Crazy is all gone

Phew! Good news, I have gotten over being a "Crazy Chicken Lady." This might seem kind of hard to believe given my love for them this spring, the huge amount of work that has gone into keeping them healthy and happy AND how gosh darn friendly they are BUT yes, it's true.

I have found that once reality starts to set in about creatures you fall in love with as babies, the joy can sometimes where off. I do still love my chickens... most of them... and we will still continue to raise chickens BUT we will not be 100% free ranging ever again?

WHY might you ask? Umm, have you ever been around a larger flock of chickens that are allowed to wander?? Let's just say HOLY SHIT! ;) Give you a hint?? On hot days, the girls could be found in the shade of our back steps. Sweet except when you remember that they don't care where they defecate. Many a trip into the house was prefaced with "do NOT step in the chicken poop"  UGH!

The second reason has to do with the large garden I planted this year. I put a green 'utility' fence around it in the hopes of slowing my chickens down from entering the garden. I knew it wouldn't keep them out but I had hopes it would at least save my plants a little. My beautiful 8 tomato plants grew to great sizes this year and were LOADED with tomatoes. That was, until, my stupid chickens found them. I have not gotten a single tomato out of the garden this year! Luckily they did not find the sugar snap peas before Dax and Dustin ate their fill BUT they did find the corn. Between the deer (one buck in particular) and my chickens, only 1 ear of corn out of 10 rows survived! At this moment, it looks like the only thing we're going to get out of the garden is pumpkins. Good night!

We do have 7 chickens in the freezer ready for eating and this winter, when it's cold and I'm wanting to warm the house up with a slow roasted chicken, we will definitely enjoy them again. Of the 20 we started with this year, we butchered 7, lost 2 two other critters and are keeping 11 at the moment-- although 3 of them are hopefully going to another home as 11 is still a lot to winter.

I'm thinking one day we may try to add ducks to our flock BUT trying to talk myself out of it for a bit and make my reasons something more than "they are so cute!" ;-)

CHICKEN COOP

Can I just tell you that Dustin gave me the BEST birthday present this year???

 Inside my birthday card were the plans for a brand new, big chicken coop!

Dustin has been working his tail off, while also doing 100 other projects,

to get the coop done so all 20 chickens can live together. 

It's ALMOST done!

I am so excited!

 The Chicken Palace

 Taking painting VERY seriously

SEE my paint brush

(this was also the point that I panicked about my new phone)

 Best little painter out there!

Can't wait to paint the door red, add some white trim 

and MAYBE a flower box under the window :)

green grass, dandelions, red barn, cowboy boots, tractor and a camo hat

My handsome farm boy

 

There is nothing like growing up on or near a farm. 

My name is Becky...

... and I fear I may be a crazy chicken lady.

You see, in May of last year Dustin and I discussed getting chickens and found the feed store was already sold out of them. So a friend and I ordered 15 birds together via mail- I got 6 and she got 9. Our Buff Orpingtons are wonderful, sweet birds. They are SO easy to care for and Dax is madly in love with them. "The Girls" got names shortly after...although we don't know which is which... originally I believe their names were Rosie, Sunny, Popcorn, Peaches, Dottie, and Penny. I love their names but they have now, all six, become known as "the girls" or Peaches and Popcorn--the two names Dax came up with of course.

Since these girls have always been so easy, I thought this spring, I am SO getting more chickens. Which then began my investigation of different breeds. I decided on dual purpose birds- they'll lay eggs and we can butcher the excess since I really only want to winter 10 birds. My very good friend, Lynnette and I watching Big R like hawks waiting for baby birds to arrive! We had the date down and everything! She made it first and reported back the breeds available. I then set to deciding on numbers from the research I did online. 10 birds in all- 5 Silver Laced Wyandottes, 1 White Leghorn, 2 Rhode Island Reds and 2 Black Polish- just for fun, they're pretty much ornamental. (You should have heard me rattle off those numbers, I had rehearsed!) And... of course... they got names. The RIR are Rhodie and Butterscotch, the Black Polish are Coco and Puddin (Dax named) and the Leghorni s Uncle Bill's honorary chicken because he named it Foghorn. Actually the conversation went like this:

Me: this one is a leghorn
Bill: You CANNOT have a Leghorn and not name it Foghorn, in fact if it dies I will buy you another one.
Me: sounds like this is your chicken- want to take it home??

Not sure what he said next but ended up being a "no go"

JUMP ahead 3 weeks and Dustin and Dax make a trip to Big R and report that there are NEW breeds at Big R. Which I pass on to Lynnette. Of course they can't remember WHAT the breeds ARE but I decided to check it out. Ha! At this point we have 16, yes 16 chickens!  SO you'd THINK that I had enough, right? HELL NO! We came home with 4 more. 2 Barred Rocks, 1 Black Sex Link and 1 Gold Sex Link. Sex Link means they can tell gender by the color they are at hatching---guaranteed hens.

Once I got home and got everything set up-- the number of chickens we had began to sink in. 20 chickens... we went from 6 to 20 chickens. That's like...INSANE! We had 6 chickens outside in a coop, 14 in a dog kennel in the laundry room and 4 in a box in the kitchen. Big, Medium and Little Chickens. It's nuts. Dax thinks it's the best thing ever!

We are now another 3 weeks into having 20 chickens and we now have only 4 chickens in the house- they are in a bird cage now and in the laundry room. The medium chickens are in the dog kennel surrounded by the baby fence. It works.

