Eggs for Education

Our photo for "Eggs for Education" program. Thought we should start saving for college by selling eggs. Here is one of our pretty girls relaxing in the cool of the afternoon with her leg kicked out. She likes to lay like this...lol.  I just love to see her in the sunshine, the gold in her feathers is so pretty, it shines and sparkles. We've got tons of farm fresh brown eggs for sale.

 

We've got tons of farm fresh brown eggs for sale. Got to laugh, hubby says that he is going to fix up the yard this year, well the chickens are unfixing it up for him by making dust bathing holes.

GOTCHA DAY! Adoption Day!

This week we celebrated our son's adoption day, we call it GOTCHA DAY! In our home when it's your special day (birthday or Gotcha Day) you get to pick your meals. Our son picked cold cereal for breakfast, we normally have hot breakfast so this was a treat. Lunch was a favorite buffet restaurant and dinner was Subway. In the past we have spent the night at a hotel swimming,  gone to the zoo, played board games all evening long or find other fun stuff to do for his Gotcha Day! We had planned a fun field trip to tap maple trees for syrup but those plans unraveled. We got on the road by 7am with my sister in law (AKA favorite Aunt of the child) in tow and headed toward the forest of maple trees.

About an hour into the drive husband calls to say the field trip was cancelled due to weather. From the backseat comes a yell to head to the children's museum instead. OK, foiled plans are now made in to more fun plans!! It was cold (33 degrees) anyway and I think we were all a bit glad it was going to be an inside day. We decided to take a side trip to look at the baby chicks at the feed store, always a fun time. We now have BABY CHICK FEVER! lol. We will need to go to the doctor for that cause I ain't got no energy to care for baby chicks right now, though we only have about 4 chickens left in the freezer. We did buy a chicken hutch that was $119.00 on sale for $89.00. When I am up on my feet again we will get some meat birds to fill that up. YUM!!

Then we headed off to the museum, we get in free with our son's AOPA membership so that is pretty cool! Since I am not up for much in the way of walking around and expending energy since my surgery/leak/infection, I rested on a bench, then sat for a few hours in the lunch room. I brought the Kindle Fire along with me to watched an episode of the Duggars show 19 Kids and Counting, if you want to know exactly what my only child is like, he is a carbon copy of the Duggar boy that is interested in cameras and photography, I will have to ask our son what that boys name is. If anyone knows post the name, I know it starts with a J . . . hahaha, but I can't come up with it, post it on my blog please. Josiah is his name!

After the children's museum we headed off to the mall since I needed some new pants, none of mine fit anymore since the surgery, my stomach is still swollen, though this morning I did see a bit of my large incision, so the swelling is going down some. We walked around the mall and sat down a few times. Son treated his Aunt to a chair massage, they both liked it. I thought it might be too much for me so I just watched. Did not buy any clothes, but got talked into being a model for a fashion show and I will get 40% off my purchases that day. I'm thinking it was the pain meds that made me do it!  Otherwise I would NEVER consent to being a fashion model. But for 40% off everything that I buy, well I'm thinking I can do this. And the child was going nuts about it, so I said "YES!"

After all this they wanted to go to a bookstore, I conceded and headed out to the car to recline. I napped and ate some egg salad (what other type of sandwich would you eat when you raise chickens?) and chips. They enjoyed themselves and Auntie thought she would never get the child out of the bookstore...hahaha, she was getting tired and there are no chairs in this particular book store, I guess they don't want you to sit around and sample the books before you buy.

We arrived home around 10pm, I was pooped (pun intended after my intestinal surgery. . . LOL), the next day I did NOTHING but breathe, sleep and eat. I am for sure not ready for a day out like that again for awhile.

There is a silver lining to all this.
After all the stress of my illness and added responsibility that the child has had over the last 6 months, remember I broke my foot, ended up on bed rest with it, then was hospitalized in December (Diverticulitis), then again in January (surgery), then yet again in February (infection). Now my recovery phase (should be back to normal by summer, but really what is NORMAL. . . hahaha.) It's been a really long ride for all of us. So this comment from our son really threw me for a loop, it got me thinking WOW I guess love is what it's all about (the love of the Father first and foremost) and you just do what you have to do to make it through. I think this has all been a HUGE learning experience for our son, in watching how Daddy takes care of me and how our marriage vowes really come into play with something like this, especially when your spouse is not able to function for months on end, you have to take on household responsibilities and new financial responsibilities (my medical bills just for 12 days in the hospital + all the extras of tests, co-pays, prescriptions etc. are well over $100,000.00 and insurance is fighting $48,000 of that saying it was not medically necessary for me to be in the hospital for the infection and IV antibiotics. Prayers would be appreciated in this area. I am thinking that there is an insurance coding glitch or something since I was very ill and I don't think I would have fared very well at home in the condition I was in, there is no way I could have functioned at home.

