Raelee had her 10th birthday in May. Her actual birthday is the end of May, but since there were so many things going on this year, her mom decided it would be ok if she had several birthday parties during the month of May; 1 for friends, 1 for family, one just because and one just for fun. I don't actually remember how many she had, but it was more than one.
Raelee has always said, "I am NOT a girly girl!"
Since she will not listen to papa and I - we will let you decide if she is a girly girl!
Here are a few pictures from one birthday party:
I cannot believe our girl is 10!
So tell me friends and family... is she a girly girl? Please, answer yes or no...
And go ahead - keep trying to convince us, Miss Raelee, that you are not a girly girl!
Let our family and friends decide, are you a girly girl?
I love you - GIRLY GIRL!!
PS: This is written in PINK because PINK is her favorite color!
Steve and I had to have the chicken laying boxes finished by the time they were 4.5 months old.
Last night he finished. The chickie doodles are 21 weeks old now! *WHEW*
I had to research... always researching. What did we ever do without computers??
So I found a man that had used dish pans for the nesting boxes. If an egg breaks or it gets soiled, you just remove the dishpan, wash, put fresh hay in and replace. So that is what we did! I sure hope it works.
Here is the box from the front view.
Each cubby hole is 12"x12"x15" deep - which is supposed to be perfect for our feathered friends.
The view from the top - the eggs you see in there are ceramic eggs. They are to 'encourage' the girls to lay. We shall see.
My girls are supposed to lay colored eggs; browns, blues and greens. I can't wait to see if they do!
Now we just have to install the laying boxes in the coop. That is the last major step of finishing it. We have a bit of touch up paint to do, but it is hot. We will wait until it cools down a bit. The girls don't seem to mind at all.
Neither do the two roosters.
They just crow and crow.
GRRRR!!!
When we first moved here, we plotted out a garden, tilled it, fenced it in to protect it from rabbits and deer, put hay down to mulch it and planted a nice big garden.
I had no earthly idea how it would produce, but apparently, we can *grow* a garden!
Daily, I love the walk outside to look at it just to see how pretty it is:
When you get up close, you can see the tomatoes and cucumbers:
We started the season picking little bits of stuff. Raelee, Steph and I eat most of the cherry tomatoes, we cut cucumbers and tomatoes for summer salads, and we cut cucumber and tomato salads, and we munch on cucumbers and tomatoes, and feed them to the kid, and to the neighbors, give 'em to the senior citizens and when no one else will take them, we give them to the chickens;
By the way, if you like cherry tomatoes, the plants to buy are sweet
100's. The produce by the thousands, the perfect, small, sweet cherry
sized, yums!
As the season progresses, we get a little bit more stuff every day:
And finally, now our daily pick goes somewhat like this:
So we can our take.
We can pickles:
We can tomatoes:
We make spaghetti and lasagne sauce - and can it:
We can more pickles; jalapeno pickles, banana pepper pickles, butter pickles, zucchini pickles, hamburger pickles;
We can peaches, peach butter, and peach jelly;
And we can more pickles;
We soak cukes and guess what? We can more pickles!
And just in case we didn't have enough pickles, we make refrigerator pickles!
And then we go to the garden and what do we find? MORE CUCUMBERS! And look how BIG those babies are!
SO we go back to canning pickles:
And as we do, we look on our shelves and think, "Man we have pretty jars of good yummy food to get us through the winter, but we don't have quite enough yet, so let's grow our garden some more!"
And can we ever grow a garden!
We have a garden that keeps giving and giving.
We have many more days of canning those goodies and stock piling them away.
Winter is gonna taste like summer!
I am off to the farmer's market - they might have more goodies to can!
Everyone has a 'special' chicken, right? Steph has Lexie, her blind chicken, who is now 2.5 years old. And very spoiled I might add...
