Holiday Card and Outtakes

Every year for the holidays my photographer husband comes up with a creative way to include the entire family in our Christmas card.  Since our newest addition to the "Smith Farm" is our kitty that we fostered, then adopted, he became this years highlight!  When we first brought Blue home his name was Wren, but it just wasn't sticking.  "Blue" is such a great name because we get to use it so many ways!  "You're my boy, Blue!" (for those who don't know it's from the movie Old School) or "Big Blue" because we are avid NYG fans and he happens to be big...and blue!  And now "We're having a BLUE Christmas without you" (c'mon everyone knows Elvis)! 

Shelldon (fka Shelly)

Since the days have been getting shorter and the weather has been rainy, I haven't had a chance to spend much quality time with the "ladies" in the backyard.  Cam does a wonderful job of tucking them in at night and making sure they are safe and sound from any backyard critters.  After 2 or 3 days of not really seeing them I made it a point to go out and sit with them until they called it a night...and that's when I realized, Shelly is a Rooster!

Since I'm not a chicken expert (YET!) I was hoping that my feeling was wrong and started referring to good old GOOGLE but was so impatient that I just called the Urban Farm Store where we got her..him.  Pete told me to look for pointed 'saddle' feathers at the base of her body near her tail so I ran out and looked and sure enough, Shelly was a Shelldon.  It explained a lot about her/his personality and also just how BEAUTIFUL (handsome!) she is!  The first thing I did was cry.  I love that little chick that EggBerta raised from 3 days old and since roosters aren't allowed within city limits we technically have to get rid of her...him.  Another reason for my tears was a bit selfish, or maybe just the farmer in me coming out ~ he's not going to lay eggs!  He's an Ameracauna and the hens lay variations of blue, pink, and green eggs or so I hear.  Eggberta was supposed to be an Ameracauna but she turned into a Wyandotte, so when she went broody I tried for the Ameracauna again :( 

I love Portland.

I really really do. 

Sometimes it's the little things that make me happy...like being bummed that the gas light came on in the car only to realize I can't pump my own gas anyway so it's not so bad to pull into the station and have someone do it for me!  Driving with the windows down is fun to me since it seems like I always had them up in Vegas to keep the a/c in, or was driving on a highway and it was too windy to keep them down. 
The pedestrians and bikers FRIGHTEN (I'm afraid I'm going to clip one) but I really enjoy seeing them out and about ~ they look so natural & happy.  Mount Hood's silhouette in the distance, driving over a bridge and looking out at the water and seeing more bridges in the distance; these things make me smile both inside and out.  Flowers, grass, outdoor markets, apple trees, and pear trees on the side of the rode that you can just pull up to and pick a fruit off and eat in your car - even going to the stores seems different here.  It's laid back and carefree and seems as if everyone knows each other, or would like to.  A woman checking out in front of me today was talking about her black and white dog named "Gravy".  The clerk was surprised Gravy wasn't a brown dog and was curious how the name came about. "It just seemed right" was her reply.  Tiny moments like that make me appreciate my new home. 

EggBerta is a Momma Hen!

She's a stressed out mom...as I would be!  She's a worry wart!

I couldn't resist, I had to make our broody Wyandotte a mom!  I'd toyed with the idea of getting a half dozen fertilized eggs and putting them under her to hatch, but we're not quite ready for that yet!  We only have room for 1 more full grown hen, and I wouldn't know what to do with the extra chickies...and what if one hatched a rooster?!  One of these days we'll have a house with a big yard and coop and for sure a handsome rooster, but currently we're only allowed 3 hens. The only other option was to get a 3 day old chick from the Urban Farm Store and pull the ole' switch-er-oo!  When we originally got EggBerta she was supposed to be an Americauna so we thought it fitting for her to mother one :)   I did some research and called the Farm Store and the babies were arriving on Friday.  The only problem was that I work until 7pm and the store closes at 6pm, so I put the idea out of my mind and figured we'd just wait until her next period of broodiness ~ it just wasn't meant to be. As luck would have it, right before I went to lunch that very same Friday my supervisor asked me to leave 2 hours early to make up for OT.  It didn't even hit me until the ride home at 5 that we could make it to the store! It was a sign! I called Cam and told him I'd be pulling up shortly and to meet me out front, and off we were to get Shelly!  There were a lot of different breeds at the store but we only looked at the "Easter Eggers" and picked out the newest member of our flock, headed home, and waited just a little bit before we made the move. 

