My chickens

Last winter I decided I was going to take the plunge into urban chickens. Well, ok, technically they're not "urban" when we don't really live in an actual real "city," so to speak, but hey, we have neighbors a rock's throw in either direction. So it totally counts. The biggest hurdle was that the hatchery had a minimum order of 25 chicks, and there was no way in hell I just didn't need that many. Then very early in the spring, my country friend lost most of his 40+ flock to mink and hawks, so I made a deal with him = I'd order 5 Buff Orpington chicks for myself and 20 Dark Cornish for him. The box came May 1st (even though the shipping receipt said February 29th). Check out these teensy peepers:

McMurray Hatchery sent us one extra Cornish and another (Bonus! FREE RARE!!!) chick - it was a Crested Polish. If you look closely, you can see her there near the back. The blonde chicks were mine, the speckly ones are the Cornish. My friend picked his chicks up the next day, and we moved ours to a spare rodent cage, since it was still ridiculously cold outside.

In practically no time, they'd outgrown their little cage (and gotten really ugly).
Pictured: Ugly Dinosaur Chickens Eating the Xbox.

So we moved on to building the coop. I mentioned here before that we intended to use the kids' old clubhouse for a coop, with a few modifications, and that's exactly what we did. With my husband's gracious help (long, LONG story that starts with me saying to him "I don't need your f***ing help and I don't want it!", and ends with me saying, "Please help me for the love of God."), we built our ladies a nice sized coop and a little yard to scratch in. (pics of the coop later).

These pictures were taken this morning, while I fed The Ladies some grapes.

Thankfully, they've feathered out (and aren't so ugly), and their waddles (or as Riley says, "wobbles") are getting darker by the day - a sign of sexual maturity (i.e. EGGS). I'm expecting them to start laying by the middle of July or Early August.

More on satisfying projects...

So, I'm getting some chickens. 25 of them to be exact, because the hatchery has a minimum order. The plan is to keep them in the kitchen for a couple of weeks, then divide those we're keeping to move outside (just three of them), and move the rest to my country friend's place for the next 4-6 weeks until they're big enough to sell (craigslist, anyone?) or eat (umm.. we might pass on that one). We've had a house chicken before, what's another couple of dozen right?

As usual, I am jumping into this with both feet. But as usual, I am researching and learning as much as I can before said jumping. Keeping chickens is much easier than it may seem, and so much information about health, potential issues, housing, etc. is available online for free - no need to even buy a book. But I still bought this one. First things first, though: My chickens need a home.

I've googled a zillion chicken coops and drawn up a design that I'm happy with. Because money is an issue, the majority of materials we'll be using are recycled scraps gathered from friends and family. This is what it looks like right now:

A pile of old fence pieces and some random boards. I'll be taking more pictures as we build. Just hoping to get done and get those chickens settled (wherever they're settled) before I have a hide to tan.

Deer Season

Deer hunting season is upon us - bowhunting now, shotgun next month. Normally deer season comes and goes with me remaining oblivious to its passing, aside from the occasional gift of deer meat from friends. This year is different.

My son, all of his life, rejected his dad's offers to go hunting together. Refused to eat fresh-caught fish and said he'd sooner eat dirt than a rabbit. He told me in no uncertain terms that he could never hunt, could never even support hunting, because it was stupid to kill a wild animal when there were animals raised specifically for food. And come to think of it, he wasn't so sure he was okay with that either. I was bracing myself for a declaration of vegetarianism. I even went as far as researching vegetarian diets, variations on meals we already eat.. the whole deal.

Then something strange happened. Suddenly he was eating all the beef he could get his hands on, and a few deer burgers convinced him deer was the Best Meat Ever. He thought maybe he'd like to try hunting for NON-food animals, so my country friend took him prairie dog hunting in SD for a few days. You could almost smell the change on him when he came home. It happened one step at a time, but it felt like a flash to me. Now he's gun-crazy, scanning guns & ammo magazines, visiting the local Bass Pro and drooling over the rifles. He can't stop talking about how much meat we can get "for free" (ha! hasn't bought a hunting license lately, I see).

Then there was this crazy thing I did. I went and bought a book on brain tanning, hoping to try making buckskins. Call it a homeschool project. I bought the book before my son's drastic transformation from border-veggie to hunter-killer, and had asked several of my hunting friends, "Hey, when you get a deer, save me the hide and brains, k? And it has to be fresh, so call me right away. Cuz I'm doin this thing.." They shook their heads, because they know how weird adventurous I am, but they all promised me the hide.

