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.

Yellow Jacket Wasp excitement

I keep trying to write posts of things that I've done over the summer, like some natural dyeing.  However, life keeps intervening with much more interesting and important issues.   A couple of days ago, one of our chooks disappeared when they were out free ranging.   This isn't abnormal as we are in a rural area and there are chicken eating predators: raccoons, foxes, hawks, and coyotes.   We've seen all of them nearby.   When we lose a chook, I always lock up my girls for a few days, so whatever critter ate one, doesn't get another free meal.

However, we have one chook, the grey americauna, who is still skittish and timid.  Most of the other chooks get very friendly in just a few weeks, when they learn that I feed them, but even after almost two years, this grey hen just panics, hides and keeps her distance.  She does tend to go her own way at times,   so when I tried to lock them all in their secure pen in the barn, for their safety, she decided she was going to roost in the open area of the barn.  

Chooks don't see well in the dark, so you can slip in and pick up even the most skittish chook, once they've settled for the night.  We figured we'd just pick her up and pop her into the pen after she settled.  The problem was that we went into the barn too early.   She was on the window sill.  When Al tried to pick her up, she freaked and threw herself forward into the window.  The window didn't break, but it turned out that it wasn't fastened securely.   Just a couple of tiny nails, which turned out to be loose, were holding it in place.   The chook managed to pop the window right out of place. 

She flew out the open window, and as Al picked up the window, to see how to re-attach it, he started to scream and run.   It turned out that all this commotion had disturbed a wasps nest (yellow jackets), which had been built in the barn wall, 30 cm from the door, right under the window.   I got one sting this summer, as I was leaving the barn, and am amazed it was only one.  Al was lucky.  He's fast.  He got into the house and managed to find the fly swatter, get them all quickly, with only 6 or  7 stings.

Before we could get the barn window fixed, we had to do something about the wasps nest.  Al suited himself up with protective gear, and sprayed the nest two nights in a row.  In the dark when the wasps had settled for the night, I went into the barn to make sure the chooks in the pen had food and water.  I couldn't catch the grey girl though, so she was out alone for 2 days and slept in the barn with the open window.   On the third day, we had wicked rain all morning and I couldn't find her, even after the rain cleared.   I thought she'd disappeared in the night, with that open window and all.  However mid afternoon, she reappeared, quite happy to have my company.  

Al and my son fixed the window last night.  It won't come off easily as it's been secured with multiple screws!  Two nights of spraying seemed to have reduced the nest dramatically, so we didn't have wasps attacking..   All this was good because we had some new chooks coming today and we needed to get them into the secure pen.  They need to be confined to their new pen for at least a week, so that they learn where their new home is.
 
This morning I picked up the new ready to lay chooks, called that because someone else raises them until they're about 16 weeks old and ready to start laying.  When I opened the pen door, the grey chook, who'd been without her flock for 3 1/2 days, ran in to the secure pen without issues.   Yay!  Since I only had 3 new girls, I had transported them in a dog crate.  They easily popped out of the crate and into the pen.    They are all safe and sound now.  It made me feel very happy and content to have a secure flock, with few more chooks. 

However, I did see a wasp go back into the nest opening as I was leaving.   I'll have to keep an eye on that!

Blue Eggs!

A couple of years ago we had a costumed Victorian dinner with friends.   Margaret is an amazing cook and she served soup in lovely little two handled cups.   They were charming and elegant to use.   I've been hunting for some ever since.   The ones I've found were either part of a large and expensive set or rediculously priced.  Mainly though, they were just not easily found at all.   Until the other day when I popped into the thrift store.  There were 4 of these bowls, which were priced at 4 for $5.  I couldn't let them not come home with me for that price.   

