Birds and Eggs

Our bird ladies have been busy.  We've been keeping careful track of our chicken egg count for the past six months, nerdy bar graphs and all.  Here are the totals:

By month:
March: 115
April: 255
May: 257
June: 249
July: 233
August: 234

By breed: 
3 Leghorns (white eggs): 473
3 Auracanas/"Easter Eggers" (blue eggs): 365
2 Silver Laced Wyandottes (dark brown eggs): 262
2 Speckled Sussex (buff eggs): 243

Six Month Total: 1,343 eggs

All that laying tuckered them out!

You probably wonder what we do with all those eggs.  We eat a lot of them.  I make a lot of quiche.  But we certainly didn't eat 1,343 eggs in six months!  We gave some away and at the height of summer I took a regular supply of eggs to the food bank in town.  I'd love to be able to donate more, though, and think that at some point I will expand my flock (new coop and a whole new set of chickens) to be able to feed more of the needy in our community.  The reality is that the chickens have peaked in terms of their laying life.  This is probably the best that they will ever lay, and not only the colder, darker months will affect their lay rate, but their age as well.  But for now, we will bask in their fertile glory...

And speaking of birds and basking in glory...It's about that time of year, when we get a little crazy for our favorite birds---the Baltimore Ravens.  There was serious disappointment in the girls' faces yesterday when they realized there was no football on today.  But they know it's coming, and we are all ready and hoping for a good football season.  We are stocked up on our football favorite foods: Sunchips, brie with fig spread, crackers, peanuts, etc.  I am anxious to listen to Caeley talking about the games weeks after the fact, in way more detail than I could ever remember.  I can't wait to watch her and Meara imitate the Fox robotic icon dance during commercials.  I will chuckle to myself, as always, when the girls comment on the "inappropriate" cheerleader outfits or walk around the house belting, "We are FARMERS, Bum-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-bum!"  (If you watch a lot of football, you know that jingle...it's right up with the fame of the e-Trade baby in our house.)  But most of all, I think I'm looking forward to each of us having our OWN spots on our new, bigger couch.

Five people don't have to fight for three spaces anymore!

Let's go Ravens!

 ps: Ray Rice, please get as many rushing yards in six months as we got eggs!

Diamonds In This Rough

It has been a rough couple of months.  Between my over-employed husband, bouts of a stomach virus (and its reprise), and trying to plug away and finish out the school year, it has been really tempting to throw in the towel....stay in bed...throw the covers over my head and write the rest of the Spring off as a total loss.

But there are always "diamonds" in any rough.  I admit, some of these things are really mundane, and most of them have to do with work and schooling, because I tend to throw myself into work when I want to feel better.  Whether it's the little curriculum gem that brings a new dimension to our dwindling school year, or the joy of finally getting something done...it's those little things that can make all the difference. Sometimes it's just those little moments or small things that ease a burden and make it possible to keep on keepin' on.  

#1: Homeschool Movie Diamonds:  Liberty's Kids and City of Bees

The Liberty's Kids series on Netflix has completely saved our study of the American Revolution.  It isn't that I gave up on my own plans (all the books and timeline work continue) but these videos make the entire time period really come alive for the girls, and they have become our daily soap opera!  They girls literally BEG for the next episode, and we end up discussing issues from the movies quite often.  I know they are really learning and internalizing this stuff more than they would otherwise.  Not to mention, it just gives me a chance to sit and relax with them, which I've needed lately.

We also checked out a movie on bees called City of Bees for our gardening unit.  (The link here is for the newer version, but check the library for the original!)  While the quality of the movie is certainly a deterrent (it's obviously old, and the narrator has a very thick European accent), the girls and I learned more about bees from this ONE movie than ALL the gazillion books we've read about bees since Caeley started Kindergarten.  It basically follows a bee keeper (the European man) through a year of bee-keeping, and he gives a detailed description of the bees, the hive, the activity, etc.  We kept pausing the movie, exclaiming, "I didn't know THAT about bees!" or "So THAT'S what the propolis is!"  Great, great, great, random library find!  Through all the yuck when we were sick, having these two bright spots in our week was really a God-send.