I am also getting a BIG COOP! As a birthday present Dustin got me the plans for a chicken coop-- this also spurred the being "okay" with getting more chicks. :)

I am a little scared this might turn into a chicken blog... and it could because...well... they're cute and I think it's pretty neat we're raising our own food!

Any roosters will probably be butchered and we really, truly only plan to winter 10 chickens-- anything over 12 will not happen-- they will be butchered.

Next year I think we'll do just meat birds.

Here they are....

 The last 4- 2 Barred Rocks, 1 Black Sex link and 1 Gold Sex Link

 1st picture of me with one of our chickens

 Kyleigh and her brothers with the chicks

 My fav picture of Dax and a chick this year

 Giving one of the "big" girls a ride

 My kiddos and the big girls

 Little bit of farm girl in her :)

 Our Buffs free ranging

 Foghorn Leghorn

 Either Coco or Puddin

Black Polish

Isn't that an AWESOME hairdo?

 Rhode Island Red and Silver Laced Wyandotte

We'll say this is Rhodie and Silvia... although I have NO idea

 Dax loves the chickens and the chickens are SO good with Dax!

The "medium" chickens home until the coop gets built

New babies!

Today we got new baby chicks! I have been SO excited about our trip to Colville all week long and Dax has been almost as excited. Last weekend I spent most of the day Sunday reading blogs and doing research on different breeds of chicken. Looking for sweet breeds, breeds that were dual purpose so we could butcher any "extras" this fall and what colors I wanted to add to our flock. Cold hardy was almost one of the requirements. Well...for the most part... I stuck by what I was looking for. :) There are still a few more breeds I'd like to add to our flock but I think they'll have to wait for next year or at least later this spring.

We ended up with 10 chicks. 7 that are dual purpose, 1 that is pretty much just for eggs and two ornamental chickens. We have 1 Leghorn (which my brother says must be named Foghorn), 2 Rhode Island Reds, 2 Black Polish and 5 Silver Laced Wyandottes.

Although there is a good chance we will be butchering 1 of the rhodies and 4 of the wyandottes... we're already coming up with names... which could mean a couple of our current buffs will be headed to the butcher in the fall. I'm finding that the ones we got "in mass" may be easier to part with-- we have 6 buffs and right now I can't tell them a part.

Here are some of the pictures so far....

 All 10 in one picture

 SO in love with his babies

 Black Polish

 Sleeping Rhode Island Red

 Sleeping Silver Laced Wyandotte

Foghorn Leghorn

Ha! Although this little girl will be all white and not red like her namesake

So God Made a Farmer

The best Super Bowl commercial ever. I usually watch them, giggle, move on and never remember the commercials again but something about the Dodge Ram commercial yesterday mesmerized me. It could have been Paul Harvey's voice, the pictures included in the slide show combined with the truthful words of the poem. Something stuck. It could have been that I had just been to the memorial service the day before for a farmer in our community and it could be that because of that my Grandpa K was weighing heavily on my heart.

As I reread the poem, it made me think about my Dad. My Dad is not a full time farmer, he's a "hobby" farmer but let's be honest-- there is no such thing as a  fun hobby farm- they are all work- There is nothing fun about putting up fields of hay in the hot summer sun after working 40+ hours a week in a rock pit on a bulldozer. There's nothing fun about having to watch for newborn fawns in the tall grass so you don't run them over. There is nothing fun about chasing cows from the county road back into the corral. There is nothing fun about worrying if your beef is going to sell this year. There is nothing fun about telling your friends price for your beef and hearing "that's too high" even when it's the bottom of the line, break even price. But someone has to do it. Without the farmer, we wouldn't have food on our tables. No farmer, no food.

I also think about living on our farm. About raising a family and livestock on the same acres me grandparents did for some 30 odd years. I think about the gift that was given to us of being able to share this experience with Dax. Not raising a city boy but one who will learn to feed chickens, raise a garden, run in the fields and that not everything is to be handed to you. I may not be the down and dirty dedicated farmer that this poem talks about or that my Grandpa and Dad are but I hope, in some ways, I'm similar to them.

So God Made a Farmer

And on the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, "I need a caretaker." 

So God made a farmer.

God said, "I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the field, milk cows again, eat supper, then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board." 

So God made a farmer.

"I need somebody with arms strong enough to wrestle a calf and yet gentle enough to cradle his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait for lunch until his wife's done feeding visiting ladies, then tell the ladies to be sure to come back real soon and mean it." 

So God made a farmer.

God said, "I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt and watch it die, then dry his eyes and say,'Maybe next year,' I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from an ash tree, shoe a horse, who can fix a harness with hay wire, feed sacks and shoe scraps.  Who, during planting time and harvest season will finish his 40-hour week by Tuesday noon and then, paining from tractor back, put in another 72 hours." 

So God made the farmer.

God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds and yet stop in mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor's place. 

So God made a farmer.

God said, "I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bales, yet gentle enough to help a newborn calf begin to suckle and tend the pink-comb pullets, who will stop his mower in an instant to avoid the nest of meadowlarks."

It had to be somebody who'd plow deep and straight and not cut corners. Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed, brake, disk, plow, plant, tie the fleece, strain the milk, replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week's work with an eight mile drive to church.  Somebody who'd bale a family together with the soft, strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh, and then sigh and then reply with smiling eyes when his family says that they are proud of what Dad does. 

So God made a farmer...

Author Unknown