firsts

The pumpkins are coming along nicely and today I discovered our first pumpkin bloom of the season. Despite the lack of rain, we've had some great pumpkin growing weather.

Today I also discovered our first red tomato. I keep adding tomato plants. So far we have a cherry tomato, a grape tomato, and two heirloom tomato plants. One of the heirlooms is named Mr. Stripey. I saw Mr. Stripey at the feed store and couldn't resist picking him up. A very cool looking tomato with an equally cool name.

The most recent addition to our tomato garden: A mystery tomato plant. It came up in Carrey's neighbor's yard and her neighbor couldn't stand the idea of it going to waste. I so get that. And I have to admit, I kind of like not knowing what kind of tomato those blooms will bear....

This year I'm experimenting with a few new things in our herb garden. One of which is French Lavender. So far we have two tiny purple blooms that smell so amazingly fresh and good.

Our "giant" sunflowers are kind of a bust. Last year they were bigger than our heads. This year, not so much. Must have gotten the wrong seeds. Our lettuce is looking good. I find that gardening is mostly about finding the right spot for each particular plant. Some need more light than others, some require mostly shade. It seems that I've found a sweet spot for the lettuce. Now if I can just keep the critters away.

Finally, I bought a new candling light for my eggs. I am stunned and completely amazed at the things this tiny but high powered light lets us see. This picture is not at all good because my point and shoot camera has a hard time negotiating the light and darkness, but the black dot about two thirds of the way down is the chicken's eye and if you look carefully, you can see the curve of his little body. (He's upside down, his body is pointing toward the top of the egg.) Amazing.

Yesterday, we took all of our birds to their farms. The fifteen baby chicks went to their farm and we took the rest of the birds to the Taylor farm.

The geese and ducks had most definitely outgrown the accommodations in my garage. Yesterday morning we went out to check on the birds and found one of the ducks had somehow gotten himself stuck in a pitcher of water I'd been using to water the birds. I have no idea how long he'd been there, but he seemed perfectly content. Silly duck.

When we got to the farm we took the tape off of Kate's wing. And, as you can see in the picture below, Kate's wing looked much better. Spence's tape was gone and I figured he'd managed to get it off. You can see that his wing is still droopy. After we took Kate's tape off, Melissa told me that she'd taken Spence's tape off on Thursday because he'd cut himself on a tractor implement. Apparently, when Spence had the accident he was bleeding quite a bit and things looked pretty bad. But Melissa said that once the bleeding stopped and they cleaned Spence up the injury wasn't bad, at all. Then she paused, and looked at me with a perfectly straight face, and said, "I've been practicing telling you that story since it happened."

I laughed a relaxed laugh. As if to say, "Who me, worry about a goose?" It was easy to be calm while I was standing there looking at a perfectly healthy Spence. But, yes, I'm sure I would have been sick with worry for Spencer if I'd known he was injured and had to wait and see how he would recover.

We also took the two chicks we'd hatched on April 1st to the Taylor Farm. When I hatched them I thought one was a banty and one was a regular chicken because he was so much bigger than the tiny banty. We named them both Pip.Twenty four days later, Little Pip, who started out smaller than a double A battery was still tiny. You can see him in the pic below walking around with regular sized chicks who were only one day old. The only way you could really tell Little Pip from the one day old chicks was that he had all of his wing and tail feathers. I kept him for 25 days because I wanted him to have a fighting chance at the farm. When we unloaded the chickens at the farm Melissa was surprised at how small Big Pip was. Yep. It turns out Big Pip is a banty too, and actually on the small side for a 25 day old banty. Grace is holding Big Pip in the picture above. If Big Pip was a small banty you can imagine how completely shocked Melissa and her sons were to see how tiny Little Pip still was. Melissa said she had never, ever, seen such a minuscule chicken.

Hopefully Little Pip will "grow up" to be the smallest chicken on the Taylor farm. And hopefully Spence will steer clear of the tractors.

easter

Mindy's family joined ours for our egg hunt. That's her husband Stu, and his mom in the background.
My dad showed us all the proper way to hold a goose, or duck, or chicken. We immediately put his technique into practice.

Logan lined his chicks up like peeps.


