Friday, July 31, 2009

How do I love my Chicken? Let me Count the ways...

I havn't said much about our chickens yet...yes we have 4 chickens. Let me tell you a bit about them... We have two white leghorns about 6 months old and 2 younger arcana chickens maybe 3 or 4 months old. Well, chickens are very strange creatures. Very entertaining to watch-even more entertaining to catch-


Try catching one outside the coop!

-but they are not the kindest of creatures, especially to each other. Due to the age difference of the chickens we have kept the older and younger ones separate until recently. We tried to put the 4 together many weeks ago but the older ones were so mean-pecking, scratching, picking them up by their feathers and dropping them...really. One of the babies seemed especially sensitive to this mistreatment due to the fact it was malled by our neighbor cat in its first week or so of life- and of course this was the chick that the older ones picked on the most. Well, I could not stand the brutality (aka reality) of chickens so we seperated them again.


The 'babies'- don't they look on edge?

Well, last weekend Chris decided it was time again. So now they've been together almost a week, and so far they are all alive. However, I wonder if chickens with starve themselves to death out of fear of older chickens. The younger chick stay up on the roosting stick all day, their only 'safe' place. Despite 100 degree weather I never saw them come down to eat or drink. The one time I did see one down, it was standing next to the water but wouldn't drink out of fear one of the big ones would come near. To help out Chris will go in the coop and make the little ones come down, and then stay in there to chase the big ones away if they come near while they frantically eat and drink as fast as they can. Well, we'll see how the next week goes.


Yes, I make them scrub with soap when they come out.



'Why chickens?' you may ask. Well, because they are so adorable a chicks (but man they poop a lot), they kids would have fun, they are entertaining, and fresh eggs! To date we've gotten 21 good eggs and last week two...uh...well the shell wasn't hard. I'll just say that. (We think a result of the heat and Chris freaking the chickens out with a shovel the day before) When the babies start laying they are supposed to be blue, green or pink eggs! That will be fun! Oh and we knew they would be good fertilizer. (Before the grass totally died due to the lack of rain, we had nice green rectangles all over our yard- wherever the coop had been.)
Well, I'm am sure I have now told you much more than you wanted to know about our chickens. Thanks for hanging in there with me anyway.

Monday, July 27, 2009

The Perks of Summer

To make the heat of summer a bit more tolerable, God added a few perks.

#1 Fresh berries!

We first went to a friend's house to pick (and eat) raspberries, marionberries and blackberries. They had so many! Elijah's bucket never had more than three in it but Abigail did great saving more than she ate.
Then ignoring the fact that it was almost nap time (and not to mention the hottest time of the day) we went to Blueberry Park to pick (and eat) blueberries.
Why do berries have such a short season? What did people do before freezers to stretch the yummy freshness out all year?



#2 Breathtaking Sunsets



The view a few blocks from home.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

A Zoo at the Library?

Yep, a 'petting zoo' came to our neighborhood library. After lunch we made the 2 block 'hike' to library-


returned our overdue books, and went to see the animals.


It was a bit more impressive with crowds of kids around it.

Abigail made sure to pet each of them but Elijah mostly kept his distance.


Abigail and 'Molly' seemed to get along well.

That chicken is bigger than ours! An egg!

The first animal Elijah petted willingly.


Summer Fun and Self portraits

Last night we ended our very hot evening with a dinner-picnic outside. We made very yummy kettle corn (much cheaper than what was at the zoo), had fresh strawberries and blueberries with cream, raw zucchini and cucumbers and cherries! Yum! There were no leftovers!


After dinner we said "cheese" with every combination of people we could!


Food on his face an owie on hers.





Notice the ant crawling on my neck?


Monday, July 20, 2009

My Growing Belly

When we found out we were pregnant with Abigail, we took a picture. We then took a picture on the same date of every month until she was born. With Elijah we tried to do the same thing but skipped a month or so here or there. Well, I am now 22 weeks pregnant with our third - 5 1/2 months- and thought maybe I should try to get at least one pregnant picture. So here it is:

Here are a few pictures of the little one inside from a few weeks ago:


We aren't finding out if it is a boy or girl, but the ultra sound tech did say it had a big head! Oh yeah.

I may as well include a picture of Abigail and Elijah at the zoo today. (Who sound right now as if they are not napping-despite the walking and climbing for 3 1/2 hours today. I know I'm exhausted!)


Sunday, July 19, 2009

Taking the first step

Well, it was time. I am stepping into the world of blogging. I have been wanting to do this for some time, and for the past many weeks things have happened in life that make me think "that would make a great blog post". But now that I am writing my first post, I don't know what to write. But I suppose this makes an adequate beginning, since I'm sure the future posts on this blog will be just as random and uncertain. But I can assure you they will be tidbits of info about: children, food, chickens, gardens or the like.