a fecal protozoa in his digestive system that can be toxic.  When I put the chicks on shavings on Thursday, they immediately went nuts, digging and kicking the shavings around... right in to the waterers.  I continually picked the shavings out, and washed or rinsed the waterers each night, but our special chick got sick anyway.

So I was back out there at 10 pm, giving the waterers a full wash and refilling them with fresh water.  It was near midnight by the time I got to bed, and I had to work the next day.

Jordan was able to track down some medicine for him on Tuesday, but as I don't want the rest of the chicks to be medicated, and Chirpy can only have the medicated water, that means Chirpy is in lockdown.  I found a small rabbit pen in the longhouse, and was able to make it work.  Chirpy has his own food and medicated water, and this way he is still sort of with his siblings, and I don't have to heat and maintain another full brooder.  He's still not happy about it though - he spends a good bit of his time slowly walking the edge of his prison cell, chirping to the other chicks.  Poor guy.

You can see him in the top corner, under the heat lamp and near the other chicks.

He's still slow, and sleepy.  Tonight when I checked on them after work, he fell asleep in my hand again...  But his crop has been consistently empty since Monday night, and he's eaten a bit of food.  He's also been protesting a bit when I pick him up, which is a nice change from Monday.

Sick, sick, sick Chirpy... I can relate, when I feel terrible all I want to do is sleep too.

And just as I got out there tonight (okay, I admit, the pictures above and below are out of chronological order...) there was a little chick who had burrowed a nice little bed into the shavings.  He was still rolling around and fluffing the shavings around him when I quietly crept up to the brooder and snapped this picture from over the edge, without looking so I wouldn't scare him off.

Chicken camouflage

Of course, the three chicks that had been keeping this guy company when I first came in had all run off, so I was worried that this little one was sick too.... but luckily, he's fine, just reluctant to give up his spot.

They continue to gain wait and feather out nicely.  Check out this handsome fellow:

15 days

And they get bigger by the day.  I decided on Saturday that I should probably track their weight.  So I grabbed my digital scale and a basket, zeroed the scale to account for the weigh of the basket, and tucked in 5 chicks, weighing them all at once.  I made sure not to grab the biggest chick, or the smallest one (who is Chirpy).  I then averaged the weights... 3.66 oz each at 11 days old.  Today, at 15 days, they're 4.76 oz each.  That's 1.1 oz in 4 days... pretty good, guys!!

So there you have it, now you are completely up to date.  And it's now 9 pm, and after a straight week of late nights, I'm going to bed.  G'night, folks.

What I have learned about chickens thus far

Today our chicks are 12 days old.  They hatched on June 18th, and arrived here on the 19th.

Here's what I have learned so far:

• Chicken TV is the best TV channel you can have.  They're both amusing and adorable, even as they start to feather out.

Sleeping, at 5 days old.

• They grow fast!!
• In growing, they start to sprout feathers too.  First is the wings, and then the tail - they've been running around looking like there are little paintbrushes sprouting out of their butts.

8 days old, and they're sprouting paintbrushes and wing feathers.  They're even more feathered now.

• They move fast too.  And as soon as the feathers started coming, they started to jump. They jump to chase mosquitos, get on to and off of the rocks in the brooder, get into the middle of their huddle in the corner, and get on top of the feeder.  And sometimes, they jump just for fun.
• Yesterday, they started challenging each other.  They stand up as tall as they can, stretch their wings a little bit, and chest-bump each other.  It's like we suddenly have a brood of little gangsters in the barn!  Maybe the challengers are the males...?
• When they catch a bug, if it's too big to gulp down they run around and tell everyone about it.  Which results in a chase, and the bug (now long dead) being picked apart in the melee, so it is in bite-sized pieces.  Clever, chicks!

• Finally, they taught me that I can't just go by what a chicken book says; I have to adapt the environment for this batch of chicks.  For example, the Storey's guide to raising chickens states that brooder temperature for 1-7 day old chicks should be 35ºC.  These chicks have never liked it at 35º, they much prefer it at 28º.  And now that our days are getting warmer, they prefer 23º.  According to the book, they shouldn't be at 23ºC until they're over a month old.  But if I had followed the book, and ignored the chick's wall-crowding, they would have all been roasted waaaay too young.

