Spicy or Mild?

God it's hot. Here's what we are dealing with and I swear its even hotter than 102 degrees. That lovely red exclamation mark isn't a thunderstorm advisory. That my friends is a heat advisory saying to stay your ass indoors. I can't do it anymore, I just can't. I live outside when I'm not rotting in the box(work) and this weather just makes me grumpy. 


Not only that, it's like a full time job trying to keep these ladies from frying. I read on the Poultry Forum that a few people have lost chickens yesterday and today from the heat. I go to great lengths to keep mine alive. The following are tips you can do to keep your ladies healthy in this heat. 


*A box fan on high in the shade with a bag or block of ice in front of it. It acts like a swamp cooler in some ways and cools the air significantly around that area, sometimes even ten-fifteen degrees. The girls even like to stand on the ice and cool their feet while the fan blows on them. I do this when it's deadly hot like today, over a hundred degrees. And I happened to find a nice man who sells ice for 99 cents. What what. 
Exhibit A: I think Bridget even has goose bumps. 

*Electrolytes in their water(any feed store should have these for poultry)

*Lots of Shade!

*I have a mister that is set on a timer. It goes off twice a day. I put the box fan by it and the girls love it. It also cools the area around and when the mister is off, the ground is still wet. They like to put their little bellies on the moist ground and that cools them as well. 

Here's the set up I use. It's high tech I tell ya. 

*Cold frozen treats. Stick a cucumber or tomato in the freezer and let it freeze. Give it to them and they will be your best friend. 

*Ice in their waterer

I have yet to lose one so far. Last year was ridiculously hot and this year is looking like it's going to be the same. Grrrrr.

How to Plant Grass Seed

The past two days I have been busy planting grass seed in the back. To plant seed, follow these easy steps:

 

Cheap

About a week ago, I was in the front yard and I heard a crazy sound coming from the backyard. It was a bit windy that day and the sound was like walking up creaky stairs in an old fixer upper. I walked in the back yard to check it out and much to my surprise it was a slightly leaning tree making that horrific noise. It was so loud and had a huge crack in it that I knew with the next rain(ha ha good one, it never rains here) that tree was coming down right on the coop fence. Ugh. I called the tree surgeon and unfortunately they like to charge a specialist kind of copay if you know what I am saying. 

Excuse the wobbly footage, I tried to be fancy and tilt and well, the iPhone doesn't tilt. 

So, we procrastinated on actually having it removed last week.  Ok, Ok, we were cheap and didn't want to spend the money. Remember, we are saving up for something big in October (more on that later) and wouldn't you know, yesterday it rained hard in this overheated drought-ridden city. 

I wasn't home when it fell, I was actually at therapy discussing much smaller problems. Had I known this disaster was brewing in my backyard, I may have spent that hour bitching about this tree and how much I hate it. When I left therapy, I knew it had fallen. I think even during the session I said "this rain is giving me anxiety, I have a creaky tree." I should have been a psychic. I got home, slowly peered in the back and wham....... in my face.....Son of a cheap ass. 

Hackberry Horror

Something or Someone must have been looking out for us. Seriously, this tree could not have landed in a more perfect spot. It grazed the the coop and missed the fence by less than a tenth of an inch. Lessoned learned Mr. Hackberry, lesson learned. 

3 weeks..................

Girls are getting big, 3 weeks old today. I moved them outside a few days ago with a light to keep them warm at night. I moved them out a lot earlier this time because I came home one day at lunch to check on them and Mutt was having a field day in the laundry room. She's an early bloomer with a super high vertical jump and while on parole decided to poop everywhere. I realized it was time to give the new coop a run for it's money and I must admit it's sooooo much easier having them outside. They love the new digs and love to scratch around finding new bugs and taking dust baths. All of them are feathering out nicely and I think, hopefully, all of them are female. 

So I may have been on the news today......

And I may need a chin implant..................


Me and the Girls are Famous! (Click on this)

You Lik-a my Melon.