I pray that our son will remember us getting through these times when/if his wife or children should ever become ill. I look at this as a time of growing for all of us, and WOW what opportunities I had to share through the course of my illness, to God Be The Glory is all I can say! As I feel up to it I will share more things that I encountered through my illness.

Visiting Mom in the hospital. I look much better now!

I will leave you with the comment from our child the night before his Gotcha Day, he says to me "Mom, I am so glad that you adopted me." I said "Why?" He says "Because I get to grow up in a Christian home, I get chickens and I get to have a dog." I told him "Thank you and also be thankful for your birth parents, they made a really hard decision in placing you for adoption."

How does your family celebrate Gotcha Day!?

 

Stop by my blog

http://adoptivemomhomeschoolinganonlychild.blogspot.com/

Laying down on the job!

Our girls are really laying down on the job! They have not laid well in weeks. Most of our girls are molting and looking pretty shabby......LOL.....Is that where the scrapbooking and rubber stamping industry came up with the term Shabby Chic?

If you don't know what molting means, it's when a chicken's feathers fall out and new pretty fluffy ones come in, it must be stressful on the body since they don't lay many eggs when they molt.
I found these 3 chicks resting high up in the pine trees, they were safe from our beautiful red foxes that like to hang out around our place.

We actually had to buy store bought eggs last week, we got the jumbo ones from Meijers and they were the size of our normal sized eggs that our hens lay. The price of feed has really increased so these girls had better be getting back to work in the hen house to earn their keep!

A little chicken humor for you. LOL

Moe

Illness strikes so please pass the Lysol

I'm thinking all I am going to get to is a picture to make you chuckle. We have been passing around a cough/sore throat/fever/headache thing. So here ya go  :O)

I found this cartoon very amusing as I was at a yard sale today with 2 mommies that have young kids and they were tired mommies needing a break. But no sitter today during the yard sale. It's easy to forget how those different seasons of life are.

Psalm 127:3
"Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward."

Have a good weekend!
Moe

Weigh in day

Today was weigh in day for our chickens, two of them were 1 lbs 3 oz, and the rest were all around
3 lbs, 8oz. So they are looking pretty tasty......eeerrr, ummmm, lol. I mean looking good  ;o)
They will be fully grown and ready to go the week of May 24.

As for names so far we have

Chicken Pot Pie

Chicken & Dumplings

Chicken Noodle Soup

BBQ Chicken

Fried Chicken

Chicken Salad Sandwich

They are enjoying their time in the sunshine and fresh air. Though it's been a bit frosty in the mornings, they are doing well. The hens DO NOT LIKE THEM! lol. We had them in the yard next to the girls nesting boxes and they were screeching at them.

We even weighed some of  our hens and they all tipped the scales at OVER 5#.

Off to bake some gluten free/corn free bread.

Moe

Character lessons learned through a baby chick

We are doing school at the kitchen table while a dying baby chick is nestled in a warm t-shirt next to us. Praying & petting him until he passes.

Character lessons being learned today in compassion, availability, gentleness, flexibility, alertness, reverence, thoroughness, love, contentment, responsibility, and sensitivity.

Sometimes life is our best teacher and life is hard at time. But knowing that it builds character helps.

Moe

I said I would NEVER do it again, but I did it again.......

We got 10 new baby chicks today! They are sooooo cute! I know I said I would NEVER get more chickens, but we were at the farm supply store the other day and I ordered some. They told me it would be Friday before they would ship. Well guess what? I had to take hubby to the dentist this morning and they called, so I drove over to the feed store and picked them up. Tried to hide them in the backseat, but hubby noticed the little cheeping....lol. He was numb on both sides of his mouth, so he was not into talking much and she just said HHHMMMM, with some sarcasm in his murmur.....lol. Meaning "This is your project and I am not helping you with them this time."

These will be ready for the freezer in 6 weeks. So we are not naming these little cuties

so hear me now........

