A peek at our weekend ...

I already posted that we had a busy and blessed weekend.  I thought I'd give you a visual, though.

 

My yard sale bargains -

• $5 white KitchenAid classic mixer that FITS under my cupboards.  I have a cobalt blue KitchenAid, but it's the taller version and sits elsewhere in my kitchen.


• Seven turquoise Corning coffee mugs (all for $1)  that coordinate well with my retro kitchen.  (Is it retro if it's really just not updated?)


• A cobalt blue oven-safe serving tray that is my favorite color and also looks nice with my kitchen colors, bought for $1.  (  You know, I wanted my bridesmaids to wear midnight blue dresses and carry a single coral rose in my wedding.  Instead, we went with deep purple dresses and white roses.  Sometimes I wish we'd gone with the midnight blue and coral after all.  That was almost 17 years ago.)


• A fun, summery glass kitchen trivet to set on my stove top that obviously matches my kitchen colors and was only $.50.

We also bought some clothes and shoes for a few children, but these felt like Mother's Day gifts to me ... and Anniversary gifts, since that is later this week.

 

 

Saturday we moved our remaining 9 hens and 1 guinea hen from the barn to this hoop-chicken-tractor.  We will move them every 2 days (or thereabouts) so they have fresh grass to destroy with their scratching and eating.  LOL!!  We still need to put a tarp on it for a bit of rain protection and for shade when we move them to sunnier parts of the yard.

 

 

This picture shows my lonely guinea hen with the lonely Buff Orpington hen, too.  We have a few Barred Rocks and Production Reds left, but the majority of them are Ameraucanas.

 

 

This is what the chickens see all summer long.  Don't be fooled by her sweet appearance.  She isn't Lassie.  She is just waiting for one of them to let some feathers, a foot, or a head poke out from under one of the boards ... so she can bite them.  Or it would be even better if one of them would be foolish enough to hop out as we enter the door ... so she can chase them ... and then bite them.  She is a chicken killer.  Sigh.

 

 

And here are our little chicks.  Most of them are 5 weeks old, a few are a bit younger.  They rushed into the one sunny spot in the chicken yard this morning to soak up some warmth after their first night outdoors.  We have 12 Buff Orpingtons, 18 Ameraucanas, and 4 Pan Fry Specials (who won't be long for this world).  Seriously, Pan Fry Specials are nasty things ... ugly, aggressive, pigs.  They're even half-bald.  Gross!

 

 

This is one-half of their enclosure.  We bought the nesting boxes with a roost bar on the backside at a recent farm auction.  They didn't use them last night, but hopefully they'll figure it out.  As you can see they rushed into the sunlight for warmth this morning.   They had slept around the feeder and they were eating and drinking earlier in the morning before I took this picture at 8:30.

 

And that was our weekend ... in pictures.  Well, part of our weekend.  It doesn't show our time at church, dinner with Steve's Mom, the wild phlox bouquet my 11 yo gave me, the dark chocolate my family gave me ...  or the piles of folded laundry in my living room.  LOL!!

 

April E.

Autumn ... through the ElCloud Lens

The leaves are half off the trees this week, but I wanted to share some Fall photos I took last week, when the leaves had just finished turning.  It was one of those days where I just went, "Oh!  Wow!  Everything's yellow!"  It may have been that way for a few days but it suddenly hit me, and I had to take photos.  I'm so glad I took the time to do it since the tree is half-bare now.

A yellow carpet across the lawn ...

The sweet little tree ...


My kids wanted to know why I took this picture ... I just liked it.


The canopy ...


Our friendly scarecrow, guarding the back door ...


The cute little tree from the side, looks a little different from here.  I truly had not noticed its tilt before.


The scarecrow guarding our driveway ...


Just a couple of our pumpkins in the rain ...

That's what Fall has looked like at our house this year.  Every now and then we just have to take a moment to enjoy (and capture) the beauty of a season. 

