FOR TODAY April 16, 2009

Outside my window...Spring begins, filling me with hope.

I am thinking...of so many things that I need to do, paint my kitchen, bedroom and hall for one. Finish the floor trim in the living room and hall. Replace the carpeting in my bedroom. Clean the back porch and the shed...so much to do!

I am thankful for...God bringing me to Fresh Life Church where my soul is fed the spiritual food it craves.

From the kitchen...Last night I made ham and musroom casserole. Tonight for dinner I will make spaghetti using italian sausage and served with soft garlic bread and a green salad.

I am wearing...My comfy clothes of course, Navy Blue pants and a white long sleeved top that is embroidered with colorful flowers. Very hippie looking today.

I am creating...Dishcloths. I have been knitting and crocheting them both lately.

I am going...to the College at 4 pm. I completed High School, but was missing a 1/4 credit in History in 1985. I am getting my GED so I can begin Nursing in the fall.

I am reading...Currently I am not reading anything, but next on my list is Love Comes Softly by Janette Oak.

I am praying...that I can become more patient, more loving, more quiet and that I can be a blessing rather than a burden.

I am hearing...The rumble of the dryer, which will soon be a thing of the past, for the summer at least. Mike is stretching the clothesline today.

Around the house...Life is strange. Our kids are grown and almost always gone and I am unsure what to do with me. I feel strangely useless and unsure of who or what I am supposed to be now.

One of my favorite things... Is finding old hand written recipes and thinking about the women that wrote them and what their lives might have been like.

A few plans for the rest of the week: GED on Friday, Church on Saturday, Financial Aid and registration for Nursing on Monday.

Here is picture thought I am sharing...

Spring Chickens

Here are some photos of the little girls enjoying a sunny spring morning. It took some doing to get them all out of the coop, because they are... well, chicken. But I did it, and two hours later I when I wanted to get them all back in, they weren't having any of it!

Lasagna Gardening

Here are the beginnings of my lasagna garden. You can see that I have added leaves and greens to my little lasagna pan. This particular pan is going to be for lettuce and other partial shade loving veggies.

Here is my recipe for a 8' X 4' pan of Lasagna! This recipe is based on what I had on hand. You can make your lasagna pan any size, and could do away with the saw if you conformed it to utilize the wood that you had on hand. Lasagna gardening is great because it is a no dig method. You layer compostable material as you would for a compost pile, and it "cooks" creating delicious fluffy light soil that is the perfect medium for growing your veggies! We use the raised bed method, building boxes to contain our lasagna. You can also just layer and build right on the ground, its up to you. You can find lots of information online about lasagna gardening. Some folks are exceptionally technical when it comes to layering their "browns" and "greens". Me? I didn't worry too much about it. I layered what I had and it resulted in the most fabulous amazing flourishing garden. So try not to worry too much, unless your a techy.. and then by all means plan, measure and mark to your hearts content!


Ingredients for building the pan:

2 8 foot 2x8 boards
2 16 foot 2x8 boards
2x4 ends and pieces for holding two levels together. (nailers)
screws or nails
skill saw
tape measure
drill or hammer

Instructions:

1. Cut (4) 8 foot long boards.
2. Cut (4) 3' 7" long boards.
3. Create the bottom frame by making a box using two of the long and two of the short boards.
4. Repeat process to create the top frame.
5. Then take both boxes and stack on top of one another.
6. Take nailer boards and screw them on the inside of the box at the corners and the center of the long end to hold both levels together.

Walla, you have your pan. Place the pan where you would like to have your garden. Filling instructions coming next!

Lasagna Filling Recipe:

Ingredients:


1. Browns : Fall leaves, shredded newspaper, peat, and pine needles
2. Greens: Grass clippings, manure (chicken, rabbit, horse, goat etc. Not dog or cat), kitchen scraps (no meat or protein..fruits and veg, coffee grounds etc.
3. Flattened cardboard boxes or lots and lots of newspaper to lay on the bottom.