Oddly enough when we went in the yard EggBerta was out and about and I feared that her broody period was over. The chick was cheepin' away and when EggBerta finally went back on her nesting box we got the chick and placed it under her!  Shelly took to her new mom right away but EggBerta wasn't sure what to do!  She was pecking the chick to keep it underneath her and kind of started to purr, or coo.  It was cute.  We stayed outside until dark to make sure everyone was well behaved, and I was up at the crack of dawn next morning anxious to see how the night went.

We weren't too sly about it!

It's fun to watch EggBerta come down the ramp and that little ball of fluff peepin' and cheepin' to keep up!  During the day mom and baby have been staying in the chicken run with their own food and water, but on my lunch break and when I'm home in the am and pm they graze around the yard under our supervision.  Right now I'm gazing out the kitchen window watching them in amazement. Shelly will be able to fend for herself and be on her own in 6 week.  I hope EggBerta looks after her until then!



Shelly grazing on
her own.

Plum Tree Time

made these into Plum Jam

One of my favorite things to do when I come home from work is to go outside and sit under the plum tree.  EggBerta is still broody so I say hello to the hubby and dogs and go right out to the coop and get her off her imaginary eggs.  I usually throw her in the air and she flaps her wings and gently lands on the grass.  Then I pick a couple of plums from the tree and sit on the wooden bench beneath it ~ and we eat.  Two bites for me, the rest for the hens.  One bite for me, the rest for the hens.  The dogs come around and try to see what they're missing out on, but then realize that it's just fruit and opt to clean up the chickens droppings...mmm tasty :-/  The husband usually joins us and picks a fruit off the tree, takes a bite and tosses it to the birds, which are right at his feet!  I like when EggBerta's out and I really want to make her a mom (but I'll save that for another post!).  Then we head over to the garden and just point things out to each other: 

"Look how big that tomato got"  "Did you see the little peppers on here?"  "I can't believe how tall the corn got!" "Look at all those beans!" "I think the head of red cabbage is ready"

Runner Beans we grew from seed.

 And it happens every day.  My husband just got back from a 5 day business trip and it was so fun to see his reaction to things!  Made plum tree time even more fun!  And he's so creative in the kitchen. Tonights dinner was a 5 course meal!  Carrot and Radish tops, Cheese Plate, Sauteed Beans, and amazing salad with lettuce and carrots, onion, red cabbage, radishes and beans from the garden, and a brownie for dessert. We're off tomorrow so who knows, Plum Tree time could be all day.

Plant it and it will grow!

I love being in the garden.  It's just so peaceful.  Having recently moved from the desert and originally being from New York I am just so amazed by it!  It's hard to believe that just 4 months ago we had a 12x6 raised bed of dirt and now pretty much every day we can go out and get something to eat from it!  The tiny little seeds that I planted in the dirt have become towering bean stalks, and broccoli, and radishes and lettuce.  The little 1ft tall corn starts and pea starts that I bought at the Farmers Market have turned into 6 foot tall plants with beautiful veggies on them.  The corn isn't quite there yet but it's getting ready to flower.  We have at least 6 different types of tomatoes that are all starting to come in, as well as different varieties of peppers. 

On a walk to the park a few weeks ago we found a couple of seedlings sitting out by the community garden.  I wasn't sure where we were going to fit them but I couldn't just leave them there!  We thought for sure that they were tomatoes so put one in the topsey turvey and bought a couple of containers for the other guys.  When we checked on them yesterday they are doing SO WELL!  We think one of them might not be a tomatoe though..looks like more of a cucumber or something in the melon family (maybe a pumpkin)!  I love that we don't know what it is right now and can't wait to find out!

I think my birds gone crazy!

