In Which I Am a Sucker for Babies: Our Chick Story

I've been very lax in writing this blog - first I was sick, and then work picked up like crazy, so I didn't get a chance to tell you about the six baby chicks we got the second week of March to add to our flock.  Of course, the year olds decided the babies were something to fear as my daughter tried to introduce the babies to them; They still think they are something foreign when the year olds and the babies are both outside at the same time, but I'll explain that in a minute.  First, baby pictures of the babies.

All six, at a week old.  We thought we knew what they were, but as they grow, we're clueless.

Mighty protector of chickies - or as we call them here, peepie cheepies - he sees it as his duty to protect all of the chickens, no matter their size.

Pretty sure this one is another brown leghorn - the year olds looked this way at a week old. We have one of these.

The yellow ones - we have three of these.

Daughter believes these are Gold Laced Wyandottes - and as they grow, they seem to be looking like it as well.  We have two of these.

At first, I was worried - two of the golden ones seemed delayed in their growth.  Each of them had a couple cases of pasty butt, easily dealt with - even if the chicks do not agree.   For a while, the two of them could fit in one of my husband's hands, as the rest of the baby flock got larger.

As these yellows got bigger, their wings started coming in buff and white, baffling us as to exactly what breed they are.  If you know, please tell us!

here we are at the three week mark.  See the wings?

You can tell who is in charge of THIS flock!

At fur weeks, we took the babies outside for the first time, with the big girls. Rogue, Nip, Magellan were all very curious, craning their necks and looking at the babies like the are a new kind of food.  Baby ran away from the chicks, Roadrunner ignored them completely, and Poppy - well, Poppy took exception to them, coming over and pecking the largest yellow - the one "in charge" above - on the head. Just once, but that was enough. We picked up the babies and took them back inside then before Poppy decided to get more aggressive.

Their first real outing was on Easter. All the chickens got to come out front to take advantage of the newly sprouted grass.  So while the older girls were getting their fill - and begging my dad for the grapes he'd unknowingly gotten out of his car - he didn't know grapes were one of their favorite treats - the babies did their first wander out.  And like toddlers, they stuck close together at first, and close to the humans.

And then suddenly, they all stood still as if dazed; the warmth of the sun was something new to them, and they had never before laid over and spread their wings in what we call the "broken chicken" pose. (Believe me, it freaked us out the first time we saw our now year olds do this - we thought they'd suddenly gotten ill!) It was so funny to see them slowly fall over, lay there a few seconds, and then jump up again.

The other two dogs were equally interested in the chicks - as I've told you before, the oldest dog likes to follow the hens around and try to wash them, and the middle dog likes to herd them together if she's decided they've gone too far.  However, the oldest also relates chicks to other birds - and other birds she likes to catch and then let go.  Luckily, she has a very soft mouth.

Here she is looking sorry - guess what she did? That's right, picked up a chick!  Three humans yelled her name, and she immediately dropped it, and went aside to sit. The chick in question? Perfectly fine.

On Thursday, I discovered this and decided it was time for sure to get a bigger box. Daughter works at the grocery, so she brought home a couple of large boxes we combined into an even larger box.

We thought this was funny.

Here's daughter showing off the five week old shoulder pet!  You can see the lace wing effect starting. She also tells me they are at the "ugly" stage.

New box, the final box before they go into the pen - however, they are still too small for the pen - they could pop right out of the chicken wire!

Still in charge, still keeping an eye on me and my funny clicky small box.

And here is where I have become a sucker. The feed store was having a sale today, so we went over to get a large bag of feed, and a large bag of scratch. Also picked up another bag of baby food.  There, in watering troughs, were the last babies of the year. Buy one, get two free.

Yep. Well, I wanted some black ones,  But wait, there's FOUR in that box!

As I was picking out the babies I wanted, I picked up a tiny one and noticed it had a blood crusted vent. I mentioned it to the clerk, and she said I could have her for free if I wanted.