Trusting In Him,
April

The farm cats God provided us

Last July we brought home a 2 year old dog we found on freecycle.  She's a large Sheltie, really large ... more like a Collie.  She looks like Lassie and is, for the most part, a good dog.  She has a bad habit of pawing you when she wants attention, has occasionally jumped on the kids which scratched them, has a bad habit of cleaning the kids plates every chance she can get, and a worse habit of chasing chickens.  But she's a sweet dog, and mostly gentle.

The first day we had her she sniffed around our burn pit, and out crawled a kitten.  It looked to be about 2 months old, and we didn't see any mother or other kittens.  We named her Silver since she was a pretty dilute tortie -- gray and cream.   We were glad to have Silver, because we didn't have any outdoor cats.  There had been a black cat who hunted the property the winter before, but we hadn't seen him lately and he didn't come near us.  Someone else had offered us barn kittens in early summer, but we could never reach her to go pick out some kittens.  We tried several times and repeatedly failed.

Silver, our female "barn cat" although she's more of a garage or porch cat.  My sisters teased us that even our outside cats have long fur, but she really only has a medium length fur.

Later that year, in late August I believe, we found a litter of kittens in the ceiling of our barn, peering down at us.  They appeared to be 2 weeks old, crawling around with open eyes, peering down at us from the ledge above.  We worried they'd fall, so we got them all down.  Unfortunately, the Mom decided not to return to care for them after we'd handled them, so we bottle fed the 5 kittens.   The children named them after famous Revolutionary heroes like Ben Franklin, Betsy Ross, and Thomas Jefferson since we were studying that period of history.  Two survived, but one was hit by a car.  That left only Thomas.

Thomas is the striped cat keeping the three kittens warm.  He was a rather weird looking kitten who walked funny, but he outgrew that and is a handsome guy now.

We've had other cats that came around from time to time, but they never stay long.  Silver and Thomas are always here.  They sleep on the porch, along the house foundation, or in the garage.  We feed them cat food, and they catch mice ... and moles ... and birds ... and baby bunnies.  Not enough to de-populate Steve's garage of packrats, unfortunately.  They're friendly and love to be petted, but they love being fed even more.  They're obnoxious when they aren't fed.

Silver had two earlier litters this year, but she was a young Mom.  Both those sets of kittens died within a week.  She gave birth again 3 weeks ago and we were worried we'd have another dead set of kittens.  This time she gave birth in a basement window well along the house foundation, instead of in the garage.  It seemed stupid at first, but it hasn't been.  The kittens are safe, and Silver and Thomas keep them warm.  I started feeding them IN that window well, to encourage her not to wander away from them. 

The family.  Silver sitting up, Thomas lying down with the gray kitten, black kitten, and tabby kitten.  We've looked and it appears that the black kitten is female, and the other two are male. 

The two previous litters seemed to have been fathered by a couple orange cats, whom I haven't seen around lately.  They weren't very friendly, but we knew there were two distinct cats and one was braver than the other.  These three appear to have Thomas for a father, based on color and markings.  The kittens are walking, trying to climb the cement wall around them, and starting to eat the cat food.  Soon they'll all climb out and move into the garage for the winter.

May they live long and catch many mice and moles ... but leave the baby bunnies alone.

Trusting In Him,
April

Pictures of our Milkbarn Converted into a Chicken Coop

Last Summer we fixed the fencing around this old dog pen, and put a chicken wire roof over it.   We moved our guinea keets into it.  The guineas lived in it through the winter.  We hoped they'd use the doghouse for shelter, but they didn't.  Um, three of them froze to death, the dog caught one once, and we had one surviving guinea hen.

This Spring we moved our chickens into the same pen with the surviving guinea once they were big enough to leave the basement.  We've spent the rest of the summer trying to decide where to move them.  I wanted them near the house as they had been, so I could easily watch them and hear them.  So we considered converting part of a nearby outbuilding and adding a fence.  But, that was going to take almost as much work as building a new coop. 

