Weekending

Did you remember to spring ahead this morning? I didn't! *grin*

Our day started with my usual lighting of the woodstoves, making sure everyone got breakfast, puttering around the kitchen tidying up, planning for lunch and today I popped on a pot of bones and veggies for chicken soup. Just before we reached lunch which was now past lunch I realized that I was truly running an hour behind. I had joked on my twitter page that I had been living in the past all morning but the truth of it was that I never caught up with the time today!

So I decided that I was not going to set my clocks ahead today since I simply just could not catch up!! That's right I had my own personal time zone for the entire day and tomorrow we'll catch up to the rest of you LOL. I swear sometimes it's a good thing we live in the sticks where we can march to the beat of our own drum *grin*.

We've had quite the run of weather to with sun, rain and snow flurries and sometimes they were happening all at the same time. The temperature in the shade today was just above freezing so the kids had to do a lot of running and jumping to keep warm but when they realized that just wasn't working for them they came up with a new plan to help keep themselves warm....

Chicken warmers!

I bet you didn't know that chickens make great hand warmers *grin*. The kids would run into the pen, pick up the closest chicken, tucking their hands around their warm fluffy bodies and warmed up a bit. Plus the chickens just loved the extra attention :)

In payment for providing warmth for their little hands my youngest two collected pine cones from the mugo pines in our front yard and blades of grass to create a soupy treat for the chickens. You've got to love their imaginations! The chickens weren't to keen on their treat but did pluck out the odd blade of grass for a nibble :)

Before my husband left for work on thursday he had been a busy boy demolishing my old clothesline stand. It had been getting pretty rickety and rotten and he knew that I really wanted a new one so he finally tore it down. I can't wait for my replacement stand. The warmer days are just around the corner and I can't wait to get the laundry out to air dry again. For now though the scrap lumber has been stuffed in the back of our horse trailer so we can haul it down the the bottom of our property for a big bonfire when he returns :)

I've been making a lot of homemade yogurt to. It is sooo good! I just have to remember to make sure I put it on in the evening so it's ready for our granola in the morning :)

How was your weekend?

Hugs,
Rosina

Nibble Nibble Little Mouse....

Who is nibbling at my house?
The kids found the hole in the photo below chewed through part of the wall in our chicken house and it was nearly as big as a tennis ball. Something was trying awful hard to get in to either eat our chickens or steal eggs :( Either way not good but we found it in time to board it back over again to thwart any further attempts to break in. I definitely don't want anything to happen to our girls!

I have to say I have thoroughly been enjoying the egg laying winter lull that the chickens have been in though. In the warmer months when we are getting 12 eggs each and every day it can be tough to be come up with creative new way to use them up! I do sell some to my mom and sister when they need them but quite often we have more than we possibly eat and getting 5 or 6 each day is such a nice treat *grin*.

But even with the drop in egg production I ended up with an extra 3 dozen in the fridge the other day right after we did our big two week grocery shop and space was pretty tight so those eggs had to go. Not to worry though they weren't headed for the trash but a recycling of sorts *grin*.

I put all of them into the largest soup pot I had in the cupboard and hard boiled them. Next I popped them into my food processor, shell and all, by the the half dozen and pulsed them into a lovely egg salad buffet loaded with calcium rich chunks of egg shells that would make a delicious and nutritious treat for the chickens :)

Extra eggs?? No problem! LOL. And I know the shells on their upcoming eggs are going to be tougher and healthier for it :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Feathered and Ready To Explore

The girls are growing!
We keep calling them our babies but really they don't look much like those fuzzy little fluff balls we had anymore :) Their feathers are fully in and they are growing more inquisitive every day. You can see them eyeing up the outdoors when we come in to feed and pet them so I think we're going to have to get their yard finished. Some of the fence needs mending and a layer of fish net needs to be hung over the pen to keep the hawks and eagles from swooping in and taking any. We definitely don't want what to happen!

So while they're waiting to be released into the grassy wild we've been feeding them little dandelion blossom treats and they love them.

So much in fact that they fight over them *grin*.
One will get a flower in its beak and then another will swoop in and snatch it away and this goes on for a while until we drop in another for them to squabble over :)

My daughter on the other hand mesmerizes them. I think I have mentioned in another post that she is like the chick whisperer and it never fails that they flock to her :) Every time she picked one up it would just tuck its beak into the dandelion blossom and hang out. Talk about taking time to smell the roses.... or dandelions in this case *grin*.

She's been taking on a lot of the responsibility of feeding them to and heading out in the mornings on her own to fill their feed dishes and talk to them. It's so cute :)

Oh and I wanted to let you know that Hubby made it safely home Monday morning!! I waited up until 2am for him to get here and it was so nice to have him back. I got the play by play account of how the whole accident went down from him blowing the gear in his tug, to calling out on the radio in hopes that someone might be near enough to help him out and getting no response, to him waiting till the last possible moment to decide to cut his tow loose as he waited hoping that it might hit the beach and hang up on the rocks so that he could save it, and finally how he threw out the anchor which I thought would be a done deal and it was over but no he wasn't sure if it was even going to hold him!! Thank goodness it held or he would have been smashed to bits on the rocks through the rapids like his tow.

We enjoyed two days together as he rested up and slept after so many sleepless nights and now he's gone again. All thoughts of danger pushed out of my mind as we count the days until he returns again :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Ugly Duckling Syndrome

Our girls are growing so quickly!
They will be three weeks old on thursday and as you can see they are definitely much larger than those little fluff balls that fit perfectly into small hands only days before :)

The kids thought they looked a little bit like ugly ducklings today *grin*. Their fluffy down is being replaced by feathers and the transition is so interesting to watch :) This little girl must have felt small today as she kept stretching as tall as she could!

We brought a couple of them into the house today and set a towel down on the living room floor so that they could roam around a bit. They really seemed to love my daughter and gravitated straight for her...

She's like the chick whisperer *grin*, and the boys were just a tad jealous of all the attention she was getting LOL.

It's a little bittersweet to see them maturing so quickly but then again I am really looking forward to all of those fresh eggs!

Hugs,
Rosina

Chick Love ~ Fuzzy Baby Overload

We brought in some of the babies so that we could cuddle and love them and somehow it turned into a bit of a photo shoot. I just couldn't help myself!

In my defense though I did warn you that I might go a little chick crazy... but could you resist such an adorable little ball of fluff?!

I thought not *grin*.

Such sweet little girls :) They were so content to just hang out in the little dishes we put them in so we could ooh and ahh over them *grin*. After a while they got a little more adventurous and started hopping in and out and checking out the flowers. They didn't stray far though and they are so incredibly docile to. We can pick them up and cuddle them and they don't squirm or try to fly out like past chicks we've had.

Of course it was inevitable that there would be a little 'incident'. At least they kept it on the paper that I had put down for just that exact reason *grin*.

Hugs,
Rosina

Easter Babies

Our little chicky babies arrived today and just in time for Easter :) It couldn't have been better timing!

Everyone was so excited to peek into the box we brought them home in and help move them under the heat lamp :) Of course we had to have the 'you have to be really gentle' talk with the little man but he truly wanted to be as careful as possible with them and he is going to love them so much *grin*.

They are so stinkin' cute!!! I'm going to apologize now because I think there might be quite a few baby chick pictures in the coming days LOL.

Hugs,
Rosina