Oddly enough, the local feed store was taking orders for ready to lay hens at the end of the summer.    I found out because I was asking if he could get in some heritage breeds or cross breeds from the big hatchery.    It's odd because it is the wrong time to get chooks.  Their laying habits are linked to daylight hours and with us getting so few in the autumn, it can mess up the laying cycles.   So he was ordering red sex links - which are fine, but he knew a guy who raises purebreds and sometimes has chicks for sale.   As long as they weren't Plymouth Barred Rocks - (my experience with them is that they are a bit mean and aggressive), I would take two of whatever breed he could get.  It turned out that he had Americauna chicks which would be ready to go about the same time as the regular hens would get in.   Americaunas are an American bred bird, which is like the Aracana but hardier, with less problems.  They lay blue and green eggs.  They were obviously younger than the sex links.  I knew that they might not start laying until the springtime because they weren't the super laying hybrids.   I chose a black and a grey, both pretty birds.   The black grew up to be an incredibly handsome rooster which the breeder traded me for another hen this week.  And ta-da!   I've gotten the first coloured eggs from them.  They are so cute.
It turned out that I did have a photo of the blue tea towel I wove at the guild studio.   What happened is that my phone was acting wonky and it didn't show up for some reason.    After a few more issues, which made it difficult to actually contact anyone, my sweetie insisted I replace it.  When I looked through the newly transferred photos, there it was.     The neutral warp makes all of the towels a little dull but it also meant we could use virtually any colour with the warp and it would look decent.

My favourite banjo strings are discontinued.  Because I can't find a way to contact the company, I don't know if they are no longer being made or just not being ordered by the local music store chain.  Our local store thinks they have found a couple more packets in various stores across the country.  I hope so.   Dean Markley Lights - 9's are very light, easy to pick, sound lovely and bright.    I've been trying other strings but they are either too heavy or made of a different metal which I just don't like at all.   I'm a bit sad about not finding them anymore.

Fox attacks and new kitty!

The other evening we found a pile of feathers and were missing a chook.   It was under the treed area, but I'd seen the eagle hanging out there in the early summer, so I thought it might be a hawk strike.  A little odd for under the trees though.   The next evening, my son yelled and ran outside.   Two red foxes had a chicken and were trying to run off with it.  This was the mess they left behind.  The chook was saved though she's missing most of her tail feathers and a few more besides.    The foxes tried twice more that evening and we managed to stop them all.  Finally I was able to round up the girls and get them into their coop.  I kept them there for 3 days in hopes of getting the foxes to move on.  So far it seems to have worked.   We thought we were down 2 chickens in all, but we heard one who was hiding in a hedgerow and she came home shortly after we called to her.

The orange cat who was lurking about for the past couple of weeks turned out to be two tiny cats, obviously siblings.  One day, the cat on the right came up the the back door and started crying loudly, trying to get in.   He turned out to be quite friendly and he let me give him a quick once over.  He was super skinny.  You could clearly feel the vertebrae and his sides were hollow.   His coat was strawlike and very coarse.   Of course I fed him.  The next day, he came with his brother and I fed the two of them for a couple of weeks.   They started to look healthier or at least less starving.  The one on the right, who let me pet him started staying around here but the second cat, came and went.   Then the brother just disappeared, leaving his brother here, alone.  Our orange deck kitty would sit on our laps and purr and purr for as long as you'd let him.  He'd cry at the door when he wanted food, water or just for some company.  He'd sit on the windowsill all evening until it was too dark to see.   

Phil outside

One evening we were around the campfire and there was some animal making weird noises in the nearby bushes.  It was unsettling enough that we cut our campfire time short and moved inside.   Our orange deck kitty started crying at the door and them moved to any window he could find and cried at those too.   I guess you can see where this is going....   We scooped up the orange kitty and moved him into the garage for a couple of days, until I could get him to a vet.   He was happy  as anything in the garage, not panicking to get out and loved having people visit him.   We figured he was just about 5 or 6 months old, due to his size, but after a thorough check up, where he was vaccinated and declared not likely to be a risk to our own house kitties, he's moved inside.   The vet said he's just a tiny cat, about a year old, who has had a bit of a rough life.   He's going back in a couple of weeks to get those dangley bits removed.   

Phil is another kitty who likes to sleep on wool blankets

  Al named our little orange kitty Phil.  Phil seems to have adjusted quite nicely to being a house cat.  He's gained a bit of weight and his fur is getting soft and silky.

  We never did figure out what animal was making the odd noises but it was just before the fox attacks, but we'll never know for sure.   Phil's brother comes back once in a while but he is much more feral than our new baby.    I guess in all this was a lucky week.  Lucky in that so far we only seemed to have lost one chook in the fox attacks and lucky that a sweet, feral kitty chose us to save him.