#2: Homeschool App Diamond:  Mental Case

I have my friend Alexis to thank for this one.  It's called Mental Case and it's sheer genius for homeschool parents that don't want a million piles of flashcards around.  (I hear it is also a huge hit with college populations as well!)  Basically it's a flashcard App that allows you to either take pictures, type in, or use voice prompts to enter the data for the front and back of the flashcard.  That means you can either make your own flashcards, OR if you already have flashcards that come as part of a curriculum, you can take pictures of the front and back of the card with your iPad or smart phone and make the cards that way.  Apparently you can also use it on your desktop to enter data, but I haven't used that feature yet.  I have over 500 flashcards for Caeley currently entered in the App, and I can't imagine what these cards, all over my house, would look like.  Using Mental Case prevents you from becoming a mental case.  For sure.

Here's a bad picture, pulled offline, of what the flashcards look like in one "case" in the App.  You can see it is being used to study anatomy.  This is just the view of the case--when you "study the cards" in a case, they flash on the screen one at a time, just like you see a flashcard in real life.

#3: Homeschool Random Book Diamond:  The Story of Salt

It sounds horrifically boring...an entire children's book called The Story of Salt.  But it's fascinating.  I checked it out because it was listed in my favorite book about books, and almost didn't read it because I thought the girls would hate it.  Not so!  There is so much history, so many fun facts, so much cross-curricular connecting that we were hooked.  Get it.  You won't be disappointed.

#4: Day Date Diamond:  How My Husband Rocks

I got a Facebook invitation from Ken to go on a date.  While this sounds utterly unromantic, it was actually super cute.  It was the kind of email I remember getting during the courting phase of our relationship.  Utter sweetness.  It was also special because the reality is that we have seen very little of each other the last couple months due to circumstances at work that have provided him with not one, or two, or three, but really four jobs.  In an effort to make time with me, he recruited some students to babysit, sent his invitation, and we got to go see The Avengers.  What a great movie!!!  And how wonderful to think that Ken can still rock the day date.

#5: Spanish Diamond: Salsa Spanish Movies

Now it's just starting to seem like my kids have been sitting in front of the TV, but I have to mention this one, because it really has been filled in the missing piece of our Spanish curriculum puzzle.  (And I have Alexis to thank again for this gem!)  It's a series of Spanish videos put out by Georgia Public Broadcasting for FREE on their website.  The videos use puppets, familiar stories, and repetition of certain vocabulary words and structures to teach children Spanish.  Not only do the girls love it, but they are using the phrases and words on their own in real life, so the mission has been accomplished.  In another life, I'd be writing an elementary homeschool Spanish curriculum using these videos...

#6: Work Diamond: Finishing Schedules for Next Year

I can't jinx myself and say I'm done...because I am constantly altering and changing our school schedules up until the moment we begin school, but for the most part, I think I'm done with planning for next school year.  Caeley will be in 4th grade, and Meara will be in 1st.  I'm thankful that I did a lot of work cementing my philosophy (in my head and heart) and schedules (on the computer) when Caeley was young, so that each year I just need to "kick it up a notch" and make adjustments based on the girls'  current needs.  But because the framework has been laid, each year gets easier and easier to plan.  All that's really left for this summer (aside from minor tweaks) is a massive book order in July and planning our actual course of study for the Middle Ages.  

#7: Friend Diamond: Loving My Neighbors

I would not be making it through these days without the friends I'm so blessed to have.  Whether it's laughing through Saturday morning Bible study (affectionately known as BS) or ranting during tea time of the challenges of living virtuously, or discussing curriculum and educational theory during play dates, I've been lifted up mentally, emotionally and spiritually in so many ways these past couple months.  I'm encouraged to grow more, think more, and love more through this little circle of women, and for that I'm truly thankful.  

#8: Abundant Harvest Diamond: Eggs and Garden

When all else fails, when the ca-ca hits the fan, you'll find me picking slugs.  Because no one comes out to the garden (they are afraid I'll ask for help) and slugs don't talk back.  When the whining doesn't stop, or Ailin pees on the floor or in her pants for the tenth time in one day (just because it's "funny"), or when the noise in my head is too loud...thank you GOD for the quiet time I get to spend in the garden.  The strawberries are coming in, the tomato plants have shot up with the rain, and the greens just keep coming.  The chickens are doing their thing...our egg count for April was 255 eggs.  I can't believe it.  Where did all those eggs GO?  It's nice not to feel quite so tied to grocery shopping, but more than that, it's nice to see the tangible blessings of the "harvest" when life's other blessings can be so much harder to recognize.

