More chicks!  Oh, yes!  The hen who has been setting on a clutch of eggs out by the shop hatched out 9 chicks!  That was just one day after my last order came from Murray McMurray Hatchery!  I ordered 40 more birds!  The answer to your question is yes.  I have lost my mind!  I panicked a while back and was afraid I might not have enough roasters!    Imagine that!  I almost cancelled my order, but I knew I could get rid of them.  The same woman who bought my last batch of turkey poults bought the 15 meat birds.  That left me with 25 assorted brown egg layers.  I know I can sell those as ready-to-lay pullets down the road a bit.

So the family who bought my turkeys and chicks run an appliance repair business.  Guess who's coming today?!  Yes, my washer broke!  Let that be a lesson to me next year.  Never sell poultry to an appliance repairman's wife! 

Here's the proud Barred Rock hen and her brood.

On another note, the mosquitos have landed!  We have been invaded by them.  My poor sheep and goats have just been attacked.  If any of you have suggestions, please chime in.  I have ordered some stuff called Garlic Barrier.  I am hoping it arrives today.  The barn was just "alive" with the noise of mosquitos last night.  Poor animals.  I sprayed the goats down with white vinegar.  They weren't impressed, but I am hoping it helped them.

I have been thinking of Tasha Tudor all week.  It's been a year since I visited her garden.  More on that to come.

It is with great sadness that I write this post.  Almost one full year ago I traveled to Vermont and met up with some of my internet Kindred Spirits  We are all Tasha fans. A gathering was planned as well as a tour of her garden.  It was the trip of a lifetime for me and I made some forever friends on that trip.  We are bound by one common thread,  that is Tasha.  My friend, Linda, who was my roomie on the trip, called me today with the news.  She knew I'd be away from the computer this afternoon and she happened to be online with the message came to her.  I was sad, but at 92 she has had a good, long life.  We can't all live forever and the reality of her passing is something we discussed as a group.  We knew the time was not far off.  So now the day has come for Tasha to leave this earthly world.  How fitting for our beloved Tasha to pass under a full, strawberry moon. I shall connect the two always and forever more. Some of you may recall her last birthday was a full moon as well.
Though my heart is heavy with her leaving this earthly world, I am doing just as she suggested.  I am taking joy.  Joy in a life well-lived, joy in a very unique woman, joy in the simple things that Tasha brought to my life and more so, joy for all the friends I've made through discovering her and becoming a fan.  She has influenced so many lives.  Mine is but a drop in the ocean.

Bless you Tasha. God Speed.

I am going to go play dolls with Annabelle.

So I get an email from my daughter.  She simply states, "Your blog is a little out dated."  Yes, dear!  I know that.  It's no revelation here!  I've just been too busy! 

I don't even know the last time I blogged, that's how busy I've been!  I know we had snow on the 11th of June and I meant to blog about that.  Never got it done!  I know my goats have both had their kids and I meant to blog about that.  Never got it done.  I know I've been working hard putting in my garden, which is behind schedule due to the rain, snow and cold, so that's where all of my energy has gone.  I come in the house so tired I just clean up and fall into bed.  I don't even get in any reading time, which is what I normally do before falling asleep to relax.

Yes, my goats have both kidded.  My Sweet Pea had twin chocolate colored girls last Thursday the 12th.  Maybe that snow storm helped bring on the labor, but I don't think so.  She was 3 days late.  Then I came home today to two new little ones in the barn.  Miss Snow (or Maa Maa) had a boy (another chocolate latte) and a cream colored girl with a white saddle across her back.  Just adorable!  I need to get some better pictures to show you all.

For now I will post a blog post I had started a while back, but wanted to add pics to it, so here you go!  The red print is the update!