Method:

1. Lay the cardboard down inside of your box. Make sure that all surfaces are covered. I have my hubby lift the edges of the box so I can tuck it under, leaving no room for grass or weeds to come up. The purpose of the cardboard is to make sure that nothing underneath your bed is going to come up through your garden. Lasagna gardening is a no dig method. No tilling, no digging, and as a result, very little weeding! Lay the cardboard or thick layers of newspaper down and then water them. Give them a slight soaking.

2. Begin with browns. Throughout your garden you want to keep the ratio of browns to greens, 2 to 1. Many instructions for lasagna gardening say you must begin with several inches of peat moss. Guess what? I didn't have any. I began with leaves left over from fall. Lots and lots of leaves. After each layer, give it a gentle soaking with the hose. You don't want to drown your lasagna, but water aids the composting of all of your goodies.

3. Add greens. You can add your grass clippings, manure, kitchen scraps etc. Remember that your shooting for a 2 to 1 ration of browns to greens. Too many greens can burn your veggies so you want to add those browns to balance things out. Remember to water after each addition.

4. I like to throw in some topsoil every few layers, but its not necessary.

5. Continue layers, 2-3 inches deep (you do NOT have to be technical about this point) until you fill up your beds. The deeper your bed the better.

6. I top with a layer of topsoil, and this also is not a requirement. Some folks add a layer of straw on the top and plant into it. I like dirt : )

Cook at daytime temps for as long as possible before growing season begins. This gives the materials you added time to break down and become a yummy fluffy growing medium for the tons of veggies you are going to grow in your garden!

Spring Chores

Here are the little girls in their new digs. You can see the partition that my husband put in. The bottom half allows the big girls to see the littles, and the top half allows me to go through and gather eggs.


Well the photos ended up being in reverse order, but thats okay, why not start with the finished product ? My dear husband was good enough to help me with the spring chicken chores last weekend. I am still not able to lift much weight, and therefore couldn't shovel out the coop. Bless him, he did it for me. I use the deep litter method of chicken coop bedding, which is basically adding and adding the shredded paper and wood shavings mix all through out the year. This allows a deep layer to build up for winter. The smell is almost non existent since the shavings absorb the moisture. It worked so well this winter when the temps were very cold for very long, the girls did great.

But, it does leave a good 8"-12" of shavings to be shoveled out and composted in the spring. So.. shovel he did. He then built a partition in the big girls coop so that the little ones could vacate their over crowded studio in my kitchen, and move into the manse. He put chicken wire on the bottom so that the big girls could see into the area where the littles live. This will allow them to become accustomed to the littles and hopefully not give them too much of a pecking when they finally all live together. Chickens, as sweet as they are, can be like teenage girls in high school.

Here is my husband working on the partition, and Goldie peeking in to see whats going on.

This is my son Garrett, he is stealing the hinges from the old A-Frame coop to use on the door of the partition. We needed a door as I had to get to those eggs somehow! I love how Elsie is watching him here, the curiosity of a chicken is really amazing, especially when you think of the size of their itty bitty brains!

This is inside the coop. Mike is moving the nest box down to make room for the littles. My coop is 4X12 and could accommodate 24 chickens at the 2 square foot per bird rule. Beings that I have long winters here though, I prefer to give them more than that.

And here is my lovely hubby layering the compost in the piles. This is what was left over from the rabbit and chicken poo! The majority went straight into the garden beds to cook for the month or so left before planting! I have lasagna garden beds and will be talking about those in my next post. They are amazing, and you can grow SO much in just a small space!

The Lazy Chicks Method of Gardening

Its been a lazy Saturday. Its been in the high 40's but for some reason feels cooler than that. Not quite gardening weather just yet. My chickens begged to differ.


