Carolyn and her peeps are doing so well!  She is such a good chicken momma…  We FINALLY got a few pictures of them head on instead of just their behinds!  Everytime she sees us coming, she hustles them away from us!  But we were working in the garden and stopped to take a little break…  and she didn’t notice us as they came in to drink a little water.  So Jessy got a few cute pictures of them!  Her peeps are growing so big!  It’s so darling to see them jump up on tall stuff, they are getting very good at short flight hops!

 

I wonder if she cares or notices that they are not her babies by blood…  they are probably some of our Amerucana/Marans mixes…  I guess it doesn’t matter, she sat on them for 21 days and she hatched them.  They are her babies!

 

Bucka Roo is introducing himself to one of the little cute banty girls.  We got their little exercise yard up and they are sure enjoying it.

 

It’s not super wide, about six feet, but it’s forty feet long!  And under the cover of some trees and the building.  I wanted to make sure it was hawk proof.  It’s hard to see, but we do have deer netting over the top of the open areas.  And all the nice tall grass helps to hide them as well.  I don’t want anything to happen to my little chicken babies!!!

 

We used the Craigslist stash of vinyl fencing to make a little poultry yard around the chicken tractor!  Right now there are turkeys in there.  And boy, do they like being able to free range.  They are sure funny to watch.  We just used a few t-posts and wire to make the little yard, it’s definately not going to hold back anything big.  But it will do nicely for turkeys and then next year for more meat chickens.  Just give them a safe little area to be able to roam about and eat grass, catch bugs.  It’s very important to us to give our meat animals as good a life as we can.  And free ranging is a nice thing for them.  Might take a little longer to grow them super big, but they get there.  And we get to enjoy them having a good time.  It’s a win win situation for certain.

 

It only took them about 2 days to master the ramp.  Does this mean they are smarter than the nuggets?  I don’t know for sure…

We have to glue a few of the spindles back to the fence, as they fell off.  It’s used, so, well, it’s a little rough in places.  But the price was fantastic!  $40 for all of it!  And it looks darling in the garden.  We want the garden to be a sort of oasis, a nice gentle place to enjoy, take a little break, snack on fresh pea pods and watch the various poultry.  I’m looking for a really fancy formal dining room set, at a garage sale cheap, because I think it would be fun to put it out in the garden!  Sort of shabby chic!  I saw one a few sales ago but they wanted $50…  that’s about $30 too much!  (Okay, shabby ad CHEAP chic!)  I think it would be useful, as a garden work table for sure.  It will show up eventually!

 

Won’t that look sweet with a bunch of black eyed Suzeys all around it?  I can’t wait to start planting more flowers and such here and there.  It’s the only real thing that Windhaven lacks… FLOWERS!  There are very very few.  Next year, I hope to remedy that!

 

Man…  no wonder the flower seeds I planted in this cold frame aren’t coming up.  Bucka and his gals have been helping me to roto-till this area where I lost a couple tomato plants.  Shesh…  Thankfully, they stay out of the planted beds, but when I pull something up, they are right there to dig and search for buggies.  Crazy chickens.

 

Love to see the turkeys out and hunting for goodies.  Turkeys love grass!  I was putting all my weeds in their coop and they like those, but I guess nothing is the same as picking exactly what you want out in your ow cute little yard!!!

 

Since the weather is so nice, we have been trying to get our to do cards down to less than 20!  We have about 40 cards, so this is one of them!  jessy painted the cement block skirt wall with a nice basic green paint that we had in our collection of freebie paints!  It’s pretty nice looking.  Better than plain and stained…   I used a half quart of nice semi-gloss on the screen door and man, did that dress it up.  I had enough to do the porch swing inside the porch too!  Nice…  Going to dig up some stuff from the wood lot and dress up the courtyard next weekend…  I found some wild roses, a couple nice little saplings that I think are chokeberry or some cute little ornamental white berry tree and a patch of purple coneflower buried out in the weeds!  And a few iris.  So, I guess there are a few flowers, it’s just that they are hidden way in the back!!!  Can’t wait to see how it all looks with a little shrubbery!!

 

Next year we have in our plans to totally revamp the screen porch.  We love the space, but as you can see, the screens and frames are in rough shape.  The plan is to remove all the screening, and then all the staples, nails and such, repair and sand down the frames, repaint it, and then put up tough new screening.  And replace the two screen doors.  They are in very rough shape.  Jr. might have a nice screen door from a project at work… it would be awesome to replace the one in the back so that we don’t have to always walk through the courtyard fence to go to the back!!!  Cross your fingers!!!  The door that Jessy is standing in front of is the one we’d replace as it is super nasty and non-functioning!!!

 

Jessy had her baby bunnies outside to get a little grass and sunshine.  Aren’t they beautiful?  This is one of the babies from Grizelda and Cornelious.  This bun looks like her Momma!  They are French/English Angora crosses.  Jessy is keeping the black bunny doe, and her name is Sophie.  She is selling this one here, and the red eyes white bunny.  And she has two pedigreed French does that she hopes to get sometime next week.  Her goal is to raise pedigreed French Angoras.  Seeing how nice her bunnies look, I’m sure she will do well.

 

Haha… oh now, bunny is going to attack Baron!  Little does he know that he’s being stalked…

 

The red eyed white buny is beautiful too!  Such beautiful wool to gather and spin!!!

 

My little banties FINALLY learned how to use their ramp and come out into their yard!  They are so cute.  Jessy calls them chicken poodles since they are really just pets!  I adore them, they are so sweet!

 

Parsely refused to come out for the longest time!  He would sit at the doorway and just crow and call his ladies, he was so worried about them.  They just ignored him and finally, he made it out.  Now they can’t wait to come out and wander around in their lovely little yard!  They are so adorable!  I have to make them a little nest box and I hope the girls decide to hatch some little babies!!!!

 

Maggie has been scraping and sanding this little table for days!  And now it’s ready for paint!  She’s going to use it for her scroll saw…  I love when my girls get a project in mind and go to it.

 

Jessy babysitting her grazing bunnies!  They are spoiled!  Can you tell?  They actually have two raised bed boxes in the garden just for their consumption!  Turnips, carrots, beets and lettuce!  They love the greens just as much as the produce.  She’s making a new hutch for Velvet, but that’s another post!

What a nice weekend we had!  Just lots of little projects to do and enjoy doing.  A lot of the big heavy lifting projects are done, so it’s nice to be able to paint, or fix something, just make things nice and not have to take all day and strained muscles to finish.  The weather has been so nice…  just up to the middle to high eighties, with cool mornings.  I know fall is right around the corner, but still, this is such lovely weather!!!  If we can get our list cut in half before winter comes, that will be wonderful.  It will feel like we got a super busy summer season done around the farm and can enjoy a little down time!!!

Aw, who are we kidding?  It just means we’ll be working on the INSIDE of the house!!!  haha…  and crafting and writing and learning new stuff!!!

Yep.  That’s us.

 

 

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