You just can't imagine the eggs and chicks around here.  The night before last, or should I say 4:30 in the morning, I awoke to birds chirping and the dog barking.  I assumed the next batch of turkey poults were hatching in the incubator.  I went back to sleep.  Upon waking I checked out the incubator and only saw one poult.  One little turkey can be noisy, but not as noisy as what I heard at 4:30 am!  Then it started again.  The day before my son thought he'd heard birds chirping in the house.  We often get birds that come down the chimney, but we had a screen put on the cap and thought that had taken care of the problem.  Wrong!  There's a nest in the cap of our chimney!  So the birds lost out.  I called the chimney sweep and had it cleaned.  It was getting too cold in here.  Although we have hot water heat, as my luck would have it, it was not working properly.  I've worked on those zone valves before and this time the zone valve won!  The chimney is clean, the birds have moved on and there were no babies in the nest, just eggs.

We also have a little nest of Rosy Finches in a hanging basket on the front porch.  There are no flowers planted in there yet, so they are safe.  It's been fun to watch them. 

Then there's the incubator!  At the moment there are 7 turkey poults in there.  I will need to prepare a box for them in the morning and get them started on some feed!  I sold those 7 to a neighbor as well as 3 of the others the hen raised, so I am down to 4 baby turkeys, shown here.

So along with the other chicks I've blogged about, we are a regular bird farm around here!

It is said that imitation is the highest form of flattery. 

The following is an article I sent to the local newspaper in April.  I have been hounding them for over a year to do an article on backyard chickens and backyard gardens.  With the rising cost of groceries, I thought this was important and timely.  They weren't getting the job done, so I wrote my own article and submitted it.  Then in today's paper I see the Editor himself used parts of my article and put his own spin on it.  I guess I should feel flattered, but I don't! 

Here's the article I wrote a couple of months ago and submitted.

Rising prices.  Not a day goes by anymore without those two little words being heard, seen or spoken.  Much has been said about rising food prices to be specific.  I've heard a few people mention they're planting a garden again this year for the first time in a long time to help curb their grocery bills.

Baby chicks.  That sounds a little redundant, doesn't it?  Oh well, that's just what I call them. 

I received my meat bird order Tuesday morning.  The man at the post office called about 8:00 am, just as I had said, "I am hoping they come tomorrow!"  I wasn't totally prepared for them, but I got prepared in a big hurry.  I ordered 125 and received 148.  That's a lot of chicks and boy are they noisey!

They always send one little exotic chick in the batch.  I think he's the black one on the far right.  The others are from chicken eggs I had in the incubator along with my second batch of turkey eggs.  Chickens take 21 days, turkeys take 28 days.  I put 18 or 20 eggs in there and 14 of them hatched!  Pretty good fertility rate around here. 

I had another black hen setting in the coop, so I took 6 babies out last night and stuck them under her.  My husband says, "YOu just can't leave it alone, can you?"    So far it's looking like she's accepted them.  I still have 3 in the hatch tray and haven't decided if I should put them under the hen or in with the meat birds.  I wish she could raise all 14, but I think that's just too many for her.  It's so fun to watch a mother hen and her chicks!

Here are the first 4 that hatched in the incubator.

Chris is afraid I am going to want to buy an incubator now.  What he doesn't know is that I've already thought to myself, I could raise chicks year-round!  It's just so much fun.  But, to everything there is a season.

This is day number 3 of rain.  On Wednesday I donned my yellow rain coat and went out to plant some seedlings in my "new" garden space.  I felt like a duck, but I must say it was rather fun planting.  I prefer cool over hot any day.

As I was planting, I got to thinking about just how long it's been since I had a vegetable garden to call my own.  I am guessing about 20 years.  I have pictures of my son standing by the corn patch in the yard and he's about 6 in the photo.  We have so many trees around the yard, with a huge windbreak on the west side of the house, and it's just too shaded to grow much, so I abandoned the idea of a vegetable garden.  Then for the past 5 years we've shared land with a young couple who put in a 5 acre garden, so I really had no need to garden.  When I answered their ad for land wanted, I didn't have time to garden anyway, so it all worked out.  Now I've taken the space where they had their greenhouse last year and turned it into my garden.  It's 20' x 92'.  That's a pretty ambitious area for me, but I've grown to love so many things that they planted here.  I made a list of "must haves" for my garden and I am surprised at how lengthy it is.  Do I want to cut back?  Of course not!

My daughter and son inlaw came out Tuesday evening to help me get a start on things.  We planted a plum tree and then replaced a pear tree that had died.  Johnathan also dug up some dead apple trees.  Those deer sure play havoc on them. 

Wednesday I planted, strawberries, Walla Walla Sweet onions, chives, russian sage (both of those are starts from the old garden here) cabbage, fennel, broccoli, kale, head lettuce, artichokes, brussel sprouts, celery, and celariac, all of which were seedlings I got from the former gardeners here.  It's very satisfying to plant seedlings.  It's instant gratification.  You don't have to wait for seeds to sprout.  Oh, and speaking of seeds, I planted some arugula.  I love arugula pesto and I also love the flowers once it blooms.  They taste like sunflower nuts.

So, 3 days of rain and we're expected to get 4 more days of it.  I am hesitant to plant any more seeds for fear they will rot in the ground.  The rivers are at flood stage here and with the snow melt as well as the rains, I think we'll see higher water than we've had in quite a few years.  The only thing I can think of is MORE MOSQUITOS! 

One of the 8 little turkeys died last evening.  I am assuming it's the one I babied with the goat's milk, but I am not sure.  It doesn't come as a surprise, since baby poultry is very venerable, but I was hoping not to loose any.

Another person suggested putting marbles in the food dish to encourage pecking.  I had read about that and do have marbles in the food and water dishes.  You can see the big marble in the picture of my last post.  I do think it helps.  I have noticed that turkeys prefer diamonds, however!  They really go after my wedding ring!

Diamonds are a turkey's best friend!

Wow!  Things are sure busy around here.  Never a dull moment!  I haven't had much time to even check email, let alone do any blogging.  The sun is out and it is STRONG!  We had temps in the high 80's for 2 days.  I am not impressed.  We've gone from winter to hot summer in just a couple days.  Who knows, it could snow this week!  The saying is, if you don't like the weather in Montana, wait 5 minutes!

Along with the warm temps comes high water.  We live with water all around us, but not very close.  Lots of swamps, which equates to lots of mosquitos and I noticed last night there was a big hatch!  Years ago I did some reading about mosquitos and found out their eggs can live in the soil for up to 10 years.  It takes standing water for them to hatch, so in a year of high water, you can actually have eggs hatch from the past 10 years!  It's always a battle here.

Friday morning I had a wonderful surprise!  I had put 8 turkey eggs under a chicken hen who was setting in the coop.  When a hen goes to setting, she gets "clucky", as they say.  She puffs out her feathers and makes these little mother hen clucking noises.  She will get off the nest once a day to eat and get a drink, but then she's back to her business of setting on her clutch of eggs.  Twice I went out to gather eggs in the evening only to find her setting on another clutch of eggs the chickens had just laid!  I touched the turkey eggs and they were not warm.  I went ahead and put her back on her nest and gathered my eggs, figuring nothing would come of the poor little turkey eggs.  Well May 16 was the due date.  I had just resigned myself to the fact that I would have to toss them all in the garbage.  When I opened the door to the coop, there was a broken egg shell.  My immediate thought was that some of the other chickens were eating the rotten eggs.  (There's no limits on what a chicken will eat!)  I lifted that mother hen up and MUCH to my surprise, there were 5 baby turkeys under her!  Within an hour all 8 had hatched.  I am still in total awe!

Here's the proud mamma hen in the nesting box.  If you look closely, you will see a little bump just above the beak.  That is called a snood on a turkey.  Both males and females have them.  They get very long on an adult male. 

Baby chicks have a special little hook on the end of their beaks called a pipping beak.  It helps them to pip their way out of the shell.  You can still see the yellow tips of the pipping beak on these babies.  After a few days, it disappears.

Here I have moved them to their brooder box.  They can be away from the chickens and have a heat lamp in there to help keep them warm.  Turkeys are very temperamental and not very smart.  They have to be taught to eat.  I've been working with them, dipping their beaks in the food and water, but the hen is a very good teacher.  It's fascinating to watch her take some food and toss it on the ground for them and talk to them in her chicken voice to try and encourage them to eat. 