This year, some of our eggs had money in them.
Mindy barefoot, Susan in her pajama pants. We're very formal people.





One of the eggs had $20 in it. Four $5 bills. We told the kids if they found the egg they would be the Egg Champion, but had to give each kid $5. Carter found the egg and happily distributed the cash.

thirty-seven candles will melt your face right off

Yes, my birthday was ten days ago, and yes, I'm still finding ways to celebrate it.

Wednesday, we hit the Z'Tejas for the fourth year in a row to celebrate my big day. Lisa posted pics of our past celebrations here. I think we've changed a lot over the past few years. Since I hadn't celebrated my birthday with my family, we decided to get together this weekend for an Easter/birthday combo. In honor of the occasion, I baked an aqua bunny cake with two vanilla layers and a gluten free chocolate layer. Saturday night we ate dinner at one of my favorite Tex Mex restaurants. Susan and Mindy posed for a pic while my dad was silly in the background.Sunday, after we hunted eggs, we lit my candles. I insisted on thirty seven candles. I'm always trying to get everyone else to light the proper number of candles on their cake, but I can never get anyone to do it. I blew all thirty seven candles out in one breath. But, a few seconds after I blew the candles out, my bunny's face melted off completely.

Oops. Next year, we may have to rethink the candle placement.

our earth day t-shirt project

This year, Earth Day and Good Friday fell on the same day, which meant the kids were both out of school. In an attempt to fill some of our day, we wondered around the craft store searching for an idea that wouldn't involve too much clean up. When I saw the t-shirts were on sale, I decided we could paint Earth Day t-shirts. When I envisioned paint all over my freshly mopped kitchen floor, I started looking for an iron on solution. I found something called Heat n Bond, I'd seen it on crafty blogs and decided to give it a try. This stuff is awesome. It irons on very easily and turns any piece of fabric into an iron on.
I let the kids dig through my fabric and pick out a color for water and a color for continents. Then we ironed the Heat n Bond onto both pieces of fabric and cut out our basic shapes. To put the earth together we 1) peeled the continents, 2) ironed them onto the earth while the earth still had its paper backing, 3) once we had our earth complete we, 4) peeled its back off and ironed it on to the t-shirt.
It was really easy. The whole thing took about five minutes.
I let everyone draw their own continents. As usual, Carter went a little avant garde with his. Meanwhile, I was sitting in front of my computer with a picture of the earth on the screen, trying to cut my fabric into the perfect shapes. Grace took one look at me and said, "Mom you're over thinking this. There are many different ways to look at the earth." My little daughter is so wise. Here we are on Earth Day, in our Earth Day shirts.

easter eggs

Dying Easter eggs is always an event at our house. This year, we stuck to our standard routine, but there were a few small changes.

Like, our eggs, seen here boiling, are from Melissa's farm, and were, in fact, laid by chickens that we ourselves hatched. The kids thought that was very cool. I did too.

We went with our usual assortment of dye tubs and vinegar infused dye tablets. The vinegar really does make the colors brighter. We also had a couple of Martha Stewart's swirl baths in place. Using Martha's technique, you add olive oil to your dye bath to give the eggs a marbleized look. Carter took one whiff of the olive oil in the swirl bath and the vinegar in the dye bath and said, "This smells delicious!"

This year we found that wearing plastic gloves really helped keep our fingers from turning strange colors. Even though the gloves were too big for the kids, they still worked. I highly recommend this and will always make sure we have some gloves on hand (so to speak) for all future egg dying sessions.

Our finished eggs - each one a true masterpiece:
Yesterday Carter hunted for Easter eggs at his pre school. He came home with a bag filled with plastic eggs. One of the eggs he found was smaller than all of the regular sized eggs. He took out the small, aqua blue egg, handed it to me and said, "Look mom, a banty egg. You can have it, I know how much you like them." It's the exact same thing he would say if he found an actual banty egg on the farm. It made me smile that he identified the small plastic egg with the tiny chickens we love to hatch.

one year later

I was born on Easter Sunday and have always loved eggs of all shapes and sizes. Looking back, I realize it was only a matter of time before I started hatching them. I am, and have always been, an egg person.

