Adventure Chick

Warning:Chicken Heavy Picture Post!!!

Lavender isn't broody any more! And she's almost done with her molt. Lookin' good.
She likes to hop up on this chair and eat the green bean leaves that are growing through the fence. She's the only girl who is light enough to do it and brave enough.

Chickens Dickens

Warning! This post is about chickens! No x-ray stuff AT ALL!! Just Chickens!!!

It rained today and I got some cute pics of the ladies playing outside in the rain/mud. They are officially HENS now. Their hatchday was Aug. 1st 2007. They're not my little pullets anymore (tear), but old lady hens. Imagine being considered old, over the hill, cull-able after only one year of life.

Zela busy hunting worms.

Scratch,scratch, scratch. Peck, peck.



Butter got a little wild in the mud. Your mascara's running sweetie!

"Hmmm, are these good to eat?"

"Yes, mumph, gulp, mmm, tasty!"


Pippa poses for a picture.

"Ahhhh, paparazzi!! Run!"

"No more photos!"

Wet Feathers

I gave my pet chicken Butter a bath!
She loved it!

She took a nap after her bath, wrapped up in her towel, for almost 20 mins.

Dust Bath

It was wet and rainy today, so the girls decided to have a nice, long, relaxing dust bath.

Lavender started to lay again! She layed her first egg, in months, on Memorial Day. Her eggs are the little green ones. It's so nice to have green eggs again!

Knock Knock

I had some visitors to my backdoor today, looking for raisin donations.
Aren't they cute?

This is the flock of five minus Lavender.

She's STILL broody!

Gardening Square

I love, love, love square foot gardening! It's so simple and it makes perfect sense. I'm turning my entire backyard into a square foot garden. So far I have 6 beds with 5 more in progress (I'm not that great at carpentry).

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I have 4 3x3 beds, 2 3x2 potato bed/bins and 1 8x2 trellis bed.

The trellis bed is for tomatos. I have indeterminate varieties. They like to grow crazy all over the place, but with the trellis I (hopefully) can keep them under control.

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I bought my tomato plants from Territorial Seeds. They let you buy single plants at a time (as opposed to other catalogs that make you buy at least three), so you can try a bunch of different varieties without an out of control garden.

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Next year I'll ask to have my plants delivered in early May, instead of late April, because one of the plants arrived frosted and wilted.

As you can see in the picture to the right. The tomato on the far left looks a little dead.

They also had aphids!!! I'm NOT happy about that, because they spread to all my other seedlings. But a quick spray of neem and they're dead green pin heads.

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The picture to the right is a pepper plant post neem spray. The little white dots are the dead aphids. Take that plant suckers!

I hope to build another 2 trellis boxes for my melons. I'm trying a bunch of crazy Asian melons and one from Iraq. I bought the seeds from Bakers Creek Heirloom Seeds.
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The lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, kale and cauliflower seedlings that I planted out last week did not appreciate the 5 inches of snow that fell on Saturday. They are dead. Dead. Dead. It's OK, I have about a hundred more. I'm growing the broccoli, lettuce, ect. for my pet chickens. Broccoli is $2.00 a bunch at the grocery store and they can eat a bunch in about....um....60 seconds.
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The chickies are loving the grass and weeds, that I'm pulling up from my garden. I weed for a few minutes every day and feed them the weeds. Then they lay me some delicious, nutritious eggs!
I'm starting to love weeding.
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I'll try to take some pics of my garden soon.

Spring Chicken

Signs of Spring

My Easter Egger bantam hen, Lavender, is broody!

It's cute, but also kind of sad.

I don't have a rooster and I can't have anymore chickens, so she's sitting on 2 golfballs.

She takes very good care of her golfball babies.
She talks to them, tucks them carefully underneath her and warns the other hens to 'stay away!'.
I've explained to her that I have enough golfballs and we don't need anymore, but she won't listen to me.
I also warned her that if they hatch, she had better take good care of them and not let the golfballs roll around and get underfoot.

These are the nice green eggs she layed when she wasn't broody.

More signs of Spring!

American Cancer Society daffodils. I always buy 5 bunches. I keep 2 and give 1 to my grandma,1 to my mom, and 1 to a friend.

I started some seeds last Friday. They sprouted!