feathers and chicken feet

The girls are growing. They change every single day. Mostly they're loosing their fluff and growing feathers. But I cannot believe how quickly this happens. Feathers literally grow overnight.

We got our chickens from a woman named Theri who sells fresh eggs as well as baby chicks. I feel so fortunate that we found her. I wrote to her about how the chickens seems sort of restless in their box and she emailed right away explaining that they would go through a stage of being kind of spazzy. That they're teenagers now and will be a bit flighty no matter how we've spoiled them. And that they get restless too because they do a lot of itching when their feathers come in. It was helpful to know. We've exchanged many more emails and I'm learning so much.

If you're considering ever getting chickens, I highly recommend Theri. Her email is: prairiechickpoultry@gmail.com 

Here's Butterscotch Cookies. Look at how she's growing! 

And now, for a chicken confession:
I have this funny thing with the chicken feet. I can handle the flapping, the pecking and the pooping. But I guess I sort of have a fear of chicken feet. Talons, if you will. I can't look at them when I'm holding the chick. I can obviously have them touching me. They're soft and sort of tickle but if I look at them while holding the chickens, I freak out a bit. As in, Ivar comes running asking, "Mama, are you okay?" And Rory asked if there was a crow in with the chickens because apparently that's the kind of sound I make when I look at the chicken feet on my hand.  They're sort of wormy to me. Reptile like. And I have a real fear of reptiles and... worms.

Anyway, it's silly. In my head I can recognize how ridiculous this is.  But in the moment I pit out a bit and have to look at something other than those little feet resting on my hand.

So now you know. I am phobic of talons. And the reality I am trying to wrap my head around is this: they are only going to get bigger.

the chicken coop

Rory is a doer. I've said that many times before, but it always amazes me to watch him in action. We knew we were going to build our own coop, but then Rory decided he would draw up his own plans. This is the final sketch and it will be awesome. At the moment he is out in the garage, finished with the base and legs and now beginning to build the walls. I'll have much to report on Monday.

Speaking of chickens, I entered Legos into a chicken competition. No fighting in this one, just good looks. If you would, stop by the Backyard Farmer to vote for Legos (it's a great blog...I just started reading). In all honesty, the chicken Legos is up against is really cute too (her name is Ugly Stepsister. So funny.) so it will be a tough win. But with your help, little Legos might stand a chance. Go and vote now.

On Monday I'll be back with pictures of our chickens at three weeks old. I am taking pictures of them once a week...I can't get over how quickly they change.

And speaking of change, Elsie is also growing before my very eyes. She is army crawling with great speed and now says, "Mama." It's my favorite sound in the world. She screams with delight at the chicks and if close enough, tries to grab them. It's pretty adorable all the way around: chicks cheeping and babies squealing.

sugar snow!

There is a scene in Little House in the Big Woods, the first of the Little House books, where a late-season snow caused the maple trees to produce a whole lot of sap. They called it Sugar Snow.

Well, we woke to snow. And it's still snowing as I type this.

At some point this morning we noticed our sap bags almost overflowing. Sugar snow! Even though the sap had mostly dried up since our last collection,  we decided to leave the taps a few more days to see what the colder temps and snow would do. Turns out, they would do a lot. Rory collected 19 gallons of sap today! The previous one-day record was 7 gallons. There was so much sugar water and the 4 gallon bags were refilling so fast that he had to go buy more containers to hold the stuff until we have the chance to boil it down.

We're very much ready for springtime. But I have to say, having something so exciting happening today made the day feel sort of special. Which is the positive spin I'm throwing out there, because I'm starting to realize winter doesn't much care that I think she should wrap it up. Until then, we'll be happily boiling down sap into syrup, glad to have something fun to do outside until these 6 inches (and falling) of snow melts away.

And for a super great read, go and read Hootenannie who likens April weather to a hormonal teenage girl. Hysterical.

so many hopes and dreams

I remember before we even found this ten acre farm, Rory was reading a book for hopeful hobby farmers. And he read a paragraph to me about how the first year you get your place you're going to want to do it all. You're going to want to take every single hope and dream you have in your head and get er done. Asap. But how this simply isn't possible. How lots of dreams on a hobby farm need to be phased in, given a multiple year plan.

But can I tell you what? This is hard to do. Oh man, it is so hard. All we do around here is talk and dream and plan. We have aerial shots of our property that we have blown up poster size, and we stick post it notes all over it with hand drawn pictures of trees for an orchard, or grass for a pasture. We have pictures of what this farm looked like forty years ago that give us a better sense of the history of this place. Rory took the above picture while going to each corner of our property and taking a picture towards the center. We want to document our place like this four times a year. Just to track the changes. And over the years, we'll be able to see all sorts of before and afters. The field pictured here is about four acres. It was corn this last year, but now we're making new dreams for this dirt. Maybe alfalfa, clover and timothy. Maybe hay or wheat. Maybe prairie grasses and wildflowers. Time will tell.

So we talk and we dream and we wonder. And you know what? It's not all going to happen in one year. That we know for sure. But as we continue to spend time outside I am certain that a whole lot is going to happen this year.

We were out in the grove yesterday and filled three big garbage bags with pop cans and trash. We pulled out an old garden hose and a broken end table. We found a lawn chair, some tires and the topper to a pickup truck. I had the loppers and was cutting a path as we worked our way deeper and deeper into the trees. And Rory was announcing each random item he found in our surprising woods.

And at the end of the day, looking at the work we had accomplished I realized that not everything will get done this year, but let me tell you something: a whole lot will.

And it's getting me excited.

how to make maple syrup: step by step

A few weeks ago I told about how we tapped our maple trees. We ended up tapping twelve trees and out of those twelve, nine produced sap. We're new at all of this, and not completely sure why some trees produced more and others less, but we were thrilled by the amount of sap we were able to collect. Being novices, our expectations were low.

In all we gathered about twenty gallons of sap. Rory built an evaporator with cement block and a metal grate. We ordered buffet table serving dishes to boil the sap in. They worked well. I think Rory would say they were hard to carry when full of sap and sort of difficult to maneuver while on the fire, but for the price, they did the job very well.

Rory kept the fire hot, and I kept him company. We decided to wake up early Sunday morning and evaporate before the kids woke up. We sat by the fire as the sky brightened while sitting in our camping chairs. Felt a lot like camping, actually. 

Rory let the pans boil down for a long time and then consolidated them into two pans on the fire. When he had only two gallons of sap left in the buffet pans, he poured it into our canning pot and brought the sap into the kitchen to boil on the stove.

We purchased a Hydrometer, some cool tool that told us when the sap had boiled to the correct syrup consistency. Rory would fill the metal vile with syrup and then place the thermometer into the vile. When the syrup was not ready the thermometer would sink to the bottom. But when it was getting close, the thermometer bobbed in the vile.

Thirty-two on the scale (the red line) is the magic number. That's a pretty awesome picture, right?!!

Using cheese cloth, Rory filtered the syrup into mason jars. And then I staged the jars for a photo shoot in front of my pretty dishes.

The night our first batch of syrup was completed Rory and I stayed up way too late and ate eggos at the kitchen table. I think it will forever be a favorite memory of mine, and probably the most appreciated and classy eggo I've ever enjoyed.