The garden is started

I'm a couple weeks late on my start time, but I finally got a bunch of seeds planted in the basement with two lights set up.  Tomatoes, onions, chives, cabbage, parsley...  I even threw in some sunflower seeds and some basil that were left over from last year just to see if they would grows. 

We planted everything in toilet paper rolls, egg cartons, some left over planting pots from last year, and even some egg shells that I read about online.  My fingers are crossed that I start to see some green sprouts in the next few weeks so that I know this worked.

Chicken Aprons

We finally downsized the flock a little by getting rid of some of the roosters, but the damage was already done to several of the girls.  I ordered a few chicken aprons and last night I got five of them put on the girls who have bare backs.

Silver Laced Wyndotte Freedom

Candling an egg

I finally uploaded a video of one of the last eggs being candled.  This was three or four days before it hatched.  There isn't much noticeable movement until 23 seconds, and if you keep watching you'll see it continue to move until the end of the clip.

Sick mom equals a clingy dog

I was diagnosed with bronchitis several weeks ago, which then became worse and was thought to be pneumonia, which then sprained (or cracked?) a rib and pulled a muscle in my back.  I think that I've been to the doctor more times in the last three weeks than I have in the last two years.  I've never been in such incredible pain simply from being sick and coughing.

So while the doctor has be taking all kinds of medicine to fight a lung infection, get me to stop coughing, help me to breathe, and to take away the pain in my ribs and back, Faith thinks it's a good idea to plop her huge head on to my chest or to drop down on to my ribcage every chance that she gets.

She's lucky that I love her so much.

I guess the weathermen were right

It's pretty rare when the weather reports about snow are correct around here so we stopped believing them several years ago.  We typically go with the "when we see it, then we'll know" theory.

They were calling for 8-24 inches as the days went on, and it did start snowing last night.  I was pretty shocked to see all of this when I looked outside though.

More Chick Pics

We finished our hatch Monday night, with 19 out of the 28 eggs hatching.  We had tossed the 5 eggs that weren't fertile half way through the incubation  process, which means only 4 out of the 23 eggs that we expected to hatch, didn't hatch.  An 83% hatch rate is pretty good, although I feel horrible about those four being developed inside the eggs but not getting out.  I will let the oldest son do egg-topsies to see how developed they were.

Wyndotte's first taste of the outdoors

Norma jeans sits at the window giving me looks every time I get near the coop.  I know she doesn't understand why she's locked up all the time and she simply wants to go find some bugs and treats.

Since I was spending some time outside with the hens this weekend, I decided it was a good time to let the Wyndotte chicks come out of their coop and to experience the fresh air.  They are two months old this weekend and I will probably keep them separate from the big girls for another month.

Blood, Blood everywhere!

This afternoon I decided to spend some time with the birds handing out treats.  I've been pretty sick and didn't like that I hadn't been able to do my usual chores that get me around them, so I was determined to just hang outside for awhile.

Then I happen to look down and see a huge drop of blood. 

I immediately started looking for feathers or a trail of blood, thinking a fox had grabbed  a bird.

More babies!

We did it again!  How can you not fall in love with that face!!!

The eggs are due to hatch tomorrow evening, but between last night and today we have had 10 of them hatch.