Well, without me even noticing, it's Deer Season. The day of reckoning approaches. I, one who can barely handle boiling a chicken, will very likely have a large - and freshly killed by my firstborn child - animal in my back yard being cleaned (why is such a bloody messy job called "cleaning"?) I will, regardless of my son's success, have someone's deer hide with bits of .. you can imagine what.. on it, waiting for me to soak and scrape, stretch and oil. And brains?!?! What the hell was I thinking??

Please keep me in your thoughts. I have made my bed, so to speak. It would harm my pride be wrong not to lie in it. I'm just hoping I can do this with a smile.

**sniff** that's my baby

Flat Stanley...

Since I've sent our Flat Stanley pictures off to Robinella, I thought I would share our Stanley adventures here.

I didn't get a picture of Cadence's Stanley pre-adventure, but she dressed him in a snappy black tshirt and some green waist-high waders. I think she was planning to take him to the river, before she realized water is a bad place for little paper boys. Since Riley's Stanley had upset Cadence so badly, Riley made another that we called Freckles because of his bright orange spots everywhere. Some kind of skin condition I guess. We took Stanley and Freckles to Ledges State Park, where there are enough hiking trails and lookout points to make you want to fall over and die.
The road is flooded out from the Des Moines River. It always is. This is actually part of the reason the kids like to go there. The kids wore their bathing suits most of the day.

The first stop was the picnic area for lunch. The kids found a tree frog right off the bat. No big surprise there. Stanley wanted to hold it too.

Next, we went for a hike.

The kids love the hiking part. You're hiking for hours on a trail that never seems to end. You keep thinking, "I'm sure we're almost there," but you're not. The kids always laugh and run ahead and say, "Come on!" about a million times. Stanley and Freckles had to stop to rest too.

Freckles is kind of a sickly kid, if you ask me. One of those scared-of-nature types. Allergies or something. We took a couple of breaks.See that green stuff in the foreground? That's poison ivy.

Then, to everyone's delight, we spotted this great little "cave."

You probably can't see it well in this picture, but there's a brown sign just to the left of the white fence in front of this "cave." It's teeny. Can't see it? Yeah, we didn't either.Up the side of the rocks! Cadence is obviously recovered from her broken collarbone, just in time to break something else. More green stuff. Yep, that's poison ivy too.Chad and Stanley, chillin' in the cliffs yo. After many shouts of, "Jesus, be careful!" and "Jesus, don't do that!" (should have named them all Jesus), we moved out. That's when we saw the sign.Oops. We moved on to the flooded road, aka the Swimming Area.Chad got busy damming up the road. Dams are his passion. They soon enlisted the help of about 6 other kids. Too bad my kids are lonely social outcasts and don't know how to interact with others.No matter how many other kids come around, my girls are still best pals.

Our next adventure with Stanley took place Down on the Farm. Well ok, it wasn't really a farm, but my friend's house is in a rural area, surrounded by crops. Does that count? We were happy to discover an old friend from Seattle was also visiting that day. Her daughter is just a few months older than Riley, and we hadn't seen them since last summer. Stanley donned his best farmer clothes (courtesy of Chad), and buddied up to the resident pet, a bantam rooster named Lone Ranger.

Notice the kids are holding Lone Ranger. He doesn't know he's a chicken and doesn't hang out with the other chickens. Hence his name. He spends his days guarding the garage so the other chickens don't get in, and hanging out around people.

Next was the corn field.

Children of the Corn. Remind me to make Cadence wear sandals the next time she wears those capris. Sheesh. Then they mowed the yard a bit. Stanley got to drive.This was taken before any mowing actually occurred. I think they mowed about 15 feet before running off to do something else. Kids are flighty like that.This green stuff is not poison ivy. It's actually soybean plants, although it does look a lot like poison ivy from a distance. Leaves of three and all that.

And speaking of poison ivy, Stanley suffered the effects of a whole day's worth of exposure:

Thankfully, my kids didn't get it. I mean worse than they already had it. Which was not too bad.

Now for the bad news.

This Stanley didn't make it. According to Riley, his extremities have turned black from frostbite. I don't know how many times I've said, "Wear your gloves. Frostbite will make your fingers turn black and fall off." (scare tactic parenting works like a charm) His lungs are intact, but the rest of his organs are "mixed up." His bladder, the dark swirly thing at the bottom, is full because the frostbite has rendered his ridiculously large penis functionally inactive. Poor Stanley. At first glance, you might think Stanley just got lost in the frozen mountains, but look closer. His brains have all come out of his head. We suspect foul play.

They make coats out of these things?...