This is how they spread out when the temperature is ideal.  Here they were 2 days old,  and it was between 38º and 28º, depending on which thermometer you looked at.  They're mostly out in the 25º area.

It's been an exciting week with the chicks.  And we haven't gotten much else done.  With the recent rush of projects we completed, we've both been exhausted.  Regarding projects last weekend, we did: nothing.  And this weekend, I've so far accomplished: nothing.    Of course, we've been getting the usual stuff done: getting groceries, picking up materials for the next project (chicken run and coop-ification of another outbuilding), looking after the chicks, and we've made a concerted effort to keep the house clean.  (With two of us, two cats, and two dogs in such a small house, things tend to get out of hand very quickly.  Especially because I have a subconscious drive to cover every horizontal surface with, well, stuff.  Mostly paperwork and mail, which I then spend 20 minutes searching the house for.)

The highlight of last weekend was the Dog Expo at the local historical attraction.  Zim and I went with Kim and Doodle, and we all had a great time.  Doodle and Kim even participated in the dog parade!  We had fun wandering the site, watching the sheepdog demonstration, and giving the pups a chance to socialize with each other and with other dogs.

Everyone lined up for the dog parade.

The weather has been very nice for the past few days, hitting 25º and 26º and staying that warm until 8 or 9 pm.  This means that the house slowly warms up too.  As soon as I repot my aloe plants and take them back to work, I can hang curtains in the office window again, which will greatly help keep out the sun, as that's our only south-facing window.

And how's about a quick garden update too:
The peas are great, except the ones Diamond dug up.  The corn is looking good too - not any taller, but the leaves are getting broader each day.  We have a few cabbage coming up (of of the 30 we planted), and lots of turnips, but no cucumbers or pumpkins.  I think we have 3 carrots sprouting, out of 900 seeds - I'm very disappointed, but I suppose there's time for that to turn around.  The onions all died, and the lettuce hasn't sprouted.  But the majority of the potatoes are doing great!  I have some kale seeds I've been meaning to plant - maybe I'll get those done today (if the weather ever makes up its mind about whether it's going to rain).  It's a little late to be starting them, but they're hardy enough to withstand a light frost in the fall.  And as for the berry garden: we have strawberries coming, and a few are ready to eat.  The raspberries from Hal have mostly all died, except for three or four canes - this is saddening.  I don't know where I went wrong there.  Our raspberries, however, are getting ready to put out berries - I estimate we'll have some within 2 weeks.  The lemon balm I planted, as well as the chives and rhubarb that were there previously, are all doing great.  And in the greenhouse, the tomatoes are doing fabulous!!!  No flowers or fruit yet, but I have hopes that they'll get there soon.  Everything else is doing good too - the basil wilts often but always comes back, the oregano just loves the greenhouse, and the flowers from Hal and Cathy are doing good too.  I've even managed to save the mock orange - I was overwatering it.  That seems to be a common problem with me....  My aloes are home right now because they need to be repotted after a near-death brush with root rot caused by, you guessed it, too much love and attention.  Their 'leaves' are all pink, deflated and curly.  Oops.  It takes talent to kill an aloe, you know.

That's about all that's new here.  We were hoping for some company next week, but no luck there, as plans have changed.  But we have some more lined up in mid-to-late July, and we're looking forward to it!  Now if only I could hook up the water in the longhouse without burning the darn thing down.....

Plants, dogs, bats and chicks!

As always, we've been busy!

After the last post, we finished working on the garden and got everything planted.  We tilled the whole thing twice, went and got a truck box full of compost from the city dump (it's beautiful stuff, and only $24!), and then tilled that in as well.  The next day I went out and marked the bed areas, and spent the next two weeks planting everything.  And now things are starting to grow: the peas were up first, followed by the turnips and the potatoes.  There are a few carrots peeking though, but still nothing from the pumpkins, lettuce or cucumbers.  And the corn is doing great.

Driving the little skid steer to fill the truck box with compost

Our third pass with the tiller

Planted!

 We have also been fostering a dog from the rescue.  She is a very sweet, older lab named Diamond.  Her house manners are impeccable, and she is very well behaved.  We would keep her if our darn house wasn't so small!!!