So this is Freebie.  Yes, that's her name.  If you look closely, you can see her butt is swollen and still a bit bloody, but I had cleaned it off, put triple antibiotic ointment on it, and let her loose. She poops just fine, eats well, and these four young ones picked up o the pecking at grit and grass their first day out with their month older "sisters".

Already hanging out with the big girls.

A bird flew over - and they automatically grouped.

Three of the new tinies.

Freebie is so smart, she's already figured out how to perch!  She is also the only one around with fuzzy feet.  So now we have four more we don't know what they will grow up to be!

Everyone is getting along fine in the box - there's been a bit of dish hoarding by the older chicks, so we temporarily put i a second dish.  But when it comes to sleeping, they've decided separate corners are best.

And such is the story of how I'm a sucker for babies - rather see them come home with me, grow big, maybe become dinner someday than to have them thrown in the trash because they get ill. Our flock has gone from eight, to seven after the fox got Riding Hood last November (Ironic, isn't it?) to thirteen, to seventeen.

Definitely gonna need a decent sized coop.

Call me in November for eggs - we'll have tons!

Nature's April Fool's Joke

After a beautiful, beautiful weekend, including Easter, and a beautiful start to the day on April 1st, nature pulled an April Fool's joke on us all.  At 6 pm, it started to snow.  We got home about 7:45 pm, and in the twilight, I got these beautiful shots of the snow as it formed up on the branches. Nice part? The roads stayed clear!

Enjoy the Pictures!

All Things Change...

As I drove my husband and myself to an appointment today, several cities over, I took a back route that used to be very rural when I was a teenager, and has since become a regularly used route for those who live in one city and work in the next.

The first time I went down that road, I was 16 and with my friends, heading back to the mountains in the very early morning after a weekend in the city. My most memorable time on that road was the summer I was 19, driving through the deep dark of the night on this empty road on the back of a motorcycle.  In recent years, it's been the quickest route to get out to my parent's house.

Before the suburbs spread and encroached, that back area was ranching country.  A small dairy - and offshoot of another dairy the other side of the city - was there and very popular.  Now, I don't know when they closed this branch of the dairy, but just this last year, Karl's closed its doors for good.  Some of my oldest friends drove by this dairy every day; myself, I drove past it at least once a month the last three years. I imagined what could be done with the building, what it would take to buy the dairy building, etc. Of course, I was never in a position to do so, nor was I inclined to live that close to the city again.

Nearby was a creek - a needed water source for a dairy - with huge cottonwoods along the bank, and a small beautiful blue house.   No one has lived in it for at least two years.  Around the corner were some really unique houses - one had a greenhouse/sun room along the front, and the next one down the street emulated the style.  They'd been there since the 1970s, and I never saw one of them empty, until today.

Today, I saw this:

All those lovely trees - gone!  You can see them in piles here on the ground.  Before, you could barely see the little blue house, because it was in the grove of trees.

We could not stop on the way out, but I stopped on the way back.  The fields behind have been graded, all traces of the fences and runs and everything that made up the back side of the dairy was gone.  Even the dairy itself had been gutted.

Holes purposefully put in the walls, the roof, windows broken out - even when no one lived or worked there, there'd been no vandalism like this.  Even if you bought the property today, there would be no way to reclaim these buildings. What a waste.

To make it worse, I was getting the evil eye from the bulldozer driver that was there, so I pulled over onto the next road, the other side of the creek, only to find the amazing houses on the next block looked like this:

Now, I hadn't been down that road since the end of November 2012, but at that time, the houses were in much better shape, lived in and decorated for the holidays.  Just four months later, weather, corporate vandalism, and no residents leave them looking like the pictures above.  I'm sure they're part of the plan to scrape the area to make it more sellable.

Such a waste.  I know all things change, but it is often NOT for the better. 

By this time next year, a subdivision of matching houses with postage stamp yards will likely cram that space, losing the uniqueness and individuality for all time.

