Last evening I started to put the garden to bed. I picked my squashes - which made me feel like less of a failed gardener!



Although the butternuts and pumpkins are teeny. I think that's due to the lousy growing season. The sweet dumplings I grew from saved seed appear to be true to form (the white ones) so yay! And the vigorous volunteer appears to have been a hybrid, they're the green ones speckled with thin yellow lines (and orange bottoms) I'll be interested to see how they taste. I also re-found a volunteer bean plant that I thought the squashes had shaded to death (not dead!) I suspect it grew from one of the many wrinkly beans I didn't cook for dinner some night last winter. I'm contemplating harvesting the seeds to grow next year instead of to eat, since it seems to be such a hardy little bean variety.

Along with pulling the squash vines I pulled the lettuce bed and started in on the corn. If it's not actively raining when I get home tonight I'll work in the garden some more. I need to pick up some garlic soon to seed in for next year. I also plugged in the chicken coop timer. We've been getting 2 or 3 eggs a day for awhile and the hens are (some more clearly then others) molting. I hope that with the added light they'll get back to laying sooner then they did last year. (really I should remember to plug the light in at the beginning of september)

This weekend I'm going down the the VT sheep and wool festival. Saturday looks like it'll be cloudy and rainy, but as the friend I'm driving down with said "the weather won't matter, we'll be high on wool fumes!" Neil's working that evening, so I have to be home in time for the animals' dinners.

And now, I'm going to sit in the sunshine before the clouds roll in!

Yesterday I wasn't feeling very well so I took a sick day.  It was pretty productive as sick days go, though.  I sat on the couch with my book (Omnivore's Dilemma - highly recommended)  and my knitting.


Chapeau Marnier from Knitty.  I knit it out of the handspun I was spinning during the Tour de Fleece.  It's perfect for handspun, it's pretty, but not too complicated.  I have 30 or 40 yards left too, enough for either a very small project like wrist warmers, or maybe a few squares in the never-ending sock yarn blanket.  The yarn is an alpaca/bamboo blend, so it's drape-y more then stretchy, but for a fitted hat this doesn't matter too much - and it means that this hat has exactly zero itch!


I really love how the ribbon finishes the project so nicely.  I kinda wanted a chocolate brown ribbon, but the burgundy one was already in my ribbon stash and it matches the yarn so well!

In the afternoon I was feeling a little better.  Also I had just finished reading about an experiment done on two blackberry patches grown in the same soil and sunlight one with conventional growing practices and one with organic growing practices.  Turns out the organic blackberries had more micronutrients (flavonoids etc...) then the conventional ones.  The people who did the study were still looking into exactly why.

Anyway, all this reminded me that I had a quart of wild blackberries that had gotten shoved to the back of the fridge a week and a half ago.  (bad sign, right?  blackberries really don't last that long) but when I pulled the container out I discovered only a handful of moldy berries.  Some more were soft, but for pie, who cares?  So I made pie.


I even baked the crust first, because the berries were very juicy.


And I made a lattice work pie.  Usually I just cheat and mix the dough right in the pie dish, and squish it down into the dish rather then rolling it out.  But this time I decided to roll out the crust, and since I was doing that anyway, why not really do it up fancy?  This pie has a touch of ginger in it.  Cinnamon is common for fruit pies but I find ginger once in awhile keeps things interesting.


And I had extra crust, so I made some raisin custardy tartlets.  I had a recipe in mind, but pretty much just made these up.  A handful of raisins in each, then I mixed an egg, a handful of sugar, a dollop of molasses, a squirt of lemon juice, and pinch of cinnamon.  They worked out perfectly, I ate two as soon as they cooled and only barely held off on eating the third so Neil could try it.

Oh, and our best mama blackbeard has been rescued from the woods (rescued is my term, she was quite cranky to be removed from her carefully secluded nest)  This time she hatched ELEVEN (that's 11) baby chickens.  I tried to take pictures with the good camera, but somehow the files went corrupt.  No kidding.  The pictures I took before (pie pictures) worked out and the pictures I took after (hat pictures) all worked.  But the chicken pictures didn't just come out blurry, but the computer couldn't read the files.  And then I put the chip in the camera, and it can't read them either.  And then I tried to take a picture with my camera phone this morning, and that died while I was trying.  So now i'm formulating a claim about mama blackbeard being impossible to photo like some kind of mythical chicken-beast.  It's the only logical explanation, right?

