Getting Ready..................

We are getting prepared in case we get hit with this hurricane> My sis, my husband,my son and I headed out for wal-mart. Madness, I tell Ya sheer MADNESS. We barely got there in time to get a couple of cases of bottled water, and some bread...Of course we got other essentials too, but bread and water is always the first to go. Would you imagine. the one thing they were completely out of was ramen noodles. That sucked cause I was planning to stock up on those myself! Darn the luck. It will only get worse, because once they start evacuating certain places, there will not be a drop of gas or a piece of bread to be found for miles around! One thing that did strike me as funny though is that there were so many people stocking up on frozen, and microwave convience foods. I wonder how they plan on heating it if the power goes out. but you cant blame them, they are stocking up and trying to feed their families like the rest of us! I just don't think they thought it out very much! I will keep you all posted on this situation, and above all else be safe!

Ohhh Gustav.....

Gustav, doesn't that sound like a name for someone that you have a hot time with somewhere abroad, maybe somewhere exotic? Well, not for me, its the next in a long line of headaches! Gustav is rumbling out there in the tropics, and seems to have his eye set on the gulf coast. The exact path is too soon to tell, but no matter where it hits, its gonna be disaster! Do I have to remind you of Katrina, and Rita? I was here through both. I watched some of the evacuees come through from Katrina, visibly shaken, some not knowing if they would still have a home, and family to go home to. Then a short time later seeing Rita roar through Texas! I remember all of us on moms porch, and hearing a low rumble start up like a long lonesome train, and then my husband yelling for me to take the baby and get in the closet, because the rumble was an approaching tornado. The winds were so strong, we watched the neighbors pine trees twisting and breaking of and lamming to the ground! I remember after the worst had past, Mikey and I started out to yellowpine to see if my dad made it through the storm. We had to drive and walk across downed power lines, and that in itself was scary enough. We had to cut trees out of the roads , and cross rushing water. Then the next week, we had no lights, or running water. The heat and humidity were unbearable! Luckily, I had prepared so we got by until the fema trucks got here with ice and water and mre meals. There were people everywhere, most of us at night slept outside hopeful for a cool breeze, I spent a few on a porch swing. We even had to wait hours in line just to buy $20 worth of Gasoline. Needless to say, this is not something we want to experience again. Lets all pray Gustav stalls out somewhere in the gulf!

Incubating and Hatching Eggs

Today we are on day 11 in our egg hatching process. We are hatching out Frizzle Cochin Bantam eggs for a friend of mine. I thought it would be cool to post about this, and I have no Idea why I haven't thought of it sooner!
Our incubator was made by my husband. We purchased a Styrofoam cooler, fixed it up with 2 bottle lamp kits for the heat source, a old pc fan to circulate the air, a hot water heater thermostat rigged in with the lights so they shut on and off at a certain temp. a small pan on the bottom to put water in to regulate the humidity, and hardware cloth to make a shelf for the eggs.Also you need a thermometer with a hydrometer. I got a digital one at wal mart and it works just fine.
The eggs take 21 days to hatch...give or take a day or two...The temperature in the bator needs to be between 98 degrees and 102 degrees. The inside of the egg will need to stay at about 99.5 degrees. The humidity should be stable at about 50, except for when you get close to hatch time and then you need to boost your humidity to about 75.
Then the next step is to put your eggs in and wait. The coolest thing is you can candle the eggs. Its like doing an ultrasound. You can use a very bright flashlight, and hold it up to the egg, and you can see inside. On day 7, you can see veins forming, That's usually how you tell the eggs are fertile. You can candle them up to end if you like. I candled today at day 11 and i could see the chick embryos moving around in there! Its so awesome. The next coolest thing is hatching. The first thing you will see will be a small spot on the outside of the egg where the chick is trying to peck out, that's called a pip. you most likely can hear a couple of cheeps from the inside of the egg. Then it will take another few hours for them to zip out of the shell.
When the chick has fully hatched, it looks all wet and soo pitiful, but it will dry out in about an hour or so and be just as fluffy and downy soft as you could ever hope to see. At that point you can put them in a brooder box with a light to stay warm, and introduce them to food and water. Just be careful they don't drown in the waterer, you can put some small pebbles in the waterer to keep them from drowning, and yet they can still drink. Don't be worried if they don't eat right off either, before they hatch their yolk draws into their stomach, so they can go a day or two without eating.
The only thing left to do after that is to love on your little biddies! They are sweet and very comical at times. Believe it or not they do look up to their mamma hen, and the more you handle them , and talk to them the more social they will be. Believe me I have a Big 6 month old red hen that still perches on my knee, and tries to peck the freckles off my shoulders. That's how she got the name Freckles!

Rants from the nut job with a head cold!

