Life (around our home and garden)

Hello, dear friends. I hope you are all well.  (Today it seems I have time to put up a blog post!)

We finished school over a month ago.  I say "finished" which really means I was all done, so I ended with the little girls and supplied the older three with a list of what I wanted them to complete for the year (mostly math lessons).  Last time I checked, one of them had finished their list and the other two are nearly there....  and I'm okay with that. 

I have yet to do our end-of-the-year evaluations or testing, so I need to do those sometime soon.... but for NOW I am enjoying rest and summer and gardening.  And the older kids are enjoying sleeping in.  Our teens (Ella and Isaac) really love to stay up late, talking to us and snacking and then head to bed and reading for another hour or two, and then sleeping in until afternoon.  It's summer so I am happy for them but am wondering how they'll transition back to real life in the fall.

Ella finished Driver's Ed in June, so she's happily driving us all around town with her permit, when she's not babysitting, which she loves to do.

Here is what else has been going on around the home front.  We planted our garden late May.  Here's a photo right after planting:

(I'll try to get an updated picture because it does NOT look like this now at all.)
 
Each of the kids chose a crop this year again:
Ella | carrots + romaine 
Isaac | cucumbers + lettuces
Isaias | beans
Adelia | sugar snap peas 
Audra | flowers

They are responsible for caring for their little sections of the garden and as they harvest (and as I use or enjoy their harvest), I will pay them.

In addition to what the kids have going, I added tomatoes.  They have been my favorite to plant for the past couple of years, so this year I went all out and purchased several varieties to see what grows well and what I like best. In addition to my standard choice of Sun Gold cherry tomatoes, I also potted two of each of the following varieties:

Cherokee Purple (Heirloom)
Brandywine
La Roma
San Marzano
Early Girl

Happy tomatoes in the garden.

(For whatever reason, in my (very limited) experience, tomatoes seem to do better in pots than directly planted in the ground, so my garden is full of pots of tomatoes.  I had placed some pots in other areas around our patio and back garden, but the ones in our garden space were doing so much better that I've since moved all of the pots into our garden space.  It's a wee bit crowded in there but I'm hoping they'll all thrive now.)

My first bouquet of peonies this spring.  I love them so much!

I decided this year that I wanted to use our back garden (which in previous years has been planted with corn or pumpkins or squash) as a cutting garden, so I did a bit of research and decided to go with zinnias and dahlias this trial year.  Here's a picture of our back garden space all ready for planting (props to Mark, for throwing up walls to hold the dirt):

I purchased my zinnia seeds from Johnny's Seeds in early April, ordering:
Benary's Giant Lime
Giant Dahlia Flowered Mix
Queen Red Lime
Oklahoma Pink

I started them indoors under a grow light and when they got tall enough, gradually introduced them to the outdoors. Then I moved them for a couple of weeks to these pots until planting into the ground:

And just this week, snapped this picture:

(Those are my dahlias in the foreground.  I have two (Melody Dora and Claudette) that are SO happy and one (Cafe au Lait) that keeps wanting to die on me, which is of course the one I was MOST excited to see bloom!  Gr.) 

My zinnias that are about a foot and a half tall now.  Two have flowers already and many are nearly-there.  However, according to my best resource on this subject, (this website: Floret Flowers, and her beautiful book Cut Flower Garden) it's time for me to pinch those flowers and I'm procrastinating because it's so hard to think of removing those precious flowers!  I am assured that pinching encourages the plants to begin branching low and will ultimately produce longer stems and perhaps more blooms. It's on my list for this week.

The other really exciting news around our little backyard garden and farm is that in the nearly-ten years that we've been keeping chickens, we have always wanted to allow one of our hens to be a mama.  We can't have a rooster in the city so we never have fertilized eggs, but occasionally we will have a hen (usually one of our Buffs) go broody on us and we've wished we could get ahold of some fertilized eggs for her.  Well, this year the opportunity presented itself-- a co-worker of Mark's mentioned that she had eggs and we had a broody Buff-- our sweet old Elizabeth-- and so we jumped at the opportunity.  She had been broody for five days already and then we set twelve eggs beneath her.  We marked them with an "x".  (Note: I cringed at the number Mark brought home because I was a bit terrified that all twelve might hatch and we do NOT need twelve more chickens in our yard (!!!)

