Friday, May 25, 2007

Chickens

started process of becoming potential organic chicken farmers. wednesday, picked up 25 adorable baby chicks from farm-n-fleet. setting up brood area, put water dish directly under heat light. thursday morning, 1 deaddrown chick, 2 verging on death. move water dish. at school, students place bets on how many live chicks kaaren will have by last day of school- june 7th. not too many votes of confidence. bets hover around 12-15. thursday afternoon, remove dead chick #2, pray over borderline dead chickie gasping for breath. all others look pretty good.
meanwhile, the 4 hens: vessie, polla, tyrina and odette are in hen house on lock-down due to bad behavior in the gardens. our challenge- find way to house all these damned chickens in humane fashion.
expediture so far, approx 25$ for chicks, 10$ for chick feed, 3$ for feed tray.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Winter Hell

Winter was hell.....sole source of heat the iron wood-stove with crazy old unlined chimney that crackled with creosote due to our burning green wood. Cant count how many panicky nites we had, with Kaaren running outside to check if there were flames shooting from the chimney while Shermen listened for fire in the walls. Kaaren resorted to showering at Mom and Dad's when the chill got to her. Shermen the trooper, still enjoying the novelty of hot water in a shower vs standing at the kitchen sink in a cooler with a cup the year before.
Still getting too late of a start...with the planting, all the seedlings we started with a grow lite in the cellar were wiped out by ladybeetles. Mint and dill need to be planted in containers so they don't take over whole bed.