Sigh.

Household Experiment: Mini Roll Egg Bake

A couple days ago, we found this recipe on Facebook being shared around for a mini roll egg bake.  Basically, you take rolls, hollow them out like you do bread bowls, and throw in goodies you'd like to eat with your eggs.

Since today was baking day, I thought I'd make some of the bread into rolls instead, and give this a try for dinner.

Finished Rolls

Tops cut off, bread pulled out of the middle, just like making a bread bowl.  

We ate the insides, the chickens gladly ate the tops

I added cheddar cheese and sliced pepperoni to the front ones, and tomato to the back ones.  At this point, I realized I'd made the rolls a bit too small, so I took three eggs, beat them in a measuring cup, and filled the hollowed rolls.

What happens when you do not cut the top of the roll off evenly; the eggs run out a bit!  Opps! But into the oven they went. At 350 degrees, they were taking a very long time, and the rest of the bread was pretty much ready to go in the oven itself.  So I upped the heat to the 425 required for the bread, and just a few minutes later...

The finished items!  By beating the eggs, it's almost souffle like, as the eggs puffed up over the top of the roll.

We ate them, and they are yummy, but I need to make bigger rolls next time.

So, evaluation:

Time - quick, if you don't make the rolls

Quality - good!

Here's the recipe - enjoy!

Ingredients:

· 8 crusty bread rolls

· 2 Tb butter, melted

· Salt and pepper

· Assorted fillings*

· 8 eggs

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 180c/350F. Slice off the top of each roll and scoop out the soft bread inside, leaving the sides of the roll intact. Brush the inside of each roll with the melted butter and season with salt and pepper.

Fill the roll with their favorite toppings*. Crack an egg or egg white on top, season with salt and pepper, and place on a cookie sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes and then cover the pan loosely with foil. Bake an additional 20-25 minutes, or until the egg is just set.

***********

Now, when I went out to give the chickens their bread bits, I collected the afternoon eggs, and found a trend - every time the chickens are stuck inside for the day due to a snowstorm (their own fault, the refuse to go out in the snow), we get an abnormal egg. Usually it's a coloring thing, or an elongated egg - one of our Leghorns just does NOT like being stuck inside all day!

Today's abnormality was a shell less egg. And not only is it missing its shell, it's missing its yolk!  Now, this is rather common when the chickens first start laying eggs and their bodies are adjusting to the whole process, but it is much rarer to find one when they are over a year old. But the snow is melting, spring is coming, which means more outside time for our girls.

Holding the shell less egg up to the light - since it's all membrane, you can clearly see there is no yolk.

What a membrane only egg is like - it's rather odd - it feels smooth, but you can clearly move it around without breaking anything.

So that's our egg, that's our dinner - I also made 16 rolls total, cupcakes, three loaves of regular bread, and three loaves of bread with fresh chopped garlic rolled up in it.  If you love garlic and have never tried it, you should!

Egg count of the day - six, including the odd one.

How Snow Works Here- a Pictoral Review

Once again,  the forecast said snow. So this time, I took some before and after pics.  It snowed all day Saturday, and this is what Sunday morning looked like.

Part of Front Yard before the snow

Front Yard after the snow - not so much here, thanks to the trees.

Side yard, before the snow

Side yard, after the snow

The path I shoveled at 1 am so daughter could get out for her bakery job. 

Sadly, she had to hike down the hill to her car - the church parking lot is our friend this year.

A shoveling assistant as we try to clear the driveway.

Protecting us from rogue squirrels

Helping shovel is tiring work for an old dog.

The view to the East from the middle of road in front of our house.

The view to the west from the road in front of our house. 

You may not be able to tell, but that's a heck of a hill in the snow.

And soon after we shoveled, our neighbor came out and plowed the road.  The sun, the slightly warmer day - now the road and driveway are pretty much down to the dirt again!

