Roadrunner and Lily

Last December while we were away on vacation a bear broke through the roof of our chicken coop, smashing everything inside to bits and eating many of our chickens. The few hens that survived went to a neighbor and long-time friend who has chickens. One of the surviving roosters went to my grandpa's chicken coop, and the remaining rooster, who liked to sleep in trees anyway, we let loose and hoped for the best. Roadrunner survived, mainly by sleeping in the in-laws carport to escape predators I think. Fortunately they rather like him there, even when he crows by their bedroom window at 4 a.m. Roadrunner was a very lonely chicken and always hung out near people when we were outside, though he never let us touch him. And he always tried to come in the house. He'd stand at the screen door and peck imperiously. If the door was open for a moment unattended he'd dash in and make himself at home. Finally Grandfather had mercy on the poor fellow and asked the neighbors for one of our hens back. So, Lily, one of our flightiest, feistiest hens came back home. They were a sweet couple, him coaxing her to come nearer the scary humans to get food and running as fast as he could whenever she called. She survived alongside Roadrunner for a couple months...

Until the day she disappeared to sit on a nest full of eggs. We'd snagged eight eggs from her nest to put in the incubator (which all hatched--looks like four roosters, four hens) since it didn't look like she was going to sit on them. I left a golf ball in their place. This usually works to keep hens from abandoning the nest when their eggs disappear, because they think it's an egg. Not Lily! She immediately moved her nest. We couldn't find her eggs anywhere. A couple weeks later she only showed up once a day by the deck to eat and drink, so we new she was sitting on eggs. We kept looking for her nest and almost three weeks later found it almost in plain sight, nicely hidden in a corner of the carport under Roadrunner's roost. 

Two days later we were treated to this: 

Lily has Ten lovely chicks :) She keeps them hidden from us most of the time, but we get a sneak peek when they come over to the deck to eat and drink. And we get to hear them chuckling and peeping under the house, their usual daytime refuge.

New Chicks

In spite of our numerous misadventures with predators up here we've decided to try raising chickens yet again. We weren't going to, I think Nate and I had finally had enough. But a certain boy was deeply missing his pets. We've nicknamed him the Chicken Whisperer if that tells you anything ;) Nate was solicited separately by both Grandma Karen and Grandfather about getting new chickens, because they were feeling sad for their grandson. So, we've been fortifying the coop yet again; and purchased some eggs to hatch.

We let each of the boys pick a breed. Brannon wanted breeds that like human contact and are more tameable. After looking at several options he chose D'uccles. Joshua chose "roadrunners" --we have one rooster left up here who's been surviving "wild" since December. His name is Roadrunner.

We haven't had great luck with our eggs so far this year. Out of six Silver Spangled Hamburg eggs we only hatched one chick. Out of seventeen D'uccle eggs there are only three waiting to (hopefully) hatch at the end of this week. You never know when you get eggs in the mail if they're going to grow or not. Getting jostled around by the postal service is quite detrimental to their health, even though they haven't started growing yet. One year none of our mail-order eggs hatched and the next year they almost All hatched (but they were 3/4 roosters!)

Our one Silver Spangled Hamburg chick (roadrunner)

 Since lone chicks don't have a high survival rate we went out to the Grange to see if they had any bantam chicks for sale. Nate said every time he'd been there for birdseed lately they had only had pre-sold chicks. Much to our delight they had lots of chicks for sale, including assorted bantams. Between the boys and I we wanted to buy half the chicks in the bin, but we restrained ourselves and only brought home four :) (and seven red rangers to raise for meat).

The two grey fluffballs Joshua picked out love to nestle on his shoulders under his hair:

 Brannon picked out the tiniest chick there (of course). We are interested to see if it's a Japanese or a Serama or what :)

 Chicks are programmed to peck at anything that moves or looks different. In this case "different" was Brannon's teeth!

 Much hilarity ensued:

The chicks are all settled in their brooder in the kitchen/hallway/entry area and we are waiting to see if we'll get any more new additions later this week. Pretty soon the noise and smell will motivate the fellas (especially the big one ;-) ) to finish fixing the brooder area in the coop so we can move the birds outside. (With our new set-up we had before the bear we usually keep them inside for a week or two, depending one the weather, then move them to the outside brooder. Our 'shop' light that was out there was 'killed' by the bear, although the heat lamps seem to have survived.)

Cousins

"We should get pictures of the kids together before we leave," says one mama to another. "We should." says the second. "We could take them on your front steps like we did last time," says the first. "We could do it today." The second replies, "Yeah. That would be good. You're leaving to soon, it came up fast." Neither mom moves. 

Then Grandma chimes in, "Well, are you going to do it now?"

We look at each other. Sore throats and headaches speak louder than motivation. The couch is very comfy. The three oldest are happily occupied outside, doing whatever they are doing. "We'll let them play a while. We'll do it later, when they get bored..."  ;-)

 "You're going to take our pictures?" Says Joshua. Yup. "Good! I want to pose like we're sword fighting, ok?" Awesome, I say, Let's get a few quick ones on the steps first, then you guys can pose with swords for me. "Ok!" 

 "Take our picture now!"

 "No, Jubilee, you've got to put your sword touching my shield." 

 "Good job Jubilee. Now we're ready Mom."

Jubilee makes her favorite request of Brannon, "Can we go hold chickens?" So, off they go. 