And this one was just too cute not to show you!  They all climb up inside her warm feathers and ride around, sometimes nestled inside her wings and feathers.  If you want to check on all of them, you have to pick up the hen and let the little chicks drop out.

Yesterday morning I was showing them to my friend Kathryn.  When I opened the brooder box, one was just laying there about half dead.  It was cold.  I had turned the lamp off and shouldn't have.  I scooped it up and tried to warm it.  After Kathryn left I gave it some goats milk and put him in a little pot under the heat lamp.  Poultry can be unmerciful when there's a weak one.  They'll peck it to death and step on it.  Then I went in and boiled them some eggs.  My dad raised turkeys once and told me they love hard-boiled eggs.  The protein is good for them.  Once the little poult was strong enough, he just tipped that little plastic pot over and joined the rest of them! 

I think the goat's milk and the eggs saved the little one!  As of this morning they are all doing fine.

I've been a little preoccupied lately with the fact that I am going to put in a garden for the first time in about 20 years!  We have a huge wind break of trees around the house and that means one good thing in the summer, shade!  Shade is not very conducive to a productive garden, so our old garden spot is no more.

As many of you know, we leased out 5 acres to a young couple for the past 5 years.  They had a huge garden.  I had the pleasure and good fortune of walking out the door and north of the wind break to pick anything I wanted from their garden.  This year they are actually growing on their own land.  I am happy for them, but I miss the life and activity at the garden spot.  They were here yesterday to dig some herbs and remove the sprinkler pipes.  It was melancholy for both Jacy and I.  I wasn't home until they got ready to leave, but it was nice to see their pickup at the field again.  Jacy said she and her helper reminisced  about last year and past years there in that spot, telling the new intern all about it.  And so begins another chapter in both of our lives.

I feel as though I am relearning everything about gardening.  I've been reading and talking with successful gardeners and gleaning tips on growing.  When I was in jr. high and high school, I had a lot of inside plants and they all flourished.  I have grown a successful garden, but it has been a lot of years!  I feel like it's a maiden voyage!  I am nervous and excited at the same time.

We've been having some nice, spring rains here.  As the temperatures warm up, that only means one thing, mushrooms, namely morels.  Our son is a mushroom head.  He loves to eat them but loves to hunt them even more.  He's got an eagle-eye for them and can spot the smallest of mushrooms several yards away.  It's amazing!  We are hoping to reap some of the fruits of his labor soon!

Well, I am off to plan out my garden!

It has been a very busy time here!  The sun has finally come out and warmed the earth.  Things are popping out of the ground, out of their eggs and out of their mothers around here!

On Friday night, May 2, around 9:00 pm, the pig's water broke.  Just after midnight she had 3 piglets.  Just before noon she gave birth to her 12th and final piglet.  Two were born dead and a 3rd didn't survive.  I still am not sure why, because it was the middle of the night and I was asleep in my nice, warm bed.  My husband, Chris, was out with the pigs in the cold, night air!

So, we have 9 little piglet from our first gilt.  This is a first for us.  Here are a few!

As the piglets were being born, they turkey eggs also started to pip in the incubator.  This whole thing has been nothing short of a miracle here.  I am in constant amazement when I look at them.  Out of 12 eggs, 6 hatched.  They marbles are to encourage them to peck at the food!  They like shiny objects.

We had actually never named the brown sow, but since she gave birth in the dark of night (pigs usually do) and the turkeys began to pip the same day, her name is now Gladys.

Once again the valley is white.  We just can't seem to get past this winter weather this year.  Tomorrow is May Day and it doesn't look a thing like spring around here.

I have some good news on the bum lamb front.  He has gone to a Montessori school where the kids will love them and take good care of him.  I think he and the kids will be in 7th heaven.  The woman who came to get him is a Veterinarian, so he will have the best care.

I took these shots on a sunny day last week.  I love to watch the lambs sleeping in the sun.  They remind me of an old man nodding off.  Their heads will bobble back and forth and finally they give in and lay flat out on the ground, soaking in the sun.  I think it's very intoxicating to them!