Colorado snow - comes in fast, leaves again just as fast.  That's ok - I'm ready for spring.

Simpler Life vs Simpler Times

To put it bluntly, simpler times never existed.  Each generation has had their hard work and bad patches, their criminals and tough lives.  But what we saw as kids is colored by time and forgetfulness, and we remember the better things. We're even worse with history.  So many people romanticize the Victorian era, for example. Not romantic at all. I only worked in a living history museum, dressing and working like the 1870s, five days a week.  At then end of it, I got to take off my long skirts and bustle, go home to electricity and running water and AIR CONDITIONING - there is nothing like summer heat of 101 plus 80% humidity to make you appreciate air conditioning.  But I lived enough of the lifestyle to know - things were not simpler.

I prefaced this blog that I wanted to learn how to live simpler. And I do.  And simpler is truly a state of mind rather than a state of being. If I wanted to live REALLY simply, I could win a lottery, not have to leave the house unless I wanted to, have someone in to clean, my groceries delivered and not worry about money ever again.

But I haven't won a lottery.

So for me, living simpler is being able to walk out to the coop and get fresh eggs, and be greeted enthusiastically, even if I know it's not always for me but for the treats I may have with me - cabbage wins over me for attention every time.  But at the same time, they clearly do know me; they will come to me when I get home from work and they are in the yard simply to greet me.  They'll come sit under my lawn chair or on the table next to me.  They don't do that with my dad or son - they're not here enough - but they do it with my husband, daughter and myself.  They even do it with the dogs, walking up and inspecting them as if they are some oddly shaped breed of chicken themselves.

Living simpler is going to mean getting rid of a lot of the stuff I have and never use.  One of my goals is to gather all the unfinished projects and get them done - either to keep, sell, or give away. It means realizing that my hoard of fabric is going nowhere, and it's time to start using it or selling it - a project I plan to start this weekend.  Same with the craft books and patterns - there's only a few things I want in each, so time to make a copy and get rid of the bulk.

Living simpler would, for me, mean being able to subsist without electricity of need be - a handpump for the well would be great.  Exploring the viability of the other well on the far side of our property is in order for warm weather. We already have an 1890s cookstove in good working order, I just need to get more firewood. I'll start with clearing some from the property, and then asking locally for the trees people get rid of on the county slash days. The freer the wood, the better.

Making more things by hand to alleviate expense and to be healthier for us - that would be living simpler, even though making bread, noodles, canning and drying foods are all more time intensive. That includes crocheted, knitted, sewn items as well. In that aspect, I fell in love with the treadle sewing machine when I worked at the museum, and want to get a nice working one to stick in the lovely cabinet my dad found for me.  I find sewing that way or by hand more soothing,  more creative.

I would like to become financially secure enough to be in a place where my income is enough and we have no worries about property taxes or car repairs, or even if toilet paper is in the budget this week.  Creative financing needs to become a thing of the past.

I would love to be able to garden and grow a great deal of our own vegetables, enough to can like we have in the past, but I am also realistic about that - we chose to live in the mountains where the soil is full of granite and the growing season is much too short.  So I will have to, for this year at least, content myself with growing some things indoors while also visiting farmer's markets and farm stands on my work trips, bringing home the good stuff to can.

But I have noticed, in my search to change life here for a simpler one, that too many people have made simpler life interchangeable with simpler times. As an historian, this bugs the everloving crap out of me. To that effect, I've started a series of articles about the myth of simpler times; the first three in the series discuss life on the plains, living in a soddy. My next set with be standard Victorian times, working my way into the 30s and 40s, through the ever glorified 1950s, up to today.

If you're interested, I've linked the first set here for you to peruse.

The Myth of Living in Simpler Times: Life in a Soddy Part One, Part Two, and Part Three

Just click the links for the various parts.  I bet it's easier to read if you start with part One.

My opinion for the day. And just for a giggle, this postcard I found: