Getting big girl feathers

Gold Speckled Wyandotte:

The chicks are growing fast now. In a week or so we are going to have to move them out of thier current cage and into a bigger enclosure. We are also expecting to get another hal dozen or so day old chicks that will be moving into their cage once the older girls move out.

Buff Orpington:

Golden Comet:Guinea Hen, Silver Speckeled Wyandotte, Buff Orpington, Rhode Island Red (L to R)Light Brahma (the yellow one):Guinea Hen, Rhode Island Red (Red is the friendliest and the 2 guineas are the most skittish)

Fishin in the Pond

My sister came up for the weekend. She had a fishing pole with her so we all went fishing in our pond for the first time. Everyone caught a fish. Our pond was stocked with large mouth bass and we now have a breeding poplulation.

My fish:

T's fish:
My sister's fish (she dropped it on accident):

Ckick Day!

I picked up our chicks after work today. We got 8 babies today and are probably ordering a few more with our friends up the road sometime soon. I have them set up in our former lizards cage in the garage.

We have 2 guinea keets, 1 rhode island red, 1 buff oprington, 1 light brahma, 1 golden laced wyandotte, 1 silver laced wyandotte, and 1 golden comet. I will post more pictures with the breeds listed another time.

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Stupid Cats or Smart Cats?

Nora and Monkey

Growing Things

The seedlings are doing well, trays are filling in. I have never had so many trays going at once. Right now I feel I have more seddlings growing than we can plant in our gardens, but I am not sure I have enough to participate in the farmers market. We shall see. I may just end up having lots of plants to give to friends and family.

This was our most exciting purchase so far this gardening season.

Sorry for the bad picture, it is asparagas. These 25 plants will provide us with shoots for 20 years.

Current seeds planted in the trays include:

Lemon Cucumbers

Pickling Cucumbers

Summer Crookneck Squash

Winter Butternut Squash

3 Varities of Eggplant

Connecticut Field Pumpkins

White Pumpkins

Onions

Bok Choy

Swiss Chard

Spinach

Carrots

Beets

Corn

Black Krim Tomatoes

Yellow Jubilee Tomatoes

Rainbow Cherry Tomatoes

Roma Tomatoes

Sweet 100 Tomatoes

Sugar Peas

Snap Peas

Cantelope

Mini Watermelon

Honeydew Melon

2 types of lettuce

3 types of beans

Dill

Basil

Oregano

Rosemary

Blue Lupines

Bells of Ireland

Green Zinnias

Also

Asparagus crowns

3 different types of potatoes

We shall call him Stew.

I think T is going to kill one of the roosters. They are so brutal with our poor hens, so bad in fact the Whitey has run away from home. The two roos gang up on her all day long. They have plucked all of the feathers off of her back and it got to the point that she either couldn't or wouldn't stand up after they were done with her. I saw the last attack happen and eventually, after she did get up she bolted into the woods towards the pipeline. 3 days passed and I figured she had died. Then one morning, when I was walking in the woods with Nora, Whitey came running over to us. She followed me to the yard and ate for a solid 5 minutes. I had to run into the house for a minute and when I came back, she was gone again. She has been living in the woods for about 5 days now, probably roosting in a tree at night. Somehow avoiding any predators. Today we talked about killing off one of the roosters and then trying to get her back into the coop. I am warming up to the idea, but not ready to do it quite yet. Something is going to have to be done before our new chicks arrive.

Peepers!

The peep frogs are out in full force. I forgot just how loud they are at night. This guy was hanging out with me the other day while I was working in the garden. I ended up relocating him a bit so that he wouldn't become cat or chicken food. Yes, the chickens will kill stuff like this. One of the roosters was playing with a big mouse that Monkey had killed earlier that day. The rooster was picking it up with his beak and tossing it up into the air. It was kind of disturbing actually.

I got a sunburn today

Today ended up being much nicer than the weathermen predicted. It was sunny all day with temps right around 70. Tony and I managed to get the raised beds built and installed in the front vegetable garden. It required lots and lots of digging, but I am glad we did it.







We came across some big rocks, and this one in particular nearly killed us in our attempts to remove it.

Our other near death experience came when I decided that it was absolutely necessary for us to dig up the lilac and move it over about 3 feet because it was too off center.

All that is left is laying down some gravel or hay to fill in the paths, and adding the veggies. The rhubarb is already coming up, as well as the chives and shallots. Next to be planted in this garden are spinach, bok choy, cucumbers, onions, and some herbs. Then it is time to expand the back vegetable garden.