And I am feeling better today, so that's nice.  Hopefully Neil and I can find a nice place to camp this weekend.

Random chickens in the afternoon!

These are the teenaged chickens, pretty much all grown up.  Anyone want a rooster?  I have two that need new homes...


There are two more hens and another extra rooster not pictured.

The second mama's baby is getting better at getting up to the perch.  I watch him(her?) do it the other day - it's jumping up from the floor to the perch that's at about 3ft all in one go!  It also has most of it's real wing feathers these days, but that's still impressive!

And the first mama stopped coming inside at night about a week and a half ago.  According to the calender at home we might have more new babies the first week in September.

Just busy!

Last weekend (I keep doing this, it's friday again already?!)  One of my good friends came up for a visit.  It was lots of fun, we had knitting time (one of my favorite kinds of time) and boating time, and swimming time, and pretty much had a very relaxing weekend.  She took lots of pretty pictures of vermont (another thing I love to do!)  Although some of my favorite photos were of the immature loon and its parent:



Although the photo of the mama hen who somehow managed to get her baby up on the pearch are pretty fabulous too:



That pearch is over 4ft off the ground, there are some in between things for jumping on, but I had no idea a baby chicken could jump 2 or more feet at a time and land on a perch!

This weekend there's a sterling college reunion (which I'm really looking forward too!)  and a LOT of veggies to put up.  I picked 16 ears of corn from my garden yesterday (some are a bit small, but with the beginning of the growing season the way it was the plants are small too) and we've got 2 or 3 quarts of beens to freeze between the purple beans in my garden and the green and yellow ones from the CSA.  We got a lot of brocolli this week too which I might freeze, my fridge barely shuts properly right now there's so many veggies stuffed in it - and the corn and big summer squashes are living on the counter!

Oh and yarn:

I have more!  This lovely batch is from Knitpicks (the green in front is gloss sock, the mossy green/dark brown in back are classic wool of the andes worsted, and the tan/chocolate brown on the side are stroll sport) and they're all destined for new designs!  I'm quite excited!  I love knitpicks - their yarns are very nice and very reasonably priced.  The Gloss has lovely sheen and is very smooth - wonderful to knit with!  I'm also really excited about their stroll (used to be essential) coming in other sizes then just plain sock yarn - the socks I've made with it in the past have held up really well to wear and tear - which is really important in a sock!

I also made bread Wednesday evening.  It was the one evening of the week when it cooled off below 60 - I'm glad I grabbed the chance to bake while I had it!  Anyway, I added some aramanth flour to the dough and it was delicious!  I picked it up because I wanted to try something new and the bag said it added a nice malty flavor to bread - and I like malty flavors!
I've slowly grown to baking bread by feel.  I used to follow the recipe exactly, then I started changing or substituting 1 or 2 things, now I don't even bother pulling out the recipe book.  Making bread goes something like this:
Mix some yeast in warm water with a touch of sugar in my bread bowl.  Is it foaming? check.
Ingredient checklist (in my head) fat? flour? liquid? salt?  Mix it together and start kneeding until it feels right.
For a single sandwich sized loaf I generally start with 2ish tsp yeast in 1/4c of water.  Generally I want at least 1 but not more then 5 Tbsp oil (yes, it is that flexible, depending on how rustic/soft you want your bread)  Then I add the flour - 2 heaping handfuls of flour and 1 of something else.  Each handful being somwhere between 1/2 and 1C flour and something else can be almost anything - rolled oats, oat flour, rice flour, cornmeal, sunflower/flax/sesame seeds, strange grains flour, etc...  And the bulk of the bread needs to be between 2/3 and 3/4 real flour when I'm all done (for the gluten!)
Once the fat and flour are in (sometimes I add an egg with the fat, if i feel like it) I'll sprinkle in some salt (I really can't say how much, and under-salting things is one error I still make regularly)  The poor yeast cells should always be buffered from the salt addition by flour/oil/egg/something.
Then I add some more liquid - milk, whey if I've made cheese recently, beer, water if I have nothing else.  Then I just keep adding flour until it's bread-like.  I suspect I end up with somewhere between 4-5 cups of flour and enough liquid for it to stick together the way bread dough should.  It takes a bit to get it right, but I really enjoy just throwing together some bread based on my whims!