It has been one heck of a week, and my Lord its only Wednesday. I should crawl back into my hole and wait until the weekend to come out! It all started Sunday when I came down with this horrible case of the hepazoodie....that's what my grandma called a bad cold....anyway, as it never fails my dad calls Bright and early Monday morning!" OOOHHHH I'm sick" he says "you gotta take me to the doctor" I told him that I was down with a cold, and it probably would be better if he called someone else to help him this time, but oh no. So i drop off my son at my moms, and my stepdaughter at her grandmas, and go on down there. I get him to the doctor, and then to the pharmacy, me sneezing and snotting all the way. Let me tell ya, my dad was sure his usual charming self..griping about everything i do, cause nothings quite as good as he would have it done and so on. I'm so sick of the way he talks to me, he does absolutely nothing but down me you know. I don't know how I can be the fruit of his looms... Well on the way to take him home, I was driving about 60 mph, and he starts screaming at me to slow the truck down, and if he knew i was gonna do him this way he would have walked home! This was all I could take....I hit the brakes and told him if he wanted to walk, get the hell out of my truck! Of course I would never really make him walk., but I'd had enough...Then he starts this ohh poor pitiful me, I should go to the nursing home crap. Then i finally told him look, you need to think of someone besides yourself for a change, I told you when you called that I was sick too, and you didn't listen. By the time I got him home he was really upset, but honestly, at that point I didn't care. I went on to my moms, and of course my dad had called her, and told her that I'd hurt his feelings. Also that night while i was working he called my husband, and tattled on me again. Of course , after going on into work, i overdone it, and have been down the last two days with this crap....Maybe its karma, I don't know. I do love my dad, well because he is my dad.....but on the same note I really to the point I don't like him at all. Does that make Sense? Why can't he just see me for the good I do, not just what he thinks I can do better. And after all these years why do I not have the guts to tell him, That the one big thing I Continue to do better than he ever could, is take care of my family, because he sure as hell never took care of my momma and me. I guess that will just continue to be the miles of bad road that's behind me. The sad thing is I wish that I could tell him how i feel, but he will just make fun of that, as he does everything else I say and do. I'm at wits end with him. Well that's enough ranting for now....If I can just find my rock I'll crawl back under it!

Chicken CSI

It was a bad week for my chickens. After waking up three mornings in a row with hens dead in the coop, we decided there was definitly a predataor in our midst. The firt day it had rained real hard so i thought maybe the two that died that day was from exposure. Then i noteced my favorite little rooster gone. After that we had a good layng hen dead, and feathers everywhere. Whatever was getting in there was leaving a gristly mess, something had to be done! We spent the day at my moms having a 16th birthday dinner for my neice, and my little boy was going to spend the night there with my mom. When Mikey and I got home I went into coop cop mode> I was set up with a lawn chair, a bottle of water, a flashlight and a shotgun...I was gonna defend my birds, and lets not forget my 2 guard dogs, my min pin, and my chiuauah....yeah I know this had to be sight. Well I sat out there until a little after midnight, no sign of anything unusual. Then my husband came out and told me that mom called, my son was sick, and i had to go get him. I thought sure enough by the time i get home one of my girls will have met the predator. When Hunter and i got home I went straight away to the coop, and lo and behold all my birds were there. when i came in the house my husband told me I needed to thank my two little Guard dogs, they sounded the alert and he went out, and there were two nasty, snarling possums, headed straight for my coop. The two dogs bayed them up, and Mikey made short work of those two critters. So now the mystery hen killer has met his match. The hens rest easy now, and the chicken coop cops, are on patrol for the next evil critter that seeks to hurt our chickens!

Have a B.A.D Day

Today my son and I were going through the toy aisle at Wal-mart. A Young man, I would say in his late teens, came up to us. He was a bit slower than some, but as our conversation unfolded it seemed that it was me, who was slow. He walked up and looked at my son and i standing there. He gazed up at me and said, "God Bless You Mam" I turned and told him thank you, and God bless you also. Then he said something that sent my jaw to the floor. " Have A Bad Day" he says... But wait a minute, a bad day, wasn't this just the same person who said God bless you to me? I'm sure that he could read the confusion on my face. Then he gave a chuckle and a million dollar smile and said, " Bad Day, Blessed And Delivered! I couldn't,t help but smile and I said well you have a BAD day too.....God Bless that young gentleman! I couldn't describe to you how blessed I truly felt. God sometimes send us rays of blessings, and that young man was mine today. Amen, and have a B.A.D. Day to you all!

Night is so Quiet

I love the night. Everything is quiet, except for the crickets and tree frogs that sing their nightly tune. All the animals are bedded down. All the chores are done, and my guys are asleep. Its my time to unwind. Peacefull, serene. I can think of things other than washing, wiping, feeding, or working. The night is the only time a mom gets to have time for herself. I love the calm of the night!

First post and blue eggs!

Yay, this is my first blog post! My friend Ginger thought maybe it would be neat to read about my farm, and how my family and I are trying to live more self suffeciently! Right now every things quiet, but all the clucks, crows, oinks and moos will start up about 6:30(chow time). We did have a cool thing happen the other day! One of my Americauna hens started laying, they lay blue/green eggs....My 5 year old son, and 13 year old cousin were looking in my nestbox out there and they both started hollering,"theres a blue egg in here"!!! So now its like Easter every day! We sure love our Chickens!!!