Gypsy Visits a School

Last week Kennedy and I loaded up the truck with Gypsy and 2 chickens, Gracie and Moonshine.  The Pre-K classes at Shreve Island had been studying the letter G.  They had also learned the song "Gus the Goat."  

When we drove up to the school, Kennedy pointed to the playground and wanted to go play.  But I told her we had to show all the children her goat and chickens.  The children certainly enjoyed petting Gypsy and the 2 chickens.  As I was holding Moonshine and passing her around so the children could feel her feathers, we heard a splat/crack.  I was so shocked. Moonshine had laid an egg and it hit the concrete.  It almost hit a child on the head.  I can't believe I didn't get a picture of that, but I was just too surprised.  Now the children know first hand where eggs come from.

Moonshine right before she lays an egg.

By the way, the first Pre-K class took Kennedy to play on the playground while I showed the animals to the next class.

On Friday, I took 10 eggs to one of the classes to put into their incubator.  Hopefully, by the end of February they experience chicks hatching.

The Ducks Have To Go!

Well, I've lasted almost a month with 2 ducklings in a crate in the house, but not another day.  









For the last 3 Springs, I have had 3 - 4 chicks in a crate in the house for about 6 weeks and was very glad when I could move them out.  

But this year I went all out and got 5 chicks and 2 ducklings. All of them were in one crate for a week and I  realized that the ducks were growing a lot faster and hogging all the water.  Also ducks are very messy.  I felt so sorry for the chicks, that I borrowed a crate from my neighbor and moved the ducks. 
 
 But the Donald and Daisy are getting smellier and throwing the straw and shavings all over the place. And they want to have water in which  they can splash.  MESSY.

So yesterday I decided the 2 hens, Gracie and Stayed At Home must go into the coop with the others.  Now there will be 6 hens with one large rooster in that coop.  That's really too many, but I let the hens out as soon as I get up everyday, so they spend the day running the yard until dark.


I spent most of yesterday clean up the coop and spread new sand for the ducks.

Dottie Belle checking out the new bigger tub.

 I bought a bigger tub for the goats and put their tub in the coop for the ducks. 










 I had a meeting last night, so it was dark when I got home. 


 I went to see if all the chicken went into one coop and found that Gracie and Stayed At Home were sleeping on top of the coop.  I grabbed them and kind of tossed them into the coop with the others as they were screaming as loudly as they could and the rooster came charging after me.


Then today, I needed to train the hens to lay in a new place since the ducks now claimed the nests in that coop.  I set up a nesting box under the old coop where all the hens now live and even put one of yesterday's eggs in it.  

But after several hours of  running free, none had laid in the new box and in fact the egg I put in there was broken.  

Gracie was determined to lay her egg in the coop.

Gracie flew up in my arms because she so badly wanted in her coop to lay. So I opened the outside door of the hutch and closed the door to the run where the ducklings were.  She laid her egg there and jumped out.  That was a good idea.

  Stayed At Home laid her egg in the "garage barn."  So I set up a nesting box using a crate and straw in there.  

Little Ace laid her egg in some tall Monkey Grass.  So I got 3 out of a possible 6 eggs today. 


Maybe that was all the eggs laid.  

Omelet, number one hen,  spent most of the day circling the coop. She was not very nice to any hen that came close to her. She spent a couple nights a week in the coop when she didn't want to be in the other coop with Big Foot. 

Hopefully, the girls will get used to the new set up.

I know Donald and Daisy are thrilled with their home.

My Flock

Tender grass and weeds are shooting up and the flock is really enjoying free ranging.  

I thought they were so cute, with Rooster Big Foot leading his 6 hens, that I had to take a couple of pictures. Can it be that spring is here?

Making My Garden Grow

That looks like a lot of work and we are just getting started.

In a previous post, I wrote about building a box for a raised bed and digging out all the weedy dirt. 





We made it 12x12 because my husband did not want to do any sawing. Actually, he didn't want to do the bed at all.  