The chickens were happy here and they laid their eggs inside the doghouse, and also between the doghouse and the fence.  We could access some of the eggs by moving a brick and reaching under the fence, but we also had to go inside and check inside the doghouse daily.  We put a metal pan in the dog house finally, because it was too deep to reach to the far corner.  We were using a stick to roll eggs out of it each day, and cracked several. After we put the pan in, we'd just use the stick to pull the pan forward, retrieve the eggs, and push the pan back inside again.

Cold weather came early this year, and we still hadn't decided what to do.  Finally, we agreed to move them to the old milking barn, even though it meant I could no longer watch or hear them from the kitchen.

The milk barn has thick stone walls, but only one window.  That window was boarded up, but Steve and I put a sheet of plexi-glass in place.  It has a few gaps around the edges we couldn't completely caulk, but it still stops most of the cold wind.   (The chickens are enjoying one of our watermelons that didn't get fully ripe, and some other veggie scraps from the garden.)

We thought they might roost over on these milking stanchions, but they never do.  Our feeder is meant to hang, but we just set it on bricks and put a pan on top to protect the food.  It's fairly dark in this barn, and we haven' t yet made the fence outside chicken-proof.  So they are stuck in here, but they're still laying. 

We were able to create roosts easily, by re-purposing farm clutter left by Steve's grandparents.  The metal gate is sitting in a brick with a groove, and leaning against the stone wall.  Several chickens usually roost on the top of this, and sometimes they lay their eggs under it.

More chickens actually roost on the old ladder we laid over two old sawhorses that were already here in the barn.  And some of them roost in the window, even though we clipped one wing before moving them in here.

We re-purposed these old tires that were lying around to be their nesting boxes.  They haven't laid a single egg in them.  Although they have laid a few between them or behind them. 

Speaking of re-purposing items ... there isn't any running water out by the barn anymore.  So we have to haul water to them.  Our first few attempts were messy, using a wagon to move their waterers back and forth, or carrying pitchers to the barn.  Then I realized if we used an empty gallon milk jug, it wouldn't spill.  We just take out a gallon of water in a milk jug each day and fill one or more of the waterers.  If we do this once a day (sometimes twice) we are able to always keep their waterers filled.

They like to lay their eggs in this corner, and we often find 3 or 4 here.  Of course, they also like to lay them in other places, and it's a bit of an Easter egg hunt each day, to find the chosen spots of the day.  Sometimes we have to watch where we walk, because one will be lying in the middle of the room.

Happy chickens and happy rooster in their new WARM winter home.  There isn't any electricity out here, so it's dark and they're going to have to make their own heat, but it will be fine.  It's more than enough room for 1 rooster, 23 hens, and 1 guinea hen.

Next Spring we'll move our new chickens into the pen next to the house again, but these older ones are staying put in the barn for now.  If we ever decide we need the barn for some other larger animals, we'll have to build a new coop for the chickens.

Trusting In Him,
April

I love my day lilies

I have loved day lilies for years.  I first fell in love with the wild-growing spotted tiger lilies along the road sides in Maryland.  I don't see those here in Kansas, but I still enjoy day lilies.

Our old home had orange day lilies all over the back yard.  We just kept thinning them and moving them around.  Here in our new home, Steve's grandparents' home, we have a variety of day lilies in colors I've never seen before.

The first to bloom last year and this year was this burgundy day lily.  I love it, and have never seen one like it before.

Soon after comes the standard orange day lily I'm used to enjoying.  Some of our varieties have color variations that differ from the ones we had before.  We have the most of these orange ones, in a couple different places.

Apparently, I'm not the only one who likes them, as this little bug does, too.  Grasshopper of some sort?

Later this summer, we'll have new varieties bloom, in shades that are almost pink.  I'll have to share pictures of them later.  They brighten our yard throughout the summer.  I love how they just keep giving new blooms day after day.

Thanks, Grandpa and Grandma, for all the beautiful flowers you planted here! 

Trusting in Him,
April

One of these things is not like the others ...

One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn't belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?

I'm fairly certain there's a rooster in my pullet cage.  What do you think?