I am really, really looking forward to summer!

Chickens and Easter Eggs

There's lots of news down on the "farm!"  Too much to write in detail about all that's been going on in terms of the garden and chickens.  But I have planted some seeds in the ground, have eaten my first of many salads (please someone come help me eat these greens!), and have played the "just kidding" game with Jack Frost.  (For those who don't know this one: This is the game where you think he's left town for the season,  so you put your hoop house in the shed, plant all sorts of stuff that's not supposed to be planted until after the last frost, and then out of the blue one day, he screams, "JUST KIDDING!" and you're scrambling to get the old sheets and the hoop house out of the shed to cover EVERYTHING.  I'm only a little bitter this year thanks to the hoop house!

Greens in full force.  (The white stuff is to try to keep the slugs off the new plants coming in.)

Other side of the bed from the greens.  New lettuce seedlings.

Garlic coming in up top of the other bed.  Should get about fifty heads in July.  No problem with vampires around here.

Haven't put anything here yet.  Waiting for peppers, tomatoes, and other things that like hotter weather.

The best news though, is that during my break from blogging, our chickens began to lay!  Conveniently, we got our first egg on March 1st, a full two to three weeks earlier than I anticipated.  I was not shocked, though, that our first egg was white.  I included the Leghorn breed (the all-white with red combs) in our flock because they are known for their lay rate and their great "feed conversion ratio," meaning they don't eat much but they lay a lot of eggs for how little they eat.  One of our Leghorns is also laying HUGE eggs.  They are consistently double-yolkers and one, which really looked like an ostrich egg, was a triple-yolker.  Fertile Myrtle!

The ostrich triple yolker.  I didn't want to eat it, but it wouldn't fit in a carton!

It has been amazing watching the whole flock "come into lay" as the number of hours of daylight increases. (Did you know that lay rates are based on how much light the chickens get?  During the winter we will get fewer eggs.)  The Auracanas started laying their blue-ish eggs next, and slowly the two brown(ish) layers revved up at the end of the month, after lots of shell-less eggs dropped under the roost bars.  I can't believe how many eggs we are getting.  Some days we get six, some days seven, and today we got NINE!  There's a lot of quiches in our life right now, and I can't wait to make some homemade mayonnaise and have the luxury of baking with my own eggs.

Our March egg count: 115 eggs. 

Leghorns: 60

Auracanas: 35

Silver Laced Wyandottes: 13

Speckled Sussex: 7

The very first egg.

 

Today's "harvest."

 And the last piece of farm news---ALL the chickens finally have names.  It took a while until they were fully grown, with fully developed combs and feathers, to decide on names and to tell some of them apart, especially the three Leghorns.  We are also starting to see how some of them are different in personality.  Cocoa is the sweetie who loves me even though I think she's the one whose leg I crushed under the coop wheel.  We bonded after her incident because I was giving her treats out of sheer guilt.  Now she thinks I am treat lady, which I am, and is the most willing to sit in my lap.  She's also been voted "Most Likely To Wander From the Pack and Become Hawk Bait."  She's really stupid.  Big Red, originally given that name because she was the first Leghorn to develop her large red comb, is the most precocious of the bunch...the first to come over and see what you're up to.  And "Floppy" (whom I prefer to call "Flopsy")...well, it's kinda obvious why she got her name.  And she's constantly brushing and shaking that thing out of her face.  The little debutant.

Floppy.

On the nicer days, we let the ladies out to dust bathe in the mulch.  Clockwise from the top: Double Stuff, Elizabeth, Oreo (Double Stuff's slightly-more-black sister), Penny (aka: Reed), and Henny.

This is half of the nesting pair of hawks we have in our front trees.  They were much easier to spot before the leaves came in on the trees.  I think they remember the chicken dinners from last year and came back thinking they were going to feed their babies.  

I still love my coop.  Probably more and more each day.  I've been moving it around 2 or 3 times a day now that the girls are bigger and pooping more.  It's the best thing ever.  Really.  I'd give up my iPad before I'd give up this coop.   And the hawk babies will be hungry.