Daily Life

The new hens seemed to be settling in with the old chooks.     After two weeks in the barn, so they'd know where home was, I let the girls out to free range on a nice day.  I had to think about that though because white hens are much easier to see, so a bit of an easy target for predators.   We'd had snow and it melted, so I was hopeful all would be well.   Unfortunately when I went to tuck them in to the barn in the evening, one of the leghorns was missing!  I looked all over the yard and I couldn't find her.  With sadness, I locked up the barn and decided to keep them inside for the foreseeable future, to keep the other leghorn safe.    Luckily, the next afternoon, the missing hen was fussing close to the barn.  Even more so on the lucky front, she was really hungry and I was able to lure her into the barn with a scoop of food and moving it a short distance at a time to get her into safety.   She's in the barn now, and doing fine after whatever adventure she had.  We've only had a missing hen return after being gone for an evening once before, so it was a happy occasion.  

We had snow squalls in the forecast, with lake effect snow expected to be close to 50 cm.  I figured it was time to put the rest of the garden to bed for the winter.   In the spring I'd purchased 2 bales of straw and left them out all summer to hopefully start rotting.  One way or the other I'd be able to use them for mulch in the fall, but rotting straw already starts the composting process.   I had cleaned out all of one bed and most of the other.   I also planted 46 cloves of hard necked garlic.  It will be interesting to see how many garlic plants actually germinate.  It starts to grow early which always makes me happy.

 I opened the one straw bale and the inside was nicely starting to compost, so I used the straw to put a 6 inch layer of star over both garden beds to let the straw work over the winter.   Also, because every spring, I find a nest in the straw from some unknown animal, I wanted to set up the space in case they needed it this winter too.   Both raised beds are set nicely for the winter.  I left the two kale plants in because they are still growing, will last over the winter and give us fresh greens early in the spring, until they go to seed.

Thankfully, we didn't get 50 cm of snow.  Also, the weather warmed up a bit, and what snow we did have, melted quickly.   I peered out the window one afternoon and the sunset was amazing.   I didn't catch the colours properly because I knew in the time it would take to run outside, I'd miss it, so I took the photo from my window.   The sky was blue, purple, orange and that bottom bit was a glorious pink.    Between the numerous cloudy skies and dusk coming at 4:30ish,  I often miss the rare pretty sunsets just due to timing. 

 I'm totally not impressed with it being dark by 5:35pm!  With the fewer daylight hours, and keeping the chooks inside, the older girls aren't laying eggs right now.  They need about 16 hours of daylight to encourage them to lay.   I could put a light in the barn, but I just deal with fewer eggs rather than do that.   The new leghorns, being young are giving us eggs which is nice.   They are tiny pullet eggs though which makes for some interesting guessing at how many pullet eggs equal a normal sized egg.  Today's eggs were marginally bigger, maybe almost a commercial small size!  Yay for that!

Keeping busy

 I've been doodling around with this year's Xmas cards.  I actually tried to start them in October, so I'd have the choice of putting them into the mail early. We are having rotating Postal Strikes right now, which could end up being another full fledged strike by December.    It's  really odd because it's hardly noticeable because we get so little letter mail anyway these days.  There are ads and flyers but those go into the recycling bin generally before we even look at them.   It also feels odd because I used to be a prolific letter writer with several penpals.  I enjoyed that a lot.

I've decided that I should probably invest in some better water colour paper.   My current paper was all I could find locally and it was fine for several years.  This year however, I'm finding out its limitations and issues.   One technique I was trying really didn't work well and it was a paper issue more than a me issue!   I remembered I had a few sheets of handmade paper that I'd gotten at a paper making class at an SCA event a couple of years ago.   I hadn't used it because I wasn't sure my skills were up to using handmade paper.   The year after I'd made the paper, the instructor did a demo on how to size it with gelatine, so paints and ink wouldn't soak in.  So this evening, I mixed up a batch of gelatine and painted it on the paper.   I seem to remember the person demonstrating this using fairly longish strokes.  I had to use gentle, short strokes on the paper.   I did up 3 sheets and have it sitting between felt sheets.   If I had something heavy to sit on it, I'd weight it, but there is nothing handy right now, so my fingers are crossed and hoping for the best.  Some instructions suggested it could be 2 or 3 days before the sized paper is ready to use!  

