The chickens are definitely enjoying this warmer weather (64 degrees today!).

MrC and I often get asked if we go to the lake during the winter. The answer is yes. Our friends that have houses at the lake too go down through the winter too so we’ll play cards and work on projects. We didn’t do any remodeling on the lake house last year with us moving into our new house-house but I’m hoping we make up for it this year!

One of the reasons I love going to the lake in the winter is because it’s so quiet. And the leaves are off of the trees so I get better sunrise photos.

I took this photo 12/3/11 and besides increasing the fill light and upping the saturation a tad, it’s the SOOC (Straight-out-of-Camera) shot. I love it.

I love everything about this photo… the orange reflection in the water, the slight shadows on the ground. It’s definitely my next window-frame-photo! (And that’s a project I’ll share soon!!)

When we first looked at our house, the thought of having railroad tracks right next to us (about 50 feet from our property line) really worried me. But the realtor told us that they were only USPS railroad tracks and that they went by once a week. Thankfully, they weren’t lying… and we actually haven’t seen a train once in the year we’ve been here. I heard it go by once, but by the time I got to the door, it was already gone.

I love train tracks for the photography aspect. Especially since I got Photoshop (!!!) and have all new tools to use to change the appearance.  (I know this photo is crooked,haven’t figured out how to fix that in photoshop yet!)

Obviously this photo was taken in summer. Things are a lot less green out there now!

Thank you to everyone who left kind words on my last post. So far *knock on wood*, our 25 new chicks and 4 older chickens are doing well… and even getting along fairly well. We still haven’t seen an egg from the older chickens (~4 months and counting!) but I’m okay with that.  They went through a very traumatic summer!

Do any of you have railroad tracks by you?

The past couple of months have been hard here around our place. Starting with our first chicken attack in May and all the way up to our turkey getting killed and our two outside cats disappearing this past week.

When I got the turkey back in April or so, I didn’t tell MrC. It was a random feed store purchase that I made with the other chicks I bought back then. At first MrC was mad that I didn’t tell him (hee hee) but eventually I noticed him telling people “Yeah, we have a turkey now too…” and I noticed myself  looking forward to her turkey garbling I could hear above all the other chickens.

She was also good about being LOUD which came in handy if a chicken was missing. When we had our first dog attack, her calling actually brought her chicken friends out of hiding and back into the coop. I named her “Turk” because we couldn’t tell if she was male or female and I figured “Turk” would work either way.

I had let the chickens out into their outside pen that morning and then went to the grocery later that afternoon. When I got back from the grocery, I noticed a chicken in the front yard. I immediately ran to the coop where I found a piece of the chicken wire fencing torn away (10 staples were ripped out) and a piece of thin board bent in….and turkey feathers everywhere. Turk’s body was laying about 10 feet away, her head and neck gone.

This turkey was no small turkey. She weighed 20-25 pounds easily.  I hate that we will never know what attacked her. Did they bend the boards (they were thin interior paneling) and in her haste to get away she ran into the fence, busting through staples? Or did they literally tear the fence away and get to her?

After that I was pretty upset. MrC and I have talked about putting poison out and finally I said okay. I was done with losing our pets.

Usually when MrC puts poison out, I make sure that the area where he put poison is an area I feel is ’safe’ from our outside pets. I have been very anal about this.

But this time, I felt comfortable with our outside cats and their usual exploring and I didn’t check.

The next day, when I went to go check on the chickens, I had a sense of dread when I noticed that we had never stapled the chicken wire back. But I pushed it out of my head, thinking that the cats never come to this area anyway.

And then that night, both of our cats didn’t show up to eat.

Or the next night.

Or the next.

While it didn’t look like the poison had been touched, I know that’s what had to have happened. One cat was known to wander, but our other cat stayed close to the house with her friend Brown Dog. She never missed a meal or the chance to follow me around while I took the dogs out.

I called animal control, just in case someone had called and had them picked up (not likely). I took an ad out in the paper that will last 2 weeks saying our 2 cats are missing. I looked through our woods hoping to find a body or fur or SOMETHING. But there was nothing. Another pet that has disappeared with no way of knowing what happened.

We have 27 new baby chicks coming in the mail this week from Meyer Hatchery. MrC has been working on the coop to secure it even further (I think I’m going to call it the chicken vault now). I told him I refuse to use poison anymore since we can’t control what gets to it.

I’m just feeling down and like I failed at being a pet owner. No matter how much security we put in place for them, the predators are finding ways around it. Both of those cats were strays that had showed up at our old house. We had them spayed, up-to-date on shots, flea protected and this was their home. Not to mention they were Brown Dog’s ‘friends’.