Finally, 2 days of sunshine!  It doesn't take much of it to perk people (and animals) up!  It's so much nicer for the baby lambs when the sun is out for a while, rather than have them mucking around in the mud and damp ground. 

My little guy who had the bout with the runs has not been accepted back by his mother.  She only lets him nurse if I hold her or if he can sneak it.    I have always wondered why they call a bum lamb a bum, but I can tell you, he definitely bums a drink off of anything that might have one!  He even goes looking at the wethers and the wether goats!  He doesn't know better or care, for that matter.  He's just hungry.  He seems happier out there with the animals, so that's where he is now, but I have been bottle feeding him. 

Here he is enjoying a rest!

What mother chould resist this little thing?  His!

The calendar says spring.  Here in Montana it is anything but!  They say we have 9 months of winter and 3 months of company!  This year, I am afraid it's going to be true.  We've had 7 months of winter weather so far.  It is snowing again right now!  It's just after 1:00 am and I just came in from the barn.  A ewe was having twins and I hung around to make sure everything was okay.  I will go back out and check on things when I am finished here.  I have one ewe left and then I will be finished lambing.  I will be glad to be finished because it's always a worry, but I really hate having these little lambs on the cold, wet ground.  That's when sickness rears its ugly head.  I will just hope for the best.

One of the boys born yesterday, a twin, developed the runs and wasn't getting better.  I just kept an eye one him and thought I'd wait it out.  That's my general M. O. anyway.  This morning towards noon his stool was getting lighter and lighter.  White stools are not good, so I called a couple of friends and wound up taking the lamb to town with me for some Kaopectate.  I had to take him along because I needed to be at the shop in the afternoon and I simply didn't have time to run in and run back home again, besides I really thought he might be getting too much milk and that was part of his problem.  I left mom and brother in the jug.  (That's a small pen.)  When I brought him home just after 5:00, the mom wasn't very accepting.  She's still not.  I've had to pin her up against the wall to let the little guy nurse.  I am hoping that once he gets her milk back in his system and the Kaopectate leaves, his little hind end will smell a lot more like his brother's and she will accept him again.  We shall see.

Here's a picture I took on April 8.  Although I am sick of the snow, it can be very beautiful.  For one thing it covers up all of the trash..................but that's another story.  I fear it will look the same as this picture when I get up in the morning.  The flakes are coming down!

Morning update:  The snow is still falling.  It's not nearly as beautiful as the picture above for three reasons.

1.  There's more snow.

2. There's NO SUN!

3.  I am SICK OF THE SNOW!

Especially lambs!  I had 7 born today.  That's a lot for me.  I only have 2 ewes to go and then I am finished. 

The weather her continues to be ugly.  Snow, wind, cold temps.  The other morning it was 11 degrees or some ridiculous thing!  It's making everyone crabby.  We're all over it!  Come on sun, please just shine!  I do have one friend who said, "With each new snowflake brings the promise of spring!"  That was an interesting way to put it and the first positive thing I've heard about the snow!

Did you get to see the full moon Sunday?  It was beautiful.  It still amazes me that we can all share it!

Things are crazy busy around here.  Most days I'd really like to sleep in, but the lambs call!

I took some pictures of my little chocolate lamb twins this morning.  They were born yesterday.  The boy was so tiny.  As it turns out, he died this evening.  Poor little bugger.  I am not quite sure what the problem was.  I found him just lying limp tonight when I got home.  I tried to warm him in the house and get him going, but he just was too far gone.  It's always a bummer when you lose an animal.

I wish the weather would just straighten up.  We had rain and then snow last night and today.  I have puddles in my field.  I am sure that doesn't help the lambs one bit. 

First off, the turkey hen has decided to set.  That means she is setting on her nest under the back steps.  I am a little nervous about the location, since it's the door everyone uses and the turkeys are very protective.  Oh well, it's just for 28 days, but I may need to put up a "beware of turkeys" sign!  I am going to put her other 7 eggs under her today as well as attempt to enhance her nest a bit.  There's not much nesting material under there and I am afraid, with it being on concrete, the eggs may break. 

