Preserving Summer (aka Nesting)

So this is a lot of what's been keeping us busy lately. There were also swimming lessons for almost half the kids and miscellaneous school prep for the older 5. And all but QB got to spend at least one Tuesday with Grandma C at the cousin's house across the border. But now pretty much all the canning I wanted to do is done (we probably should make more applesauce though) and the official due date is tomorrow, so we're down to the waiting for baby game.

What I love most about this picture though is how much time it represents that I was able to spend with various individual children.

Over 100lbs of butternuts (25lbs pictured here) were collected over five days of swimming lessons at the local park. While the kids in lessons were swimming most of the others played on the playground and one or two kids would help me collect shopping bags or feed pails of nuts off the ground at the park. This gave me time with just about all the kids individually. Later when we dried the nuts in the dryer, it was Dolly who spent hours washing out the walnut stain that was left behind each time we dried a batch of nuts. I'm sure she was happy to see the long range forecast with record temperatures and no cloud cover that prompted the nut drying process to be moved outdoors. Without the threat of rain, we spread the butternuts across the driveway and let the sun dry them for us.

This pail of apples came from the two trees we have, and I got to spend time with Hal and QB picking them up off the ground. Well, I carried the pail and they picked up the apples since they are already a lot closer to the ground and can bend over better than I can currently. :) These apples are the best of what we collected and have been reserved for school lunches. We collected other apples and pears from the neighborhood trees and Granny sent bags of windfall apples from her house to us via Grandpa and Grandma C. Butler was my one-on one applesauce maker - we made 6 quarts, but then ate one quart right away because everyone loved the samples from our canning leftovers. QB especially loved the 'app-sauce!' and in spite of his size, he probably got the lion's share of what we put out for dinner. The plan is to make more since we still have buckets of apples sitting outside the front door, but they can wait until after the baby comes.

The 4½qts of hazelnuts were Ricka and Dolly's specialty. They were my 'hazelnut hunters' and we had a lot of fun wandering the property identifying trees together. Ricka still brings me an odd hazelnut that she finds every once in a while.

PC nearly did all the work involved in making the 10 pints of peach salsa and he willingly helped me pit and chop a whole pail of plums that I needed for later. Emma worked with me to make one of the two batches of plum jam including picking the crab apples in the sheep field that we needed for making the jam pectin. We ended up with a total of 5 pints of plum jam and 4 more of plum jam/sauce (those didn't set up quite as nicely as the first batch).

Dolly worked in tandem with me to make the first two batches of peach jam which was a really fun project because she did all of her batch herself after watching me and copying what I did on my batch. She took a few minutes longer to get her batch off the stove, and ended up with a darker jam that set up better than my lighter colored batch. It was a rainbow after the thunderstorm type of thing and I was really thankful for that because she had worked so hard and thought she ruined everything by letting the jam cook longer than it was supposed to. For the other batches of peach jam I had random helpers that came and went, but we ended up with a total of 16 pints and the kids gobbled one up in sandwiches the first few days after we made the first batch.

The five older kids collected the one pail of pears that we let ripen in the living room for a week before I turned most of them into baby food. Any leftover peaches and plums were also turned into baby food and we ended up with a total of 18 half pints of baby food split between the three flavors. It works out to about 36 jars of store-bought baby food. Again, I had random helpers during the baby food batches, but they came and went and helped while there was something that kept them interested in the job at hand. One of my favorite quotes was from one of the older kids, "Don't worry Mommy, when I grow up, I'm going to do canning too!" And it was immediately followed by a sibling's enthusiastic, "Yeah! me too!".

I think it was rewarding to all of the kids when we collected everything we put up during the month to take a picture and they could see all their hard work in collecting and preparing the bit we did all in one place. And it's rewarding to me to see all my children learning and appreciating the value of projects like these while they're still young.

"Go to the ant.... consider her ways, and be wise: which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest."
Proverbs 6:6-8

The Three Little Pigs - Chapter 1

Our Three Little Pigs

Perhaps the newest story in our life will revive my writing skills... one can always hope. Meet the stars of our latest adventure! Sir dubbed them 'Chocolate, Strawberry and Vanilla' when we brought them home this past Saturday, but I think they're fast earning their own names already. When I'm doing the chores, they get called 'Boss, Rojo and Chip'.

Today I moved them from their stall in the barn out to their yard for some sunshine and grass and they had a blast digging and smacking to their hearts content. Once Freckles got over her initial fear of them, her natural guarding instincts took over, and she has decided they're her personal pets. She tried getting them to play with her, but that resulted in Boss and Rojo threatening to take her on in a wrestling match. In the end peace was established and Freckles took up her post in the pig pen to keep the newbies safe.

