So it’s been approximately 723 days since my last post. Well, close to it anyways. I wish I could say it was b/c I was out in the garden weeding like a mad fool, but alas… it was only b/c I couldn’t get pictures to upload and without pictures, what is there? Just words. Boring words.

Mr. C got me a new camera for my birthday. (A Nikon L100, that I LOVE. It’s got a 15x zoom!) so I’ve been taking random pictures around our little farm.

First up is the tomato plants. This year Mr. C decided to go a more natural (and cheap!) route to string up our tomato plants using small tree trunks. I think it looks pretty neat. (Ignore the weeds)

I SAID don’t look at the WEEDS!

And thanks to my zoom (b/c if I try to get his picture when I’m close to him, he runs to me and flops on his back), I finally got a cute picture of BrownDog with his ‘broken’ ear. I don’t know if he was born like that or what, but I think it’s cute nonetheless. Soon he’ll be headed to the groomer for a much-needed shaving.

Isn’t it cute? And it looks like he’s smiling!

And last but not least is a picture I snapped of a hummingbird. The light wasn’t good, but this was with my zoom and I was amazed at how much detail it picked up. (Did I mention I love my camera?)

What kind of cameras do you guys use?

So, Mr. C and I finished laying the underground dog fence wire yesterday. We decided to do it ourselves to save money and no, it wasn’t easy, but we did it! And it works!

These are the little white flags marking where we laid the wire.

We decided to get an underground fence b/c our outside dog, Brown Dog, has been following hikers (there’s a hiking trail right by our house), sometimes for 15 miles. He disappears pretty much every weekend and all we can do is wait until someone notices his collar and calls us. Hopefully the fence will keep him contained and safe. We laid the fence around 2.5 acres so he’ll still have plenty of room to roam (although not the hundreds of acres he was used to before!!)

Our garden has been growing like a weed the past couple of days thanks to a let-up of the rain. Here’s a couple of pictures:

I’ve never grown broccoli before so I was tickled when Mr. C pointed out that our broccoli was indeed growing!

Our green beans are starting to pop up. You can still see the seed attached to this one!

Since some of you mentioned that you liked seeing how my broody was doing, here’s a quick update.

Yes, she’s still broody. And yes, I candled the eggs. Out of the 12 eggs I gave her, 2 showed no signs of growth (and after cracking them open, I was correct and they would have eventually became the dreaded ROTTEN EGG!), 3 have small growth but I need to recheck them, 1 has veining but is slightly cracked so I’m waiting to see if it continues to develop or if the crack is too significant, and 6 showed veining! So we’re off to a great start!

Want to read more about our broody hen adventures?

Read Part 1 here.

Read Part 2 here.

Read Part 3 here.

Read Part 4 here.

So how are you gardens doing?

We finally figured out how our blinds were getting torn up…

One good thing about the cold weather is that we HAD to get our pekepoo, Jolee, a new coat. Okay, so she probably hates it more than anything, but it’s cute and as I remind her daily… beauty is pain. hee hee.

So, in spirit of Fun Foto Friday, may I present Jolee in her new coat (and don’t try to tell me she’s not one cute puppy dog because I’ll know you’re lying):

This is her “Oh? You’re taking pictures of me?” pose.

This is her “Leg kicked out” pose.

This is her “They have food! They have food!” pose.

And, so that you don’t think that she has it TOO rough, a picture from last night of how she spends her evenings:

Two words: Spoiled Rotten.

**And I totally got the dog coat from Wal-Mart. They have some cute (well priced) dog clothes.**

Mr. C and I bought a house.

And not just any house.

 An on-the-lake weekend house.

So we’re still renting our little farmhouse, but we now have something that we OWN (or rather have a mortgage to) that will give us equity.

It also means that we’re full-on responsible for a HOUSE. Scary.

The house sits on a 5,800 acre lake. It’s an 1800 sq. foot manufactured house with a detached 3-car garage and a little garden shed. There’s already a fabulous back deck that overlooks the lake.

It also needs a lot of work. The garage doesn’t have any garage doors and there are some unfinished steps that go in between the house and the garage and lead to the deck:

The steps are made of concrete and creek rock.

Also, the deck needs pressure-washed, sealed, and re-stained/painted. Actually, there’s a lot of stuff that needs pressure-washed.

But we have a house! On the lake!

I may be posting ‘home improvement’ updates on this blog, since the Lakehouse is officially part of J&J Acres.

And one member of the family is VERY excited b/c now she gets to go to the lake with us!

Our peke-poo, Jolee.

What happens when you plant an egg?

You grow a chicken of course!!! This is Dum-Dum and she acted like standing in the potting soil was the best thing she’s done all day.

The weather has been beautiful around here… warm during the day and the perfect temperature at night so you don’t need an air conditioner or a heater.

This past weekend, we went fishing again. Mr. C caught quite a few but they were too small. For whatever reason I wasn’t catching diddly squat so I declared that he was somehow cheating and therefore his didn’t count. hee hee. Jolee was bounding through the tall grass and collecting ticks like they were gold. Needless to say, she was worn out at the end:

She’s way too spoiled.

