img_2086.jpgYep. AWOL all week. I guess sometimes you just need a break for a bit, and now I’ll try to cover a week in a few minutes. Luckily, since we had company, there weren’t a lot of projects happenin’ for the week. Before my parents and niece arrived on Sunday, we were able to finish off the gabion wall planters. Here’s an overview of what they look like newly planted. We put in some flowers along with seeds… just so that they look like they have something in there for a bit. I did purchase some herbs and winter vegetables for these as well. This is another bigIMG_2084 experiment, you know, like everything else. I have this untested theory that the gabion walls with the planters. I’m thinking that, since the rocks soak up the heat from the sun in the afternoon – it’ll keep the flowers from getting too cold at night during the winter. I think it’ll be great for winter type veggies and flowers, I don’t know about the heat of the summer tho’ – we’ll just have to see what happens then. Our goal is to plant it with herbs that we can use ourselves and feed to the chickens. So we currently have cabbages, broccoli, lavender, dill, parsley (curly and Italian), thyme, chamomile, sage, rosemary, oregano and some others that I can’t remember. I also planted – for us – garlic, chives, and sweet onions.  Yum! The great thing about planting right now, is that we have some super warm weather still ahead and we haven’t gotten into freezing weather yet. I’m hoping they’ll get established enough that they’ll be able to over winter without needing too much covering over. 

I do need to share that we had some sad things happen this past week. We did end up losing the rooster with the broken wing. Just too much trauma, perhaps – then he took sick and that was it.  Then on Wednesday, we had to say good-bye to my Great Dane, Belle, who had been my constant companion for nearly 10 years. For the rest, we still have two chickens in some type of quarantine; one with a broken leg, and one with a hurt but probably not broken leg. We’re not really sure if the broken leg girl will recover or not… but we’re pretty sure the hurt guy will be fine. That being said we have identified December 2nd as a processing day for the Banty Roosters. We’ll keep one and then we’ll need to process the rest. If the girl with the broken leg doesn’t get better by next week, we’ll probably need to add her to the list. It’s too bad too, because she is a beautiful little chicken. Just some decisions that you end up having to make. We’ll keep you updated on these guys as we get closer to P-Day. Until then, as always~
Thanks for reading.

Today’s Weather: Today’s high was around 82°, we started low at around 46°.  Midday the sun was just so hot, but it was great in the shade.

Egg Report: We’re still fighting some egg eating chickens. Not just one, but several. I’m not going to update you for the whole week, suffice it to say that we are holding our own. I think we had 13 chicken eggs (plus one that was eaten) and 2 duck eggs.

Gratefulness: My gratefulness took some off time this week, I don’t thin you want me to go through a full 7 days here, so let’s start with today and finish out the month. What moment are you most grateful for this week? There were many, I suppose. I think perhaps when my family pulled up the driveway! I was very grateful to see them, and grateful for their help, support, and love all throughout the week.