I AM NOT GOING TO GET ATTACHED TO
THESE LITTLE SWEETHEARTS!!  Look closely at the picture above, especially at the beak, you can see the 'egg tooth'. That is pretty cool, because they normally fall of pretty quickly. It's on the top of the beak and it's a very special tooth that God gave chicks. It's the tooth that they use to peck out of the shell to be born. It looks like a little piece of dark yellow with a bump on it. It will fall off very soon. I'm off to check on my new brood.

Have a great day!

Moe

Pantry Challenge January Round Up

Let me count the ways that I bombed this past month in the Pantry Challenge.....lol. But I had fun and hope you did too.

For starters DO NOT EVER shop for groceries after being under anesthetic..lol. I felt so well after my upper and lower scopes that we decided to shop at Meijers (remember I love that place!), I wandered through and blew a cool $50 some odd dollars, can't find the receipt now. Got some wonderful produce (did I ever tell you how I just love Meijers produce? I think it's the lighting!).
My dear husband pushed the cart dutifully up and down the isles for me as I plucked things off the shelf (who knows what!) and dropped them into the cart. What on earth was I thinking? That is right I was not in my right mind and what did that paper say that I signed before surgery? "I will not make any financial decisions for 24 hours." I wonder now, does grocery shopping fall under that category? I think so! That brings me up to $122.09 for the month.

Then another $49.56 at the local grocery store this was sort of a woe is me shopping trip, I had to do the prep for my upper/lower scopes (drink the nasty stuff to clean your insides out) and I wanted to treat myself, so I bought my favorite soda Canada Dry, my favorite kool-aid drink TANG, the good ice pops (not those nasty cheap watered down ice pops......lol). Since I knew once the tests were done I would be back on a gluten free diet, I got some Lenders Bagels and Thomason English Muffins, no generics for me on those! I also bought the good juices to drink during my prep time, nothing like Welches White Grape Juice $4.50 a bottle and Mango Peach Juice. Those items added up very quickly. $171.65 for the month.

Then on 1/30/12 I ran to the store real quick like for milk & chicken (remember I did not want to butcher our laying hens so I had to buy chicken)........that cost me $23.76.
They had milk on sale for $1.50 so bought a few of those,
Cannelli Beans on sale for $1.00 a can, I stocked up on those since I can sneak them into a lot of things..lol
Tyson Chicken was on sale for $1.99 lb.

January 2012 cost us $195.41 for three people, doing homeschool math that comes to an average of $65.14 per person for a month or an average of $48.85 per week. I was hoping for less, but I know that I could have done without the $50 bucks spent on surgery day, I am still kicking myself for that one! I am thankful for what I saved and did not spend with being gluten and dairy free, I could have spent a lot more $$ on fancy products.

How is your February going on the pantry challenge? I am going to just keep on going with it and see where it leads me. Remember if you are not gluten free or dairy free you can still use my recipes (comment if you have questions about them), just use whole wheat or white flour and regular dairy and butter in the recipes.

If you are new around here we are having a Pantry Challenge, here is how it works.........It's easy, before you head to the grocery store, shop your freezer, refrigerator and cabinets to see what you can use up. For the first 3 weeks I try to only buy milk, butter and bread, since I usually have an abundance of canned fruits and veggies on hand. If you don't have chickens you may need to buy eggs :-p Make a family game out of this, let the kids pick some can goodies from the cabinet, find some meat in the freezer and go from there.
Moe

Waiting, Waiting, Waiting

That is what life seems to be all about.
2 Thessalonians 3:5
"And the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ."

Tomorrow I see the first of many specialist, so we shall see what he has to say about it all.

I've kept busy here, decluttering and tossing stuff. I gathered up a large box full of scrapbooking supplies and gave them to a girl at church. And ya know those piles of papers that we all have, I've been sorting through those and have a rather large 'to be read pile!'. (yes, you know those hidden away piles of misc. papers, magazines, flyers and such that you had good intentions of reading.....lol).

I've also stumbled across a few Christmas gifts that need to be wrapped. Along with the latest homeschool class schedule for the spring semester, would like to sign our son up for a few classes, but not sure what the future holds as I have to wait 6-8 weeks before the doctors say that they will do any testing, that right there cuts into the Spring semester.

School has been going well, our son is working on a huge research paper on The Battle of Britain, I'm working on teaching him how to hone in on the topic, as he is pulling in way too much information (thinks he is doing a college paper!). He needs to narrow it down a bit, there is a TON of really neat info, but he needs to fine tune it.