It was a bit tricky because Elizabeth was sitting in the favored nesting box, so the other hens kept trying to wrangle their way in to lay, but she patiently shared space with them and kept sitting.  She was such a good mama.  She would get up and come out once a day for about five minutes to stretch, drink a lot of water, and eat a bit, and then she'd be back in to settle on her eggs.  A few eggs were broken in the process, so we would remove those and any (unmarked) eggs our other hens were laying. 

A chick has about a 21-day life cycle, so when it had been about 19 days of her sitting on the eggs, we began watching more closely.  It was at this point that she stopped coming out for food or water at all, and we also closed off the back of the nesting box so that the other hens would stop pestering her.  Then we kept running out and checking on her, offering her water and telling her what a good job she was doing, and listening for little peeps. 

On the 23rd of June we heard peeping and saw one little head.  A bit later we saw two.... then three... and out of the seven eggs Elizabeth was still sitting on, six ended up hatching.  They were adorable, poking their little heads out from her feathers!  Audra (8) pretty much camped outside her nesting box for days.  Elizabeth stayed put in the nesting box for a couple of days until all had hatched (she kept sitting on #7 for a full day but then eventually got up and left it, and sure enough, when we checked, the baby chick had died at some point within the egg).

This was her a few days ago: 

It has been so fun for us to watch her with her chicks.  I keep telling Mark that I doubt any family has had as much joy as we have watching this whole process.  It has been such a delight.  She is such a good mama, those first few days, breaking up their food and setting it before them, clucking to them and nudging them to eat and drink and now teaching them to forage.  It's my favorite thing to watch how she'll call them her side and they will duck underneath her feathers for safety or at nighttime.  And also I love this stage (above) of them climbing all over her.  

One more thing before I end this ever-long blog post: Mark and I were able to get away recently (to the ocean, of course; my happy place) to celebrate our 20th anniversary!  I am so thankful for this man.  He remains my best friend and I love doing life with him.  It is a good thing, marriage, and I am so thankful to God for blessing us with the gift of one another and the grace to live out each day of these past twenty years. 

~

Love to you and yours!  I'd love to hear from you if you're able to say hi in the comments.  :)

Our sweet old girl

Flora, this morning

We got our first little flock of backyard chickens seven years ago.  We began with four chickens: Missy, Henriletta, Dora and Flora.  Now we have a flock of twelve, and Flora is the only remaining chicken from our first flock.

She has definitely slowed way down over the last year.  She rests a lot more during the day.  She has her favorite spot in the outdoor coop area, and she'll often perch herself there during the day and just rest for hours at a time.  Rather than climbing up with the other girls to roost at night, most nights she'll tuck herself into one of the nesting boxes and sleep there.  We've watched how the other chickens respond to her-- knowing that usually when a bird within the flock gets weak or sick, the other birds will begin to torment and peck at the weak bird.  But so far she's held her own as the elder of the flock.  When push comes to shove, she'll fight and put the other chickens in their place, and for the most part, they leave her alone.

Flora is our tamest chicken, and she loves being near us wherever we are.  If we walk into the coop, it is Flora who is at our heels first, clucking and still- waiting to be patted or picked up.  The other chickens might flock around us to see if we're bringing food or scraps, but if they discover there's no food; that we're there only to clean or mend the coop or refill their water, they'll scatter.  But Flora will stay near, following us around the coop, clucking as if she's talking to us.  She's a sweet old bird, and I sort of think of her as the wise old grandma of our flock.