53 Acre Update

Mr. C called the people and left a message, but they haven’t called back. I looked up their number on whitepages.com (using the reverse lookup, I love that thing) and they’re between the ages of 31-34… so I’m curious as to why they’re selling the land. I guess I may never know.

We Mr. C broke out the tiller last night.

It does have a sort of charm, doesn’t it?

And he tilled the garden again. (Even though the ground was still kinda wet) I, in the meantime, shoveled chicken poo from my quickie-made compost pile. The chickens were all over the garden as soon as he got it tilled.

The rest of the flock ran over a couple minutes after I took this picture.

Mr. C and I hoed mounds up and planted yellow and white onion sets.

The chickens were tearing up our mounds left and right. I finally made random high-pitched noises and ran at them with my hoe. I’m sure any passer-by would’ve thought I was crazy.

“I lay green eggs. I do no wrong.”

We already bought posts and chicken wire to put around the garden to keep the little scavengers out. I’m sure they will be very upset.

Hoein’ out in the garden for the first time made me realize how out of shape I am. Mr. C had to pick up my slack when normally I would forge through the tiredness. I also realized that our garden is PRETTY STINKIN big.

After hoein in the garden, I went and collected eggs:

Green and brown and white, OH MY!

Then it was time to play with the dogs for a little bit since they did fairly well at staying out of the garden.

Do you think I can teach her to hoe?

Whew! Let the summer begin!

So yesterday we got 3 (!!!) eggs from the chickens. To celebrate, I ate an egg sandwich last night. Yumm.

Yesterday, I was running late and couldn’t get into the chicken coop. I didn’t really think anything about it since all they were losing out on is the extra light I turn on in the mornings. Well, I got home yesterday and threw hot water over the doorknob so I could get the key in to unlock the door. I walk in the coop and the waterers are frozen solid. Both of them. Not only that, but there were chunks of ice missing where the chickens had been thirsty and chopped up ice trying to get to water. Sometime during the windstorm, the breaker had flipped to the outside buildings and shut off the heat lamp that keeps the waterer unfrozen. I felt horrible!

Before someone gets all PETA on me, they were fine and I remedied the problem by keeping one waterer inside last night so I could make sure they had fresh water this morning. Mr. C also figured out which breaker it was (we think the heat lamp bulb blew, causing it to flip) and I got new heat lamp bulbs today, so all is well.

Did I mention we got 3 eggs yesterday?

I probably have way too many pictures of our chickens.

Here is a picture of our younger rooster, Barney. He always gives me good pictures. He’s an Easter Egger (has a gene to lay blue eggs). We heard him crow months ago, but haven’t heard him crow since… and his wattles aren’t really coming in like our first roosters did. He’s not supposed to be a rooster (we ordered 10 pullets, and he ended up being #10), but it wouldn’t to have two guardians for our flock.

If you read www.backyardchickens.com, you’ll see a reoccuring theme of neighbors dogs killing flocks, or becoming pests. We’re lucky that our neighbors dog, Brown Dog, doesn’t mind the chickens. He doesn’t even care when they eat out of his food bowl when he does! Here’s a picture of them, hogging his bowls.

A list of updates of happenings around our little farm:

1.) The weekend has come and gone… and I finally know of at least 2 of the pullets that are laying eggs. One is a Barred Rock and one is a Rhode Island Red. I caught both of them in the nest boxes on Sunday morning. I would go out periodically to see if they were ‘done yet’ and lift them up to see if there was an egg yet. I’m a little on the impatient side. hee hee.

2.) We did get a decent sized egg (a “small” on the egg scale) on Saturday. That’s a step up from the not-even-registering eggs we’ve been getting!

3.) The younger chickens have been roosting on top of the nest boxes… thus making the hay in the nestboxes pretty crappy (ha ha) looking the next morning. So Mr. C hammered another board that hangs over the boxes and this morning Wah-la… no poop in the hay. When I went out at 6:30am this morning, the Rhode Island Red was already in the nest box. She’s quite an early riser!

4.) Jolee is in heat again… this means random dogs passing through and having to put her on a leash when we take her outside. It’s not fun for any of us.

5.) We’ve been letting Brown Dog sleep in the kitchen when the temperatures dip in the teens. He doesn’t chew on anything, make any sounds, or #1/#2 on the floor. He’s such a good dog.

6.) Brown Dog did growl at the chickens for the first time. I threw some of Mr. C’s chili out and they were pecking through it and some where trying to get at Brown Dogs stash. He’s just growl and nip towards them, but didn’t hurt anybody. It is obvious, however, that if a mean dog comes around the chickens, they will not know what to do. Sigh.

7.) Mr. C and I were talking about our garden this weekend. We hope to make a garden plot at our house this summer, then plant corn at his mom’s house. Our corn didn’t turn out so well last year… I begged him to plant it, then it got infested with those little black bugs. This year will be better.