Guard Dog on Duty

About a month ago or so, we decided that since chickens had worked out so well for us over the past two years that we were probably ready to move on in our 'farming journey' and expand our horizons a little. Since Sir isn't as excited about my dream of a milk cow as I am, we settled on something a little less time-consuming and work-loaded and agreed on pigs instead. The first step was visiting the local livestock auction to observe and learn what our options might be. Almost every Saturday we'd watch the sales take note of the prices, condition and variety of what went through and then we'd go home and work on reconstructing our barnyard to include a pig pen. Finally one day we registered as buyers, but since we still had work to do to be completely ready, we set our bidding limit pretty low so we'd only end up buying if the pigs were ridiculously cheap. The first week we didn't even bid, the week after that the price exceeded our limit and we backed out of the bidding, the following week we couldn't make it to the sale and then there was last week.

We had plans for the evening, so to save time between the auction and when it would be time to go, we decided to take two vehicles to the sale. That way I could go home and get something done and Sir could run some errands after the auction. He took the two oldest kids and headed to the sale and I was going to join him with the rest of the gang once I finished making lunch and putting shoes on little people. Of course I was running late as usual, and even though I arrived at the auction two minutes before the sale was supposed to start, I could hear the bidding already in full swing. As I herded my little people in the door to the auction ring, I heard the auctioneer slam his hammer and say, "Sold! How many do you want?" and then I heard Sir's voice reply, "Two.". I rounded the corner with my sleeping infant in his car seat in one hand and my foot-dragging toddler in the other to find Sir motioning to me to go pick out two pigs. I plunked the carseat down, let go of the toddler and stepped up to the ring to make a selection on a heartbeat's notice. To buy myself time, I asked for gilts (female piglets) because I couldn't tell if the males were boars or barrows (gelded males) and the ringman ran his grease crayon down the back of the first gilt he found. As she scurried away, I realized she wasn't the healthiest looking piglet of the lot and tried to get him to change her for another, but I guess that was against the rules. The auctioneer said once they put a color on them, there was no switching, but I could choose a third pig for the same price if I wanted. Sir gave me a quick nod, and I picked out two other pigs tossing gender preference to the wind in favor of hardiest looking.

It turned out we got a second gilt and a barrow and once we got them home and in a warm stall with food and water they all looked great. I still have to weigh them so we can chart their progress, but they're smart little guys and have been adjusting and fitting into our barnyard menagerie quite well.

For Hal

This little boy love anything and everything that has to do with chickens. He also learning his colors. I have told him that the egg on the top-right of the photo below is blue. Sir claims it's green. I doubt Hal would understand what aqua or teal or turquoise was though, so we have to settle on a normal color name for that particular chicken's eggs. I still say it's closer to blue. :)

On a white background.


On a blue background

And I shouldn't end a post without a picture of our littlest guy. He still doesn't have a blog name, but I'm working on figuring it out. I'm thinking of doing some name changing around here anyway. Maybe it'll all happen at once.

50 days old and smiling.

Something to Crow About!

(December chicks)

Halfway through December, we decided to take the plunge from the comfortable position of acquiring full grown chickens to the new frontier of raising chicks. We wanted to add some color to our egg basket, and the only Easter Egger chickens we could find, were day-old chicks. The person selling them, claimed to be able to 'feather-sex' them which meant that the chances of us ending up with a better than 50/50 ratio of roosters or hens, would be significantly higher in our favor. So, we bought all the supplies to build our own brooder box from the local feed store and paid the extra $2 per chick for 'pullets' (hens).

(Back row, left to right: Popcorn, unnamed, Flutter. Front chick: Burnside)

Three weeks in, just when we thought we'd gotten the hang of adjusting temperatures, accepting the fact that chicks will scatter ⅔ of their food while eating the remainder and patiently clearing and re-clearing their water dish of the shavings they constantly scratch into it, one of the chicks died. They were all fine one morning, and 3 hours later, one was dead for no apparent reason. We later learned that this 'sudden death' thing isn't uncommon with chicks and thankfully, we haven't repeated the experience.

(the survivors)

We moved the chicks out of the pantry and to the garage around 8wks old. They were technically old enough to no longer need the heat lamp, but that week was the week of our winter deep freeze, so I felt sorry for them and set them up in a bigger box with an oil heater out in the garage. When everything thawed out, I moved them to the hen house along with their heater for another week or so, gradually lowering the temperature settings until they were braving the rest of the winter like all the big chickens.