My 'special' chicken is Ella;
I am not sure when we realized Ella was special, but at some point, I realized Ella could get on the roost, but hours after the other chickens were out of the coop, Ella was not. I would go in to find her and she would be pacing back and forth on the roost, trying to figure out how to jump down 12 inches to the poop board to get out.
Once I put her off of the roost, she realized there were more obstacles; she had to walk down her little ladder to the floor, then walk through that silly door and then down another little ladder to the ground.
It didn't matter what step she had to do next, rest assured she had lost all the details; each one confused her. She stares blankly at each new task - and then looks up at us.
For help.
Raelee and I help Ella. We move her from one place to another, we make sure the other chickens don't pick on her, we make sure we feed her separately, we make sure she gets out in the morning and gets in every evening. And she knows - she stays close to our feet:
We swing with her:
Chelsea guards her:
She is sure to be the first to meet new 'guests':
And she loves to cuddle:
And well, she is definitely a 'special' chicken.
She might not be the brightest crayon on the box, but that is what makes her special.
Have you ever seen a chicken cuddle? Now you have!
I don't think I ever posted a final update on our chicken coop, so here goes!
We have basically finished it. I say basically because we have some touch up paint and some painting to do on the overhang, and a porch to add, but the biggest and most important parts are done.
Again, almost. We still have laying boxes to make - but we will do that this weekend.
This is the front, obviously, and you can see the overhang that needs to be painted. Soon, we will add a little porch on here - that is why it is so long.
Do you see the big pots on either side? Those are full of dirt for 'dusting' boxes for the chickens - and they LOVE their own private dusters! Lol... The trash can there holds the hay I need to freshen the coop.
The east side:
The west side:
The south side - or better known as the back:
When you first walk in, there is a 4 foot area for storage for food and such - and then a screen door to enter the coop:
Inside the coop, we built roosts with the poop boards under them. The poop boards are filled with Sweet PDZ, a horse stall deodorizer, but I use it for a chicken litter box - kinda like a cat litter box, ya know? Every morning, I take about 5 minutes to scoop the poop out (with a cat litter scoop) and toss it in the compost pile.
I put the Sweet PDZ in 2.5 months ago, and have done daily scoops with no changes or additions of Sweet PDZ. It is still fresh and not a mess. Sweet PDZ is natural, compost-able and works like a charm! Absolutely no stink in this coop!
We installed a fan so the chickens can stay cool in the summer heat - they love their coop! They enjoy 'hanging out' in here!
I am using the deep litter method for the floor. I put hay, Sweet PDZ and grit on the floor. Again, no stink in this coop. This litter has not been changed for 2.5 months - I have occasionally added hay and I sprinkle Sweet PDZ over their poop, but beyond that, nothing. The feathers are left over from when I had WAY tooooo many roosters. We are down to two now so no more feathers are flying. Man, that was a mess! I will say though, I need to change it just because it is 'looking' sad.
We have a Poultry Butler Door. It opens at sunlight and closes at dusk. Yes, our chickens make it in before the door closes. Occasionally, Ella, my 'special' chicken doesn't get in, but I have a rooster that crows until I come out to bring her in. Even at 11:30 pm - he crows. He needs all the 'girls' inside and safe before he sleeps. All the others make it in before the door closes! I LOVE this door! Well worth the money!
This is what is always at my feet - my 'special' girl Ella and my side kick Chelsea. Yes, she herds chickens. And yes, she loves Ella!
The only thing we are missing in the coop are the laying boxes. We have two weeks to get them installed and that will be done this weekend. We just haven't gotten it done yet, but the girls are a few weeks from starting to lay now. We will get them all finished before then.
If you missed noticing this, I put chicken portraits on the walls - after all - it is their house!
I 'see' you rolling your eyes... lol... that's ok, it is my coop, and I like it!
And my grand daughter and I added the "Easter Eggs" so we could encourage the 'girls' to lay colorful eggs.
And finally, the name. Are you surprised by what I named it? Lol...
Now you have seen our chicken Taj - but, in the future, you will now hear it being called Justa Cluck Inn.
