Sweet Cecilia

Much of the day, this is how we find Cecilia: walking around with Black Spot in her arms. Back Spot often falls asleep in Cecilia's arms. Eelie used to be her favorite, but now its Black Spot. We also have chicks named Root Beer, Woodpecker, Chocolate Cake, Brownie, Clementine (since we didn't get to name Julian that name,) Frosty, and I think the rest are still TBD. It was easy to name them all when we only had four, but thirteen is another ball game. A stinkier ball game. An eating tons of food ball game.

I think Cecilia looks so cute in her new bonnet and shades (compliments of the lovely Karla from Kairos - we love the both of them.) Days like this I feel like I fall in love with my children all over again. I could just eat them up!

The Real Chicken Expert

The real chicken expert in my world, Jackie, e-mailed me this cool link about Diatomaceous Earth. She uses it in her chicken's dust bath to keep the bugs off of them. My girls are still looking rough and I can't figure out if they're picking on each other or themselves due to bugs? If I leave them cooped up, they come out all ruffled looking, like they've been fighting eachother or something. I'm sure they're re-establishing their pecking order, but come on girls, there are TWO of you. Just be cool to each other.

So this link is a must watch for all you Crazy Chicken Ladies out there!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQn6GSHNzBE

Big Doins at Granny Yaya's

How are we tired? Let me count the ways:

• Francesca and Cecilia spent the night at Granny's (stayed up until 9:30.)
• They woke up at 6:45.
• Went right outside because, "We're missing the best part of the day!!!"
• The Great Horned Owl is in the tree again.
• Ran around in the wind like maniacs. Granny comments that she hasn't even taken a shower or gotten dressed. "Uh, well yea, welcome to my world. Now you know why I always look/smell the way I do!"
• Francesca picked any flower that was blooming (every flower that was blooming.)
• The apricots are in full bloom. The orchard is humming with bees. Granny has a beehive in one of her cottonwood trees. The trees are about 10 days behind schedule for blooming, according to my farmer friend.
• Went for a morning walk.
• Carried Julian because I forgot my baby carrier (dangit!)
• Cecilia rode in the baby buggy.
• Francesca walked, floating her duck in the canal by a string.
• Julian's hat blew into canal so Francesca held Julian while I jumped into the canal to rescue the hat (it is a really cute hat.)
• Heard a rooster crowing. I guessed that by the sound of the crow, it was a bantam (because since I've heard two rooster crows, Jackie's and mine, now I'm a rooster crow expert.)
• Walked to Mary Story's to see the goats. Baby goats nursing and wagging their tails are so cute.
• Saw the "husband" goats.
• Found the bantam rooster (ha!) He is a cutie pie, with a huge plumy tail - Spanish looking? Looks like a Spanish something rooster in my chicken book.
• Carried sleeping Julian home while both girls rode home in buggy, eating snacks and singing, "Is everybody happy? Yeeees sir!"
• Lunchtime.
• Girls swing on swings and play in sandbox while mommy makes lunch. (Why am I speaking about myself in 3rd person, ala Bob Dole?)
• Owl is still sitting (sleeping) in tree. He looks as big as a cat, sitting way up on a skinny branch. We look at him through the scope. His talons are huge and black.
• Granny finds a cough pellet from the owl. It is huge (as big around as a human turd.) Upon dissection, the grey fur and claws and teeth look to be Granny's missing cat, Rooster. Yikes, poor Rooster. Supposedly, most owls' MAIN food is cat (not mouse or rabbit like you would suspect.) I suppose that cats would be relatively unsuspecting, compared to a rabbit or mouse or other wild animal. A house cat would be a pretty easy pick, right? Rooster was probably just laying on the chair on the back deck when, SURPRISE!
• Lunch is typical, girls falling out of chairs, spilling drinks, getting up, etc. I'm the only one eating.
• Nap time: on our way to nap time, Granny says, "I know! Why don't we take naps in the camper!" I say, "I know! That can be your job!" Granny takes girls for nap in camper.
• Julian falls asleep. I get to read almost an entire article in Backyard Poultry magazine about the goodness of roosters and now I'm missing our rooster.
• Grandpa gets home from Lake Powell, wakes Julian up. Francesca comes in from camp trailer, "I kept saying, 'is she asleep yet? Is she asleep yet? and waking up Cecilia so Granny told me to get out."
• We go outside to show Grandpa the owl.
• Granny gets Cecilia to sleep and finds some plastic castle of a tool work bench for Francesca to put together on the deck.
• Julian plays on his blanket. Afternoon goes by. Cecilia wakes up from a much needed nap.
• Andrew returns from his bike ride from Fruita to Utah to Fruita on the old Highway with a banged up face. He mouthed off to some lady in the parking lot after the ride, while riding without hands and crashed (instant karma?)
• After dinner, we discover the 'eagle has landed' and the owl is with its mate, outside Granny's kitchen window. The mama owl is sitting way, way up high in a cottonwood tree on a nest, which has babies because we can hear them.

