We’ve got peeps. I had tried putting fertile eggs under Sue back in December. Unfortunately, I made a rookie mistake, and so did she. I didn’t change her food when I put her in the broody box; a sitting hen needs a leaner diet than a laying hen, to prevent diarrhea. What she did wrong, […]
The tomatoes are doing well. These were planted the 23rd of January. They’re doing quite well in their four-inch pots. I kind of wish I had started them earlier, but by the same token they’re easier to manage when they’re not huge… and there are a lot of them. I’m going to share some with […]
Our Phoenix hen, Sue, laid a witch egg. Chris found it by the food bowl. From reading up, they’re called “Witch eggs,” “Dwarf eggs,” “runt eggs,” and “wind eggs.” Some people call them “fart eggs.” We think that it may have been her first egg back on the cycle – she had stopped laying for […]
Monday, I was working on cleaning out the chicken coop. Rawnell decided that she needed to lay an egg. In spite of the whole top of the coop being open, she walked up the plank and plopped herself on the nest. I respectfully left her alone; a girl needs some privacy for these things. Apparently […]
I’m working on twisting up a LOT of silk for a project. This is a bobbin nearly-full of twisted singles. It’s a Very Fast Flyer bobbin on my Lendrum wheel. I haven’t done a count, but I’m guessing in about the 1500 yard range. The camera is not off its white balance; the silk really […]
A friend of mine recently asked me how I go about throwing (twisting) my filament silk yarns. Throwing is needed to turn the totally-flat raw silk into tram and organzine; it’s a little like spinning, and a little like plying, but it’s really its own thing. To start with, I wind all the filament onto […]
Today, for the first time, we have three blue eggs. This confirms what I had suspected – our three Ameraucanas have been taking turns laying. We’d been getting two blue eggs a day most days, but the color wasn’t always 100% consistent, and just recently a couple of the eggs were bloody outside (typical of […]
By 5:45 this morning, it had already snowed a couple of inches. By nine this morning, we had nearly five inches. This is really beautiful snow; it fell almost straight down, so it built up on every available surface, instead of blowing into drifts. The coop is covered in a thick layer. The chickens were […]
In order to try and beat the heat, my Dad always starts his tomatoes really early. Last year was the first time he started tomatoes from seed, and it inspired Chris and me to start some of our own. Chris got a little plant-starting greenhouse with a heating mat, and a Jump Start plant light, […]
After several unsuccessful attempts, we finally managed to get our rooster Little Bit returned to the farmer and exchanged for a hen. We picked a lovely Ameraucana, gold with brown and black markings. One of my friends from work, Ron, asked us to name her after him. One of Chris’s friends from work, Ellen, made […]