Oh, and now that I finally have pictures up feel free to go back and see a photo of me trying to eat a smore half the size of my head - it's pretty funny...

The Green Mountain DNA conference went very well.  The speakers were all quite interesting, which isn't always garenteed since some scientists just aren't good speakers no matter how interesting the subject matter.  The two that stick out most in my head (while not totally applicable to what I do) were:

The talk given by the woolly mammoth guy - he leads one of the groups mapping the woolly mamoth genome.  He had facinating stories about digging mammoths out of the permafrost as well as having a really interesting insight into DNA preservation, extraction, etc...  It was also interesting to hear his questions to several of the other speakers as he knows all about DNA extraction, amplificaiton but little about the specifics of applying it all to forensics.  The factoid that seemed really interesting to me is that in working with coprolites he's isolated DNA from woolly rhinos in alaska more then a few times - the catch - archeologists have never found wooly rhino fossils in north america and thought that it was an asia-only species.  It's a really strong reminder of how little information is actually in the fossil record - a lot happened that was never fossilized!

I was facinated by the talk on Optical Tweezers (dude!  tractor beams on a cellular level!  crazy...)  Basically, they focus a laser down to a narrow point and use the physical properties of light to trap things at that point and move them around.  Yes - they're moving stuff around using a light beam.  It's pretty non-distructive and they've seen yeast budding while trapped and the sperm they trap and move around can swim away afterwards.  If you have time watch the videos at the bottom of the wiki.  It's really cool!

Along with taking real notes I broke down and took notes on silly references made by the speakers
1 spinal tap "this one goes to 11" reference (just one, but it happens at EVERY dna conference)
1 monty python reference
2 shakespeare references
5 (yes FIVE) star trek references (and 1 star wars refernece)

Meanwhile back at the farm:
"green" beans are starting to produce. 

I'll probably freeze the first few batches, and make some pickled green beans when I really start gettting buried.

I racked the tart cherry/apple wine into a secondary container and set up another:

Cranberry/apple/mystery berry (red, from the CSA last year, currant shaped, but way to sweet to be currants)  This is the "cleaning out the back of the freezer" wine.  There's a lot of berries in there still, I might do another...

I got a call from Neil on tuesday during lunch about how he'd looked outside to see something chasing reggie (Reggie's the dominant yard animal, things don't chase him)  Then it broke off and chased Jake, then Peanut.  Then Neil noticed Moxy cowering in the tall grasses.

The missing chicken is missing no more!  She only hatched 2 babies, which is a perfectly respectable number for a first time mama chicken.  And besides, I already don't know what I'm going to do with all the roosters from the first batch...  She's a bit feistier then our first mama hen.  Also, Neil's already spotted one of the babies riding on mama's back, so I'll go back to stalking chickens with a camera in hopes of catching one in the act!

The yarn for my deadline project has finally arrived! Hooray! Now I'm going to have a little knitting race with myself.

Sorry, I can't give you a better picture. But isn't my new project bag nice?

And we still have no news on potential new baby chickens. Since I don't remember exactly which day she started nesting I'm not too worried. And since the first mama hen was on the nest for about 48 hours after the first baby hatched I just have to accept that if she's still out there she'll come home when she's ready.

My plans for this weekend involve a LOT of knitting. Maybe some canoeing (Neil can do the paddling) and definitely a trip to the yarn store (because I don't own all the needles in the world yet) Oh, and I need to re-rack my apple/tart cherry wine so the big glass jug will be available for something new! Wine making doesn't take much active time, just lots of patience.

Next week I have a DNA conference in Burlington for three days. It's always fun to hear the latest new techniques, and this conference tends to have a lot more discussion rather then just the speaker speaking, which adds to the interest. Three days of conference knitting should be good for my project too.

Yesterday was cranky on many fronts.  I'm actively ignoring it's existence.  Well, except for the evening, because it was much better.  My cell phone was returned to me by an older gentleman who found it in Burlington.  He said it took him 20 minutes just to figure out how to open it because it slides instead of flipping open.  It's nice to know there are still reasonable people in the world who will return lost phones (bonus points to Neil who's idea it was to send my phone a text message that read "If you find this phone, call xxx-xxxx" with our home phone number. Since the man couldn't figure out how to dial on my phone, he probably wouldn't have found my contacts list.)