It was last spring that I decided to take a shot at hatching an egg. My dad and I built an incubator, and 21 days later Scarlett came into our lives. The moment I saw tiny, wet Scarlett raise her head and gaze at her audience through the incubator window, I was in.

My first Brinsea incubator was a birthday gift. Then, I found Melissa and the Taylor Farm on Craigslist while I was hunting for hatching eggs.

I remember our first trip to the farm last April. We gathered eggs, and met all of the animals. We even saw some big grey geese that Melissa's husband had just brought home. I specifically remember her saying, "I don't know what we're supposed to do with those geese."

When I asked why her husband bought them, she replied that he just loved birds. I remember thinking that this man might have a screw loose. Everyone knows how mean geese are. Right?

When we were getting ready to leave the farm, Melissa went back into her house and came out with two duck eggs and two banty eggs. When she asked me if I wanted to try to hatch the ducks, I actually took a step back. She explained that the ducks would take a week longer than the chickens, but should be fine in the same incubator.

At this wee stage of my life as an egg hatcher, I couldn't possibly imagine some eggs hatching while others stayed in the incubator. It sounded like uncontrollable chaos. I simply told Melissa no, that I couldn't possibly hatch the duck eggs. So, she handed me the banty eggs and let me go home. The bantys I could handle, they were just small chickens and would only take 21 days.

A month later, I returned to the farm. Chicks in tow. And so it began. Our monthly exchange of freshly hatched chicks for freshly laid eggs. Gradually, I warmed up to the idea of ducks, and even guineas. Melissa found a nest of guinea eggs just as we were leaving the farm one day. I'll never forget the sight of her hauling ass down the gravel road in her suburban, jumping out, running over to Lisa's car and handing her four fresh guinea eggs. Well, it was actually the look on Lisa's face that I'll never forget. Melissa was adding guineas to Lisa's turn with the incubator.

And then came the goose eggs. One of those big grey geese that Melissa's husband brought home last April, had begun to lay eggs. And, Melissa's dogs had begun finding the eggs and immediately eating them.

But after a couple of weeks of trial and error, Melissa had figured out where the goose was nesting, when she was laying her eggs, and most importantly, she started locking the dogs up during the crucial egg laying periods.

In January, when Melissa told me she was going to have two goose eggs for me when I came to drop off the chicks, I did not take a step back. I got ready to hatch Kate and Spence. I was excited about hatching the geese but had know way of knowing how much I would love the little birds.

Yesterday, we drove out to the farm to pick up one of the small incubators I'd loaned Melissa so her little boy could hatch eggs in his pre-k class. While we were there, I helped Melissa tape Kate and Spence's wings.

Each goose has one wing that droops slightly. It's called Angel Wing and it's very common in growing geese. Their wings simply grow so fast that the feathers get too heavy. It doesn't hurt the geese or cause them any problems, they just have some feathers that stick out. Sometimes, taping the wings for a few days can help with give the wing a chance to strengthen.

There I am, in the green, taping Spence's wing. Spence was a true champ about the whole thing. Kate resisted the procedure a bit, but both geese were nice enough to let us tape their wings with special vet tape that only sticks to itself. We should know in a few days if the tape is helping.

Driving home, I was in my usual state of post farm visit happiness. Remembering all of our trips to the farm, I was amazed at how much had changed in just a year. I'd gone from wondering why in the world people would ever want to own a goose to believing that everyone should hatch at least one goose at some point in their life. This weekend,while we were touring the immaculate grounds of the Hyatt, I couldn't help but think that a few well placed geese would really add to the ambiance.

When we got home from the farm last night, it took several trips to carry all the eggs in from the car. Some eggs for Easter dying, some for Grace's class to hatch, and some for me to hatch. While I sit here typing this, my incubators are stuffed full with my seventh and eighth goose eggs, six banty eggs, three jersey giant chicken eggs, lots of regular chicken eggs, and yes, there will be several different hatch dates.

Finally,

If all goes well, the peacocks should hatch around the middle of May...

my birthday weekend

We woke up. Very early. We drove to The Hyatt Lost Pines in Bastrop. We ran a 5k (which actually turned out to be more of a 6.5 k).

We drank. We napped. We laughed.

A lot. It was an unforgettable birthday weekend with wonderful friends at an amazing resort.