The chickens are freezing their tail feathers off........lol. Not really but their water has been frozen over every morning. So it's for sure winter time. They are enjoying some goodies, we sliced up pumpkins yesterday and they like those. We have 1 watermelon left, I'm saving that for a mid winter treat, hoping it lasts.

Husband is burying himself in his work, that is how he deals with all this. No Christmas tree up yet, but I have a few snowmen out. I think we will forgo the tree this year since I just don't have the strength or energy to deal with it. In thinking along those lines, there was never any mention of Christmas decorations in the Bible, so I don't think that we are missing out on much this year, decorating seems to be a world's view of Christmas. We have been enjoying Christmas music and seeing the lights displayed on many homes near us. One tradition that we will keep for sure this year is driving to look at light displays. It just dawned on me that we did not get a Christmas tree up last year either, we were in the middle of a remodeling project and there was just no room for it. I used my Cricut Machine to make a cute cut out of a tree with a train underneath it.

What are some low key Christmas traditions that you enjoy as a family?

Moe

We lost a chicken :O(

I was resting in the recliner on Friday morning when I heard our son come screaming around the house. Now as a mother I know the difference between a 'I broke my arm' scream and a 'something terrible has happened' scream. Well it was the something terrible type of scream. And our son ran in the house crying saying "I can't find the head, I can't find her head." Well he had gone out to do his chores in the chicken house and found one of his hens missing a head and blood all over. It was very sad. I know it was hard when Sicky Chick was ill, but we knew she was ill and then she died, but to be enjoying your day and all the sudden walk in on that, it was very hard. We thought it was a mink or a weasel, but since the head is gone we are thinking more like a dog, since the other two would have just cut the neck and drank the blood. Now on our Christmas cards I will have to cross off 14 chickens and write in 13. Sort of entertaining in a weird way, but when you have been ill, sometimes the most interesting things are funny. lol. She will be missed though.

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
Ecclesiastes 3:3-5
I think I have done all of these this past week. It's so wonderful that God's grace extends to all who will accept His free give of Salvation. Won't you accept this gift during the season of giving? Click here to find out more.

Merry Christmas

Butchering day is here! It really was not too bad!

I really thought it was going to be horrible, I got all these horror stories from people and I was really worked up about it all. The chickens did not flop around, there was not tons of blood and it was not nasty. We prayed before we started, thanking God for the provision of the chickens, allowing us to raise them and then allowing us to enjoy eating them. The Lord really blessed and the kids actually enjoyed the process (I don't mean like YEAH we are doing this, but it was in no way traumatic to any of them, from ages 11 and under). I was the only one that cried and I was fine until our friends showed up and then I just bawled!

We only got 6 butchered and packaged in 5 hours (but we had 7 kids and 3 adults).

Plucking the chicken this was very easy, people told us it was hard to do and it stunk, nope, easy as pie. (chicken pot pie that is!)

We got chased inside by a severe thunderstorm with some vicious lightening! lol Otherwise we would have stayed outside working in the rain, but instead we had to drag in the dead chickens and all our tools lol.....yes it was rather interesting to say the least.



The kids learned a lot, our friend is an RN and he showed all the kids the body parts and explained how the chambers of the heart work and what and where the organs were. They loved learning about the tendons and how the feet move. They played with the feet and a pair of pliers.



Butchering chickens tomorrow

I think we are ready for butchering chickens tomorrow, it's still hard since we raised them from 1 day old baby chicks. But since DS has been really pecked a few good times by the roosters, he says he is ready....lol.  The final nail in the coffin (yes pun intended!) was the other day when DS came in and said "The roosters announced today that they are ready for butchering." I ask what he meant and he told me that the one pen of roosters started crowing today. Which in chicken speak that means they are of age to be consumed.

I am thinking of scrapbooking the process, but I have to think on that for a while.

Farm Fresh Eggs for sale

Yesterday was our first trip to the farmers market. We sold out of farm fresh eggs within minutes. It was our first crop of eggs with the proceeds going to winterize the coops. We are already gathering eggs for next week. A homeschooling mom came and bought 2 dozen, she has 4 hungry growing boys! She made a donation to our coop project too. Thank you Chris  :O)  We had not really thought far in advance when we got all the day old baby chicks that winter would someday come........lol.  Winter will soon be upon us, so much work is needed to be done.

We are thankful for some Michigan friends that have been saving egg cartons for us so we don't have to buy them. 

We got a free watermelon while at the farmers market, our son helped a man load up his produce after the sale and he gave him a watermelon! So we came home with $ and a free $4.00 watermelon. Not a bad day.

