Just a bunch of stuff

I got a gift in the mail last week, don't you just love surprises that turn out to be awesome? My mother in law, MJ sent me a hat! She is a super knitter and makes really beautiful hats. I have one that's square and bright red, so when I put it on my head I have ears, you can't see the ears but I'm wearing the hat in my profile pic. Anywhoo.... I got a squishy envelope on Thursday with a glorious royal purple hat! My favorite color to boot. I was needing a special gift that day because of shoulder issues (again..), so this was just what I needed.

I am working on another rug for our front door this time. We have a towel right now, and it does look kinda lame. Not that I really care but making a rug gives me a project and gently works out my shoulder at the same time. It's the same log cabin style as the last rug I made. It's pretty much the only knitting I know how to do because it's the same stitch over and over again. I am using cotton yarn again because I wanted it to be super absorbent since it will house wet shoes.

I noticed some of our garlic in the giant braid is starting to sprout a tiny bit. I took about 9 cloves and roasted them in the oven. Then I took them out of the skin and individually froze the garlic cloves on a cookie sheet. After they were good and frozen I stuck them in a freezer bag. Now I'll have roasted garlic for a recipe with out the 45 minute cook time. I forgot to take pictures along the way, oh well.

I am getting so antsy for spring to arrive... ugh!

Honeybee waggle dance

While visiting some of the bee blogs I follow, I came across this video about the waggle dance. Bee's communicate by dancing and pheromones, this is a rather fascinating video about the food source or waggle dance.

Another Surgery Update

So I had the 'manipulation' surgery last Friday. The dr. found scar tissue had attached itself to the head of my humerus bone, thus restricting my movement. After some gentle (well not so gentle) pressure the scar tissue gave way and now my arm is free to move. I was only under the anesthesia for 25-30 minutes total, and since I had a nerve block in my arm they didn't have to put me to sleep very deeply. Which means, I woke up without any nausea! WOO HOO! Usually that is the killer for me, my horizon goes all tilta-whirl and I feel like I'm drunk. 

I had to start physical therapy right away, but being on a Friday, the physical therapist role fell to Jacob. I could've let it sit all weekend but that would risk it locking up again, and I didn't want that. I found the most uncomfortable thing to be my triceps muscle, having not been used for the last 3 months it is tight and takes some coercing to move.

Over all I am doing pretty good, the arm moves but now I have to work on the range of motion that I should have gained 2 months ago. I'm a bit behind but now that my arm can move, I should regain that quickly. I have physical therapy everyday this week and next week as well. Hopefully this should jump start me, but we'll see....

The difficulties of bun breeding

We bred our big mamma on the 24th of December meaning she should have had some babies last week if she was preggers. Well no babies came. But now she's being really difficult to re-breed she's just not in the mood. So I tried some different tactics to get her used to Ches our buck. So far none of them have proved successful she: "just doesn't want to and you can't make me...."

Ches is on the left and Big Mamma Clove is on the right. 

Here's a quick video of them in the "make-out" pen, I was hoping she'd get in the mood in a neutral and on sold ground location. No such luck. They just played ring around the rosie for a half hour. Both bunz were pretty pooped by the end. Curious the chicken didn't like the bunz being so close and she made sure to tell me all about it! Check out the mighty adorable leap Ches makes about 20 seconds in. He's trying to impress his lady with his slick dancing skills.... to bad it doesn't work.



Yesterday I did finally get her to *ahem* get with the program. It seems she needs to breed at night instead of early morning. Go figure! Now we wait another month and see if this time it's successful.

Chicken coop and run lay out

I figured I'd just do a blog post about this so that ya'll can see what our set up looks like. A lot of this stuff I explain in the video but just to give you a look at what our coop started out as.

This is the playhouse coop design, we purchased the plans directly from the website and built it ourselves. I liked how open it is. But being new at this we didn't consider winter. When it's really cold the girls have to come out of the roosting area and down into the open in order to eat. They won't do it. It's been 3 years since we built this coop and it's meant to be a single inclosure without a run hence all the floor space. But I just didn't think that was enough run around space for the girls, so we attached the the chicken run (I'll show that in the video, also in the previous post the picture of the Sussies is in the run). On weekends we give the girls free access to the side yard for grass and extra bugs. If they get too much time in the grass side they'll kill it and scratch it to death.

The above picture is the coop in it's original form. We've since added an addition of 2+ feet for extra roosting space and the extra nest box. Those nest boxes have been removed since none of our girls are laying yet and we needed to lower the roost so the Sussies could figure out how to roost. We're going to either put nestboxes on the side double stacked vertically or on the back side by side horizontally, not sure what yet. That's our project for this weekend since the Sussies are getting close to laying age.

Chicken Integration

The chickens are finally all figuring out this new life and the routine of it. The Sussex's  still huddle into a big group together and seem very afraid of this big world. I think that's mostly because they were raised in a barn and then my garage until they were around 14 weeks old. That's a long time to be inside not feeling the sun on your back. But steadily every day they explore the chicken run and side yard they have access to. No matter how many times I feed Curious our one pet chicken from my hand the Sussie's still won't come over and try some, Curious = bad ass brave chicken to them I am sure. Another thing these girls don't do is scratch, growing up on a concrete barn floor they learned their is no point to scratching. It should be funny to see what they think when Curious dust baths for the first time. We did have to teach the Sussie's how to roost, it was completely foreign to them. We'd go out every night just before dark and place each bird on a roost. Jacob came up with the idea to lower one of the roosts and keep one at it's original height, which seemed to help the girls figure it out quite a bit faster. Now two of the Sussie's will roost next to Curious although she still isn't happy about it.

I get the chicken butt pose all the time from these girls. It's the "this is what we think of you" pose.

The red stars were dispatched the same weekend we started integration. They were so pissed at the new additions that yelling ensued and in a very unhappy chicken way. I feared that the neighbors might get really mad if we didn't do something fast. So the red girls went to Camp Freezer.

This is what Curious thinks of the whole deal, she is in operation protest mode: seen here giving me the stink eye.

Jacob's going to work on building some outside the coop nest boxes this weekend. We took the nest boxes out of the nesting area to give the Sussies more room to figure out how to jump up and roost. Now with one roost lowered our nest boxes no longer fit inside the roosting area. So we have to think of something else.