But by the time I moved the chicks outside, I had some serious doubts regarding whether they were all pullets or not. As time went on, it became more and more clear that Flutter and Popcorn were definitely NOT hens. Popcorn even croaked/crowed at me once when I went in to let the chickens out for the day one morning. And Burnside was becoming a more expensive hen all the while because the city rules are that, roosters are not allowed in our zone. This means we will have to either eat them or sell them for someone else to eat, and our hen was a '1 for the price of 4' deal.

(Burnside)

Today was pretty exciting around here because Burnside laid her first egg! She officially went from 'pullet' to 'hen' status. It was so much fun to show the kids our first green egg. Ricka's smile was priceless. And Emma was so excited, she could barely contain herself. Even stoic PC cracked a pretty big grin when I showed him today's egg carton. Dolly didn't even see the egg because she thought it was a wad of colored paper at first. Even Hal was excited, but he just thought it was a ball and tried to throw it when he finally got close enough to make a grippy-fingered grab at it. It was definitely worth waiting 21 weeks for!

(Leghorn, Australorp & Olive EE)

Technically an Easter Egger chicken is a cross between an Araucana or Ameraucana (both of which lay a blue egg) and any other breed of chicken. Because they are a 'cross breed' the colors that Easter Eggers lay, can be almost any shade of blue or green and can even be light pink! We discovered today, that Burnside is an 'Olive Egger' EE, as she presented us with a very green egg.

Burnside's egg is noticeably smaller than our average egg, but that's just because she's young. Her eggs will get slowly get bigger and should be comparable to the other chickens in just a few weeks.

And now we'll have a rainbow egg selection! So much fun!

Meet Freckles!

We're taking the Small Farm Chicken project to the next level. After unwillingly feeding the local coyote a plump laying hen dinner about once a month, we finally decided a menu change was in order. And that is how Freckles came to join our family. She's ⅞ Great Pyrenees and ⅛ Akbash; both LGD (livestock guardian dog) breeds and her job will be to convince the local coyote that someone else's chickens will probably taste better than ours. Freckles is not quite 4 months old, but she's already 34lbs. In the month we've had her she's gained 13lbs, so by the time she's all grown up she should make a pretty intimidating presence. I should take a picture of her paw prints... they're enormous!

The kids love her, and she adores them all. I find it fascinating at how gentle she is with them. She's still very much a puppy and wants to play with and chew on almost anything, but when it comes to the kids, she is wonderful. Another very interesting thing I've noticed about her interaction with our little people, is that she singles out the smallest child to companion. She will play and interact with all the kids, but it's almost like she keeps a special eye on the littlest of the kids. And when that kid wanders off away from the rest, Freckles is right there with him/her.

I wasn't going to include this picture since I cropped it to get a closer look (as you can see in the next pic), but this view shows more of the surroundings and gives a better story understanding. Here, Ricka had climbed to the top of our latest gravel pile, and just as I was about to go stand closer to her in case she lost her balance, Freckles climbed up to the top of pile too - almost as if she had read my mind. So, I went and got the camera instead.

Happiness and Loyalty


Even sweeter in real life!


Sunshine and Snow

Here, Ricka kept falling down in the snow, and Freckles would stop her own exploring, rush over and see if there was anything she could do to help. It was really precious.
Ironically enough, two days after we brought Freckles home, the coyotes made their most productive hit on our chicken flock taking out 3 hens and the rooster in one afternoon! Freckles is still learning that the chickens aren't trying to play when they go flapping and squawking away from her when she comes close enough to them. She really doesn't mean to frighten them, but for now, we keep a close eye on her when the chickens are running loose just so she doesn't accidentally get too carried away with herself.

Now I've got to see if I can find a copy of Gene Stratton Porter's book to read to our kids since that's what inspired her name. They're going to love it!

Breakfast!

(A double-yolker!)

This morning after everyone else had rushed out the door to school or work, Butler, Ricka and Hal had fried eggs and sausage patties for breakfast. While they ate, I asked Butler, "So, do you like having chickens?". It was clear by the way he was savoring his breakfast, that he definitely liked having chicken eggs.

"Yeah," he replied, "because now we get lots of eggs and we can have eggs and sausages for breakfast!". Then after another bite and some quick thinking he asked, "Where does sausages come from?". "Pigs." I told him.

He was quite for half a minute or so, then wiped his plate with his toast and exclaimed, "So, if we get some pigs, they will lay sausages?!?" "No," I began, doing my best not to disappoint him, "you have to kill pigs to get their meat which you can use to make sausages from." Apparently, that was acceptable, but he was still trying to work something out.

Then, he had it! "How about we can get pigs so we can have our own sausages?!" Of course that would be the perfect solution, but I had to tell him we wouldn't be ready do that for a long time probably. But, we can still eat eggs for breakfast in the meantime.

(MaranX, Orpington, Sussex, Leghorn)