Sigh.

Rest in peace Turk, Kitty, and Miss Kitty.

This is Kitty, taken about a week before she disappeared.

Here lately, it’s starting to feel like our Unfinished Projects far outnumber our finished projects. Here’s a couple we’re slowly working on:

1) Adding rock to the back of the house. When we first moved in, this was all dirt while the other areas around the house were covered with this red rock. It took us a while to find it (it doesn’t look red in the bag!!) but we finally did and we only got 5 bags. Which. Uh. Didn’t exactly cover it.

2) More rock. The area around the barn needed more rock. So MrC ordered a couple tons or something. Then we never got around to spreading it.

3) I just brought this old rabbit cage back from my parent’s house. While it’s been sitting outside (and looks pretty rough) I’m going to clean it up and use it as my chick house when we get new chicks. I usually use a cardboard box or plastic bin but this (with it’s removable bottoms) will be perfect! At least for a couple of weeks! Now I just need to pressure wash it (the pressure washer is at the lake), touch up a few rusty spots, and it’ll be good to go!

4) The BIG project. The chicken coop. While it’s functional right now, I want to FINISH it. You can see the non-stained side. And we still need to add lower barriers (like dig into the ground and put chicken wire to prevent digging by predators) I also want to stain the fence posts around it. We plan on adding a fenced in area on the other side as well but that will probably come later. The interior still needs to be finished. We are planning to hang peg board in the feed room so I can be organized. (Or at least try!)

Want to see more of the chicken coop? Go here.

What are some of your unfinished projects?

 After seeing Extreme Couponing on TLC, I became inspired to start using coupons.

“I,” I declared one day to MrC, “am now Extreme Couponing and need to buy 4 newspapers every week. For the coupons.”

Prior to watching the show, I thought there was no way to be able to get stuff for free. I knew there had to be a catch (like they had gift cards or something!) but after watching it I realized that in some cases, it was as ‘easy’ as knowing where the deals are.

The big thing with us is that even though there is only two of us, we have TWO houses (with frequent visitors at the Lake House) which means our grocery bills sometimes exceed our house payment. After watching the Extreme Couponing show, I began to see that by stocking up on items when they are on sale, you can really save money in the long run.

(I will stop here and say that I would never go as extreme as the Extreme Couponers do… some of them could be dually shown on hoarders as well!!)

My first successful trip my total was $143.00. I was able to get it down to $34.00. (I bought 20 Purex laundry detergents during that run… enough laundry detergent for a LONG. TIME.)

My goal is to start documenting my shopping trips on here (at least every once in a while) to maybe inspire someone else to try it out.

So like I said, I buy 4 newspapers a week. That way I have 4 copies of each coupon. I then scour websites (my fave is the Krazy Coupon lady) and they essentially do the leg work by looking for deals and posting them.

I will say that if you see a deal at Walgreens or CVS, (at least the free ones!) you better move quick. The sales start on Sunday and by Monday they are GONE. You can get rainchecks but depending on the store, sometimes you don’t get the Extra Bucks or whatever.

So this week, at CVS, they had Scott Paper Towels 6 Mega-Rolls on sale for $5.00. This is a good sale alone but I had a coupon, and if you spend $30 on certain items (the Mega Rolls included) then you get a $10 giftcard. I also had a $5.50 extrabucks reward for my cashback for Spring spending.

Image from http://scott.fashionstylist.com

So I bought 6 packages of Scott Paper Towels:

Normal Price: $42.00 ($7.00 a piece)

Sale Price: $30.00 ($5.00 a piece)

Used $1.00 off coupon for 5 of them: -$5.00

Spring Spending Cashback: -$5.50

Gas gift card for spending $30: -$10.00

So for 36 rolls of paper towels, I only spent $9.50. A savings of 78%!

They still have this sale going on, so even if you don’t have the coupon, it may be worth picking up a pack or two.

Do you use coupons? Do you watch the Extreme Couponing show?

When we moved to our new house we knew we were going to have to build a chicken coop. Unfortunately for MrC, we moved in December/January and had to have it done by the end of January. It was stinking COLD when he was working to build it.

Since we’re engineers and tend to be nerdy, he drew up the plans in a 3-d modeling software first. Then he started building it:

 The chickens in their new home. (When they were all still alive.)

 The chicken coop building was all done in January and we had probably the coldest January EVER. The wind was in the negatives. I would go out to take update pictures and not be able to stay out longer than a couple of minutes.