Also yesterday afternoon: Neil caught sight of what might be the most recently missing hen.  She's been gone for almost 3 weeks without a sighting, and I was beginning to worry she'd been eaten, not just in hiding.  So I put another perch in the main coop and offically kicked the teenaged chickens out of their nesting igloo and into the main coop.  Most of them were happy to have a place to roost (they'd tried on the main perch, but the grownups kept knocking them off) but one kept running in and out of an egg laying igloo cheeping and trying to convince the others to sleep on the floor still.  This must be where the cliche about having trouble leaving the nest comes from.  Neil's picked up some more baby chick starter, and we're all ready in case another mama hen leads some more babies out of the brush sometime this week.  If we get another 8 birds we'll have to figure out the best way to pawn some off to someone - I don't know if I need 28 chickens.  But I'm also trying not to count my chickens before they hatch (yay cliches!  Now if I can just say something about not putting all my eggs in one basket during this post)

While it's cloudy and supposed to rain again today, we've been getting some sunshine the past few days.  And the garden has noticably greened up.  Also, baby veggies are starting to appear:

Baby tomato is a little bigger then a quarter, but you can already tell from the shape this is not a cherry tomato.

Baby winter squash is a little smaller then a quarter.

Baby kohlrabi is about the same size as a quarter.  (If only I could figure out how to grow actual quarters!)

Tiny baby watermelon.

I've also got some baby green (burgundy) beans coming in.  Ok, lots and lots of baby beans.

Baby basil.

And my garlic is probably ready to dig.  I'm nervous, but I should probably just dig one up and see how it looks.

So I wore my new skirt! (and now my legs and feet are cold)  Here's a lovely self-photo from the gas station parking lot:


Yeah, taking a picture of the skirt I'm wearing with my phone camera = harder then I thought it'd be.  I really like the gradient in the fabric - it's quilting fabric from a store in Johnson.  I already had a brown zipper (convenient!)  The trickeiest bit was the thread - and whether to use dark or light brown.  I ended up using both.  I used the dark brown on the light sections and the light brown on the dark sections.  I like how the stitches stand out, it's a bit like the yellow thread trimming on denim jeans.  I used just about every inch of the fabric.  In retrospect I think a narrower waistband would have left a touch more fabric for the skirt.  But instead this is a skirt I can wear on skinny days...

And just in case you were wondering:


The baby chickens are now teenaged chickens.  They look just like the big ones, but in miniature.  And I have another arucana that's not coming in at night.  I'm choosing to hope that she's sitting on eggs somewhere and not that she was eaten by something.  We'll see in another 18 or 19 days...

And I'm still hungry after eating my lunch...  Yup, that's how exciting my day is!

My arms are so sore.  I spent most of this weekend reverse gardening - digging stuff out instead of putting stuff in.  It's been so rainy all those perennials are perfectly happy sitting on top of the soil.  Which has allowed me to do a thorough job of preparing the garden bed I want them in.  I've been threatening to remove all the non-blooming orange day lilies (ok, there was a handful of blooms last year, that's how I know what color they are)  When I went into the bed with a shovel I realized there were more day lily bulbs then dirt.  After a weekend of fun filled digging (and pruning dead willow shrubs, and pulling ferns and weeds) I have a nice, bare patch of soil where I can put all my new plants - just as soon as the rain lets up.  I also had this:

That's the back end of a full sized subaru - filled almost to the roof with day lilies.  Nothing else.  Just lilies.  I threw them all into the dtich on our property along the edge of the road.  This variety of lily usually grows well in such places - and hopefully they'll have space to actually bloom.

It takes a lot to keep going at a project like that all weekend.  So for breakfast on Sunday I made:

Ginger pancakes, fresh CSA strawberries, and home made whipped cream - with the cream scooped off the top of fresh milk from our neighbors and some honey.  Who cares if the whipped cream was a little runny, it was delicious.  I practically HAD to garden all weekend to work off the calories from eating a pint of whipped heavy cream though...