I woke up this morning to a horrible screeching/crowing sound coming from Elsie (the lighter colored blond in the video below). I had never heard her make that particular "screech" before and was somewhat concerned. It sounded as if she was attempting to crow, but was not quite up to Rooster quality. While she performed her own little opera, she paced the run. It was odd behavior.

In the past, she has paced the run when she wanted to be out of the enclosure. As in, pooping and pecking in the middle of the yard or fully ripe garden. Pace only though, not shout at the top of her lungs demanding to be let out. M'Kayla was good enough to slip on her shoes and go open the Coop and run door to see if this was the problem. Orabelle jumped up and out of the run as soon as M'Kayla opened the door. Poor Elsie, not being hatched with the escape artist ingenuity of Orabelle began to grow frantic until she realized the Coop door was open as well. In through the little chicken door, through the Coop and OUT! Once out, she flapped her wings and ran to the garden box.She hasn't made so much as a peep all day.

I am pretending that Elsie is concerned that my garden looks hardly ready for spring. The real reason is that said garden is filled with all manner of worms and goodies beneath the lovely leaf mulch that covered it last fall. Newly thawed, moist and delicious...its every chickens dream.

This video was taken at 5 in the evening and as you can see, Elsie and Goldie are still hard at work tilling the garden for their lazy mama. Adding heaping helpings of fertilizer as they toil. Sigh, a chickens work is never done.

Spring Chickens

I am having so much fun with my new chicks. There have been updates in the chicken world of late though and I thought I would post.

After talking with one of the ladies in charge of chickens at Murdoch's, she said I would have no trouble selling my Bantam Roo and several of his ladies. So I did the thing that comes natural to any chicken mama in a feed store filled with troughs of peeping beaks.... I bought three more! To be more accurate, I bought 2 more. Mike bought 1. He bought a White Crested Polish pullet with an adoreable little top knot of fluff. (crazy looking hair do when she grows up though). I bought another Buff Orpington like Elsie. She is pictured above on the right. I also purchased a Speckled Hamburg, which lays porcelain white eggs. She is pictured on the left.

The top photo is of the fab brooder box my husband set up. We went to Sears and picked up a couple of range and freezer boxes. Mike flipped one on its side, cut the side (which is now the top) out, and cut ends from the other box. Some packaging tape and wala! Insta brooder!

You will also notice the window. He had a sheet of plexiglass so he cut a window on one side of the box and duct taped the plexi in. Perfect viewing window for Lulu who pleads with me daily to please please just let her kiss one of the babies. Right.

I also bought vegetable seeds at Murdochs! They were running a sale for 9 packages of seeds for .96 cents! Now I just need a grow light and somewhere to put the baby plants.

You know, when I was younger, I didn't care much for spring. Infact I could easily have said (and probably have said on many occasions) that it was my least favorite season. I would generally complain of mud, and that half in half out of winter bit that brings on a never ending restlessness. Part of it could be that I was in my first few months of pregnancy in the spring with my kids, and had morning sickness 24 hours a day. To this day if I hear Sinead O'Connor sing "Since you been gone I can do whatever I waaaaant"... I could literally almost throw up, that being the artist I was "in to" at the time!

But now? Now I realize how much I need spring. I realize how much I long for the promise of respite from the dark cold place of winter. Here in Montana, the line between winter and spring is much more vivid than it was in Florida. There was Spring in Florida, but you had to pay close attention to the natural world around you not to miss it. This winter, with my illness and, has been especially dark. I long to feel the steady heat of the summer sun on my skin. To close my eyes and let the sunlight fill my body with seretonin and vitamin D. Spring promises summer, bless her heart.

Spring holds more than just the promises of Summer. I am a Christian now. It is in springtime that we set aside a day in remembrance of what our Lord did for us on the cross. Giving my life to Christ has been its very own Spring. In Christ, the bible says, I am a new creation.

Wow, this post was just supposed to be about chickens! : )The snow blows crazily outside, winter doesn't want to let go. The days are longer though, and warmer and I am so grateful for all this season brings.