I broke down and bought new shoes the other day.   Shopping for clothes is not one of my favourite things, but sometimes needs must.  Anyway, I do like them, but managed to leave them on the floor, nicely out of the way.  I woke up to the little obnoxious cat of my husband's biting at them.   I rescued them and wiped off the cat spit.  I woke up quickly enough that there wasn't much of kitty tooth marks on them, so that is good.   Still not my favourite way to wake up when Kevin the cat is getting into trouble making activities. 

I've almost got the small raised bed cleaned out.   I went at it today because they are calling for snow in a few days. I got enough done that it will be easier to deal with in the spring.  Now just to grab 5 cloves of garlic and finish off the row that I had decided I didn't need to finish.   Hindsight being what it is, I can't believe I made that decision.  That half row won't be used for anything else, so if I don't pop the garlic in, it will be wasted space.  That would give me just under 50 heads of garlic for next year if the crop is successful.

The last bit of autumnal colour.  Taken before we had a storm with much more wind than rain.   The leaves were flying around  making for an interesting visual.   I'm so really not ready for winter to come waltzing in early as they've forecast, or not. Either way, I'd be happy with a late winter.   The long range winter forecast says an early and harsh start to the winter in this area, and then possibly a slightly milder end to the winter, with high risk of freezing rain possibilities.  Somehow that doesn't seem much better to me.  Being on the edge of the snowball means we sometimes get hammered with snow. :(

A cold and frosty morning and new chooks!

It wasn't quite 8 am when I had to head out the other day.  This was the view from my driveway.   The sun was just rising and there was frost on the grass and all the fields.    It was very pretty but just a tad cold out side.   I still had my coat in the car from the springtime, as I sometimes just toss on a sweater or hoodie when I'm running about to the shops.  I keep spare mittens, a toque and a jacket in the car just in case there is car trouble during the in between seasons.  This summer though, I just tossed the jacket in the back instead of bringing it inside, so it was where I left it instead of where I needed it that morning, rather than inside so I could wear it!

My hubby has been bragging about how nice his seat and steering wheel warmers on on his new car.  I sent him this photo of my steering wheel warmer.  Interestingly enough, the mitten photo was taken just seconds after this one, having backed out, parked in the driveway and pulled out my phone.  The sunrise had already faded due to the rising sun.   

 Yes, that is frost on the edge of the windshield.  I had to scrape the windows, which wasn't fun.   I may have had mittens and a toque in the car, but I had moved my ice scraper into the garage in the spring and had to run into the garage to try to find it.   I couldn't find it quickly though, so I had to run inside and grab the tiny hand ice scraper that I used to process flax and sometimes nettle (although a dull butter knife works best for nettle).  We went out today and bought me a brand new snow bush/ice scraper tool since the old one has gone walk about!  It will certainly get a lot of use one way or the other this winter.

We didn't want any new chooks this year.   Honestly, we have 5 older girls and they still lay enough eggs to keep us well stocked and allow a few for co-workers.  Not as many as we used to have, but more than enough for us.   However,  I was chatting at the feed store and we were discussing how they had a chook delivery just a couple of days earlier and a few people hadn't replied to their phone messages, for their chooks, but still wanted them.  They were able to arrange a delivery of ready to lay hens the next day and not only the red sex link layers, but they had a few leg horns available.  I ordered 2 leg horns.  They lay white eggs.   When I do Pysanky (Ukranian Easter Eggs), I have to spend a lot of time and aggravation looking for large white eggs, without date stamps on them.  One year I ended up finding duck eggs.   They were mixed colours, blue, green and white, but they were telling me that their spring duck eggs come from young ducks and that's why they were still small.   Hopefully these girls will thrive and I'll have my own decent white eggs for this spring.   They're already laying little tiny pullet eggs which look so small against the giant brown eggs.