And in chicken-y news I think the babies are officially teenager birds now.  Well, it's not what I think so much as what mama chicken thinks.  Saturday night she and the babies bedded down in their little shelter, sunday morning she led them out into the world.  But on Sunday afternoon I spotted her nonchalantly picking bugs out of the front lawn with the babies no where to be seen.  I admit to panicking a bit.  But when I brought out some tasty grain and called all the chickens the babies came running just as quickly as the adults - just from a different corner of the yard.
At bedtime mama chicken went up on the roost with the other adult birds, and when one of the babies followed her she actually jumped down again, walked back to the little shelter with it, ducked inside.  And ran off again as soon as the clingy baby had settled down.  (we called him/her the failure to launch bird all evening)
This morning (it's raining) the babies didn't seem inclined to run outside with mom still ignoring them.  And in an unusual move Looney (our rooster) hung out inside with them.  He usually doesn't mind rain, so I wonder if he's figured out he's got a confused batch of new birds to keep an eye on.

I have no idea where the time went! Last weekend we had a fun saturday followed by a very quiet sunday to make up for it.


The Rattlin' Brook Bluegrass Festival was last weekend - we go every year. It was pretty nice weather (it didn't rain - which it almost always does for this poor festival) And the turnout was great. The bands were good, the company was fun. I didn't ace the boccie game this year but I guess I can't have everything.


I did have homemade snacks, beer, and some lovely knitting. This is the shrug for which I found The Perfect Yarn, and it's coming along wonderfully. I've made very few changes to the pattern. I'm about 14 inches across the 22 inch flat back, and I'm finally bored. Bored as in - too boring even for TV knitting. I know because I kept stopping without realizing it last night! It's not the project's fault, I just can't handle this much stockinette all the time. This will take a nap at the back of my closet - but the yarn is much too lovely for it to never re-appear.


The beetle thought so too. I think this closeup shows A) the subtle color of the yarn and B) how well the beetle matches.


See that? I've tried to take that photo three years in a row, but I've never had a camera up to the task of taking photos in dark corners of old wooden structures... Every year there's a bird nest in the lady's bathroom - and every year I worry about the little babies, 'cause mom seems to vanish while there are so many people around. But this year I decided that probably if she keeps returning she must be successful in raising the babies. I hope so too, because I think there are 6 in that nest.

And I've been collecting chicken pictures without every getting around to uploading them. So lets have a baby chicken update, shall we?

About 2 weeks ago their primary feathers started coming in (other then the ones on the wings)


And now they look like this - all their primary feathers are in, except for their fuzzy little heads. In my experience with both the araucanas and sussex their feather patterns will change once more before they reach adulthood - but on one of them (not photoed) I'm already starting to notice some sussex speckles coming through. They've started exploring more on their own, and mom has started letting them. She'll even eat some bread crumbs in the morning before she starts sharing. They're really mixing in with the adult flock now too, it's pretty cute watching them dive in and out between the big ones when there's a special treat to be eaten!


I'll be interested to see how they look as grownups - the araucanas have pea combs while the sussex have pointy standard combs. I did notice in just the last 3 days their legs have started to go from yellow to the green tinge that the araucanas have. There's a lot of feather variety in both breeds though, so I'm sure we'll get some unique looking birds.

Oh, and hey!  It's our 4th wedding anniversary!  Craziness huh?

It was absolutely wonderful to have a weekend at home!

The lawn clearly missed me and was beginning to send out scouts...  When the grass is tall it can be cut with the reel mower but it takes some creativity.  I figured out how two years ago.  The first pass merely flattens the grass.  Then I pull the machine back towards me across the grass and it ends up pointed directly into the mower blades.  On the third pass it is cut, hooray!  But it's a very time consuming and sweaty process. I did contemplate the weed whacker instead of the lawn mower except I was reminded how much I hate small engines.  I got out the machine, pulled the cord, and nothing happened.  I wasn't convinced I was doing it right, Neil came over and tried, he couldn't get it to start either.  Eventually we got it to the point where it'd start, sputter along for a few seconds, and die as soon as you asked the whacker part to spin.  After ten minutes fighting with the machine I realized how much lawn I could have mowed in that amount of time - and went back to the reel mower.

