Pick Up Sticks

Remember that childhood game where you dropped a bunch of colorful sticks and then had to pick one up without moving any of the others? I loved that game and would watch ever so vigilantly to make sure my competitors didn't get away with any little, tiny, miniscule movement of any other stick other than the one they were picking up. I loved winning.

We taught our girls a different version of pick up sticks the other day. My husband cut down a tree with a chain saw and chopped off the branches. Then the entire family spent the morning picking up sticks/branches/tree trunks.

My two year old was so cute while helping. She would carefully choose a small stick, carry it to me and hand it to me every-so-proudly. She would then wait patiently while a place the stick in the Gator. As soon as she was satisfied with the stick's placement, she would toddle back to the tree and choose another branch. My four year old, on the other hand, started to say that it was a lot of work to pick up the sticks. When I told her she could take a break, she exclaimed, "No! This is fun!". Ah, a good life lesson learned. Hard work can be fun and rewarding.

Growing Up So Fast

Bringing them to the barn in a box (I am in the far back of the picture)

 Well, we did it. There are no more chickens in our house! Even days after moving them, I still expect to hear peeps every time I enter my laundry room. Maybe that means I miss my pretty pullets or maybe it means I am just losing my mind but either way, I really do like having my laundry room back. Besides, my birds seem so much happier in the barn. They have so much more room to move. There is even room to fly a little. The cats enjoy the company too, though I suspect they would rather have the chickens as a snack.

The new temporary coop

Introducing them to their new home

Flyin' the Coop

What is more exciting than a dozen chickens in your laundry room? Chickens escaping their cage and running free in your laundry room! Yes, indeed, there is nothing like casually strolling into your laundry room, happily anticipating a fresh, clean batch of laundry to fold and put away and finding a chicken standing in the middle of the room staring at you in her fowl way. Usually, she has also left a few gifts on the floor for you to clean up. Oh joy.

That is what I have been experiencing the last couple of days. The chickens feel they are old enough to fly the coop. So they do. And it was not the birds that I expected to fly first. One was Dottie, a Silver-Laced Wyandotte, who is in the middle of the pack, size-wise. She has always been one of the quieter ones. Guess I need to keep on eye on her from now on! You know what they say about those quiet ones, right?

The other was a big surprise. It was Blackie, one of my "penguin chicks" from the second batch. They aren't even fully feathered. Or that big. But Blackie has always been a bit of a trouble maker so maybe it shouldn't have caught me so off guard.

Time to put them out in the barn.

Signs You Live in the Country

We are not sure where we live. It is complicated. Technically, we live on several acres in town. However, our place is more like country living and here are the reasons why:

1) No one can find our house, even when given clear directions.
2) In any given week, we see more wildlife or farm animals than people at/in our home.
3) We have chickens living in our house.
4) Many people we know envy us for our shop space.
5) Friends and delivery trucks sometimes cannot make it up our snowy driveway.
6) We have one neighbor.
7) Our other neighbors are horses.
8) We have a little red barn.
9) You need to climb up a stall door to rescue your cats from the rafters.
10) When our neighbor helps plow our driveway, he uses a tractor.
11) Even the tractor gets stuck in our driveway sometimes.
12) I can cross country ski on our property.
13) We have needed to wear snowshoes while going to pick up our mail.

14) We regularly almost hit deer on our driveway.
15) We had lots of mice in our house when we first moved here.
16) You can get a severe case of poison ivy while working in the garden.
17) We know what a fox says.

18) Is this the view of a city-dweller? I think not.

These are the only things I could come up with at the moment but I think it provides a strong case for us being country rather than urban dwellers. I do believe that as time progresses, we will gather even more evidence of this.

Oops, We Did It Again

So I know I've mentioned we have chicks in my laundry room. I believe I've also mentioned that we need it to warm up so we can get them out of our house soon, especially since they are beginning to fly. But we ended up getting even more chicks Friday night. They were so cute and fluffy and tiny that we couldn't resist. Actually, there were two more breeds I wanted to try that weren't available when we got our first batch.

So now we have an even dozen chicks in my laundry room. Our newest chicklets are Goldie and Star, which are of the Gold Star breed and Blackie and Aussie, from the Black Australorp breed. Again, clever naming reigns in our home.

It has been only two weeks since we brought our first batch of chicks home but I have already forgotten how tiny and fluffy they were at first. They grow fast. I mean FAST. Last night, our newest chicks only had fluffy little "winglets" and this morning they had feathers, forming the start of full wings. It was crazy. No wings last night and now wings this morning!

Blackie and Aussie remind me of penguin chicks.

Wings mean flying. Not for our newbies quite yet but our older chicks are starting to fly. The other day, I was bringing a chick over to my oldest daughter so she could hold it and all of a sudden, it leaped off my hand and flew toward her. Unfortunately, it tried to land on her face, which didn't make for a graceful landing and caused the chick to fall onto my daughter's shoulder, scratching her cheek on its way down. My eldest was not thrilled with that but she still loves her chicks. I have known some people who have been terrified of having a bird fly into their face but not my girl. She isn't afraid of much, if anything, and still begs to play with the chicks all the time. And I mean ALL the time.