UH-Oh!  I've heard of it but thought it was just a myth!  EggBerta's maternal instints have kicked in and she is determined to sit on her (imaginary) eggs and hatch them into babies!  I've tried explaining to her that we don't have a rooster so none of they eggs are fertilized...I've even removed the eggs from the nest but she still sits in her roosting box all by her loneseome ~ and she is ANGRY!  We noticed that she was missing a lot one day (longer than it takes for her to lay an egg) and when we went to the box she squawked at us!  She sounded like a dinosaur so we were calling her the Jurassic Park chicken.  She's stopped laying altogether because in her mind she already has her "clutch" and she's even slowed the others production because they are afraid to go lay next to her!  It's very tempting to buy her some fertilized eggs and let her carry out her motherly roll...stay tuned!

Eggs. So amazing and fun!

Layla has been producing a lot of double yolkers.  It's fun to see how big they are in comparison to the regular ones.  Since they just started laying recently their eggs are on the smallish side and they'll reach a normal size in a few more weeks.  But the double yolkers that LayLa has been laying are about the size of the ones you find in the store, only we don't have any of them on steroids ;-)

Heeeerrreee Chickie Chickie!!

The ladies are laying pretty consistently now ~ we get at least 2 eggs a day and most days 3.  But they are getting smart those little ladies, especially Martini!  I realized that she wasn't producing recently and had read somewhere that some hens may find different spots to lay because they want to protect their eggs (and wisen up to the fact that every day they lay an egg and it goes missing!  She was acting extra funny one afternoon and was pecking at the sliding glass door to go in the house while we were out in the garden.  She was so persistent that we finally let her in and she layed an egg behind the curtain! So I wasn't surprised to find that there weren't eggs in the nesting box over the next few days.  I went in the yard one day while she was "missing" and took a broom stick and was going through the bushes to see if I could find her...and wouldn't you know she came out from UNDER THE DECK with a broken eggshell in her mouth!!  Then I looked under the deck and saw that she had laid 3 other eggs under there!  I took the broom handle and nudged them out so Cam and I are going to have to work on getting under the deck blocked off.  For the next couple days I made sure to just keep her in the closed run until she was done laying the egg, this way she had no place else to go. 

We have an EGG!

The circle of life!

Can you guess who laid it?!  The gals are a week shy of 5 months so we weren't really egg-specting any so soon!  I went out to feed the girls some cherry tomatoes and couldn't find my Tweety Martini!  She's the Speckled Sussex and is ALWAYS the first to greet me...and here I was feeding Layla and EggBerta and she was nowhere to be found.  I panicked.  I called in the house to Cameron and told him I couldn't find her.  I asked my neighbor who was in her backyard if she had seen her (her response was that she had and she tasted really good...which wasn't very comforting!) and Cam calmly walked over to the coop, opened the door to the nesting box, and lo and behold! 

Thatta Girl!! You did it!!

There was Martini crouched in her nesting box :)

What an amazingingly great day :)   We celebrated, gave Tweety Martini some milk and chicken scratch, and went in and tested it out!  They yolk was so orange!  I'd heard that it would be since they are allowed free range and can eat bugs and worms, but still it was a nice treat :)

Carton Egg on Left ~ Backyard Egg on Right



The Proudest Hen :)









Time Management!

I want to publish to my blog more frequently but never feel like I have enough time.  I've been unemployed for 6 months and don't have any kids...but I still don't have enough!  I don't necessarily want more in a day (well okay of course I do :) )  but I feel like i'm not sure if I want to live the day or come in here and write about it!  I mean do I come inside from sitting in the backyard with my husband and the dogs and beautiful chickens while I'm watchin the garden to come in and write about how relaxing and rewarding it is?  But if I don't, then how I am supposed to remember all of the joy that it brings when I start losing my marbles :)
Questions questions.  SO how is it that I am writing now?  The chicks are not yet in the coop because the sun hasn't set, the dogs are on the bed, and Cam is in the living room.  I used the bathroom and decided to pop in really quick because although I may be missing a minute or 2 I think it's special to pop in and write about our simpleton lives (at the moment).  We built a cage (took about 2 hours but it FLEW by..no pun intended) to keep the chicks out of our newly planted garden (carrots, beets, red onions, green onions, and radishes), learned how to "blow out" the Duck and Goose Eggs that we bought at the Portland Farmers Market yesterday (we're about to make a spinach goose egg casserole for dinner!) and had some brews while enjoying the sun and wind on our deck little porch...  Really looking forward to the spring when everything is in bloom.