Recent Happenings

Happy Wednesday, friends!

It's hard to believe that I haven't posted anything since March 7th. It's been crazy busy around here the past several weeks! Here's what's been going on...

The day after my post about the Silkie chicks, we got some snow. Not much..just enough to cover the ground and make everything beautiful..

The next day, our chicks from McMurray Hatchery arrived..all 35 of them...

Aren't they adorable? Well, they were adorable. They are feathered out now, and looking more like adult chickens. The cute stage didn't last very long.  :(

A few days later, we found one of our Bantam hens was broody and is now on 6 eggs. Oops.. make that 4 eggs - 2 have already hatched!

One chick is light brown, probably an Aracuana. (The eggs she is setting on are not her own, but eggs from our other hens.) 

The other chick is almost entirely black, which means it was fathered by Ian's huge black rooster, aptly named Gigantor. See how massive he is compared to our hens?

You can see Gigantor's chick peeking out from under the Bantam's feathers on the lower left side.  :)

And as if we didn't have enough birds in the house (in the den beside the wood stove for warmth), we bought 16 White Pekin ducklings from our local Tractor Supply.  Ducks are my favorite birds!! :) They are straight run, so we don't know how many males and females we have. Only time will tell.

How cute are they?!

Mimi loved carrying the ducks around the house, providing there was a "duck diaper" (paper towel) under the duck at all times.  ;) She and her siblings did a great job of taming them.

When the birds got old enough (or rather when we got tired of the constant chirping), we moved all of them out to the barn.

On the days when the weather is warm enough, we let the ducks out to graze in the field.  Mimi is getting plenty of opportunities to sharpen her duck herding skills..

But she also makes sure each duckling gets some TLC.. :)

Sometimes, she just sits and watches them. They are quite entertaining.  :)

Ok, enough about the birds. Spring has finally sprung here and that means it garden planting time..at least the early crops.

So far, we have planted peas, carrots, kale, mustard, and spinach..

And, of course, you simply can't plant  a freshly plowed garden with shoes on, right? Barefooting is the only way to go!  ;)

While digging in the dirt, we found this cocoon..

Ian, our resident entomologist, couldn't identify it. So we put it in a jar, hoping that we will eventually get to see what's inside. Whatever it is, I am sure it will be fun to sketch in our Nature journals.

~Psalm 33:5b "The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord."

Have a great rest-of-the-week!  :)

A Thought for the New Week

Just a thought for the new week, friends.  :)

Baby Chicks and Marco Polo

With spring just a few weeks away, it's time for our family to be thinking about increasing our laying hen population.  Last week, we placed a chick order with Murray McMurray Hatchery. They had already sold out of several of the breeds we were looking for and we had to settle for what they had left. So I called several Tractor Supply Co. stores in our area to find out what kinds of chicks they had.

One store had Silkies for sale. Now, we had never raised Silkies before, and I am not one to just go out and buy chickens without knowing what they're good for...as in meat or eggs. 

So I did some research on them: they aren't the best layers, but they are excellent setters and will hatch just about any type of egg: goose, turkey, or duck. And since our sweet little Banty got taken by some devilish critter recently, we are in dire need of a hatching hen. They are also considered the friendliest of all chicken breeds and easily tamed.  From everything I read about Silkies, they fit the bill perfectly.

But being friendly and good setters wasn't all that sold me on the Silkies; I read about their history and, according to Wikipedia (I also read other sources that confirm this info), "The earliest surviving written account of Silkies comes from Marco Polo, who wrote of a furry chicken in the 13th century, during his travels in Asia." And Mimi is studying Marco Polo this year in Term 3 of AO!  A chicken breed that was probably first documented by Marco Polo?? I couldn't resist. And you can imagine her excitement when I told her. I love it when we makes connections like this.  :)  Off we went to Tractor Supply!

Now for some photos of the adorable little ones...