This morning when we opened the door to the coop, Flora didn't get down off her roosting spot.  Ella was concerned so she came in to tell me.  I went out with her and encouraged her to carefully lift her off the roost.  Ella commented that "she felt funny, really skinny and bony".  When we set her in the chicken yard, she sort of flopped and struggled to walk, and I worried what the other chickens would do to her in her weak state.  She also seemed disoriented, and her eyes weren't bright.

We got Flora when Ella was five years old, and Ella loves her dearly

We decided to separate Flora from the rest of the flock for the day.  I fenced in an area of our yard that is right next to our coop, so she can still see and hear the other chickens.  (They're all jealous that she gets to be in the grassy part of our yard.)  Ella set her up with her own food and water.  She drank a bit at first and tried to eat, but couldn't.  She stumbled a bit and then righted herself and just stood in one place, looking disoriented.  It was rather strange.  We added some water to her food- (pellets), in the hopes that it might be easier for her to eat if her food was a bit soggy.  She ate really well after that. 

My concerned girls, watching over Flora

It made us wonder if perhaps she hasn't been eating the chicken food for awhile.  We know she eats scraps when we bring them in and we've seen her drink, and she forages when she's out, but maybe it's been hard for her to eat the pellets.  We'll just wait and see how she does.  She has some very attentive nurses, so I think she'll be well cared for until the end.

Our chickens

Thankful, today, for our backyard flock of chickens.  I really like our chickens.  We've been keeping chickens for seven years now, and I still really like them.  :)  And it's still exciting to discover eggs in the nesting boxes.

nesting boxes

Spied in the nesting box this morning.  This is Summer, doing her part to provide us with these:

These photos make me thankful for our various breeds which give us the different colored eggs.  It was Mark's idea this last year to get some Ameraucanas (for the sole purpose of getting those pretty blue and green eggs.)  I'm glad he did.  Our Welsummer ("Summer", up there in the nesting box) lays the darker brown eggs

and our Rhode Island Reds, (Plymouth) Barred Rocks, Australorps, and Buff Orpingtons lay the lighter brown eggs.  We have a white egg-layer, too- Millie- (I forget what breed she is.  Mark would remember) but she has decided to take a break for awhile.

Our hens really slow down in their laying-egg habits during the shorter days of winter, so it's always exciting when the days get longer and we get more eggs.

Update on our chickens

It has been a long time since I've talked about our backyard chickens. The little chicks we got back in March have all grown up and are beginning to happily lay eggs for us.

Here they all are, all nine of them, with one of their doting farm girls:


{From L to R: Missy, Millie, Della, Honey, Polly, Bawk-Bawk, Lucy, Flora, and Elizabeth.}

Audra is completely unafraid of the chickens, and the picture above is a typical sight. Either that or her toddling after them in the yard, babbling and patting their feathers. She's pretty cute.

Ella is responsible for the care of our chickens. In addition to talking to them, singing to them, and holding/petting them, she feeds them and gives them water, collects their eggs, and lets them out each morning. [Mark cleans the coop, for now, and puts them in for the night during the summer months since they go to bed after Ella does.]

Flora is our only hen left from our initial flock three years ago. It took some serious work to get them all acclimated to one another. I thought we were going to have to get rid of Flora because she was such a bully.

We kept easing her into it. First we put the box of chicks inside of Flora's coop so that while she could hear them and get accustomed to their noises and presence, she didn't have access to them. (The box was covered.) For the next phase we put up chicken wire in the coop, separating it right down the middle. Eventually we removed the wire and then watched very carefully to make sure that they were all doing okay together. Other than a few early squabbles, they seemed to be fine. Flora just kept herself apart from the other birds for the most part, and they kept their distance from her, too. She was a little fierce when they all went into their house to roost at night, but Mark helped a little with the arrangement and it was all going smoothly.

Until the younger birds began laying, that is.

Then Flora began picking on (literally) Honey whenever she sat in the nesting boxes. We had to remove Honey from the flock in order for her to heal, and once she healed up we placed Flora into her own area (think of it as a long time-out) and now we're mulling over what to do. We don't want Flora back in with the other birds if she'll just bully them. I think we're hoping that once they all start laying and get into the groove of it, she'll realize it's a lost cause to keep bullying each of them whenever one is in the nesting box and she'll give up.

Anyway~ it's fun to be getting eggs again, although the eggs themselves are still super tiny.

I maintain that chickens are the easiest pets, ever. They're very tame and gentle with the kids and our kids love them in return. AND they give us fresh eggs, which is of course why we have them.

Oh, and I was so happy this year that I was finally able to get some Buffs, because I've always wanted some. I think Buffs are a pretty bird (as far as chickens go) *and* I had heard they were calm birds, so I thought they'd be perfect for our kids.

Wouldn't you know it, though, but my favorites this year are our black hens. (If I remember right they're Australorps?) They are very docile (moreso even than the Buffs) and I think that's a good quality to have in a backyard chicken.

Okay... I'm done with my chicken ramblings...

Please do chime in on any advice you may have for our Flora-situation, or your favorite breed so far for backyard chickens!

New at our house this morning

Missy update

Many of you have asked, so here's the update...

Well, our hen is still alive, but I'm not sure that's saying much. Her wounds are still very much there and very much infected, and she remains weak.

We've explained to our kids that if she doesn't turn a corner, we may have to put her down. (Which brought fresh tears from Ella and statements of "Missy in heaven" from Isaac.) But really, I think that's the direction we're headed due to her condition. The reason we haven't done it yet is because there have been stretches each day where we think, "Oh! She seems much better!", only to find her frail and struggling in the evenings.

Anyway- there's the update. Thank you for your concern!

Our favorite hen

Our favorite hen, Missy, is very, very sick.

We're not sure what is going on, really. (We've only had chickens for a little over a year, and this is the first major problem we've had.)

Mark has noticed that for the past three nights she hasn't climbed up on the roost with the others, but has remained on the floor instead.

Unusual, but not necessarily alarming. Maybe she was just climbing up later than usual.

And then this morning Mark found her in the corner of the henhouse, and she seemed lethargic. We wish now we had pulled her away from the other chickens as soon as we found her this morning.

This afternoon we noticed her in the yard, and initially thought that was improvement, until we noticed that two of the other MEAN hens were pecking at her. (They do that, you know-- they pick on the weakest member of the flock.)

Mark got home from work, checked on her again, and isolated her from the other three. Then he came indoors and told us he thought she wasn't going to make it. She was very weak and still.

Missy has always been the sweetest, tamest, and mildest of our four hens, and is Ella's favorite one.

Ella and Isaac both (but especially Ella) have been in tears on and off throughout the evening. They're asking all sorts of questions like: "What will we do with her if she dies?" "Will we have a funeral?" "Will Missy go to heaven?" "If she goes to heaven will God have a coop for her there?"

Ella spent some time feeding her and trying to get her to drink some water. She ate a bit, out of Ella's hand, and did drink some water.

[If you're squeamish, skip this paragraph] The other chickens pecked her head today (so much so that it's bleeding), and her back as well. As Mark was putting medicine on her this evening, he noticed that maggots were all over the wounds on her back. Ew. So he spent some quality time with Missy tonight, picking out the maggots, cleaning her with warm water and putting peroxide on her wounds. Then he put some salve on her.

Little Nurse Ella- who would not leave Missy's side- dried her feathers with a hairdryer, and made her a bed of fresh straw and cedar shavings. We put her in a box on our back porch. We have a lamp above her to keep her warm, and food and water in her box, and we'll see if she makes it through the night.


As for the other meanies? They're not getting any scratch from me for weeks. And I'll be glaring at them every chance I get.

First egg!

The girls

If these girls don't start earning their keep around here, there's no telling what I'll do.

(from L to R: Missy, Dora, Henriletta, and Flora)