Dottie Belle is sniffing the dirt for quality control.

So I am happy with what he will do; because I have never touched a skill saw and have enjoyed having 10 fingers.  After the box was made and the bad dirt eliminated, we bought 40 bags of dirt; actually 20 bags of cow manure and 20 bags of topsoil. 

 Don and I worked together emptying the bags.  I spread several layers of newspaper in hopes of discouraging any remaining weeds from sprouting, while Don spread the dirt. I think BS and Dottie Belle were going to turn those boxes into goat manure. We realized we would need at least 40 more.  So I went back to the store, while Don took a break. 

 After I had climbed up in the truck and unload 30 bags and spread them; I could not do 1 more bag.  I went in the house and told Don that I had spread 30 of the second load, could he please do the last ten?  He said, "That's impossible.  You did not just spread 30 bags by yourself."  Well, I was very proud of my stupid, stubborn self.  And he could not believe what he saw. So he was happy to do the last 10. But even 80 bags were not enough for a 12x12 bed. I understand that I could have figured this out mathematically ahead of time.  But I like for reality to descend upon me slowly.  To know how much work and money is involve ahead of time would likely stop the project altogether.  We did all of this on Saturday.

On Sunday, I decided that in order to reach the plants, I was going to have to divide this box into fourths.  I then brought the level of 1/4 of the bed up to the proper level.  In that quadrant I planted 18 broccoli plants, 24 Texas sweet red onions and in the middle sowed spinach seeds. You see I can't wait to plant something, so when I made the second trip to Lowe's for the dirt, I bought the broccoli and onions.

Broccoli on the outside, the onions, and spinach in the center.

Then I realized that I have to solve another problem.  











How to keep the goats, and even harder, the chickens out of my garden? Boy am I glad that I don't think of all these issues ahead of time. With previous gardens, I didn't own goats and the chickens stayed in the coop.  I was too afraid to let them roam around the yard. Now that they have tasted freedom, there will be no going back. They almost knock me over every morning to get out.

Oh look!  They made us a lovely dusting box.

So thinking quickly and using what I have on hand (I was way too dirty to go to any store) I put the cones I use to cage tomato plants and made a barrier to keep the critters out until I come up with something better.

Spinach sprouts after 9 days! Not ready for a salad.

Nine days later the spinach seeds have sprouted! 












I'm still working on a better solution for keeping the chickens out.  Hopefully, I will need the cones for tomatoes. Today Don stopped by Lowe's and bought 20 more bags of dirt. 

 So soon we really will be "dirt poor" if we keep this up.

Just a Joke for Tonight

Crate of Chickens

The farmer's son was returning from the market with the
crate of chickens his father had entrusted to him, when all
of a sudden the box fell and broke open. Chickens scurried
off in different directions, but the determined boy walked
all over the neighborhood scooping up the wayward birds and
returning them to the repaired crate. Hoping he had found
them all, the boy reluctantly returned home, expecting the
worst.

"Pa, the chickens got loose," the boy confessed sadly, "but
I managed to find all twelve of them."

"Well, you did real good, son," the farmer beamed. "You left
with seven."

My Grandmother's Rose Bush

The cutting I took from my grandmother's rosebush is blooming now.  It is at this time every year I think of her.  She is likely the reason I have chickens in my backyard.  I used to love to help her gather the eggs, because her chickens laid eggs all over the place; even under her house.  It was at least 3 feet off the ground, so I could stoop and go get them.  4/9/2012

When I was growing up, my family lived on the same dirt road as my father's mother. I remember as a small child walking to Grandma Murphy's house and picking a bouquet of wild flowers along the way.  This was a ritual that I engaged in several times a week.  Grandma Murphy always smiled and received the handful of flowering weeds as though they were long stem roses.  She had the familiar vase right within reach.

