Another couple of months have come and gone and life keeps rolling by, including many blog-worthy events for which I have imagined great descriptions and even taken pictures, but like much of energy, my inspiration to actually write seemed to be somewhat dampened by the late winter grey. With the sun no so shy these days, offering us extended evenings and helping us arise in the morning, I feel my energy and inspiration of returned, at least to some level, and thanks to a great sister in law who made supper for us tonight after taking care of my daughter all day, I have time to compose my thoughts for others to read.
It’s sad to admit that I have to go back and read my own blog in order to remember what I last wrote about, and even sadder when its not even in my browser’s memory anymore! In the last ten weeks or so we’ve adjusted to a fairly major change in lifestyle, as I’ve returned to work at the local Credit Union two days a week. Up to this point, Lorelei has spent one day a week with Grandma or a friend or (like today) with my sister in law, and one day a week with a friend who lives right next to where I work. It has worked quite well so far, but I have decided to put Lorelei into daycare for 1 day a week with the option of a second day – so I’ll probably have her there 1 day one week and 2 days the next week. This will help lower the load on the family and since my friend is expecting a baby on the first of June, I don’t want to put any more stress on her than necessary! Work has been a good thing for me in some ways; it helps me appreciate the time I have at home. Financially it has met our needs well and it gives me a little change of pace. Sometimes I hate having to go somewhere all the time….I’d rather stay home more often, but its probably good for me!
The next day…
Lorelei has adjusted very well and doesn’t mind a bit when I leave her, even in unfamiliar places. Today we’re going to have a tour at the daycare, hopefully she’ll like that just as much! One of her favorite things to do lately is emptying anything she can find, a box, a basket of laundry, her diaper bag, my purse or even my cupboards… What a mess! She is learning to put things “in” too, and I’ve found her toys in my bowls when I take them out of the cupboard, and many mysterious things in the bottom of laundry baskets. She’s never boring to be around anyways! Another one of her loves is shoes, but not on her feet so much as on her hand, she will put her hands inside of a pair of my shoes or Trevor’s and crawl across the room – “clunk, clunk, clunk” giggling all the way!
The weather has warmed up beautifully in the last few weeks and though it’s raining today and we had snow on Friday, the only white stuff left is in the utter shade on the north side of the windbreaks.
On Sunday afternoon it was finally calm for the first time in days, so we racked up all the old plants in the flower/asparagus bed and set them on fire – it made quick work of the mess that took me many hours of raking to clean up last year!
In other outdoor news, operation “Chick Move Spring 2010” was completed last night…. Involving hat mounted flashlights, extension ladders and rubber boots. Almost one year ago, I proudly brought home 22 hens and put them to bed in their shed converted to a chicken house. I soon let them free range around the yard, and started noticing there seemed to be a few less chickens around! By the time I got them all captured and started trying to keep them secure, I had lost 5. I started by just closing the coop door at night after they’d all gone to roost, but the wicked little predator dug under the pen and gained access and still wrecked havoc, so the next night I closed the door to the pen too! In the morning, I discovered another dead and half eaten hen, and realized that only having the door latch at the top wasn’t fool proof enough for this determined little bugger! Turns out it was a hungry raccoon or a few of them….we caught one in a trap and disposed of it, and were able to get rid of another one too, but I continued to lock my chickens up at night to keep them safe. When fall came, it was apparent that their drafty stud and plywood shed wouldn’t be an appropriate winter home, so we converted part of the barn into a “chicken palace” It looked quite nice, and had lots of space, ample roosting, etc etc. It looked great, how could there be any problems? So just a day or two later we left on a trip and the in-laws looked after the chores. There were a couple slight problems – the chickens didn’t want to be locked up after free ranging for the summer, and they found the weak spots in our design very quickly – like the inch of space under the wire mesh. Seriously – approximately ONE inch, and the stuck their little beaks under there and stretched and squished until they got out. A row of straw bales along the outside of the mesh did the trick and they were safe for the winter…or so I thought. The next problem was how come we couldn’t keep the water from freezing – I had purchased a heated water bowl and it had worked great for Sneef the winter before – why did the water keep freezing in the barn? After some frustration, an attempt at replacing each component (a different dish, a different plug, a different extension cord) I discovered upon returning from our trip, that the problem was very simple…the entire barn was wired through one circuit and that circuit was controlled by the light switch at the door – so when the lights went out, so did the power…a few screw-in pull-string inserts later, we had the problem solved! One day in December, there was a terrible blizzard with winds howling from the north at 90km/hour. That kind of wind nearly blew through our house, not to mention the partially collapsed north wall of our 100 year old barn…the poor chickens were pelted with snow for over 24 hours and were quite wet and unhappy. We mounted a heat lamp over the roost and when the blizzard was done, we attempted to get rid of some of the three-foot drifts of snow in their pen and put down another thick layer of bedding. The rest of the winter was pretty peaceful for the hens, although a couple succumbed to unknown illnesses (pretty normal for chickens).
This spring, the girls had the best day of their lives….ok ok so maybe that’s an imaginative exaggeration…
I was able to acquire two beautiful roosters. I’m not 100% sure what breed they are, but they are beautiful and I’m hoping for some nice little chicks later this year!
One of our spring projects is a chicken palace on wheels that I’m hoping to complete this spring – it will be a small self-contained chicken house on wheels (6’x8’x4’tall) complete with roosts and nest boxes. I plan to purchase some electrified netting to make a movable pen for the chickens to scratch/graze in around it – I’m pretty excited, and I hope it will solve some of our predator and missing egg problems!
Ok…this is day three of writing on this post and I’m very uninspired, so I think I’ll leave it at that…..Sorry its mostly about chickens :D