One of those days..

I woke up at some ridiculously early hour this morning, with rain pounding on my window and the wind howling.   It was one of those moments which makes you wonder what the rest of the day will hold.   I snuggled back under the covers and amazingly got back to sleep - amazingly  because usually once I'm awake, I'm up and running.

Once the heaviest of the rain stopped, I let the chooks out of the barn.  In this mild weather, they hate being inside.   They don't like being out in the wind much, but they will come and go in this sort of weather but boy, if you don't open the barn door for them, they complain and complain like something is horribly wrong!

When I looked outside to the front, I realized that the culvert under the driveway wasn't happy.  It generally drains nicely, but for some reason, the ditch decided to drain on to our side yard and the driveway!  This has created a muddy mess!  

As I was contemplating this mess, the neighbour's dog, came running across our lawn.  I didn't used to care about their 2 dogs because they were friendly and kept away the racoons.  However, their current black lab is territorial and has started growling at me when I'm in my own yard and raising up a fuss when I go to do anything.    Today though, he went after one of my chooks.  I raced outside and caught up to them 3 feet from our garage.   I was able to get the dog to drop my girl, who miraculously was alive.    She ran off, while I chased the dog off.    After quite a while of searching and now worrying that my girl was hiding away, fatally injured, I found her in my front entryway (note to self - remember to close the door properly!)   While the poor chicken is quite friendly, she doesn't like to be handled, so I couldn't pick her up and she only huddled near the house door, trying to follow me inside several times.  She is a little chewed up, but doesn't look like she has taken any major damage.  There is a chance she may moult again though, from the stress, which means several months of no eggs.   I found a second girl, with possibly mauled feathers in the neighbour's field, far enough away that it looked like she'd been carried off.  She seems to be okay too.   I'm not happy though, with their dogs worrying my chickens.  Dogs will kill chickens for the fun of the chase.    

The rugs are off the loom.   The red one turned out quite nicely.  The last rug, from a navy blue jersey sheet has a glaring error in it, where I treadled two border patterns in a row, instead of a full block.  It is so obvious, that I can only think that my being so oblivious to the mistake was because I was rushing to get the rugs off the loom for the guild meeting.  Bad. Idea!!!!!

On top of everything,  the big box store where we ordered the Formica for our counters has the company's ads listing sizes available.  We ordered two of their advertised sizes and they won't actually sell the sizes as advertised.  Now we need to rethink the countertops.    And... my shoes are soaked from my foray outside, because to save the chook, speed was a necessity.  My barn boots are at the back door and I ran out the front, into that wet, soggy, muddy mess of a yard.  Some eaves trough fell off in the wind and the bathroom tap started leaking and why does it all happen on one day!   On top of everything, I've hardly accomplished anything at all :(

 Blech... not a great day so far.

Spinning, weaving, printing.

The Blue Faced Leicester is plied.  I used the jumbo flyer for my Kromski Minstrel to make a huge skein of about 430 yards.  It's soft, squishy and I'm happy with the spinning.    There is so much roving left that when I eventually get around to finish spinning it, that I'm sure to have enough to do something with.  I just have to convince myself not to dye it before it is all spun up!  I'm spinning up a bit of cotton sliver right now.  I thought it would change things up a bit, but it's white too and really sort of feels the same, even though it's a totally different spinning technique for the cotton.  It is still white.

After a bit of trial and error on the loom, I'm half done the 2nd log cabin rug.  I tried using two colours and I really disliked the lighter tan that I'd used.  It looked grubby to me.  Log cabin uses 2 shuttles, but adding a second colour also added a 3rd shuttle, which I didn't really enjoy using.  I tried just manually setting in strips, which helped a lot, but in the end, after about 8 inches of weaving, I unwove it and started again. 
Next I tried 3 strands of 2  ply rug wool.  It was a dark grey and looked fabulous.  If I'd had a narrower piece on, it would have made great tote bags, but with a rug width, it was just too light weight.   I will either try it with 6 strands of yarn or use it for a warp specifically for tote bags.   I did have this dark red sheet, already cut up into strips and waiting for me to use it.  I'm happy with it and it's a quick weave.