• I bet the mama and daddy doves sitting on their nest RIGHT outside Granny's window aren't too happy about the owl situation. Will the owls eat the dove babies when they hatch? Or pick off the doves themselves? This is like Discovery Channel Live. The owl's feathers are perfect camouflage for hiding in the pines - their feathers look just like the bark. Its amazing that the songbirds and bunnies are so seemingly oblivious to the owls' presence. They seem so ominous. And to leave the cough pellets of the missing cat, about three meters from the back door is so irreverent! For all we know, it could be Julian's owl, coming back to visit. Mom keeps reminding me to mind the baby while outside, as if the owl is going to swoop down and snatch him.
• We herd the children into the car and go home (finally.)
• I check on our baby chicks (who I left inside this morning because I noticed an owl flying in the sky.) (I know it was an owl because now I'm also an owl expert.) :)
• I accidentally let all the chickens out and while hearding them back into their coop, the suspected rooster baby tries to attack me. I don't miss my rooster anymore. This little pistol is going to be fierce, I can just see it in his stinkeye.

Thank goodness for mother nature and all mothers. And while we all drift off to sleep, our owls begin their night, hunting for more yummy cat, or mouse or what? to feed to their babies.

My Bluberry Also Has a Ding Dang Video Camera!

Julian seems tired in this video because he is at the tail end of spending an hour on the blanket outside in the shade, playing with toys. This is a new record for the hold me baby of the year. Inside, he is either in somebody's arms or fussing for seconds until he is back in someone's arms (usually mine, and remind me to send a thank you card to the Moby Wrap peeps.) Outside is another story. He will lay on the blanket forever, while I hang laundry or fuss with our flock. Springtime magic!

Mu Blueberry Has a Camera!

Julian is okay!

Cecilia loves the shower cap:

Ducks

Francesca is an animal girl. For some reason, she's really into ducks. I can't even remember how it came about, but for Christmas I gave her a stuffed mallard duck and it is her prized possession. And that's saying a lot because she has just about every kind of Audubon bird, chicken, horse and cat stuffed animal made. During Fruita's Farm and Ranch weekend, there was a petting zoo with mini horses, dogs, goats, and a baby goat and Francesca wanted to chase around, catch and hold the duck. I was totally surprised.

So when we were at Uncle Charlie's for Easter, he got out a couple of duck decoys for the kids to play with in their pond. Francesca was in HEAVEN, tending her ducks in the pond, netting them, feeding them, etc. Uncle Charlie gave her two of them and she has been sleeping with them. They're hard plastic, life size ducks! Tonight was big doin's at Granny's because the water is in the canal, so Francesca brought her ducks up, tied strings around their necks and floated them down the canal. When I arrived, Granny was handing the kiddy swimming pool out the top of the garage so that the girls could float the ducks in the pool. Pretend animals are great. Pretend animals are perfect for age five.

Blueberry

Andrew and I got new phones from switching cellphone service to Credo Mobile. They bought out our contract and gave us each a new Blackberry. This device gives me total anxiety. I have no idea how it works. I thought it was like a mini computer? But evidently, its just a mini e-mail checker/phone/who the f*ck knows what else. Who has times for this?

The up-side is that it has a hookup to the computer and so let's just see if I can get a picture up in here. Nope. I think I have to download software or some crap. Who has time for these things?

If I bought this Blueberry (cracks me up to call it a Blueberry for some reason) I would be having a little buyers remorse, but since it was free . . . freebies remorse? Andrew's says, "You can download movies and music and stuff onto these!" I say, "From where? I don't think you can download them just from space?" We are like a couple of old people up in here. How embarrassing. I guess its all about what you're into. I'm more into blackberries and blueberries you eat, I guess.

I took the batteries out of our old phones and gave them to the girls. Cecilia has been on her pretend phone all day. Like a little teenager . . . "Mom! You're calling somebody and I'm calling somebody! Match Match!"