Also, about the aluminum cans.  I think I've written here before that about my ultimate pet peeve, litter.  Montana passed a law last year where you may not drive with an open container of alcohol in your vehicle.  Does it stop people?  No!  It only increases the litter!  They just throw the cans out of the window!  We have noticed a huge increase in cans laying on the side of the roadways.  I HATE LITTER!  It just galls me!  I've been known to stop and look in a bag of trash and get a name so I can call the sheriff's office and report it.  I've done it more than once.  A neighbor of mine sends me latex gloves to keep in the car just for that purpose.

With all of that said, I would pick up the trash on the roadways too, but I have no place to dump it in the end.  It would fill my own trash can and then some and I am just not willing to have piles of trash around here until I can get it to the dump.  It kills me to leave the trash behind and only pick up the cans, believe me!  So for now I will do my small part, WHEN IT QUITS SNOWING!  UGH! 

So my total for 1 month (actually just 5 evenings) was 335 minutes of walking, or 5 hours and 35 min. 

March 9, 2008 90 minutes,  2 grocery bags full of aluminum cans (plus 2 bags of garbage!)

March 10, 2008  70 minutes, 5 bags of aluminum cans!

March 11, 2008 50 minutes, 1 large white trash bag of crushed cans!

March 12, 2008 35 minutes, almost 1 large white trash bag full!

March 14, 2008 90 ,minutes, 2 large white trash bags full +

My husband was heading in to the recycler today, so he took my cans in for me.  My grand total was $22.50.  Alumunum is now 50 cents a pound.  I made over $4/hr. walking the ditches.  My husband thinks I should calculate by the mile instead of the hour and it would look really good! 

Now, to start all over again!

I will try to simplify this story for you.  It goes back a few months to when a man came in to the shop and asked if I'd be interested in some framed prints and things they were cleaning out.  I told him I would and so he brought them back in.  I purchased them and we visited about their plans of preparing their home for sale and moving out of state.  As it turns out, they had already taken 3 pickup loads to the dump.  Included in those loads was a bear collection and a doll collection.    He said, "You don't even want to know what all we've taken to the dump!"  That's when I told him he was right and I didn't want to hear any more.  It just makes me sick.  Think of the charities that could've benefited from those collections!  UGH!  I begged him to stop at the shop on his way to the dump the next time. 

That brings us up to yesterday morning!  He stopped and told me he had a couple of things he thought I might be interested in.  I went out to look and one was a beautiful stained glass mirror, made by his wife's mother.  The other thing was a stained glass lamp, also made by her.  They were both just "ridin' high" on the back of his flatbed pickup.  He did have it tarped.

Along side these items were several black plastic bags and some rubbermaid containers.  I asked if it was all going to the dump because I could put the containers to good use.  Then I asked what was in the black plastic bags.  He told me he didn't know because he wasn't allowed to look.  I said, "Ok, I will!"  The first bag I opened contained a doll.  I asked him to set that bag on the sidewalk and told him I would take care of it for him.  The next bag I opened was a bag of board games.  LOTS of board games.  The list just goes on.  There were probably 6 bags total.  I am constantly amazed at what people will just throw away!

My lesson in patience for the month!  I put the 12 turkey eggs in the incubator Sunday.  Now I have become  obsessive about checking the temp and the hygrometer readings!  Every time I walk by I have to take a peek!  I am so glad this thing has a plexi-glass door.  It's not that anything is going on in there just yet, it's just the fact that you can see in.  This thing turns the eggs automatically.  It rotates slowly over time.  Now we just hope the power stays on for the next 26 days.

The very first thing I did was break the themomter.  It's the old fashioned glass kind.  Naturally they don't make that kind any more.  I am currently using a digital cooking thermometer.  I will definitely replace the one I broke with another.  As I told the friend I borrowed it from, I am not in the habit of returning damaged goods.  He says it's not necessary to replace it, but for me it is!

I have found more treasures in the trash!  I will post as soon as I can get the pictures on!

Also, I started lambing yesterday!  One very sweet little snow-white girl!  She was already cleaned off and up running around when I got home.  I just love that!