I also finally got my tomatoes planted!  I'm not convinced it'll stay warm though, so I'm fully prepared to cover them if the nights start getting really cold (hopefully by being prepared I won't have to actually do anything, like carrying an umbrella to keep the sun shining)
My burgundy (green) beans are doing pretty well, as is my corn:
 
If we could get some good sunshine to go with all this lovely rain it might even get to be "knee high by the 4th of July"
I tried to plant edamame (soybeans) too, and they may be the failure of the season, only 3 plants (out of two rows) have come up.  I'm wondering if it was too cold and rainy and maybe the seeds died.  If they don't come up with a few days of warmer weather I'll re-plant and see if they can do better.

And I planted sunflowers!  I've tried to grow them several times - but the chickens always get the seeds.  Or if they don't get the seeds, they like to eat the leaves of the young plants.  This year I planted them along the north edge of my garden (so they won't shade the veggies) inside the fence, why has it taken me so long to figure that out?

Did I say chickens?

They getting much bigger, and have primary feathers everywhere except their fuzzy little heads.  There was a baby chicken tragedy - but I'm not sure what kind.  All I know is I let them out one morning - and there were 7, not 8.  Our coop is pretty much predator-proof, and mama always tucks the babies away early enough I don't get to count them in the evenings, so I'd guess it probably happened the day before.  The day after we kept them inside to whatever predators there are from thinking our yard was a daily buffet.  And for several days after that mama and the babies played Jungle Chickens all day - which makes me think it might have been a flying predator...

Let see, what else?  Oh yes, the rosa rugasa bushes that Neil hacked back last year are thriving:

And completely covered in buds.  These are basic sea roses.  A single set of petals and a wonderful scent.  The hacked-back shrubs are still a foot or two taller then me...

Oh and Neil was busy this weekend as well:

He installed track lighting in our kitchen.  It's much MUCH better then the dim, 70's syle globe fixture we used to have.  And it turns out track lighting is one of those things that's really pricey to have an electrician do - but doesn't cost any more then a living room light fixture if you do it yourself.  Who knew?  Of course with that success he's now threatening to go down into the basement and change the switch on the circuit breaker that needs to be upgraded.  I suggested he call 911 first, that way the ambulance will already be on the way when he electrocutes himself.  It's not that I don't trust him - but when you're changing a light fixture you start by flipping the appropriate circuit.  I don't know how you kill the power to the entire circuit breaker box before working on it - and that makes me nervous....

Please don't let it be said that I don't try to give you what you ask for!


See the fuzzy baby legs sticking out from under?  It's getting much harder for all 8 to fit under mama.


I know, I know, still no pictures of babies riding on mama.  Only one tried it this morning, and mom was scratching for food so it fell off again.  Maybe I should try and figure out how to do video.

This one found something tasty and stood still long enough for a nice closeup.

I've heard you can tell whether they're male or female based on how quickly the wing primaries grow in, but they all look about the same to me right now.  And since several people told me they thought all four aruacanas were male I really don't trust that system.

I'd like to point out that in most of the pictures I take, even with this nice new camera, I get a lot of this:

I actually really like this one, because some of the babies are standing still, and some are being speedy.

The babies are pretty skittish right now.  Mom has taught them to be careful of anything big.  And while mom doesn't mind me at all, the babies hide from me a lot.  I have a plan though.  It may involve crumbled hard boiled egg and lots of patience.

This weekend has been great. The rehersal dinner and wedding were awesome. After the wedding, I ended up at a bbq at my sisters, with more alcohol and food - also great, but it's been a long time since the last time I was awake for that many hours in a row.

I'll talk more about the wedding once people have pictures up. I didn't have a camera with me, so I have no pictures of my own to share.

That's kinda funny, since I have a nice new camera so I can take nice photos! (thanks to Caitlin, yay for friends!)

And since it was made clear to me that people want more chicken pictures, I present to you: my parents chickens:

See? Inside chicken coop pictures with good color, amazing!

And some of the healthiest meat birds I've ever seen:

Standing up and walking around happily at 8 weeks. I think I want some from this hatchery because they could be pastured.

And speaking of meat:

Piggers! So cute when they're little and so tasty when they're big.

I had a fabulous weekend.  We didn't get hiking, but we did go to a wonderful wedding, have a fun canoe trip, and I got my garden all set up (I didn't put in my transplants though, we had a serious chance of frost last night.  Hopefully they'll get planted today)  But I'm going to start this week with more baby chicken photos, 'cause they're the cutest!

Mama ended up with eight (that's a lot! especially for a first time!) baby chicks. 