Grandma's appearance disguised the amount of strength she had. Her very petite, thin body would make one think she was frail.  But this opinion could only be held by one who had no knowledge of her past or present life.  Being widowed at about thirty-eight years old, Grandma had to raise 12 children by herself.  Her youngest child, Aunt Cordie, was only six months old when her husband, my grandfather, died. My father was one of her 8 rowdy sons.  Even as a child, I could imagine what a challenge that must have been. I had heard stories about how she had picked cotton to support her family.  They always had a huge garden and raised chickens.  She was a devout Christian and walked five miles with her children to attend Loche Arbor Baptist Church every Sunday.  It probably made more of an impression on me that Grandma never talked about doing these things and having difficult times.  She was always focused on the task at hand. 

After her children were grown, she still raised a large garden and had a yard full of chickens.  I would often find her out working in her garden or toting buckets of water to it; since it was quite a distance from her house.

I used to crawl under her house and gather the eggs for her.  I still smile when I remember her solution to chicken snakes getting her eggs.  She put plastic eggs in the hens' nests.  She said that the snakes would swallow the real and plastic eggs whole. Then climb up on a tree limb and fall to the ground to break them. But the plastic egg would not break, so it could not be digested and the snake would die. 

As a small child I was highly amused by this story and envisioned a lumpy snake climbing a tree and jumping off a limb to break the eggs.

My grandma died in 1983, a year after I moved to Shreveport.  Ten years had passed, I don't recall even thinking about her during this time. She seemed like a very distant part of my life, both in miles and years.  I was going through a very bad time in my life. My marriage of 15 years was ending.  I was very depressed. I didn't know how I was going to get my life back on track.  It amazed me that the answer came in a dream I had about my grandmother.

I was not conscious of what a role model of strength and courage Grandma had been to me, until I made one of those visits with her, as I often did as a child.  But now I was dreaming.  She and I were walking through her yard and she was showing me all her rosebushes.  As I held the blossoms and inhaled their fragrance, she told me their names and where she had gotten them.  One rosebush dominated the others.  It was a huge bush in her backyard.  No other bush had the heavily perfumed purple roses it had.  As I walked through the yard with Grandma, I felt strength and confidence growing inside of me.  I realized that because I was her grandchild, I had inherited much of her strength and resilience.  That there was no adversity that I could not overcome.  I awoke the next morning in a whole different frame of mind; ready to move on with my life.  Through this dream Grandma Murphy had bequeathed her strength and courage to me.

Several months after that dream, I was visiting my brother, Frank, who at the time, was living on our old home place.  In a vase on his dining table was a bouquet of fragrant purple roses.  A chill went down my spine and I asked him where he had gotten the roses.  Sure enough, they had come from Grandma's yard.

I responded to this discovery by asking Frank to get a shovel and take me to the bush so we could dig it up.  It was challenging just wading through the thicket that now engulfed what had once been a well-tended yard.  The rosebush was huge.  After struggling with the thorns and underbrush, I had to be content with 6 pieces from the roots that looked like sticks.

I planted them in my yard in Shreveport.  Several years later, when I married Don and we moved to a different house, I tried to transplant that rosebush.  But it died.  I returned to Grandma's rosebush and dug up some more roots. It is one of those very fragrant old roses that only blooms once a year.  In spring I watch and wait for it to bloom.  This is the15th year the bush has been in this yard.  When it blooms, I inhale its strong fragrance and allow my grandma's strength to be reborn in me.

First Things First--Defining My Menagerie

Well, see how Webster would define menagerie. It said, "Collection of animals exhibited in cages." I will use the terms animals, exhibited and cages sometimes literally and sometimes metaphorically.
I have many "animals" in my life: a husband, adult children, grandchildren, extended family, the C.P. School Board, an 83 year old house, my weight, 2 Schnauzers, 1 cat, 3 hens, 1 rooster, 2 bunnies, and leather purses that I make. I'm in the process of getting 2 Nigerian Dwarf kids. I'm sure this is not a complete list of all the "animals" in my life, but it's a start.
Most of the animals are not in actually cages, but are in my life-head, heart-whatever.
Blogging will be the form of exhibition.