Fiber Art and Chickpeas

Chickens are very curious by nature, and they LOVE to eat.  We try to give them a variety of things to pick and scratch through.  They have a 12' by 12' run, but we throw in lots of things for them to mix it up a bit.  I found out over the weekend that they LOVE nectarine, and we always throw in grass clippings, chunks of sod, weeds from the garden, and odds and ends from dinner left overs (corn cobs, salad left overs...etc.) Today I shoveled in a shovel full of dirt from our back yard.  They love new things to explore, and were quick to start kicking it apart looking for bugs and things.  They are so cute!

Then tonight I finished a dish cloth that I started yesterday.  It's a super simple pattern, and I love it because it looks like honeycomb.  I happened across this really neat blog site that has a new dishcloth pattern every week.  I found it around week 18, but I plan to make more of them.


Check out her site here! 

This one is week 16, and I just started the one for week one.  I love it because it's a project that goes pretty quick, but who can't use more dish cloths??



Until next time lovelies...xoxo

Egg tally, week of July 21st

So this was the second full week that the hens were laying eggs. I can't believe the increase in the number of eggs just since last week! I think the first day we had 4. It was pretty close the whole week, but the final tally was Green Team 11, Brown Team 13. The Brown Team did a really good job the whole week, but I was very proud of the Green Team today because all three of them laid an egg! I love my little chickies, and can't wait to see what we get next week.

Eggs to date... 32!

Weekend fun!

It's been cloudy and rainy all day today, so what does someone do in a cold damp paradise??  Make jam of course!

 I just got some fresh jam jars at the store today, so what better thing to do than fill them up!?

 This is a batch of raspberry nectarine cooking down, and there is red raspberry in the jars below.

 I'm not a huge jam fan...I love the taste but I'm just not usually in the mood for it, but I have a ton of fun making it, and I've had some luck selling it, so YAY for that!

 My garden also surprised me today with a little zucchini. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet, but I'll be sure to let you all know!


Have a great weekend!!!

Rhode Island Red Surprise

So as you can see from previous posts, our chickens have started laying eggs.  It's a slow process, since they kind of lay on and off for a few weeks or so until they get in a rhythm.  We've had 27 in two weeks, so they are doing pretty good, and the other day, we were graced with this surprise!

 The two yolks on the top left are from ONE egg!  We have a hen that lays double yolks!  There are several reasons why they might do this.  Sometimes it happens when a hen first starts laying...her system is not in sync yet.  Some are born with the trait.  All I know for sure is that it's one of our Rhode Island Reds, and we've had a couple eggs with double yolks.  We'll see if we get more! =)

Egg tally, week of July 14th

So last Sunday the chickees started laying eggs, and unbeknownst to them they entered a contest of which "team" would lay the most eggs each week.  We have the green team and the brown team. Here are the results for week one!

It was a tie!

Buku berries!

So in my yard we have black berries, raspberries and black raspberries.  The black raspberries are doing great. We've picked about a quart and a half so far with lots more on the way. The raspberries are not doing well this year, so every berry is a treat! The black berries, though not ripe yet are looking SUPER promising! You can see in the picture that there are TONS of them cooking...I'll keep you posted!