The Herbal Gurggle: March 2010

Saturday, March 27, 2010

new house

due to all the peer pressure, i decided against cleaning my house first and just decided to post the darn pictures. here you go suckas!

if this picture looks like a redo form last year, well, it is. creasy doesn the same thing every day as she did last spring: stick her head in the box and wine at the chicks hoping they will understand dog and play with her. we have 4 black australorps, 1 gold wyandotte, 2 brahmas, 4 americaunas and a real live mom who hatched 9 babies at a friends house. we brought here here the day she hatched them and are raising them up until the mom can return to her home. we'll keep half the babies and our flock will be about +15 more layers. The really cool thing about all this is that we are getting a jump on the season this year. we got the chicks 2 months earlier this year, so we'll get eggs starting in late august. next month we're getting 25 meat birds in the mail. that should bring our grand poultry total to right around 50 birds!!

some home corned corned beef and some green sparkling wine complete the spring equinox.

old hens

elders first please. here are the new digs for the old ladies.
ole jeff was here for a lovely week of feasting, unpacking, dice rolling, and some good old fashioned manual labor. here he helps with the design and execution of the run. neil and i finished it off after he flew away back to CO...well, mostly neil did the cage work, but check out the nesting boxes i made all by myself. we relcaimed some redwood fencing to make all the boxes and ramps. we salvaged old fencing for the run and jeff and neil cut fir saplings for the posts. the coop it self if an old rabbit hutch were someone used to raise them up for sale. total out of pocket cost: about $5 in screws and such. this bear proof building has proven to be a life saver after hearing countless horror stories of raising live stock in the country, we are lucky to have been provided with such a sound shelter. this is where our 8 current layers reside. they actually love the nesting boxes now and lay all their eggs in there instead of all over the floor like before.

the herbal gurggle may be back...

at least, i hear rumors that my husband is going to take over posting and such. who knows it may happen when we get this internet-less life rectified. in the mean time i am spending some of this fine afternoon on a porch poaching once again. worse ways to pass the time. here are some random snow pictures from the house, a lovely pedicularis species "indian warrior" that i saw for the first time in bloom last week, and some "eggs in action" a delicious picture of a steak dinner salad from recent fare.