It was nice being able to design your own chicken coop. We made it to have 2 rooms (a feed room and a chicken room) and as you can see from the pictures, it has 2 windows. We currently have 4 nest boxes that are built into the walls between the rooms and we hope to have back doors to them that will allow us to collect eggs from the feed room.

Today it’s definitely not as finished as I’d hoped it’d be. We only got 2 sides stained (we had a rainy spring and just haven’t tried to finish it again) and I want to eventually build a small deck on the front. We did get one of their outside pens mostly done (b/c of the predators who are showing up more frequently now) but still need to do the other, larger side.

The small deck may seem excess but I’m hoping that if we ever move and people don’t want chickens, they can use the shed as a garden shed or something.

If you designed your own chicken coop, what features would you have added? I wanted skylights but MrC put the kibosh on that b/c of the limited time we had to build it!

This spring, we got A LOT of rain.

 So much, in fact, that the lake where our lake house is was up over 40 feet. All the public ramps were closed for Memorial Day weekend, but we’re lucky enough to have a private boat ramp at the end of our road.

The water was down at this point, but still 26 feet above what they call summer pool:

Isn’t this crazy? You can actually see how high up the trees the water was. It made a mess of everyone’s docks… many floated away and had to be retrieved (like ours!) some people didn’t get theirs rescued in time and they are now stranded on land.

We still managed to have fun for Memorial Day weekend though and I made my brother (#7) and his girlfriend do this so I could get a corny picture:

The water was back down to normal level soon after Memorial Day weekend but it’s still crazy to look back on those pictures and remember how high the water got.

Now it’s the exact opposite… it hasn’t rained in weeks! Is it dry where you are too?

Hello out there! Hello? No one? Well, I don’t really blame you.

 We moved into our new house (!!!) and we’re still (7 months later!!) looking for internet. Ridiculous.

But for now, I’m checking in to tell you guys what a helluva time we’re having with our chickens.

MrC designed and built a brand new chicken coop at the new house. He and a friend worked hard outside in 20-degree and lower temperatures to get the coop built so we could bring our chickens from the old house to the new one.

So how do you transport 20+ chickens?

Well, put them in the back of a truck of course!

Really, it made sense. We put plenty of straw in there and they all made it safe and sound.

So soon, (January 23, 2011) we finally had all of our critters at our new house. And I couldn’t have been happier.

The problems didn’t start until May 20, 2011.

MrC and I were looking forward to going to sleep early when he looked outside and saw a dog go running across our back yard. We ran outside and found 2 dogs attacking our chickens.

We would lose 9 chickens that day. Including 5 of my new babies that were about 2 months old.

(Love is the man who stands out in the rain, in the dark digging a hole big enough to bury 9 chickens in… by the way.)

I was devastated. The dogs had ripped Fred (our rooster)’s tail feathers out. For a couple of days I thought his wing was broken. We had never seen those dogs before and haven’t seen them since.

We would lose more chickens to predators (including one who had to have squeegeezed through a 4″ opening) so now we’re down to 6 chickens. (Well, 5 chickens and 1 turkey)

Fred is gone. He was one of the ones we found headless in the coop. (Weasel, maybe?)

So MrC has been setting a kill trap (I know, I know… live and let live. But good lawdy I can’t take anymore of my chickens dying!) and so far we’ve trapped 2 raccoons. We caught another coon on the deer camera getting the bait out of the trap and somehow not setting it off. It was apparently angry about getting it’s photo taken too b/c there were footprints on the camera.

We’re still sort of expecting to catch a weasel. It’s hard for me to picture a raccoon climbing into a 4″ opening… but I’m sure it can be done.

Sigh.

So how do you guys with chickens deal with huge flock losses? This is horrible!

Hopefully the next time I write, I’ll be talking about our new chickens and how well everyone is doing.

For those who don’t know, I come from a large family. I am the oldest of 8 and have 6 nieces and nephews.

So once you get all my siblings, their significant others, the offspring, my parents, and a couple friends and roommates in there (and throw in an aunt and grandma just for fun) you wind up with 27 people at your family Thanksgiving.

So how do you do a Thanksgiving for 27 people?

First, you better have plenty of seating.

And then you better deep fry TWO turkeys. (And of course TWO hams)

As a side note- it also helps to have a good-looking guy cooking the said turkeys.

Throw in a cute niece and a grandma.

On another side note- my niece has the ‘look cute’ thing down, doesn’t she?

Make sure you have plenty of food:

And then take a group photo at the end which will sum up how crazy (and fabulous) your family is: (picture is minus one person who is also fabulous)

Picture stolen from my mom. Hopefully she doesn’t sue.

Is it just me or does my Grandma seem a little frightened?