Watermelon......... silly 

Yeah, I grew it. What? 

All You can Eat Tomato Buffet

So I'm kicking some ass at growing tomatoes right. I mean Killin' it. The tomato plants are huge and flowering and the tomatoes are just now starting to turn a fresh kissed hue. I came home yesterday and WTF. What the hell is this?

Something is chowing down on these tomatoes like an all you can eat buffet. Uh Uh. I really thought it was a mama bird taking snacks back for her brood of young baby birds that have moved into our siding directly above this tomato plant, but then I noticed something Funk-ay on the concrete. 

This. is. Poop(that ok Mom). 
Weird shit I have never seen before and directly below the tomato plant. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what was responsible for this. I fumbled around the plant looking for more tomatoes that had been mutilated and couldn't find anything. Stumped, I got up and turned away from the plant and saw something that hasn't made me jump and scream like a little girl since I called 911 on that humongous rat snake in the yard. Seriously, not much can scare me other than snakes and taking a shower alone in the house since watching Psycho and seeing Janet Leigh killed, but this thing, this mutant I witnessed going to town on my tomato did it.  It was bigger than my hand I swear. Exhibit A:

Look at the teeth on this thing and it trying to stealthily blend in with the plant is so sly.  

Anyway, I did a little research and found out it is a Tomato Hornworm. Seriously, no one warned me about these things. Anyway, I need to figure out a way to get rid of it humanely before I snap it in half with a shovel like my mom and dad used to do with snakes in the yard when we were younger. Yowser. 

Got to Have Faith

Stop it .


I can't even stand how cute these new little ones are. The hair on little George Michael kills me. I literally thought when she hatched that her head was deformed at first. But nope, that big bump on top of her tiny little noggin' was made for her super hairdo. I mean the way it slicks itself back and poofs on top makes me giggle every single time I look at her. Killin'. 


They are doing great at 2 days old.  They are back in the laundry room (sorry Claire!) for about four weeks before they can go outside and I must admit that it is nice to hear the sound of little chirps again echoing from the back of the house. 


They are learning how to eat and drink on their own without the help of mama and are learning quickly. A couple of videos to show you their progression and their incredible cuteness:

After all that eating, they get super sleepy. It's so sweet how they just fall asleep standing up and cuddle together: 

By the way, I went out to see the big girls today and Bridget is no longer broody. She's back with the other girls, a part of their flock again. Good news. Whew.  All that work and drama paid off. 

Nature is a bitch

Does this look like the face of a killer?

Well. It is. 

Today was hatch day. They started pipping yesterday morning, which means they poked holes in their shells to start the hatching process. It is such a weird phenomenon. You can actually hear them chirping and wiggling around trying to work their way out. Usually after the first pip, they hatch somewhere between 12-40 hours later. So, I figured last night they would hatch and I would wake up this morning to some new, cute little chicks.


Yeah not so much.


I set my clock for sunrise. I had a nagging feeling that Bridget might not take to the chicks. From what I have read sometimes, even after sitting on the eggs for 21 days, some hens will still kill their young. She's super young and it is her first time so I wanted to be there when she woke up in case they did hatch last night and she wasn't immediately smitten. Thank God both myself and Claire were there. When we walked in on her this morning, I could tell she was freaked out by the chirping and I saw that she was pecking something in the nest. I lifted her up, expecting a peck from her, and saw that she was pecking a black little silkie. Crap. After a few hard pecks it was confirmed she was trying to kill it. I snatched it up, brought it inside, and put it under a heat lamp.  My original plan was to check on them in the morning and make sure they were ok, then head to work and check on them again at lunch. I had to change that plan as soon as Bridget started killing them.The others were starting to hatch as well and I needed to get back out there and make sure they would be ok. A quick call to the on call person at work and I was able to stay and make sure everything was going to be ok. If you are planning on hatching chicks, my recommendation is to make sure you are off of work and don't have anything else planned. I had no idea. 


The next few hours were a blur. I went back to the coop to check on the others as soon as I put the black silkie under the heat lamp and when I got there, Bridget had killed another one and was furiously pecking all the eggs because they were chirping. I frantically gathered the remaining eggs, and two were actually hatching in my hands as I carried them all back to the house to safety. When I got back, I noticed that the black silkie was dead under the heat lamp. Damn. Was it too hot? Or did she have internal damage from the pecking? Either way, I'm harboring major guilt that she died. Two hatched right there and one was a cute little white silkie who ended up being ok and one was a frizzle who had the yolk sac still attached. Not survivable. It probably hatched early because Bridget had pecked it. Another egg also had a huge gaping hole in it and I could tell the chick was dead inside. I had another little one hatch within that horrid hour and she is doing ok and still alive. After that fiasco, two eggs were left and they looked like they needed a little more time to incubate before they hatched. Unfortunately, I don't have an incubator so I put them under the heat, this time with a digital thermometer( I seriously made it to the store and back with that thermometer in less than 3 minutes) and prayed they would make it. About 5 hours later I noticed they were getting dry and I could here the chicks trying to tap their way out. I read online that sometimes the egg can dry out without the necessary high humidity and the chick can get stuck in the egg. I knew from looking at them that this was the situation I was quickly getting into. Ugh. 
Waiting for the eggs to hatch, You can see the others snuggled up to the eggs that are chirping in this video:
If you listen carefully, you can hear the chick tapping to get out. 

A quick google search later, I realized I should let the remaining eggs hatch themselves and only intervene if they absolutely needed. There are a lot of blood vessels etc. that can be damaged if you just crack the egg open and help, so it's better to let nature do it on it's own. If it doesn't, then there is a procedure you can do as a last resort. 


Cue 5 hours later and last resort. 


I had to do it. I could listen and tell the little chicks were going towards the light by the sound of their weakening chirps. So I gathered my tweezers, Q-tips, and hot towel and went to work. I hatched them successfully and they are still alive tonight ( once again, I should have been a veterinarian) Both of them were super feisty when they came out and are doing great. One is a black copper maran and the other is a mutt of sorts. Thank god they lived or I would be so bummed and deflated. 


Sigh.....so out of the eight, four made it. 


We named one George Michael(the look and mullet from the 80's). Seriously, right?

We named one Mutt, because she's a mix and the other two have yet to be named. Better, non-blurry pics to follow soon. I am just so seriously exhausted, emotionally and physically after today. Farm life isn't for the faint of heart and I'm thinking I may need to reconsider this hobby. Even Viejo is tired and Oh yeah, Bridget is still Broody. 

Mom knows best

Want to see something cute?
In response to my previous blog post my mom sent me this:

"Oh, I am so sorry - but don't be so hard on yourself.  I love you - mom
p.s. don't curse so much, I taught you better :) "

Ahhhh man. Sometimes curse words are the only way to go. I will try to clean it up Mom.

In other news, 3 days left. Yesterday Bridget came off the nest for probably the last time and took care of business. She ate a ton, drank a river full, and took the biggest bowel movement (I know Sh%t would have worked better but ma's reading) I have ever seen. Usually at day 18, they hunker down and are in it for the long haul. She won't come off again unitl they are born most likely, as evidenced by that massive bomb drop. Such a determined one that Bridget.

I'm thinking that some of the eggs will start hatching on Sunday afternoon, which is Mother's day! How appropriate!

I will keep you posted.

I wanna kick my own ass

God. 


I am so freaking mad at myself. Ugh. I wanted to see if the embryos survived the heat wave the past few days. So I decided to candle the eggs one last time. As I was putting the egg back in the nest, I totally dropped it and it cracked. 


I looked in it, hoping it wasn't fertilized and unfortunately it was with a little chick inside. 


It's amazing how guilty I feel about it. I am not going to touch those eggs again until they hatch. I seriously can't deal with the heartbreak if I do something shitty like that again. 


Dammit...................5 days left

Time Crunch.....7 days left.

Man, what a time crunch I have been in. I cannot get ahead this week to save my life.  


Seriously, I used to take time for granted but this week and last, I feel like there has not been enough time in a day to get all this good stuff done. I was going to try to finish the brooder where the new girls will live on Thursday, but I got called in to work because a co-worker was sick. I ended up working an insane amount of days in a row and wasn't able to work on it until this weekend throwing a serious glitch in the plan. Yesterday, Saturday, I decided I would put all of my effort into it Sunday (seriously, building stuff and being outside for me is my church) and then bam last night at 2:00 am a huge thunderstorm blew in. Killin' me. Not kidding. I put on my rubber boots and went to work this a.m. in the rain. My one and only next day off is Tuesday and then the new arrivals will be here on Sunday so it was imperative I got most of it done today. The clouds parted and after a couple of unplanned trips to the hardware store and a few @*#^ #%'s later, I am happy to report that I was able to get it mostly finished. Tuesday I am going to level it a bit and predator proof the hell out of it. 

Isn't it cute? It even matches the big coop. 

If anyone out there is looking to build a coop, I'm going to seriously suggest using the plans I did(I mean if you like this look).I bought them online from The Garden Coop. The directions are super easy to follow and even those with little building experience can do it. So get out there and DO IT. 

Seriously. Damn this heat in Austin.  95 degrees, but with the humidity it feels like 101. 
Tell you what is not good. Bridget's clutch(the nest she's sitting on). If the internal temperature of the eggs reach 105 degrees...........toast. Or shall I say over easy. 


Son of a................. ugh. 


She's pretty intuitive at coming off the nest when its too hot. This a.m. she left for about an hour  as soon as I opened the door for her and then this afternoon, when the temps reached boiling point, she wanted to come off again.  I let her linger around for only a few minutes and then put her back on. Since it's her first time on the nest I don't want her to get bored or have ADD and forget. So far she has been great and I think she is going to be an excellent mother. 


I put a shade cloth on the roof, ran an extension cord to the coop, and hooked up a fan for her and the eggs. I just looked in there and the temperature was down to 88. Thank God. I'm going to candle tonight and see if the eggs survived. Tomorrow it's supposed to be a scorcher again and then monday its supposed to get back into the 80's. 


81/2 days left.........................fingers crossed. So freaking close. 

Day 9

Can you see the veins?

So far so good.

Today I worked on the new brooder/coop. This is where the new little ones will reside with mama Bridget for a few weeks. She will raise them for probably 4-6 weeks, get tired of them, and reincorporate into the flock. They will stay there and grow until they are big enough to integrate with the older girls. 

Framing it up

As I was working on the coop today, I left the door open to the nesting box to see if Bridget wanted to stretch her legs and eat and drink a little. Most broody chickens leave the nest a few times during their broodiness and I figured I may as well monitor how long she is off (Don't worry, I have water and food next to her at all times). About an hour and a half of having the door open, she busted out of there and started running around chatting it up. She sat at the waterer for 10 minutes drinking like she had just run a marathon. She ate a little and then took multiple dust baths. After about an hour I started to get worried that she forgot she was supposed to be sitting on the nest so I picked her up(she was so light from brooding) and put her back on the nest where she settled in nicely. 
13 more days. 

Mishap

Well Hell. 


On day 2 of Bridget holding court on her unborn babies, we had a mishap. Shocking, I know.  Old girl got confused. I set her up in a nest box and blocked her off from the other girls. I put her some food and water and secured her in but it obviously was not too secure because she high jumped like an olympian right on out of there. Someone give this girl a gold medal please. Unfortunately, she couldn't get back in and ended up sitting on the other nest box which was empty except for one lonely golf ball. I'm not sure how long the eggs were chilling there without her heat, but I read somewhere (after frantically googling on my iPhone during a Feist concert) that broody chicks usually get up every other day for about 30 minutes at a time, leave the nest to take care of business and eat and drink a little. Since I didn't know how long she had been off the nest, I resigned myself to wait until day 7 to candle to see if they were still alive. 


Today is Day 6 and I could not wait any longer. I candled a few minutes ago and good news folks. The eggs are alive and kicking. Literally. I could see them moving inside the shell! So amazingly cool. I only candled a couple because I did not want to disturb her nest too much but the eggs seem to be progressing perfectly. One week down two to go. I think my bridgie girl can do it. 


I tried to take some video footage(its super raw). In it you can see a few veins and that black dot in the center was moving around like crazy back and forth.  Silkie Madness!

Chicken Freak

I'm afraid I am becoming one of those weird chicken people who keep amassing chicken after chicken. I swore to myself I wouldn't become a chicken hoarder. Too late. 


When Bridget went broody I wanted to be annoyed, but secretly I was ecstatic. After spending time with my grandmother a few weeks ago and seeing her hen raising some little ones, I really wanted to see one of my girls become a mother. When I noticed Bridget sitting in the nest box more than she should, I knew it was my chance to let her hatch a few. I started my search on the Austin Poultry Meetup Group and found a few people who had some fertilized eggs for sell. I have to tell you, finding eggs in the city is tough. A 45 minute trip north and two country roads later, I am the proud owner of six new eggs that hopefully in 21 days will be chirping. 

Silkies, Frizzles, and a Black Copper Maran (rare)

I also picked up 5 more eggs today from a friend. We aren't sure if all of them are fertilized so  I will candle them in the future days to find out.  
I am going to let Bridget raise them if she wants and not brood them in the laundry room like the last broody disaster. I can (and I bet all of ya'll can too) already hear Claire jumping with joy. Because I won't brood them in the laundry room I need a place for them to live and grow away from the bigger girls STAT. I already started cutting and laying out the lumber for the new chicken coop. Hopefully tomorrow I can get a ton done on it, since I'm rotting in the box the next 5 days. Ugh. 

Back Off

Found these on my Zucchini. 

Red aphids. Not good. I just read somewhere one can produce 80 offspring in a week. Good lord. They can also easily destroy a garden in no time.
To kill them, I pretty much picked most of them off and squished them. I'm going to do a good dose of NEEM oil in the morning. Something else is having a little snack on my blackberry plants and my chard. I haven't seen the offender so I'm just going to give everything a good spray. 


Other than that, everything is looking pretty good. 

Zucchini as big as your face

Tomato Jungle

Finally

Well, on a high note, I finally grew something worth eating other than chard. 

Been Frustrated Lately. 
I have a couple projects that have really gotten me down in the shitter. It's like the harder I work, the crappier the project gets. Case in point, the stock tank pool. If it weren't so heavy, I would have rolled that rusty pile of crap down the driveway and put it out on the street for bulk pick up. I drained it at the end of the summer and as I let the water out, it rusted like the undercarriage of a 1950 chevy. No Biggie I thought. Nothing a little replacement pool liner can't replace right? Two days of caulking like an olympic champion and two pool liners later I suffered a huge let down that even a Lamictal haze couldn't fix. The tank is still leaking and my next plan of attack has yet to be determined. So, heads up friends. If you are thinking about doing a stock tank pool, don't use a saltwater pump system. No matter how well you balance the pH, the salt will make it rust faster. I wish I would have seen this article prior to running the saltwater pump. Sigh. 

First Chard Experience

We are Rockin' and Rollin' in the garden so far this spring. The Swiss Chard took off and is growing like a weed. Its easy to grow and adds great color to the garden space. To be honest, I love it just for it's appearance. Since it was getting as tall as me, I figured it was time to harvest a little and cook some up. I actually have never even eaten chard, much less prepared it, so I did have to do a little google search. I got so many results for sauteed chard, but I really wanted to use something that incorporated eggs since we have a surplus of them. I found a recipe for a quiche, tweaked it a little and cooked up something halfway edible. The hardest part of the whole experience was resetting the oven every time we opened it to take a peek.  For some reason it turns off every time we open it and we have to move the fridge to reset the breaker. I guess it shows how much we care to get a new oven since we don't even use it that much. Embarrassing. 

Potato Crusted Swiss Chard Quiche 

Ingredients

5-6 small-medium red potatoes
2 tsp of olive oil
3/4 cup of onions 
Garlic to taste
4 eggs
10 egg whites (1-1/4 cup)
½ cup 2% milk
Cheddar Cheese 
A pinch of nutmeg
Cooking spray
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Pre-heat oven to 375.
Heat olive oil in a large non-stick sauté pan over medium heat.  Saute onions and garlic.
Stir in the Swiss chard and sauté another two to three minutes or until the chard is just wilted.  Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg and allow the greens to cool for a few minutes. 
In a large bowl whisk together eggs, egg whites, and milk.  Season with salt and pepper and set aside.
Spray a 9-inch pie pan with cooking spray and layer thin slices of potato all over the sides and bottom of pans, making sure to overlap them.
Once the greens have cooled, combine them with the egg mixture and pour everything into the potato lined pie crust. Scatter shredded Cheddar Cheese over the top and then pop into the oven for 30-40 minutes or until the eggs are good and done. 

The following recipe was taken and adapted from the website:  http://cleananddelicious.com/2010/07/08/potato_crusted_swiss_chard_qui/

The Finished Product

The recipe also says you can change up the cheeses and use feta or goat cheese. I used cheddar cheese because I can't stand goat cheese. It literally tastes like my goat Billy I owned as a kid smelled. Gross. Can't do it. Play with it each time and you can have a different quiche every time. 

Bridget's gone Rogue

Ugh......


Bridget one of my young girls(salmon favorelle) has been showing some broody tendencies. Hell, I am not even sure if she is laying yet. I am only getting four eggs a day and have five girls now, so I am not sure who isn't laying. I had my suspicions it was her earlier this month and now she has been spending way too much time in the nesting box which makes me think she is broody. Great. I have been through this once before  and I am so not in the mood to relive that nightmare again. She gets super upset when you even open the door to hen house which makes me 98% sure she is trying to hatch the other girls eggs.


Sigh. 


This time I am going to go on the poultry forum and get some fertilized Silkie  eggs. I know, seriously, how cute are they? Last time the heat killed the two eggs I had slipped under Little Shit, but now with a relatively normal spring here in Austin, I have a feeling Bridget can pull this off. Fingers crossed that it works this time.

Do I look old enough to be a grandparent?

Did I mention we are grandparents?


I didn't? 


Well, we are! Remember my Sonny boy? He's been thriving at my Dad's house and has been bow chicka wow wowing all over the place. So much so that one of the hens laid and hatched  his first offspring a few weeks ago. My maw maw(grandmother) is taking great care of them and even tried to get me to take two of them home to add to our girls. Unfortunately, I wasn't able too because they aren't sexed and I don't  want to end up with rooster's again. Nevertheless, I'm super excited to watch them grow up.

Humidity is Killer

The Humidity with the pending storm is killing the Big Bear. 80 degrees never felt so hot......

Tornado Chance 70%

The weather man said a 70% chance of tornado tonight and tomorrow. WHAT? Great. Scares the crap outta me. So, I guess I will be up all night worrying about the girls. I may sneak them in a little later without Claire noticing. We also have to worry about the creek(ok, ok, city sewer ditch) running through the backyard. When it rains, it turns into a class V rapid any kayaker would be envious of. The good people at the insurance company swear we aren't in the flood plain and don't need flood insurance, but about a year and a half ago, before the dreaded drought, it rained five hours straight and I knew our house was going to turn into Noah's Ark. Two of everything, Come on in. 


Anyway, tonight and tomorrow it's supposed to rain, hail, and be nasty like it hasn't been in a long time. Three to five inches they say. My anxiety level is high. That's good because I'm going to need a lot of adrenaline when I have to start sandbagging and building a levee to protect the homestead. Ugh. I will let you know how it goes. 


In other news, I seem to be able to grow stuff I didn't mean to grow. This little tomato plant popped up the other day after I tilled up my garden box getting it ready for spring planting. I'm going to let it grow and see what happens. 

No Mo' Mud pit

Sod was delivered today. It's amazing how happy a little grass makes me.  

Crap

Someone has bloody poop dammit. Almost two years without an illness and I open the door to the henhouse and it looks like an old man with a GI bleed in there. Ugh. 


I did a little research and turns out it can be either a mild situation or something that could kill them in as little as a week. I truly think it is just intestinal shedding which chickens do from time to time, but just to be safe we are treating them for coccidiosis, a nasty infection. They all seem fine and are eating and foraging as normal, so I'm not too worried. We are treating them with Sulmet which is put in their water for 6 days(thanks Claire for going to the feed store for me and picking it up).  The only crappy thing about the treatment is that we cannot eat the eggs for ten 10 days and I feel super guilty about having to throw them out. 


To prevent illnesses like this, I usually overhaul the coop twice a year. Clean it well, bleach it, and change out the deep bedding. This time, just to be safe I changed out the self stick tile vinyl I placed in the henhouse. I would recommend this if you are looking for a floor for your own henhouse. It's only $1 a square foot and is easy to change out every so often. I also repainted the whole house and changed out the roosts just to be safe. 


Today Rougie was mad at me for taking out the nesting boxes for a moment. She wanted to lay an egg and was not having any of this remodeling. Before I realized it she was trying to lay an egg in my paint tray. Seriously killing me. 

And Bridget was so excited about the floors she could hardly stand it(notice, she was all up in the paint as well).

Toad House Party

Found these little ones, living in a tree stump yesterday when I was getting the yard ready.

I'm tired of trying to be fancy

So we are planting regular grass. Gasp. Yeah, I said it. I have dealt with the zoysia's, buffalo's, and the curly mesquites and I'm done with them. Last years drought put me in a bad mood as far as grass is concerned. So bad in fact, astro-turf is starting to look like a classy option.  I know what you are thinking and xeriscape would be great, except we have two stinks(the boys) who like their grass and to be honest our front yard looks way better with grass. So, I am giving it one more go. You can knock me down but my ass keeps popping right back up in a fighting stance. 

It finally stopped raining and today ended up being a gorgeous day. I figured since the ground was mushy, today would be a perfect day to till up the yard and I tell you what, I have never had a tilling experience as effortless as today. I don't even think I dropped a swear word in the hour I was skipping around with the tiller. Something finally worked out for me. I got it tilled up, leveled, and now all I'm waiting for is the grass delivery on thursday. We are going with Bermuda. Yeah Yeah I know, it's invasive and can take over everything, but no one can talk me out of it. It's an Austin native and it's drought tolerant and that's all I care about at this moment.This is the third time of redoing this area and  I'm not doing it again. 

So today, the dogpark came to us today in the form of a tiller and the stinks couldn't get enough. 

My Bones are a achin'

I'm a brittle little soul when it comes to the rain. I can usually tell when it is going to rain a day before it actually does. My bones ache like an 85 yo who smoked all their life and never drank a glass of milk. Seriously. That bad. It's been raining like this in Austin for three days straight and I will tell you what, I'm over it. If it keeps it up, I'm going to need a walker and some BenGay stat.

Tell you who else is over it. The girls. They stand in the rain(not sure why when they have their coop), get soaked, and start to look more like muddy little pigs than chickens. I can tell they are pissed. I always get anxious that something is going to happen to them when it rains like this. I worry about my building skills and the coop collapsing with the slightest burst of wind, especially at night. I woke up a few times last night, peeped out the window, and couldn't see anything. Every now and then with a bolt of lightening, a strained eye, and a furrowed brow,  I swear I could catch a glimpse of the coop in the distance. But it still wasn't good enough confirmation that it was still upright.  I contemplated hauling myself out there in the hurricane winds and bringing them all in, but I quickly came to my senses. I  peeped out again several times and realized if I don't stop straining to see, my brow is going to need more than a few rounds of botox after tonight. I reluctantly, for the sake of beauty and sanity, resigned myself to lay in bed and worry that the first annual chicken apocalypse was occuring right outside my window. Cue Generalized Anxiety Diagnosis 300.02 and one Prozac refill. 

Update: As of this morning, they are all doing fine and the coop is still standing strong and I have not been admitted into a psychiatric institution as of yet.

Anyway, next week I plan on doing my spring  planting. I pretty much have all of my transplants ready to go and after the past few days, I just need to wait for it to dry out a bit before I go ahead and get them in the ground. I dont want my tomatoes to end up with that nasty blight again like spring 2011. This year is the year I tell ya. Boom.

Pool Partay

These chicks are ready to go Poolside. Bring on spring and summer. 

A fungus Among Us

I'm growing them. Oyster Mushrooms. A spray of water here and there and BAM...... growth. Shit, I even forgot about to spritz them for two days and wouldn't you know it, they grew bigger. I haven't grown anything this easy in a long time.  


In a few days, these bad boys will be ready for the grill. 

Chicken attack

Been gone awhile........yeah i know, again. 


Tired, unmotivated, lazy, busy, saving money. Gasp.  The list of excuses is endless. But the last excuse above, conserving the green, is by far the most important. We have a pretty big event going down in October, so the flow has stopped and is damned up in the bank. Anyway, there are still a few emotional logistics to sort out with a few people, so more on the big event  a little later. 


So, the equation for 2012 looks like this:


(October)($$$$)+No cash flow= minimal projects. 


Boo.


The girls are good and everyone is finally getting along great. We are all unfortunately still missing Penny. Bridget just started laying and we are still waiting for Big Monica to give us her first. Bridget is laying super cute, tiny cadbury like eggs. Seriously, so tiny. You literally have to eat 3 to equal one normal egg. Sigh.

Yesterday, for free, I went ahead and readied the garden boxes for spring planting. The weather has been warm lately so I thought I would get a head start. This year is going to be the year of produce. I can feel it.

Here's a video of me and the girls getting the boxes ready. Seriously, as soon as I grab the shovel and start digging, they are all over me. I can't fight them off they are so excited. The many "ouches" you here are me trying to protect my digits. In all their excitement, the girls aren't able to tell the difference between my short little stubby toes and grubs. Yowser. 

A video

A video of the rye grass cover I planted for the winter. The girls love it and the weeds are gone. 




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdmvMZtWOeY&context=C38798ddADOEgsToPDskLgwtDJyUWVq1jGPnDIerS-

Fruity

Wow. Been Busy with the holidays and all. I can't believe its already the middle of January. Not much going on. I have been rotting in the box way too much. Things just haven't slowed down. Putting a huge Blah factor on my mood. 


I planted a few fruit trees last week (2 peach, a plum, a fig, and a pear).  I decided to do something a bit different because I'm worried about the overall quality of my soil. I made a 2 1/2 foot by 2 1/2 foot box out of cedar that is twelve inches tall. I dug and removed the soil about six inches deep in the ground and placed the level cedar box around the six inch deep hole, making it a total of 18 inches deep.  I back filled with a 50/50 good quality soil and compost, planted the bare root tree, watered, and added about three inches of mulch. I followed it up with a good dose of seaweed/fish fertilizer. So far so good, except the past two nights have been frigid in the 20's. Ugh. Hopefully, the weather didn't kill them.  Supposedly if they haven't leafed out by June, then it's a bust. Fingers crossed.