Crazy Chicken Lady

When Jackie went to the Ace Coop to buy diatinacious earth for her chickens, upon asking if they had any diatinacious earth, the man replied, "Are you one of those new age, hippy dippy chicken ladies?" And so - our cult is born. We're Crazy Chicken Ladies. Right now, my back yard looks like a microcosm of a farm . . . straw everywhere (because I'm trying to grow some grass in a couple of spots and because straw everywhere is fun) swing set in the middle, and 1/4 of the yard - okay maybe more like 1/3 of the yard corralled off into a sort of chicken grotto, or chicken courtyard as Andrew calls it. Inside of the chicken courtyard, is a small silver trash can full of scratch. Chicken scratch is EVERYWHERE in the courtyard because every time the girls visit the courtyard, they have to throw scratch, right? There is our composter, the chicken coop proper, which houses our two hens, their chicken run, which is fool proof for dogs and cats and the like and then the brooder. Okay, its not a brooder, its a fabulous chicky palace. A giant, plastic, white with pink and green shutters and doors, Lil' Tikes playhouse full of 13 baby (but getting big way too fast) chickens. Right now, it is glowing in the dark like a Christmas time display because I have a red heat lamp inside and also a space heater inside a crate so that they don't singe their little feathers. My backyard is small - crazy small and FULL of an acre's worth of farm fun. It is so rad. I decided to bag the gardening this season in favor of the chicken brooding. I am so hooked on chickens. I LOVE THEM! They are seriously the most favorite pet I've ever had - and I've had a lot of pets. I had a total of seven dogs growing up, two cats, one hamster and a bird, but nothing comes close to these chickens. Okay, maybe the bird, who's name escapes me. We left its cage unlocked and it would push the door open in the morning, hop down two flights of stairs, walk into my room, crawl up the blankets onto my pillow and chirp me out of bed.

Having had dogs my whole life, I can honestly say that I prefer the chicken to the dog. Why do dogs get such royal status anyway? What is it about one animal that makes it somehow more important than another? Chickens are every bit as social and endearing than any dog and as opposed to dogs, chickens actually give something (good) back! Eggs and great doo doo for the garden.

Since falling so in love with chickens, it has been increasingly hard to EAT chicken. I've cut my meat consumption down to maybe about once/week and only the grass fed, happy cow meat and Maverick Ranch chicken, although I've come to realize that Maverick Ranch chicken isn't much if any better than regular chicken except for maybe less junk pumped into but the factory raising and slaughtering is still the same - oh dear am I getting onto my soap box? I've been reading, "EATING ANIMALS," by Johnathan Safran Foer and it makes an extremely convincing case for vegetarianism, if not veganism, unless you do it all yourself. Since I don't plan on killing anything in the near future, looks like I'm down to raising hens for eggs. So huge props to all you hardcore vegetarians and if you haven't read "Eating Animals," yet, I highly recommend it . . . even the most hardcore 'meat tooths' out there will have a hard time eating meat after reading this book. So, I guess I'm weaning myself from the meat, and dreaming of a giant free range, happy chicken ranch, where I can raise chickens for eggs.

I better get to bed. The chickies are spending their first night outside in the playhouse (they've been in a series of taped together boxes in the garage) and so I'm sure I'll be up half the night worried sick. If they'd just be quiet and go to sleep I'd not worry so much, but as it is, they are chirping and chirping, so I'm afraid they'll be chumming in the owls and such.

Ding Dong the Witch is Dead!

I've been singing that song in my head ever since Monday. I posted an ad on Craig's list for a good home for our rooster and Jerry called wanting a rooster to protect his 14 hens! Eureka! Nothing describes my utter glee and giddiness better than the scene in Oz when Dorthy accidentally lands on the Wicked Witch of the East and everyone in Oz is dancing and singing and happy as can be. The girls have been hanging out with the hens all week, feeding them by hand, chasing them around a bit (trying to pick them up) and they can put them up and let them out into their new corral alone, whereas before, with the rooster, we were all scared sh*tless to let them out, for fear of Tornado's wrath!

Jerry looked at us like we were a bunch of idiots when he started to open the gate and I nervously say (not wanting to admit he is mean and we're scared sh*tless of our rooster) "Uh, he can be kind of ornery sometimes . . . (get back girls.)" Jerry smiled and said, "Oh, is that how it is then?" And he opened up that gate, walked into the coop and Tornado actually seemed to be running from him. He jumped up on his perch and pecked Jerry's hand when he put his hand up to him. Jerry just grabbed him by his legs and held him upside down for a moment then hoisted him up under his arm like he was a kitten. Then Tornado actually acted like a kitten. I think I saw remorse in his eyes, as Jerry carried him to the car, like, "Oh man. I attacked that woman one too many times. Now Jerry is going to put me in the soup." And if he does . . . WHO CARES! At least he's not crowing all d*mn day long, and threatening to claw our eyes out. Yo ho! Yo Ho, yo ho, yo ho - let's open up and sing!