Poppy Night

Poppy taking a nap on our rug.

Singer Featherweight

My neighbor Nancy is a machine quilter. She has always wanted a Singer Featherweight sewing machine. She finally got to trade quilting work for her very own Singer. It runs very well and lives up to its name of dependability.

Hummers Part Three

My husband took these great photos of our happy hummers partaking of the homemade nectar. There are two males and a single female who visit our feeder hourly.

Chick Day is Here

We got our chicks! We ordered 30 pullets (hens) getting 10 of the following Cinnamon Queen, Americana and Silver Laced Wyandottes. All are good egg makers and meat chickens. We made our own brooder from a wardrobe box, metal supports and 2 kinds of metal mesh. We used our camera stands to hold the warming lights stable over the cage. The cage is cat proof for now in our basement.

When we placed all 30 chicks in the brooder box we realized that we have too many. So we gave away 8 chicks to a friend who's hens eggs did not hatch for her this month. She was overjoyed to have baby chicks.

We are planning to raise the rest. We will post photos as they grow up and eventually move outside with the adults in 6 weeks.

Hummers Part Two

We poured out the red nectar that came with the hummingbird feeder since they were not eating it. We mixed 1 part sugar to 4 parts water, boiled then cooled then poured into the feeder. Bingo, we have happy hungry hummers fighting to feed. It is a blast having them fly over our heads to get to the feeder. And they also chirp loudly when flustered by other hummers about the feeder.

April Storm Clouds

Hummers

Last week we proudly put up our hummingbird feeder. We bought the special red nectar and waited. Hummers came but did not eat. So we looked up why. The red stuff taste terrible to the birds. They only want sugar and not the red dyed stuff. So we poured out the red nectar stuff, cleaned the feeder and boiled 1 part sugar to 4 parts water. This new clear nectar we made has been a hit with the humming birds. They sit and eat and bring all their friends.

Tiny Visitors

In our chicken coop I had spilled diatomaceous earth on the floor. The next morning there were tiny half and inch cat paw style footprints in the dirt. Could be mice or skinks? We don't know but are hoping to find out.

Do Zombies taste like Chicken?

That is the question we pondered as we tried to deal with our dead rooster. Our red rooster was killed two weeks ago by our other rooster. We learned you should only have one rooster per flock of so many hens; this prevents fighting and death.

In rural areas you have a "dead pile" to let mother nature take care of disposing of dead livestock.

Coyotes, vultures, rats, skunks etc. will all snack on a dead pile. Our neighbors all told us to take a carcass out into the woods far away from the house. So we took dead rooster out to the edge of our field to be consumed by nature; or so we thought.

Then we noticed our dog next to a dead chicken on the lawn. Yep, it was zombie chicken back from the dead pile. Osa, our dog, was trying to bring it back home. So this time as the sun was setting we hiked back into our woods to bury the zombie chicken. But it seemed our dog might want to bring it back again. So we treed the rooster. Put zombie rooster in a tree fork and hoped nature will find it and take care of it for us for the second time. Zombie chickens smell really bad. I guess in spring time predators are full and pass on zombie chicken.