As the great Ella Fitzgerald sang, "Summertime, and the livin' is easy...." It's been a good summer here for us so far. We've enjoyed our share of hot weather, swimming, sleeping in late and enjoying down time. I don't really plan a whole lot of big projects around the house for the summer months, because we basically live outside. But we … [Read more...]
Advice I can offer from raising our own backyard chickens.
Planting a Backyard Garden
Here we are, almost to June, and we are just getting around to planting our backyard garden. It seems like it's taken forever for our temperatures to warm up enough to allow for planting anything. And have you ever seen the movie Peter Rabbit? Those beautiful English gardens are enough to make anyone want to move to the countryside and become a … [Read more...]
Chicken Update: What’s New with the Coop?
It's been a while since I gave an update on our chickens...and for good reason. They've been absent from our coop for the last 6 months! This year our original flock was turning 3 years old, and we knew that their steady egg laying days were soon coming to an end. It's hard to justify keeping chickens when you don't get eggs in return on a … [Read more...]
Don’t Quit Your Daydream
Hello Friends! The past month has just flown by and it seems like a lot has transpired since my last post. We were dealing with some unfortunate egg-eating in our flock, which I'm thankful to say was remedied by clipping their beaks. You can read all about that crazy adventure here. However, shortly after this problem was resolved, another … [Read more...]
Birds Behaving Badly – Dealing with Egg Eaters
Hey there and happy Friday! Thought I'd update you all today on an issue we've been having with our feathered ladies. About a week or so ago, I started noticing that every time I would go collect eggs from our coop, they were smashed and broken. At first I thought, "huh, that's weird," but after a few days of noticing this was developing … [Read more...]
5 Great Children’s Books About Chickens
It's National Library Week and to celebrate I thought I'd kick off my new section of the blog on Children's Literature by featuring some fun books on none other than our family's favorite feathered friends - chickens! The library has always been one of my favorite places to go ever since I was a child. Now that I have my own children, it's … [Read more...]
Braving the Winter with Chickens
It's time to talk chickens again. They don't call me the crazy chicken lady for nothing! I'm just as crazy about my feathered beauties now as the day I brought them home in all their fuzzy yellow cuteness. (They grow up so fast!) So, once the weather started to take a turn towards winter, I knew we needed to do a few things to help protect our … [Read more...]
Extreme Makeover: Coop Edition – DIY Expansion Pen
Happy Wednesday everybody! It's been a while since I gave you all a recent "scoop on the coop" regarding our feathered friends, so I thought I'd take this post to update you on what's new with our 5 pretty hens. To back waaaaaaay up, you'll remember when we first got these little cuties in May they were day old baby chicks who needed a lot of … [Read more...]
The Scoop on the Coop: A Beginner’s Guide to Backyard Chickens
Maybe it's because my baby sister is getting married in 2 short days, but something in me feels very much like a mother hen these days. Looking after little chicks is sentimental work! We've been busy here over the last 7 weeks, tending to our own little flock of chickens, five of them to be exact. Although we're far from experts on the subject, … [Read more...]