Monday, Monday

Wow... the weekends sure fly by. I can't believe it's Monday already!!! Let's see this weekend we changed the chick box to double the size... no small feat with 42 chirping chicks. They are ravenous eaters. We did lose one on Sunday. This little fella just did not thrive and I believe there must have been some problem with his lungs. All the others are fine and show no sign of illness, thank the Lord for that. We usually lose a few before they grow to adulthood and then sometime with the meat birds they can get lame because the grow so quickly.

I took the ducks outside for their first outing. They are growing very rapidly now. It will be time for them to graduate to the outdoors very soon. It's hard keeping their box clean now. I've started using shavings in the bottom of the box which keeps the moisture away from them when they are resting, but they really need to be out of the box and exploring the world a little. I'll probably set up a little fenced off area for them with a shelter for the daytime and then bring them in at night so they can get used to the outdoors. We also need some "debugging" in the garden. With all the rain this spring, we have an overabundance of slugs and couple nights ago I came outside the back door and stepped on a snail... yuk! It crunched!


I cleaned up around outside where Doug has been doing some construction. We have been using our table outside when it's not raining. It's far more comfortable outside. I moved the larger of my window boxes to the top of the tub where the washer drains out. We use biodegradable soaps so we can use this water in the garden... though there is no lack of water this year. The bugs don't like the soap. I've heard of people using all sorts of concoctions in their garden including soap to keep the bugs off. I expected we'd have lots of trouble with bugs this year being that it is damp, but I think our resident frogs are doing an exceptional job at keeping the mosquito and blackfly population way down.

We also moved the big old chest freezer out of the greenhouse and into the new chicken coop. We use this as a feed bin because it is ratproof. We had to wash it all down with bleach to make sure no chicken dust from our old batch of chickens was on it. That was a job in itself, but moving it was no small feat either. It is still heavy and I'm not a strong as I used to be (getting old).

I also made bread, did the shopping, did 4 loads of laundry and worked on my Sunday School stuff. I found a cool Father's Day card idea from Lori's Blog. I'll add a link to her on the sidebar for ya. My students loved the little fold-up orgami shirts and we made white shirts and ties... since it was a church project :) Thanks Lori!

I took some pictures of my bread making this week. I'll post those this week sometime along with some updated poultry shots and garden pics. Probably not today because it's a little busy right now. I also want to take some pictures of the "chicken coop on wheels" that Mr. Doug's been working on. His next project is the house.... YEA!!!

Psalm 145:3 Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable.