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. 

Ripe?

I took my sister in laws advice and put my green cherry tomatoes in a brown bag, folded it up, and waited.
I spent a week in mexico (thanks #jacqsbirthdaybash) and when I came back, some of them were red and the rest are on their way to being ready to eat. We made a salad the other day, used them, and they tasted great.

Just to rub it in, this was the view from my beachside bed x 6 days

This Means War

It makes me sad when I come home from work and make sure the girls have made it to the roost and I only count five butts. I miss my Penny. I'm not going to lose another one. 


Claire mad a good point. It's the circle of life and the poor Hawk was just hungry. It's the survival of the fittest. I understand that, but, I still hate it. 


I have waged a war on this hawk. I haven't see it around in the past 3 days, but It's been cold and rainy. I'm sure the first day the sun comes out it will be back. 


So, I have done a few reinforcements to the coop. I hung some shiny eye ball looking things in the trees to hopefully scare it away. Some people use old Cd's but I bought mine today at the feed store. Supposedly the shiny will scare it away. 


I bought some netting that I am going to hang throughout the run. Hopefully, this will make the hawk unable to swoop down and prey on the girls. 


Lastly, I bought a decoy. It's an owl. Supposedly one of the fiercest, most feared predators around. 
Check it out here: 


HAWK WAR

RIP........Sweet Penny

A hawk took her out today. 
Im sad................

Penny(in front)

Killer on the Loose

I have never really been a big cat person.  I have had them in the past, but as an adult never really wanted one. Their judging eyes and "making biscuits" on my face in the early a.m. were a real turn off. But now all of a sudden, I have an unwelcome feline friend. 


For the past few days, I noticed something having a field day in my garden boxes. Digging stuff up, messing up the irrigation, and pooping. I thought it was a squirrel or raccoon. The other morning, I woke up and much to my dismay I saw a cat sitting by the coop door, preying on the girls. Great. I ran out to the coop, watering the newly seeded rye with morning coffee, and shooed him away. I thought I had scared him for good. 


I noticed it here and there after the above encounter, but it never did much in terms of harming the girls.  It basically just sat and stared at the girls with curiosity but never went in for the attack. I stopped worrying really. I figured if it's been around this long and hasn't hurt them, it probably won't in the future. I came home from work at lunch to feed the girls and check on them a few days ago and got quite the scare from the new cat.


Disclaimer: I swear to you the following story is true. Just as it happened. This thing is vicious. 


Anyway, I'm feeding the girls and I suddenly hear a rustling on the other side of the their fence in the bamboo. I turn and look and the cat is in attack mode. It looks at me and with a swift pounce move, its go go gadget arm reaches high into the bamboo and grabs a poor unaware  pigeon. Seriously it just grabs this bird out of the air like it's no big deal. I'm standing there with my mouth wide open and I swear to you all of a sudden, I'm making some serious eye contact with this killer. At the moment our eyes meet, the cat puts the bird in it's drool dripping mouth and takes a bite out of it. If that cat could talk, it would have told me at that moment, "this is a warm up lady, your girls are next." 


Shit. 


So for weeks, I have been scaring(and this just means raising my voice saying, get out of here) this cat away. Again and again and again.


But I started feeling kind of guilty. I didn't want to be mean. I felt bad that if it was feral and didn't have a home, maybe it just wanted a little human contact. The other morning I decided to talk to it nicely. And wouldn't you know it, that little cat started purring, came right up to the fence, started rubbing on it and just wanted to be petted.  Well, I feel like an asshole now. 


So, the cat has become a part of daily life. Now, I worry if a day goes by and I don't see it. So far so good. We are all living in harmony together and well I must admit, I kinda like cats again now................as long as it doesn't touch my girls.