Check out this brown egg!

That is one brown egg buddy!

I know we have seen brown eggs in the store, but NEVER that brown. I am thinking it must be chocolate flavored?

We think one of our Red Sex-links/Golden Comets/Cinnamon Queens/Red Stars (depending

on the hatchery is how they decide on the name of these chickens, we call them Golden Comets)

 

Happy/Sad day

I am fearing that Sicky Chick will pass tonight. It's been pouring

down rain and he got wet, DS found the 4 chickens standing on top of him. He said it looked as though he was having trouble breathing. I told him to go back out in the pouring rain with a towel and wrap her up in it and put her in the coop. We prayed about it and ask the Lord to go ahead and take her, since we wanted her here for selfish reasons (we fell in love with that chicken) and if she passes she won't be suffering any longer. The Bible does not say if animals have a soul or not, but I don't believe that they are capable of understanding the need for our sins to be paid by the death of Jesus or our need for a Savior, though I do believe that they know that God is their Creator.

This is our dear little Sicky Chick with her slippers on. We think she may have had Bumblefoot.

Isaiah 41:10 "Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness."

 So we know that our Sicky Chick is in the perfect hands. We are also rejoicing in the first egg from Xtra Crispy!!!

Our first EGG!

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!" Luke 13:34

I like what Barnes' Notes on the Bible has to say about this verse. I think we need to heed this in our every day life. "We should be on our guard against crafty and unprincipled people. They often "profess" to seek our good when they are only plotting our ruin. Even those professedly coming from our enemies to caution us are often also our enemies, and are secretly plotting our ruin or endeavoring to prevent our doing good."

Yet, in the end we must remember that "The LORD preserveth the strangers; he relieveth the fatherless and widow: but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down." Ps 146:9 AMEN to that!

This is our girl Xtra Crispy, we are pretty sure she was the egg layer, she was very worried when we took the egg away. She was searching all the nesting boxes and pacing back and forth.

Life on a chicken ranch

Well my husband finally had time and patience to separate the chickens. So we now have roosters in one area and hens in another. Along with a few that we don't know if they are boys or girls yet. There was lots of commotion, but things have settled down today. And everyone seems happy now. We are hoping for eggs to come in the end of this month or early August.

The above picture is of one of our Wyandotte chickens.
In the coming month we have 4-H, this will be the first year of showing chickens, now we just have to figure out who to show. We had a few in mind but upon closer examination we have some odd balls, one adorable rooster with 5 toes on 1 foot.....lol. Another striking Rooster (Rhode Island Red, he is gorgeous!) but his tail is not show quality. And a bunch of Wyandotte, we don't like them because they escape and you cannot catch them! lol. The kids call them "Jail Birds" because they are black & white stripped like the cartoon characters in jail. They are as sweet as can be, but are so sneaky and have huge legs that don't tire easily.

Crazy Mamma

We call this one Crazy Mamma, all the kids think it's is mean looking and are scared of it. She/he reminds us of the Looney Tunes cartoon with Tweedy Bird, remember the episode where Tweety drinks a potion in the laboratory and becomes Dr. Heckle and Mr. Hyde.......lol. We don't know if this is a rooster or not, but it's funny looking.

Some good days!

This past week our first rooster crowed!! It was a proud moment for us all. I clapped each time he crowed. He sounded like he needed a cough drop, though.....lol. I've been told it will get louder and stronger as time goes on.

Had a wonderful lunch out this week, we attended our local electric companies annual dinner and enjoyed pork chops and potato salad without getting sick!  Every year I would go and then have to run home since I was ill after eating. This year I skipped the BBQ pork sandwich and was fine! Though it looked really good, but I thought "It ain't worth being sick over!"

Our Pastor talked about the fact that nowhere in the Bible does it say that our lives will be trouble free or storm free. We will encounter hurts and hardships this side of Heaven, it's good to hear that when you are in the midst of a life changing storm.    

Philippians 4:11 "Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, [therewith] to be content." So according to the MIV (the Moe International Version as my DH calls it), when life gives you lemons, make lemonade and add a bit of extra sugar to make life a little bit sweeter  :O)

2 MORE baby chicks!

Dh says we are opening up a chicken adoption center, he has named our farm "BlackJack Farms" since we have 21 chickens now. These 2 new babies have feather pants on, so they are fancy ones.

Praying for all those affected by the storms as of late and in the past month.
In all the stress of your life, "Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time: 7Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. 8Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." 1 Peter 6-8

Have a great week!