I played around with making a new block print.   This only took a couple of hours to carve.  I tried using an acrylic paint, which is why the stamp is stained black, but I didn't read the fine print on the label.  I'd presumed that acrylic paint, meant just that, but this is matte finish and I'm guessing is kids tempera paint.  It covered well, but had a horrible texture once dry.   I worried it would flake off in time.   I used the purple ink, the only colour I have at the moment, to make a few cards with this print.  I have learned I need a barren, to rub over the applied stamp or carved block , to help keep the ink adhering evenly.  My son who can actually draw, sculpt and paint (really do so, not just dabble like myself) suggested a small paintbrush to add a bit of extra ink to places where it tends to be lighter.   I'm officially out of supplies though, and for the moment I can't do anything new.   There is no art supply store locally, so it means a trip to a nearby city at some point, and I've no idea when that will happen.

Despite it being cold today, the sun is out and the wind is fairly gentle, at least compared to the past couple of days.   The chooks are enjoying the sunshine.  This girl is determined to dig up the front flower beds with her sunning and dust bathing.  She really looked like she was enjoying herself, so I let her dig away.  Hopefully she'll dig up some of those weeds.

Wintery things

It was sunny yesterday.  It was cold too, but the sun shone and the sky was blue.   During the winter we get an awful lot of white and grey skies.  After day after day where the ground was white, the roads were white and the skies were white, the blue sky was so very welcome.

A good sized bird brushed it's wings against the fresh snow, leaving an image as if it had been trying to make a snow angel.   It was big enough to have been at least a BlueJay or maybe even a crow .

The girls came out to play in the sunshine.  They didn't all keep to the trodden paths I've made doing chores.  Some waded through the snow to get to other parts of the yard.   I wish I had a photo of 4 of them sitting on the top edge of the chicken wire garden fence, and the Bedstraw stalks which have intertwined amongst the strands of the chicken wire.   They were sunning their backsides!

  The sky was a glorious shade of blue.  Not that pale, watery winter blue that we usually get.  This was a blue that gives hope that spring will soon arrive.  

Hunkering down inside during the most recent blustery weather, it was too cool in my work areas to finish up my in-depth study, so instead, I set my wheel up near the woodstove and played with some of the fibre I've been washing up.

 Three bobbins of playing around with the longdraw produced 360 yards of 2 ply yarn.   I will just keep spinning until I have enough for a project; a major project.   Maybe this will become a sweater or at the very least hat and mitts. Last year I had 3 pair of mitts in rotation. They were a) a fairly sturdy yarn pair (not all soft and yummy) which held up well for barn chores, b) a somewhat softer probably Shetland pair, which were comfortable for every day use and c) a Merino/Alpaca pair which were sooooo soft and sooooo yummy and which I can totally remember the exact day that I lost one of them late last winter.   However, I still had 2 working pair of mitts at home, so it wasn't an issue, other than I lost one of a lovely pair of mitts.

  Fast forward to this winter when I can find 3 mittens, none of which has a mate.   There is one barn mitten, one medium soft mitten and one Merino/Alpaca blend and only the last one should really be mateless.   At least they are all white, so despite having different ribbing patterns, they all sort of look like they should go together.

New Girls in the barn

Sometime back in the summer, I'd asked Lisa at Westfield what they were going to do with their chickens during the winter.   While they have a lovely, cozy barn there, since the village is closed for most of the winter, I wondered if they were going to keep them or not.  If not, I was willing to give them a home, since I was down to 2 laying girls and one who was retired and just hanging around.  I was told that someone else had said they wanted them.  We talked for a bit and that was that.  I went home thinking about it and remembered that you could order ready to lay pullets.   A few weeks later, I popped into the feed store and yes, they could still get me some ready to lays, especially because I wanted just 4 of them.  A week and a half later, my new little girls came and all was good.

So a couple of weeks ago, I got an email from Westfield about picking up the chickens.   While it was a bit unexpected, I was pretty happy because really, having 10 young birds in addition to my 3 old birds means that they will produce enough heat to keep warm all winter.   These are the new girls, who arrived on Sunday.  They were fine and calm during the trip home, in a dog crate in the back of my pick up.  They popped out into the new pen as if they did this sort of thing every day.  Yesterday they gave me 6 eggs.  A couple of them came up to say hello and not a single hen showed any signs of stress.  They don't even seem to mind having shavings instead of straw!