We moved her and the babies Friday night after dark.  She seems to like the little nesting area we set up for them - she leads the babies inside every evening without any complaints.

She's teaching them to scratch for food:

Which they would figure out on their own, but it so cute to watch!  She showed them where the water was, and picks little bits of grass for them to eat too.

They spend a lot of time exploring in the lilac forest, which is right near their door into the coop:


And when the babies get cold they'll settle in for a nap pretty much anywhere:

I hope you are, 'cause here it comes:



Mama had just one fuzzy baby (and a bunch of peeping eggs) yesterday evening. This morning I think I counted 4 or 5 fuzzy babies under her (it's hard to count, it's just a mass of tiny legs and fuzzy butts) I've been bringing out a handful of chick starter every time I go harass her, and while she still squawks at me, she tolerates me handling her.



She'll probably lead them all off the nest today once she's sure there are no more hatching (and while no one is home, I'm trying not to fidget and worry, she's proving a very competent mom) We did put the chick feeder and waterer right outside the coop so they should have easy access. And tonight we'll herd them all inside, or maybe just watch where she beds down and scoop them up. We're planning on letting them free range right from the start, I'll just be much more comfortable with them sleeping inside at night.

Fuzzy baby chicken watch begins today! We're at day 19 for Mama Blackbeard and I've read at least one source that says baby chickens may hatch closer to 19 days under mama then the 20 days they take in an incubator. The babies can also hatch out as much as 24 hours apart. That's probably part of why they've evolved to be able to last the first 24 hours without food - so mama can hatch the rest of the babies before taking them all off the nest to eat. It's just convenient that it means you can get mail-order baby chicks without them all dying.

Mama has been really good at sticking to her nest - we haven't seen her off it since the first weekend. Well, except for the two - TWO! - times this weekend when our dogs went over to investigate. Can't really blame her for that. The boys have been on the short leashes ever since. In fact the speed that she returned to the nest both times speaks highly for her as a really good mama.

I'm gonna check for babies tonight, and tomorrow, but we'll give her until thursday night on the nest just in case we've counted incorrectly. If there are no babies by then we're planning on moving her into the nesting hall of our chicken coop and starting her on nice, fresh eggs. From what I've read she'll keep being broody until she hatches some babies. Apparently this can be quite a problem for people with backyard chicken flocks that don't have roosters - no fertile eggs can lead to hens sitting on nests for 6 or 8 weeks!

Assuming she hatches some babies in the next 3 days we're planning on moving them into the nesting hall so the babies can have their own feeder of chick starter. Also the people-door into the coop will be much easier to set up with a ramp since little babies won't be able to hop up on their own.

I'm so excited!!

Every day I check on mama blackbeard in her nest to make sure she hasn't been eaten by a fox.  As a compromise with Neil I stand back.  There's only one good viewing point for her nest (other then getting down and peaking right in, which Neil suspects would tick her off).  Last time I checked on her I took my camera (which we've discussed, is sucky, and could use replacing.  But it's all I've got for now)  I'm pretty proud of how well she's hidden herself, which is the major reason we aren't trying to move her:



This part of our yard is what I refer to as our "tornado damage zone" it's a mess.  And it's going to be a pain to cleanup because a lot of it is wet.  Can you see mam?  She's in the center.  Here, let's look closer:



Crap, I used the high resolution, but this picture is getting grainy.  You actually can see her in this shot, if you know what you're looking for.  She's a brown pine needle colored chicken, hiding under a lot of blown down pine branches...

Ok, try this:



Those arrows are pointing at her tail, sticking out of the little cave she's snuggled down into.  She's actually moved further under the branches these last few days.  It's been raining, this is one dedicated mama chicken...

So yeah, hopefully all this dedication will pay off and she'll hatch some cute baby chickens!

In other news, I'm hoping to go to the NH Sheep and Wool festival this weekend.  I'm really hoping to wear my new Petal top (that's the teal sparkly one) but it's only 75% done right now...

No question about it now, here's my proof:

1) Bluets

I LOVE them.

2) Garden beds:

I'm calling them "rustic" and I enjoy that we didn't have to buy anything to build them. The bed for my sweet corn still needs a second layer of logs (Neil has to sharpen his chainsaw first, to get logs the correct length) and we're going to splurge and buy some rich compost to mix with topsoil from elsewhere on our property for the top layer. The bottom layer (seen here) is some wonderful (free) horse manure. But it's only about half composted and therefore still hot (literally, it heats up as it decays) it'd be bad to plant in right now, but we're putting down a bottom layer of it as our long term soil enrichment plan.

3) We have a broody hen!
At the beginning of last week I commented to Neil that we were getting fewer green eggs then usual. And that with the warmth and the longer days I wouldn't be surprised to see some of our heritage breed birds start to brood. It was only two days later that we were one araucana short at the nighttime count (I count my birds almost every night after I close the door) But with free range birds we couldn't be certain whether she was brooding somewhere or just eaten by a fox.
Well Sunday she came running out of the woods behaving strangely enough to catch Neil's attention. She did a quick circle around the yard making funny hen noises before running into the coop and eating hungrily. I was just beginning to wonder how long it would be ok for her to be off the nest when she vanished back down into the wooded area. She couldn't have been off the nest more than 5 minutes! She was off long enough for Neil and I to find it (only because Neil was lucky to see exactly where she came from)
So now I'm torn between letting her continue on the nest she's chosen. (positives: she had about a dozen eggs, and not all of them were hers, so she's got a good chance of a good hatching rate, she picked the spot herself. negatives: she's outside at night, and might get eaten by something) and trying to move her (positives, getting her inside and protected. negatives, she might not settle quickly enough and we'd have to start her on all new eggs. And there's a chance she might not settle at all)
So if we're all very lucky I could have some ridiculously cute (make your head explode cute) pictures of mommy blackbeard and some babies sometime after the 19th!

I'm half way finished with the teal and sparkles top. But it's knit in sections, so it looks pretty much the same as it did before.

I kept quite busy over the weekend although nothing was hugely exciting.
 

• Bottled wine, flavors: orange carrot and black currant.

The black currant was sweeter then I expected it to be.  Not dessert wine sweet but very nice.  Good thing too since I have a flat of frozen black currants we picked last year at the Farm Between waiting to be turned into a 5 gallon batch of this wine.  Orange carrot was drier then I expected (but still not a dry wine), nice, light, a bit tangy (that must be the orange) and I think it'll make a great summer wine.
 

• Dealt with egg eater

During late winter one chicken started eating eggs.  This is bad (clearly) and not something anyone has figured out how to fix easily.  Just as I was preparing myself the snow melted and the egg eating stopped.  Since boredom is frequently a cause of things like egg eating and cannibalism in chickens I hoped that now that the ground was bare the hen had better things to do with her time.  But after 2 or 3 weeks we started finding broken remains of eggs in the coop, and when we caught the same hen red handed (or yellow beaked as the case may be) I knew what needed to be done.  Not all parts of farming are cute baby animals and eating delicious food.

• Made cheese

This time I tried a "chevre" style cheese, but with cow milk.  The result is quite tasty, although it tastes nothing like chevre.  I'm a little suspicious that while 10 year old rennet (enzyme) seems to be fine 10 year old cultures (bacteria) are less active.  It's hard to say for certain though, since part of the chevre flavor is (of course) from the goat milk.

I'm also two half-sleeves and some finishing away from finished with a nice, bright, spring, alpaca sweater.  I'm hoping to be done with it by the 25th!

I'm having a better day today, not for any special reason, but mostly because it'd have to try pretty hard to be worse then yesterday.  At least the sun is coming out!  Saturday is supposed to be gorgeous, and I really want to get out for a hike - something besides our standard 1.1 miles up to the round top shelter.  We'll see what we can find!

Yesterday had me so frazzled I totally forgot to mention that we've re-homed Grackle:

He's been the underling rooster since he matured and we mixed the flock.  The lack of drama between our two roosters this winter is visible just by the fact that this guy has all his feathers!  But with the arrival of spring Grackle had been trying to challenge Looney.  The stress isn't good for either rooster and they tend to take it out on the hens.  Our flock of 13 hens isn't really big enough for two roosters anyway, but the challenge is always finding someone who wants a rooster.

Luckily, through the magic of craigslist Grackle has gone off to be the head rooster of a 3 hen flock a few towns over.  He should make a fine lead rooster - I find the ones who've grown up not being in charge tend to make much nicer flock leaders in the end (they get the fight beat out of them early on)