Finally!

Finally :) We have baby chick arrival!!

Things didn't go quite as planned as 22 days ago I ended up in the ER with a gallbladder attack. 4 days later I was in the OR having my gallbladder removed, and recovery has not been fun.
For many people who develop gallstones requiring surgery, recovery is a quick thing. 3-4 days and back to work. I was hopeful!
But, beings that I have an auto-immune disorder (Sjogrens/Lupus type) and Fibromyalgia, I am STILL recovering, and having some post surgical problems that are really trying my patience. I had actually had symptoms that mimicked gallbladder problems LONG before my gallbladder ever went to the dark side. This indicates that something else is going on, and only time is going to get me down this path.
I have been depressed, in pain, angry and generally miserable...yaaaa! I am working on the attitude. I seem to just have no patience for illness. It scares me, I hate being out of control, I hate pain and I would really rather just be back to normal...nnnnnnnnoooow! My mind has turned from its fairy tale world of chickens and knitting, to a deep thirst and longing for more of God's Word, which brings comfort everytime I open it. I have also relied upon the love and prayers of my friends who really keep me going when I feel like all is darkness. I cannot express the gratitude I feel toward those who have held my hand, in thought or in person. And never can I express gratitude enough for the comfort my Lord has blessed me with. In particular having our church services live at www.freshlifechurch.org has been an incredible blessing, and I find I live for Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings.

But.. back to the topic at hand. My husband in all his wisdom decided that my surly "I'm just not going to get chicks this year....grumble... whine.. grumble..." was not healthy.
Armed with absolutely no knowledge except that I had been going to pick them up from Murdoch's Farm Store, he went chicken shopping.

I had been going to get 5 large chickens, to enable me to sell eggs this fall when they would all start laying. That would be a total of 9 chickens when you factor in the girls I already have.

You must know my husband to appreciate this, or perhaps its men in general? If 5 was gonna be good, 10 would be even better.....

So when I opened up the box he brought home from Murdoch's, inside were 10 peeping little fluff balls. The ensuing conversation went something like this:

Me: ohh!! (with happiness) you brought me chickens, what breeds are they? (peering in the box)
Hubby: Not sure.. (while setting up the brooder cage)

Me: Well, they didn't tell you what kind?

Hubby: Nope, it might be on the receipt.

Me: Well how did you choose them?

Hubby: Just said.. two of these, three of these, two of those and three of those...

Me: Ohhh...

Me: This is so sweet of you! I was only going to get 5 though.

Hubby: These are small.

Me: Small?

Hubby: Yeah, Bantams.

Me: Ohhhhh (wearing slight concern) they lay little eggs. (bantams are mini chickens, sorta like toy poodles : )

Hubby: shrugs (adding chicks to brooder)

Me: I love them! (feeling blessed he thought of me and looking frantically for the receipt)

Me: Mike!!!

Hubby: (looking up) huh?

Me: You got two Guinea Hens!! I don't even know what those are, but I think they are really loud and stupid!

Hubby: (shrugs)

Me: We can't have Guinea Hens in town!

well you get the idea : ) I had 2 guinea hens, 3 Partridge Cochin bantams, 2 Birchen Cochin Bantams, and 2 Barred Rock Bantams.

A quick call to Murdoch's allowed us to take the Guinea Hens back. Thank God.

I love them all, and am so happy that he chose them. I am so blessed with my husband and his concern for my deranged insanity. It is going to be a precious little flock. Sadly, one of the little Barred Rock Bantams is looking like she is a he : ( and I won't be able to keep him either. I am still trying to figure out what we'll do with him. He is so unbelievably cute, thats him in the photo above.

Oh and not to worry that I didn't get any full sized hens... because my dear husband came home today with two Plymouth Barred Rock chicks, which will grow into FULL sized clucking ladies.

Life keeps moving!!

Next is names!!