 The bottom 2 photos are of my summer girls.  They are a couple of months younger than the new layers.   They have a little more white and some of the lovely bi-coloured feathers.   Between the two little flocks, they should make one handsome larger group of very pretty chooks.

I've been feeding them GMO free food which costs only a couple of dollars more than the regular layer mix.   It has 2% more protein though which has made a huge difference in the birds' condition.  As well, the chook who used to peck her egg open to eat it, has stopped.  Even my old girls have started laying eggs with a nicer shell and a more regular size.  I've very happy with it.

So anyone need farm fresh eggs?

Labour Day accomplishments

On the Friday of Labour Day weekend, I picked up a bushel of tomatoes, some extra lemons and a couple of dozen jars.   I spent two days canning tomatoes.  I misjudged on the jars though.  I needed to send someone on a jar run as I just didn't have enough with all the jams and pickles I'd made this year.    I had thought 2 dozen would do it, but needed what I figured would be an extra dozen jars.  We picked up an extra 2 dozen just in case and it's a good thing as I needed one jar out of that carton for the tomatoes.   Since the tomato harvest is down this year according to the news reports, I'm glad to have at least some in the pantry.    

On the Monday, I stripped the garden of all the cucumbers and made more pickles, both garlic dills and bread and butter pickles.  We should have enough for most of the winter now.  The dills I did in spears instead of chunks.   The bread and butters have red pepper, lots of onions and some cauliflower in them to make up for the fact that I was just a bit short of cucumbers.   Several older recipes I found called for the addition of cauliflower, so I decided to try it.  We sampled some from the first batch and they were pretty darned good.  Not nearly as sweet as commercial bread and butter pickles and definitely hotter, due to the addition of a nice little shot of chili pepper flakes.  The second batch doesn't have the hot pepper in it.  I figure we can compare and decide which we want next year but it sure was an easy way to get that "heat" fix without having to whip up a whole meal.

When we shipped the meaties, I moved the new layers into a larger, brighter pen in the coop.  This one has nice roosts and layer boxes and would make a nice home for the girls.  However they had other ideas.  One night I found one of them  out of the pen, in with the older girls.  After shooing her back into her pen every morning, there were two out with the old girls.  Of course, 3 nights later, 3 of the 4 were out with the older girls and I was still scratching my head trying to figure out how they were getting out.   They were staying in the pen all day though so I wasn't horribly worried.  Then a day or two later, I went to feed the chooks and collect eggs and two of them were outside.  Sigh.. I opened the door and let them all out that night and merged the two flocks instead of keeping them separate.  I think I've figured out how they got out but it's too late.   The good thing is that they tend to feed themselves and hardly eat any grain at all.  The bad thing is that the girls were still skittish and one of them won't roost in the barn.  She's chosen a lilac bush just outside the barn door.  However, she'll either get eaten by a predator one night or freeze if I can't get her inside before winter sets in.     I'm not sure how to fix this since she's still pretty wild.  The others come up to me, hang out with the rest of the flock and do the normal chicken flock behavior thing, but this one keeps her distance, spends time alone and doesn't seem to mind being caught out at night in stormy weather.

Pantry Bounty

I found a nice basket of apricots at the local market.  They were just ripe enough to use and not overripe or with too many green ones.   Because they weren't perfect and blemish free, they were a little cheaper than the apricots at other booths.  So I grabbed a basket and when I got home, I made 2 batches of apricot jam and had a couple of leftover apricots for my snack.  Not only is it a beautiful sunset orange but it's very tasty! 

The cucumbers are ripening despite the weather.  I think if we had a bit of properly warm weather we'd have way more cuks, but there were enough to make sweet relish.  Last year I chopped everything by hand, which made a chunky relish.  I liked it but everyone else felt is wasn't "relishy" enough.  This year I ran all the veggies through the grinder.  I tried the meat grinder first as it has larger grind plates but the darned thing wouldn't work empty, so I finally gave up and hooked up the Kitchen Aid grinder.  The relish is a little finer than I'd like but it's good.   It's definitely not chunky.