According to Mimi, we simply can't have baby chicks without a Lincoln Log house for them to play in.  ;)

Oh, and chicks we ordered from the hatchery? They arrived this morning. So that makes a total of 35 baby chicks in our den. We have them right beside the wood stove to keep them warm. Needless to say, it's a bit loud in the house right now.  ;)

Have a great day, friends!  :)

Nature Exchange #4 and A Visit from Jonas

Hi friends,

Wow, it's been over a month since I've posted anything on here! I have been busy, busy, busy.  But such is life around the holidays, then trying to get back on schedule at the beginning of the New Year, then Winter Storm Jonas stopped for a visit. And believe me, it took a while for us clean up after he left.  ;) But more on that later.

First, our latest Nature exchange. If you read any of my ramblings on here, you have probably read about our Nature exchanges with my friend Silvia and her family. And you have probably heard me talk about how the exchanges have been such  a wonderful learning experience for our family.

Well, after reading my post about the most recent exchange with Silvia and her family, my friend, Celeste, contacted me and asked if we could do a Nature exchange with their family. 

Now, Celeste lives in California, not far from the shore. And we live in the foothills of the mountains and are a long distance from any beaches. So the thought of having a Nature exchange with her and  her family was an offer we just couldn't refuse!  

The search began...we looked high and low for things we thought her family would enjoy, and her family began to gather things for us.

Finally, we had a box full of goodies to send. We mailed it, and not long after, her family's box arrived..

We were so thrilled with all the ocean treasures! There were sand dollars, crabs shells, a crab claw, all types of shells: pacific razors, sea urchins, turban snails, dwarf olives, limpets, and California blue mussels just to name a few.

They also sent various seaweeds and sponges which are so unique!

Have a look at some of the treasures..

 A pine cone from a Redwood tree and a sand dollar with a barnacle on it.  How exciting to get our hands on some barnacles when Mimi was reading Pagoo!  Actually, the contents of the entire box fit right in with the book.  :)

 Love the ridges on this shell.  

 A "furry" sand dollar! How cool is that?!  :)

After closely examining everything, we decided to arrange the treasures on 2 trays and display them in a prominent place in our house. But where? All of the things that Silvia has sent are on display in our school room. I am happy to report that those shelves are full.  :)

So, where to put the ocean treasures? Mimi decided the best place would be on the baker's rack beside our dining room table.  We all agreed it would be the perfect spot, complete with magnifying glasses.  :)

Mimi has dubbed it our "Ocean Museum". Love that.  :)

Since we haven't had much opportunity to do any Nature sketching in the dead of winter, this exchange has provided us with many different things to sketch..

Thanks again for such a treat, Celeste.  :)

Speaking of Nature, I mentioned Winter Storm Jonas and wanted to share some of the photos of his visit. It's hard to tell how much snow we got because of the high winds, but hubby estimated 30 inches. For all of my warm weather readers, enjoy!  :)

This was only one hour into the storm..

It came down fast and furious.. 

White-out conditions, but thank the Lord, we didn't lose power. However, we were prepared for a power outage: we had plenty of eggs on hand. Why eggs, you ask? Well, since we heat our house with a wood stove, we could have cooked on it, and would have been eating cooked-on-the wood-stove scrambled eggs for a couple of days, which (speaking from experience) are quite tasty.  :)

After about 20 inches of snow, it was time to bring out the snow blower..

Obviously, our playground was a bit deserted that day.  

Shoveling snow was done in shifts since shoveling 30+ inches at one time is a bit too much, even for my hard working kids.  :)

On the bright side, there was plenty of snow for making snow tunnels..

As soon as Jonas hit the trail, the sky was so blue..

I couldn't help but think of the verse..."The heavens declare the glory of God,

And the firmament shows His handiwork." 

~ Psalm 19:1

  And then it was time for some sledding, as soon as we made a sledding track, that is.

Going down the hill was a blast!

It's the walk back up the hill that is not as much fun.  ;)

Asher decided to take a sledding-and-then-trudging-back-up-the-hill break on the boxwood recliner.  :)

We are expecting more snow tonight, but only several inches. My children are thankful that it won't be as much as last time. They aren't big fans of shoveling snow..at least not 30 inches of it.  :)

Have a great week, friends!