 Joshua, bored of that particular occupation, elects to stay behind. When Jubilee tried to convince him to come along he assured her he would be waiting to join then again when they came back. Then he proceeded to not only climb the apple tree but to go as far out on a branch as he could without falling off...

 (not garbage, bags of leaves waiting to go on the garden:)

 Agmess, one of Brannon's hens

 Holding Coraline. This is the first time I've seen one of the chickens in a nearly featherless molt. She looks quite sad. Jubilee was inspecting the feathers growing in.

We're Back :)

Now for lots of "boring" mundane news of what we've been up to...

On the garden front: I have one large, green pumpkin sitting out in the garden. I don't think there's any hope of it turning orange before the first frost kills the vine. I hope there are some good recipes for green pumpkin out there :) I always kind of wanted to try making pie with it like in Little House on the Prairie. Remember when Ma makes the pie out of green pumpkin and Pa thinks it's apple pie?

I also have heaps of green Serrano chiles. Nate was going to make salsa and never got around to it. I'll have to get him to slice them for me (I Don't like handling hot peppers) and I'll pickle them for him. Though, he hasn't eaten his jalapeno slices from last year. I think he forgot about them.

We missed the fall crop of raspberries. Such a short window compared to spring. And only made two blackberry pies and one jar of syrup. No jam, or anything else. I made one pot of pear butter and froze it in small containers. I started to make applesauce one day and decided to make pie instead. I have six jars of tomato sauce in the freezer and one jar of dried tomatoes. And that's it on the preservation front. I really planned to do much better this year. Oh well.

We tried our first crop of meat chickens this year. I have to say, the processing is not my favorite thing to do (obviously.) But it's worth it to have meat in the freezer. We have lots more to do and will be doing a few each weekend until it's done.

Our "keeper" flock has grown as well. We now have six roosters and eighteen hens. So many pretty and fun boys we have trouble getting rid of them all. So, we need six more hens for the four-to-one ratio that's supposed to be best for them :) Nate really wants some more mille fleur booted bantams (if you find a picture of "Little Red on here that's the breed and color) so we'll probably try to get some eggs from our friends who have them and fill our quota that way. The boys each picked two laying hens to order when we got the meat chicks. Brannon chose "Easter Eggers" which are mixed breed Auracanas, Joshua chose Barred Rocks. I find it fascinating that they both chose the same breeds as last year (I guess I expected them to change their minds :) Sadly their previous hens met sad ends, presumably in predators stomachs. Brannon named his girls "Owl" and "Agmes". Joshua originally named his "Black Eagle" and "Agnes".  Then he switched to "Agmes" and "Agnes". Now the two girls are unnamed because he can't decide what he wants to call them. Now if we can just keep the girls alive through the deadly months of April and May we'll be doing good. I think these must be the "baby months" and the predator moms and dads are extra bold and desperate because we lose chickens in broad daylight when we're all home. It's just when there's lots of new fresh food around and the chickens are eager to be out and about after a rainy, cold winter of sticking close to home or being stuck inside. We're planning to build a covered run for them so we can let them out during the dangerous months and still keep them safe.

Our Madrones and Walnuts have been attacked by web worms this year. Wretched beings. The boys were even willing to forgive wasps for being wasps when they heard that they eat web worms. We cut lots of web worms out to the Madrones that we could reach, and thankfully they didn't hit our fruit trees badly at all, just a branch here and there. (the chickens really liked the branches full of caterpillars we kept dumping up there for them). Our big walnut tree survived pretty well. I've seen several trees in town with no leaves left and web all the way to the ground!!

Nate's been really busy with school while working most weekends. The boys and I are always looking forward to the weeks between terms when we actually get to See him :) He's enjoying working for the fire station. He had a really fun time doing open houses with kindergartners. He said if all public relations were with five-year-olds we would Love to it :D

A Use For Old T-shirts...

...other than the rag bag that is :)

Hula hoop loom

One very happy boy:)

Who gave his first rug to his big brother and is ready to make another for himself:)

Chickens, Visiting Cousins, and Garden Goodness

Sweet new baby! I always forget how small bantam chicks are :D

Big Chicken, guarding the path to the coop
One of our new batch, he doesn't have a name yet. But he does have five hens of his own by virtue of being the only rooster out of 14 not currently in the freezer. He's the same breed as Gimpy and Cora and Coraline and was the underdog in the pack we had before. I really wanted to keep him, he's the only one of that color that hatched out, so I was glad he was calm enough to join the crew...

Two of his ladies:

Part of the happy chicken family. You can see the boss, Gimpy, keeping a sharp eye on me! :)

We had Haylie over for a few hours the other day. After a bit of...um...discussion over what activity to engage in the boys convinced her that riding bikes would be fun...

Joshua stayed close for the most part ;)

And when she needed help to get up the hill...

Hmmm....Pulling didn't work so well. Maybe you'd better get off...

I'll push it up the hill for you...

(She insisted on coming over in her pajamas, Lol! Maybe it seemed more like a party that way?)

More rose lusciousness...

Blaze

Charisma

Dublin Bay *LOVE*

A GIANT squash blossom. Seriously! It's the size of a dinner plate.

Squash leaves

Raspberry lane. One of several!! These things go crazy in the garden. Grandfather was out there with the weed-eater making room to walk...

Radish blossoms...

and honeybee visitors:)