I know you’re wondering! Wondering if we caught the egg eater. Am I right? Well, we think we may have. I went in to collect eggs one afternoon and caught one of the girls pecking on an egg and her face was covered with egg yolk. Your culprit is pictured here. The Red! Now, she may not be the originator, or even the only one; she’s just the one we caught in the act. Since then it has escalated somewhat. Sue picked up eggs around mid-day today and then when we did chores this afternoon, and I picked up more, there weren’t any. We’re still leaving the fake egg in one of the nesting boxes, so that if the egg eaters try to peck it, they’ll be in for a surprise! Who knows if that’ll help or not, but it’s one of the remedies that people suggest. Continue reading
Busted!
08 Wednesday Nov 2017
Posted in Co-workers
I know that we are encouraged to be thankful every day, in every way, but isn’t November the month that all hearts turn to Thankfulness? Also, there is so much going on in the world today, that we are often horribly reminded to be Thankful for what we’ve been given. No matter how hard you’ve worked, or what you’ve been born into – all that we have is not simply the product of our own lives. Along the way, so many people have helped us; parents, grandparents, teachers, friends, exceptional Pastors – Leaders – trailblazers, and – for us – God has been leading the way. We are thankful for the opportunity to do what we are doing, on the land that Sue found, with the animals entrusted to our care. How can we be anything but thankful? 
How big indeed. They are so small! It’s amazing that you are seeing a mature chicken. You all know that Maeve is our smallest chicken; she’s some type of mottled cochin – or a crossbreed there of, we’re not exactly sure as she just came from a straight run of chicks I purchased at Tractor Supply one Spring. Sue ordered the teenagers we have now from a hatchery on-line, specifically looking for some chicks that were about like Maeve. Those chicks are now 8 weeks old and many of them are as big as her! It was difficult to get a photo of them together as they are still getting used to one another, but here’s the best I could do. Maeve is in the background and the teenagers are in the foreground, so the size comparison is difficult to see. Take it from me, they are quite close in size. They are Bantams, so are naturally small chickens. Let me try to give you some other visual comparisons. 
It’s been an interesting couple of days. Things don’t always go as you plan – right, that’s just a life thing. Sometimes we make plans to do x and y and then it takes so long to get the stuff together before you can even start x that y never comes into the picture. Or – if you’re me – as you’re going along you get distracted by this other thing that needs to get done and will only take a you a couple of minutes, and – do enough of those – there goes your day. It’s not that the day is wasted at all, you still get things done, just not the things that you had initially anticipated getting done. My whole MONTH has been like that: I know it’s just now November, but haven’t you ever spent a whole month doing something one day. I’m over dramatizing this… but sometimes it’s just difficult to get to Wednesday and think, “The week’s almost over, what am I doing?” 
A quick Monday update for ya’ll. Weekend seemed to go rather quickly. We sold all the eggs at the Farmers Market on Saturday. That was good. Also, this Saturday we pushed the camper trailer into working position. It’s under the car port by the back door, so that it’s protected from Sun and rain and mostly sheltered from the prevailing winds. Sue has started demolition and took all the old rotted canvas out today. What she found is that there was a leak in the roof so most of the interior wood in the roof has rotted as well. I’ll try to take some better photos as we try to remove the heavy plywood that made up the sleeping side of the tent, tomorrow. Sue said there is a lot that can probably be salvaged. We’ll see as we go along. You can check out the initial idea from the post on March 8 called “
Chicken? Yep, chicken. We have an egg sucker – or rather an egg eater – in need of a 12 step program to help with her addiction. We’ve been trying to catch her in the act, or figure out who the culprit is, for weeks now. We have an idea, but no proof. We tried holding an intervention, but none of the chickens were willing to say anything~ so that was a no go. Many people are surprised to hear that chickens really do like eggs. – They also like to eat cooked chicken, but that’s another story. – Most of the time, egg eating starts innocently enough; an egg accidentally gets broken in the nest and they get a taste for it, then it becomes a habit. There are also other reasons that chickens may start feel compelled to eat eggs, so we’ve taken great pains to make sure these do not apply to our hens. 
Okay, in reality, this is the weekend update, but I had a talk with my folks a bit ago and I thought their story needed to go into the blog. So, let’s have a chat about habaneros. Those are hot peppers that are really quite hot! If you follow the 
“I love it when a plan comes together!” Immortal words from the leader of the A-Team, Hannibal Smith, but they are so very true; right up there with one of Sue’s favorites, “I love completing a project!” And she can say that this week, because the most tricky part of the cold frame is done! There was some difficulty figuring out the covering for it, but yesterday it all came together. 
Wing and a Prayer 