Beans are getting frozen although we're almost out of freezer space.   With 44 huge chickens in there this year, though 25 were chopped up into parts, there isn't much room for anything else.  I ordered 36 meat chicks and despite counting them as I dipped their little beaks in the water as I took them from their shipping box, I miscounted and didn't realize we had been sent 38 instead.   They seem to always send an extra chick or two.   I also ordered 4 Rhode Island Red female chicks to replace the 4 year old layers.  Over the past couple of years we've found ways to help keep the meat birds in survival mode.  One is making sure that the water and food are far enough apart so that the meaties have to actually walk to get back and forth between food and water.  We also place the food up high enough that they must stand in order to eat and can't just plop themselves down beside the feeder and eat while lying there.   Finally, we've found that having a couple of scrappy little hen chicks keeps the pen lively with activity and it is that little bit more exercise that we think helps keeps the meaties from early heart attacks and untimely short life spans.   Their lives are short enough  and so I think they should at least have a decent chance at a fairly healthy, happy life, such as it is. In the end though, they are still supper.

How Does My Garden Grow?

A couple of days ago, I checked the weather and it looked to be just fine, a good time to plant tomatoes.  So I dragged out the tomato spirals, laid them out nicely and proceeded to put each and every tomato plant into the ground.   Please note that normally, I don't plant them all the seedlings, because more germinate than I have time to process the harvest.   I have planted all 16 tomato plants this year.. sheesh.. What was I thinking?  I mean there are even 5 cherry tomato plants.  That is a lot of cherry tomatoes!  They all survived the last few days of unseasonably cold weather, including frost warnings, thanks to lots of straw and some plastic bag cloches.  

I also got the new blueberries in the ground to replace the entire patch that the bunnies ate over the winter.  They came planted with strawberries for some reason, so I dug up an area for them and now we have an unplanned strawberry patch, which will hopefully start to bear next year.   I found another blackberry bush as well, so that should finish filling up the row for those.    I planted a small patch of potatoes.  Not enough to store for the winter, but hopefully enough for over the summer.  The Japanese Indigo is planted as well.   I finally got the greens in, spinach, lettuce, beets and cilantro.  It's way too late for these, but the garden was way to wet and soggy until just recently.

The Lilacs are just starting to fade.  Over the weekend though, the scent was incredible.  I wish we had some dark purple ones, but they are mainly white and pale purple.  I can't think of a space to put new ones in, so the dark purple will have to wait.

Then, I looked up and the Dame's Rocket was blooming!  Yesterday it wasn't there and poof, today, a beautiful pink spray in the flowerbed.  It's the first.  There will be more coming.

The Bleeding Heart is so pretty this year.  This one is an incredible deep pink.  It's such a quick plant, growing, blooming and then dying back before mid summer. 

Yesterday I was able to finish spinning up the second bobbin of the Black North Country Cheviot fibre.   Today, I plied it together.  There is just under 250 yards here of woollen spun yarn.    It's black but the sun is washing out the colour.  It's  outerwear yarn, soft enough but not something I really want to cuddle up with.  There is still about half of the roving left, so a few more skeins to come.    It will have to wait though as I'm wanting to spin something less wintery feeling right now.

I looked up today and saw these chooks doing what chooks will do... sunbathing in the dirt.  Every year they find new places to dig holes in the yard.  They roll around in the sandy soil, relaxing in the sun.  The first time I saw them I thought they were having some sort of seizures.  The second time, they didn't move for ages, and I thought they were dead.  Nope, just enjoying a sunshiney afternoon!

After the storm..

What a difference a day makes!  Yesterday I woke up to falling snow and it just kept coming down, all day.   We got over a foot of snow, which isn't really a lot of snow, but in our area, it tends to come a bit here and a bit there and builds up slowly, giving one a chance to acclimatize to winter.

 The snowblower wasn't working so the boys had to shovel the drive the old fashioned way so sweetie could get the truck in the driveway to pick up my son for work.   Then today, with the glorious sunshine beating down, I went outside to play for a bit.  All of a sudden I heard a noise, and look what I saw coming around the corner of the house.  Apparently it was an easy fix!  He did a 3 pass run to the coop and made it easy for me to get out to feed the girls and collect the eggs.  

