Halloween Prep Video

[Ganked from one of Joy's blog posts. Remember, Costco is your friend. Thanks, Joy!]

A Round Tuit for the Garden Chores

It's a cheesy, schlocky old-timer joke, and it's ever so applicable regarding the garden projects on the farmette at this time.

We purchased two pomegranate bushes in May, and they're still sitting on the porch awaiting transplant. We've also a third fig, a dwarf lime tree and another fruiting cactus also awaiting transplant.

We purchased cedar planks for making raised garden beds sometime in February, along with a truckload of mixed compost and soil. The soil hill is now half its original height due to rain, settling, pup digging and erosion. The planks were finally cut to size this week.

Some good news, however: we've now money to outfit the Subaru wagon with hitch and trailer, and thusly can tow rental agri equipment to the property. This means we can start machine-digging holes for the orchard saplings, cutting down and chipping the invasive cedars, etc. That is, once I order the hitch, take the car in to be fitted, find & purchase the trailer...

So much to do, and yet I'm so excited to have these sorts of things awaiting completion. It means we really ARE getting the farmette/orchard started, and it's no longer just a dream in the back of my head.

Have a great weekend, everyone... don't know about you, but I'll be busy. :-)

[pic: Our gal Frau. Respect the Frau.]

pics: chicken, chickens, geese and dogs

"Red", one of the Ameraucanas. Spouse took this photo with the new-to-us camera. I call the Ameraucanas our "little bearded ladies":



All of the chickens lined up on the porch railing. A rare event, as Nutmeg is the pecking order enforcer, and usually doesn't hang out with the Ameraucanas for long. It's amazing that birds almost twice the size of Nutmeg will tolerate her bossiness:



For Natalie: the dogs getting their daily goose "massage". The pups will see the geese waddle up, and will then shove their bodies up against the fence so the geese can chew on them, wagging their tails all the while. I guess it's safe to say they've bonded.


Can't wait until we figure out some other way of keeping the pups shaded and kenneled during the day. The shade tent works, it just looks nasty. On the other hand, it's the ONLY shade tent that hasn't blown away in all the high winds we've had around the place. It was the cheapest one, too. Pfft, figures.

Back to full health. Have a happy one, folks!

One of these things is not like the other...

Spouse came singing this tune, waking me up out of a nauseous, fitful slumber*. "Take a look at what I found!"

See the pastel colored egg in the carton? Our Ameraucanas are starting to lay! And holy crap, their first egg is HUGE compared to The Frau's first efforts. [Doesn't matter; ALWAYS respect The Frau.]

Earlier that day when I bent over to pick up Red and she responded for the first time with the "uh, are you a rooster?" crouch, I predicted to Spouse that the birds would start laying within a few weeks. Little did I know that they were way ahead of me...

[*caught some sort of 24-hour virus: nausea, dry heaving, light-headedness, massive headache. Bleargh. Better now!]

Video: Nutmeg growls "back off, I'm layin' eggs here!"

I had never, EVER, heard a chicken growl before. Thankfully, Spouse had recently been gifted a second-hand camera that takes short videos, and he got a short take of Nutmeg telling us to back the h*ll off while she was trying to lay an egg. The first noise you hear is actually one of the geese, but the growling... that's all Nutmeg, our little Cubalaya chicken-dog:

She does this every time we go near the coop when she's trying to lay. I love that little firecracker!