Zim and Diamond the day we started fostering her

We've also bought a new lawn tractor - the quad towing the brusher just wasn't cutting it (pardon the pun).  Jordan indicated that he greatly desired a proper lawn tractor, so off we went to pick up a new John Deere.  He now greatly enjoys cutting the grass, which is fabulous because I would rather just get sheep or goats to mow it, but that's not possible right now with our continued lack of fencing.  Next year I'm sure we'll be able to focus on it!

This past weekend, we re-skinned the greenhouse.  The tree nursery up the road sells their greenhouse plastic from last year for cheap: 30 by 140 feet for $60.  We took the old plastic off, cut new strapping pieces to hold the new stuff on, cut the new stuff to size, and accordion-folded it so we could get it on fairly easy.  We cut some lengths of nylon rope and prepared the plastic for installation by rolling pop cans in the corners and center of the short end and tying the plastic around the cans with the rope (see photo).  We then threw the loose ends of the ropes over the greenhouse and used the ropes to pull the plastic over.

I don't even remember where I heard of this method, but it works!!!

There were a few small snags, but all in all we're pleased with how it turned out.

Finished product - a newly skinned greenhouse.  This should last us for at least two years.  It's still on the North side of the house, but sometimes you have to pick your battles.  There's too much else going on to worry about moving it right now, unfortunately.

After that marathon 10-hour day, we used to following day to complete some smaller projects.  For example, I finally finished the bat house!

It's stained properly, I promise, it's just covered in spruce pollen.

 Jordan helped me hang it on the back of the shop.  Now we can get around to getting rid of the bats for good!

I also got the stall set up for the chicks.

Ready and waiting

 We ordered 25 buff orpingtons, which is a dual-purpose heritage breed.  They arrived this morning, and I raced down to the Canada Post warehouse to pick them up.

A whole box of adorable!!!

 They chirped quite noisily the whole way home - they can make quite a racket!!!  I got them home, and started the process of transferring them from box to brooder stall: pick them up, check their vent to make sure it was clean (an important indicator of chick health!), dip their beaks in the water and then the food, and let them go, triumphantly counting each one.  The ones in the stall were quiet once a few of their siblings joined them, and the first thing I noticed is that they sleep in very odd positions.

Here are two (one behind the one standing) who just lay down on their sides and stretched their legs for a quick little nap.

I introduced them to all the other critters around here: I took one in the house to meet the cats (they were curious, but didn't show any sign of being predatory).  Then, as I unloaded the box, I would periodically hold one out to Zim and Diamond.  Diamond was uninterested for the most part.  Zim, on the other hand, was both intrigued and scared.  He was looking over the stall divider quite intently, but when I held one up he'd back away really quickly.  Then he'd take a few very curious steps forward, and if the chick moved, he'd immediately back away again.  This was the first time he got close enough to actually sniff one:

"What the heck is that?!!!  Does it bite?"

He's now quite enamoured with them, and wants to be in the brooder stall with me when I'm in there.  That's not going to happen, of course, and I keep poking his paws off the divider as he tries to get a closer look.

Of course, I am also enamoured with the chicks.  They're cute!  And they're also curious.  Some of them don't trust the thermometer:

Peck! Peck!

And they continue to sleep in odd places and positions - this one fell asleep with his head jammed up against the end of the feeder, while everyone else scrambled over him this way and that.

Zzzzzzzz

They only seem to sleep for a minute or two, then they're up and wandering around, chatting quietly to each other, eating, drinking, and chasing bugs and other things found on the floor of the brooder.

Yes, they are so far into the feeder that their butts stick up in the air as they gorge themselves.  Silly chicks.

 And, just to prove that I can still pay attention to other things, look at these tomatoes:

 Aren't they awesome?!  They were small, spindly things when I put them in the greenhouse three weeks ago, as they weren't able to get enough light while they were inside the house.  Now that they're out in the greenhouse, they are doing amazing - their stalks have bulked up and they're putting out new leaves like it's going out of style.  Good job, tomatoes!  I hope they continue to thrive, and I get a few this year :)  Next year, we'll rig up a better lighting system (instead of relying on our big, east-facing window) and hopefully they do much better.

So there you have it - another busy few weeks.  Our time-sensitive large projects are now mostly complete, and things will hopefully start slowing down.  We will have friends and family coming to visit us in July, and we're looking forward to that!!!!