Check out what we saw on the way to the cookout today:

A MINK! (This isn't an actual picture of the mink I saw, and not to cheat the guy out of his photograph, I found it here.) I was so excited! But, I was driving and it was hippity-hopping across the grassy clearing so quickly. If I hadn't gotten a better look at it, I would have assumed it was a muskrat or maybe even a cat. But it was mostly the mink's canter that gave it away. We've had ferrets, and the way a weasel moves is pretty unique.

I was kind of surprised, previously assuming mink are all glossy and black. This one was fluffy and brown, just as in the picture. I knew mink lived around here, but in all my years in this farm and country state, I'd never seen one before.

Fly - er, Hop Away Home..

After close inspection of our developing amphibians, we've decided we have a mix of Spring Peeper frogs and some kind of toad, probably just an American Toad. The Spring Peepers are smooth and brown/green, while the toads are darker and slightly bumpier. Spring Peepers have a bumpy appearance anyway, so identification, especially of such small specimens, has been pretty difficult. This would explain their great differences in development the last few weeks. Either way, they're pretty cool.

There were eleven frogs and toads ready to hop to freedom last Friday. Forgive the blurryish pictures. I couldn't use the viewscreen in the bright sunlight, but you should get at least a reasonable idea of the size of these teeny little guys. This is the "path" we walk through to get to the creek across the road. Poison Ivy, anyone?
I've never had poison ivy and so far the kids have proven to also be immune. While we don't count on immunity, as often as we're exposed it's still a good thing to have. We transported the frogs (and toads) in an old tea canister.

Aww, aren't they just So Freakin Cute?!?

Hop away, my tiny little friends! See how camouflaged they are in the sand and mud?On Sunday, we took another eight to my friend's pond, where the eggs were gathered weeks ago. On the walk back to the house, the kids found a very cool garter snake.

After several minutes of handling, the snake was not happy. Garters aren't venomous, but they will still bite. Here it is, pissed off and poised to strike at anything that gets too close. Like some crazy lady with a camera. Isn't it beautiful?
Here is a picture taken while I'm running from the beautiful snake that has determined I am close enough, and slow enough to take out its aggression.

Ah, wildlife!

We started with 26 live tadpoles and have so far released 19 frogs and toads. Yesterday two frogs died suddenly in the tank before their tails were fully absorbed. I'm not sure what happened there, but considering how many have made it, I think we've done pretty well in caring for them. For those of you that have a hard time with math, that means we have 5 left in the tank; two toads we're letting go this afternoon, one tadpole with only back legs, and two frogs (or maybe toads?) that still have significant tails. More updates soon.

Lesson of the Day: Don't Curse the Camera...

This morning I was pissed off at my camera. While studying the tadpoles, we noticed that, just like the illustrations of tadpoles we've seen, their tails are a dark line surrounded by a feathery transparent structure. We also noticed that, unlike the illustrations, a transparent jelly-like skin covers their whole bodies. I tried to take pictures of this, but closeups were blurry and zooming out again didn't show the really cool transparency around them. Cheap damn camera. I had much the same problem trying to take pictures of the ants on my peonies. Too close, blurry. Too far, can't see the tiny little ants. I cursed my camera. I called it some very bad names. The camera took my abuse quietly.

Then, my substitute dad called wanting to take me and the kids out to the lake to observe the flooding and "maybe fish a bit." Yay! I grabbed the crappy camera to document our trip.

This is the rarely-flooded area next to the lake. Normally, the lake sits beyond the furthest treeline in this picture. It might interest you to know that this 1000 acres or so of land, owned by the State of Iowa, is available for lease to farmers every year at a lowered price. Due to rising gas prices, and corresponding rising corn prices, the farmers paid about four times more than prior years per acre this year for this land. Leases were signed two weeks ago, before all this flooding. I'm betting some farmers are losing their ass on this one. While the day was overcast, the view was much brighter than this picture would indicate. Damn camera.

Cadence promptly caught a toad. This particular toad was an amputee, having lost one of his front legs, probably to a turtle. It was healed though, and while he wasn't very good at landing, his disability didn't affect his hopping skills.

Notice the crisp detail of the rocks and plants. Notice the shiny nail polish over dirt-crusted fingernails. Notice that Cadence has as many warts as her new handicapped friend. Now notice the blurry blob that's supposed to be a toad. That fuzzy stump is what's left of his front leg, but after taking four shots, this was the best picture I got of him. Grrr. Piece of shit camera.

After fishing for 45 minutes and catching only one teeny fish, we moved on. A long drive around the lake and down about a hundred gravel roads brought us to a nature preserve. (I forget the name now and it's driving me crazy!) This place had a large grassland with grazing bison and elk, and a Learning Center that offers classes, tours and information on Iowan wildlife. Very cool! We didn't have time to visit the Learning Center or the gift shop (it will make for a cool field trip at a later date), but we drove through the grazing area. I busted out my camera to take pictures. This is what I got:

The bison, buffalo if you like, were wildly and unpredictably lounging in the grass in the far edge of the pasture. I could have gotten some pictures of them, if my camera was good enough. Alas, they were too far away and I didn't even try. Heck, I couldn't even see them well. Grumble grumble.

We got home only minutes before Vic and I pulled out the camera to show off the (crappy) pictures I took today. As he handed it back to me, his fingers caught the wrist strap and the whole thing fell out of my hand onto the slate porch. Batteries went flying. The memory card skidded across into the mud. We got it assembled again and found a small dent in the lens casing and that some small piece of something under the glass viewscreen cover had peeled away at the corner. Bummer. When I turned it on, the lens wouldn't retract and the screen kept telling me "Lens error! Restart camera!" with lots of loud beeping. Fucking great. No matter how shitty, I did spend around 300 bucks for that camera and can't afford to replace it.

A few minutes of screwing with it got the lens working again and it seems that all is well after all. I'll have to deal with the little dent as my punishment for swearing at the camera all day. Cursing at your camera is very bad juju.

Hey, I'm Earthy. Really...

Is it okay that I forgot it was Earth Day yesterday if I was out enjoying nature? I mean, I was appreciating the earth and stuff. We went fishing. I was careful not to litter. I got a sunburn because I'm an idiot and always forget sunscreen during the first month or so of decent weather. You get used to huddling in the house like some 21st century cave man, and when the sun finally shines again you feel like singing "Here Comes the Sun" and dancing through your yard in your underpants and wallowing in the fresh green grass and you completely forget you have to actually protect yourself from the wonderful and long-awaited Sun God. Well, maybe not all of that applies to you, but you get my drift.

We all caught at least two catfish, but none of them were keepers. And look! There was nature on our fishing trip:

See? Doesn't the sight of a pretty flower peeking through a bunch of dead leaves and sticks just make you want to don your favorite Underoos and skip around? It does for me, baby.

A walk in the park...

Today we took advantage of the fabulous weather with a walk in the park near our house.


It's a state park, which means a lot of trees and no playground equipment. My kids never miss the slides and swings because there's a gob of way more interesting stuff down there. Thick woods around a creek. What more could a kid ask for?


While wandering the woods, we found a tree awesomely chewed to pieces by a beaver:



And the beaver's equally awesome home:



We passed a dead and mostly eaten up dog on the way to the creek, but I'll spare you the pictures of that thing. It wasn't pretty. The people-beaten path leads to a sand bar under this very cool old train bridge:

Chad got busy building a dam, one of his favorite things to do with water:



Cadence hunted for frogs:


Riley played in the mud:


After we got good and dirty, we trudge up this treacherous incline to the top of the train bridge:
..and went across.

I was having flashbacks of Stand By Me and made the kids hurry across for no reason. We've lived here 7 years and I know perfectly well the only trains that run on this track come through at about 2am. That's paranoia for you. On the other side of the creek, Cadence caught her much-coveted frog and I got some great pictures of the water..


..along with some other pretty silly things to take pictures of. Grass? What kind of weirdo takes pictures of grass? Uhh, that would be me.


It was a great way to spend the afternoon. We're all waiting for slightly warmer weather that will enable us to wade the creek. The bottoms is covered with mussel shells, sparkly rocks, and all kinds of other treasures.

"Fishing" for frogs...

Last night, Chad stayed over with a friend of mine so he could attend a farm equipment auction early this morning. This friend has several acres of a really great yard with lots of trees and a little pond out back. When we picked him up this afternoon, Chad was in the back lot scanning the pond.


I asked what he was doing. "Fishing for frog eggs," he said. I make a joke about frogging instead of fishing, but he was too absorbed and didn't even hear me. I tell ya, nobody appreciates a good smart ass anymore. I guess there's supposed to be some eggs in there. Eggs from some frog my country friend calls Spring Peepers. Looks like a bunch of slime and muck to me. Chad was determined to take some home. He carefully inspected the slime.


After deciding the good stuff was out of his reach, he hunted up an old jug to stand on.


After all that hard work, Chad had a baggie full of pond water and slime, and possibly some frog eggs. As soon as we got home again, he realized he'd left the baggie on the counter at my friend's place. Figures. Tomorrow we're going back with all the kids to fish for some more.