It's not real clear in this picture, but his comb is taller, redder, and he is getting wattles. 
That is not a Buff Orpington Pullet, but rather a Buff Orpington Roo.

Did you guess which thing was not like the others?
Did you guess which thing just doesn't belong?
If you guessed this one is not like the others,
Then you're absolutely...right!

Trusting in Him,
April

Chick Days Are Here!!

It's "Chick Days" at our local Farm & Home store.  We were in the previous weekend admiring the chicks and talking about what we'd like to do this year, but we didn't buy.  When Steve went in on Saturday, he found these little girls just begging to come home with him.  They're Ameracauna pullets, and someday they'll lay lovely green, blue, purple, and brown eggs for us.  We're looking forward to that, but until then they're just 14 cuties!

We also intend to get some Buff Orpington gals, but Orscheln was out of them this weekend.  We're not sure if we'll mail order them, or buy locally.

Trusting in Him,
April

A memory for our homesteading scrapbook ...

Steve told me I needed to save this for our family scrapbook, so I thought I'd share it here, as well.  We had trouble with the toilet here at the farmhouse the last two years.  It was overflowing fairly often, and we took wet towels home from more than one trip.  Our worst time was during one of my family's visits.  When they were coming here to spend Christmas with us at the farmhouse, I was trying to figure out how to warn them about the toilet and lay down some rules w/o embarrassing us all.

This is what I came up with:

This is our friend, Loo.
Loo is a little tempermental.
He gets upset easily, and then his "anger" overflows.
Here are some tips to keep Loo happy:

1. Do be sure the water stops running after you flush.


2. Don't flush personal items.


3. Do flush in stages if you have to use a lot of toilet paper, instead of waiting until the end to flush it all at once.


4. Do alert April if you see any signs that his anger is rising.  Hopefully she can calm Loo down before it all overflows.

Thank you for working with us to keep our Temperamental Loo happy.  After all, he is our friend.  Without him, we'd have to get to know our other friend, "Mother Nature", a whole lot better.

                                                                               The Management

I posted it on our bathroom wall, and it brought laughter instead of embarrassment.  The message was relayed, and problems were avoided. 

We had a plumber out last month, before we moved in.  He said the septic wasn't the problem, and neither was the toilet.  Someone, at some point trying to save water, had turned down how much water flowed into the toilet.  Without enough water in the tank, the toilet had troubles flushing properly.  It also seems to plug easily, as it has a small outlet.

We've only had one overflow since the plumber came.  Our 3 yo potty training boy made a big ball of toilet paper and threw that into the toilet before he flushed.  We had to talk about how much toilet paper was appropriate to use, and that we do not ball it all up.

I will put this notice into our family scrapbook.  Or maybe I'll put a copy of it in the scrapbook, and frame a copy to hang in the bathroom.  It's still good advice, even if we replace old Loo.   Or maybe I'll re-write it to include tips about not wasting water, as well.

But I thought I'd share one of our "early homesteading memories" as we began this adventure.

Blessings, April

New Year's Snow at ElCloud Homestead

We spent a long New Year's weekend at the farmhouse, where we met some of our family for a late Christmas celebration.  The day we arrived was miserable as it rained heavily all day.  We all traveled through rain on Friday to get there.  Then it rained all day Saturday, as well. 

But Sunday morning, New Year's Eve, we woke up to several inches of snow on the ground, and it was still falling.  We hadn't expected it, since we had not seen or heard any weather forecasts since we left home on Friday.

This was our first snow while being at the farmhouse.  It was beautiful!  Between the deepening snow, and some sick children, we decided not to go into church that morning.  We just enjoyed our time with our family at home instead.

Due to the rain, and the snow, we weren't able to do any outside work at ElCloud Homestead.  Steve replaced the bathroom door knob, but mostly he just enjoyed his time with the family.  That was a pleasant change, since he's usually outside working whenever we visit the homestead.

I'm including some pictures of our homestead in the snow.

Happy New Year!

Blessings,
April