One of the girls was brave enough to venture out on the newly made path.  Last year they were all out and about in the snow, but we had so little, it really wasn't a hindrance to them.  This year though, we've had much more, as well it's been much colder only the bravest, biggest girl has made the rounds when there has been snow on the ground.  

   


On the few sunny days we've had, I've found this grey girl sunning herself in front of the door. 



Despite the early morning temperature of -20, the rare blue sky was something to behold.  I thought that as it warmed up, the sky would turn an insipid pale whitish, watery blue as it often does, but thankfully, it stayed a nice, deep blue.   It was just lovely outside.

This is one of my favourite things this time of year.  The colour and definition of the buds against the sky.  Like the snow banks turning grey, the slush and the strong, warm sun, these buds are signs that Mother Nature has not forgotten us and that spring is really, just around the corner.

Eight and a Half Weeks

Exactly eight and a half weeks ago, I popped into the local feed store to pick up the chicks that I'd ordered. We only ordered  meaties this year as we decided that the layer flock was big enough for the moment.   They are such cute, delicate, fluffy babies.  Noisy though for sure!  Somehow it always surprises me that a chorus of those tiny peeps adds up to such a big noise!

We were lucky this year with a number of factors, which helped with good growing conditions.  The weather was warm enough that I could turn the heat lights off earlier than I normally do.  This meant the beasts had to actually sleep at night, rather than have enough light to eat all night.  I'd ordered unsexed chicks.  This means that they tend to get along better.  The females are smaller and some of them don't grow as quickly.  We had two who were really active and kept stirring up the rest, so they got a bit of exercise.   Healthier birds for all that.         

  This morning, at stupid early, we loaded them up for the drive to the processing plant.  It's not a horribly nice thing to think about, but they have lived a good life for their time.  I'll admit that by 7 weeks of age, they become work, eating, drinking and pooping an awful lot.  They grow so crazy fast it's almost scary.  You can see why warnings go out about the risks of the chicken industry relying on too small a genetic pool, should a disasterous health issue arise.   However, you can also why has come about.  In order to feed people, chickens need to be grown quickly and efficiently.   This cross breed is very food efficient!  We let ours grow larger than the industry standard, cause well, we aren't an industry, just filling our freezer for the winter ahead.   Tomorrow morning, that freezer will be filled and we will have chicken on the barbeque for dinner.

The end of March ..

March came in like a lamb and limped out like an old, faded lion.  We got snow and cold, blustery weather, but it wasn't horribly frigid cold, nor incredibly blustery or a huge dump of snow.  It was just icky.  I woke up and the cold frame was covered with snow and a bit of ice.  We had sleet, hail, ice pellets and a little bit of snow, which looked horribly out of place on a lawn which is almost green and almost long enough to need mowing in places.

The poor daffodils looked so sad.  All the incredibly early blooms were bent to the ground.  Were they doing so in a desperate bid to go back to the safety of the rich,dark earth and their cozy little bulbs or just huddling away from the nasty weather?  

The few peas I got into the garden early, liked this weather.  They have already germinated and are a bit more than an inch tall.  I'd love to get the rest of the peas in the ground, if the chooks would let me.

  The chooks were out and about in the snow.  It was starting to melt by the time I'd let them out.  Still, it was such a change from the glorious warmth of the previous weeks.  They were only putting one foot down at a time and holding the other up as if they'd stepped in something horribly yucky and uncomfortable.   They spent half of their day huddling on the deck, hoping I'd pop out and give them treats.   It was a good day to cuddle up with a book and a cup of tea, that's for sure.

Then the other day, on an errand day, I happened across one of my horrible "ooh shiney" type weaknesses.   I can look at a whole slew of antique crockery and what speaks to me is Lusterware.  It's not horrible old, nor horribly collectable and it tends to be rather inexpensive.  But I do love it, in it's variety of colours and patterns.   This small set of 6 cups and sauces was very well priced. I've not yet seen a pattern in this deep blue.  The colour is gorgeous and the pattern is unique and charming.  I was smitten and I'm happy to say, even with the new addition, there is still space in the china cabinet.