I walked out this evening right before dark and saw an amazing thing. With all the political craziness in our country, a profound image made such a mark on me that I ran back inside to grab my camera in hopes to capture the moment.
The Merritt Chicks (The oldest chickens) have had a rough time letting the new guys (The Chix) just... "Be". They keep them huddled in the little coop and rarely allow them into the main coop except for when we are bringing out treats. Even then, we have to split the treat giving up into two groups with Joey giving the Chix their treats, and me giving treats to the Chicks.
Tonight tho, when the sunshine wasn't on them and it was time to settle in for the night, I saw the most amazing thing.
Every one of the Chickens were on the top perch. Lined up, all in a row, feather to feather. Their petty differences that are shown during the day under the glaring light, seem to fade away in the cool evening.
Well, we started at the the crack of 8am this morning. All three kiddos and I headed to meet my mom at the Statesboro Farmer's Market for some fresh corn!
Well, we found corn and so much more! We got 4 lbs of snap beans and 4 dozen ears of corn. The kiddos shucked and silked the corn and as a reward, got to swim in Grandma's pool. Meanwhile, Grandma Deb gave me a lesson in canning beans and freezing corn!
Perfect portions for a family of 5!
So here are the $.50 squash plants we got (6 of them) so we'll see how they turn out.
We put the corn cobs in the worm bin for some fresh food and good compost!
We're finally seeing the first fruits of the garden.
Poor hot babies! See her wallow in the cool dirt, and shake herself off!
Ol' Jr. is still at it - he's so hot he's dropped his wings to air his body out. Still too pretty for his own good tho. ;)
I took some videos - as soon as they upload, I'll post them.
So, we decided to put the baby chix in with the big chicks to see just what kind of relationship would form. We'd had the chix in the little coop with a sheet of chicken wire covering the walk through to the big coop - so they could get to know each other, but not get 'at' each other.
Not as bad as I thought it would be...not as nice as I would have liked. I thought I taught the Chicks better than to behave like that, but it just goes to show, sometimes kids rebel.
Let me preface this video by saying a few things. It's short and sweet, but let it never be said that I consider "Us Merritts" to be professional chicken farmers. We're learning, as this video will show.
On Saturday, I bought two ripe, beautiful cantaloupes. Joey said "Oh, good! We can give the rind to the chicks." Sounded good to me, tho my thoughts focused more on "Yay! We can give the rinds to the worms!"
This evening, the kids were ready to "dig in" and eat their portion as a snack. Joey and Lexie cut and cleaned the cantaloupe in half and then divided the half even further down which created approximately 6 pieces.
We were quite excited about this, as Joey had been waiting to try his experiment since Saturday.
Enjoy this very imperfect video, candid banter and all. Let it never be said I don't share my faults as well as successes. Actually, overheard in the video is
"Sheebus, let me NOT record this right now"...but then I thought...why not make it a blog? So, here ya go.
So...I am not the type to buy cantaloupe and feed it to the chickens when I have perfectly good kiddos who'd prefer to snack on the goodness of fresh fruit. So, worm food it is. Sorry, Merritt Chicks, fresh fruit is for kids!
This was crazy fun for me. I had been talking to Little Bit aka "Junior" and he was feeling a little "cooped" up. I like to sit and watch him just be a chicken, so this was fun seeing the whole "feather cleaning" process and him get a little skittish when the squirrel (heard in the background) started acting crazy because of our cat, Jojo.
He's been "coming" to me whenever I talk to him, so I purposefully waited to speak to him until the very end. The result made me proud and you can see that "Junior" has sure come a long way from this, the sick little chick-a-bitty that he was.