School Vacation!!!

YAYYY!!!!!
Sorry for the lack of posts. It has been quite busy, hectic, and stressful the past couple of weeks. I am SO ready for my week off. I haven't uploaded any new pics lately, so I will add more later in another post. Today I am spendning the day not thinking about the hundreds of dollars we have spent on attempted car repairs this last month, or the fact that Tony's car died, or that my car spent the 2 weeks after T's car died stalling evry single day, ar that we had a sheriff at our door to serve Tony paper about the pending foreclosure on the apartment house, or about the short sale we are trying to make on the short sale taking so so long, or about our cells phone that aren;t working because we couldn't pay the bill.......The list goes on and on. Our propane is to low, so I can't use our dryer, the ceiling fan's remote broke and now we can't get the fan to work, the tv remote broke, the wood on the outside of our sunroom is rotted out and needs to be replaced, as well as the garage roof.

But enough complaining (although I am so good at it).
This year I have gotten tons of seeds started and I am thinking about starting even more and attempting to ave a table at the farmers market. I've raked piles and piles of leaves (with some help from my mom when she came to visit), and a lot of the snow has melted. Well, like I said I will post more later with pictures, T and I are makeing raised beds for the front vegetable garden today.

Thawing out!

It's starting. Finally, but slowly the snow is beginning to melt. The chickens were out of the coop today. Our 3 hens and 2 roos. Yup, it's officially decided that the 2 chicks we hatched last summer are both roosters. Bummer, but we did just order some new chicks at the farmers union. 6 more hens on the way and 2 guinea hens. They should arrive in about a month.




The pond is starting to melt along it edges, but the snow everywhere else is still about 2 feet deep. For a while we could walk on the surface of it, but when you sank through you would be up to your knees.

The picture above is the top of our picnic table. I am standing on top of the snow next to it.

I finally gave my girl bunny a hair cut. Her fur was the longest I have ever let it get. I normally don't let it go so long and am lucky i did it when i did, because she was just about to start matting up underneath.

Tony's car is pretty much dead. Here we go again.

It lives.

Still here. Keep thinking things are going to settle down ad that I willl have more time to post. Hasn't been the case. Between wedding dress shopping in Maine, New Hampshire and Connecticut, Easter Dinner, an alternate work schedule, and extra after school odd jobs...... anytime I have in the evenings is usually spent staring at the computer screen in a half vegetative state.

We ran out of wood about 2 or 3 weeks ago and have been using our propane heat which isn't as effective and certainly isn't as economical. It's not warming up fast enough here, and we still have over 2 feet of snow on the ground.

I am back to work at my regular school. We got a new student today who is going to be a handful and we just narrowly avoided a major altercation today. I came home with a throbbing headache and have been pretty useless around the house since then.

I did find 'the dress' and will be ordering it later on this week. Save the date cards also arrived so I need to get busy addressing them.

Promise to update more soon with pictures.

LAZY

Sorry for no interesting posts as of late. I am exhausted and feeling just plain run down. This week are the MEAs at school (standardized testing); our kids react very poorly to testing.
The weather warmed up over the weekend and things are slowly beginning to melt around here. Now we just have to hope that all of this snow melt doesn't flood us out. With the slight warming of the weather comes the itch to start some seeds. I did manage to get some birdhouse gourds started and hope to plant some onion seeds soon as well. Indoors of course.
I am taking Friday off as a personal day and will be heading down to my parents in Connecticut to do some more wedding dress shopping. I can't tell you how badly I just want to be done dress shopping. All of this wedding planning stuff is so stressful.
Anyways I will leave you with a few random pictures and will do my best to be more exciting soon.
Oh, ya. Two of our hens have starting laying again. Hopefully soon we won't have to buy eggs at the store anymore. We did find this neat brand of eggs called Born Free. They have their dates laser etched onto their shells! It's so cool !


**** WELL BLOGGER WON'T LET ME POST AND PICS TONIGHT. I NOTICED THIS HAPPENING TO A FEW OTHER BLOGGERS AS WELL. SORRY, I WILL ADD PICS WHEN IT LETS ME. I HATE POSTS WITHOUT PICTURES***********************

We've Got Fleas!

Snow Fleas that is. These are not the fleas that bite animals and or people. In fact these are harmless decomposers that like cold, wet environments; like snow. They eat mold, fungus and decaying leaves. They also seem to travel in droves and stay for looooong visits. They have probably been around our property for the last 2 months.
Harmless or not they gross me out.