All good things... must come to an end...

Well, I had a telephone job interview on last Monday for a traveling consultant position in Yonkers, NY.  And I got the call later that day that let me know I had gotten the job.  I will start on next Monday.  So my full-time farming stint has come to an end, at least for the next 6 months.  The job is a 6 month contract, and I will be flying to NYC on Monday mornings and flying back on Thursday evenings.  It's exciting, scary, bittersweet.  Not having a "real" job was really driving me insane.  But to go from one extreme to the other is no doubt going to be difficult.  Being away from the family and animals for those 4 days every week will make me very sad.  Plus, Jason will have the added responsibility of taking care of Ezra in the mornings and in the evenings on those 4 days - which of course makes me feel guilty.  But it's only for 6 months.  It was this or nothing, and nothing was just not cutting it any longer.

Looking back on the things I've done over the last few months of joblessness, there's a couple that I'm proud of and many more that I'm not.  
Proud of:  painted the barn, painted the chicken coop, sawed down a bunch of trees, donated bone marrow, learned how to hatch chickens and successfully hatched out at least a couple dozen.
Not proud of: didn't ever cut Peetie's toenails, drank way more than I should have, gained weight, watched the first 3 seasons of Dawson's Creek on Netflix, didn't ever get to where I made dinner every night or even most nights.

Frankly, I sucked at being a stay-at-home mom slash full-time farmer.  I'm just a lot better at going to a job and getting paid for using my brain.  Ezra is better off at daycare during the week, and my few accomplishments out at the farm do not come close to justifying not having a job.  But I gave it a go.  And it was a nice spring/summer.  I hope that when I become worn down at work, I can look back at this experience and know wholeheartedly that the grass is not greener in the unemployment line.

Here's a few pics from the last week or so out at the farm.

Barn painting completed!

MooMan and Stevie got into the paint before I could get the lid back on...

Yum, paint...

I let Mama Llama out of the fence to chow down on some "other side of the fence" grass - Brutus was jealous.

Took the 7 newly hatched chicks out to the farm to the upstairs coop to room with Cindy and Brenda

The "downstairs" chickens followed me up to the "upstairs" coop.  I just love our beautiful blue maran rooster!  Hopefully, he won't get all mean like our last rooster did.

The downstairs flock enjoying some morning grass

I love our little olive egger rooster.  Too bad he won't be laying any olive eggs.  He is the one chick that hatched out of 6 eggs I ordered off Ebay from Maryland, I believe.

The big laying ladies

Our beautiful white wyandotte hen.  She is just gorgeous!

Zelda made the move out to the farm.  I hatched 10 guineas in the garage back at the house, and she got into the brooder and took 6 of the guineas.  So she got moved out to the farm.  I deeply regret it now and will bring her back home if she shows back up.  She was there yesterday morning, but this morning I called for her and she wasn't there.

There's Zelda on the right behind the chicken run.

My beautiful kitty

Ezra picking up rocks.  There's no shortage of rocks out there for him...

Hanging with the chicks and painting the barn

Here's some pics from the past week.

Dolly Llama getting some green leaves

Check out all of our chickens!  They are begging to get out and peck around.

I thought this chick was having some issues.  Turns out it just liked hanging out on its back.  A week later and it's just fine.

Our newest chicks - 7 total hatched out.

Dolly and the goats got to go outside the fence.  Brutus was jealously looking at them.

Dolly

Mama Llama was sunbathing.  She looked all puny so I decided I should deworm her.

This is right after that heifer spit on me.  Grrrrr!  Dolly's in the background like, you better not mess with my mama!

We brought Norman some Romaine lettuce.

Here's Norm's abode.

We got all of the supplies to put up our fence for the goats, but didn't quite get it done this weekend.  Decided it would be more fun to go hang out on the lake in our neighborhood.

Here's Brenda, our crippled chicken, and her friend Cindy

Brenda's right leg is a little mangled.  She hatched that way.  Other than the leg, she is a gorgeous chicken - a white Wyandotte.

Good ole Stevie trying to get in Jason's truck - and Jason resisting.

Got started painting the barn.  The llamas thought it was very interesting.

Making progress.  Hanging out with the chickens.

The chicken got painted a little too - look on its back.

The chickens pecking around below while I was on the ladder painting.

Stevie and MooMan were worn out.

Our wonderful menagerie of animals

More progress painting the barn.

Different angle

Done with the green (disregard the unpainted gable...)

Read the sign - no kidding!

The goats were revived and got into the paint.

Stevie thought it would be fun to lick the paintbrush.  MooMan preferred to eat my washcloth.

Check out Stevie's beautifully painted hoof.

I still love him though :)

Got a little something on your chin...

Now That's how you paint a hoof.

Brought the chicks inside to hang out a little last night.

Got the white trim on the barn today.  Still need to paint the gable...

That's all for this week.

Eggs they are a hatchin!

So I incubated a total of 52 eggs starting, I guess, 3 weeks ago.  There were 4 different batches since I ordered them off Ebay and they arrived at different times.  The first chick hatched right on time, 21 days after the start of incubation, on my Dad's birthday (7/31)!  Then another hatched in the early morning of 8/1 and a third was peeping inside the shell, but when the 2nd one hatched, the shell encased the other egg and I believe it suffocated the chick inside the egg unfortunately.  I cracked the egg open yesterday to find a fully developed chick inside, only problem was it was dead.  So out of the first 7 eggs incubated, we had 2 hatch.  They were both speckled sussex chicks (I did an image search on google to figure out exactly what they were).  

Here's the link on Ebay where I got them - it's an assortment of several different breeds of "rare" chickens.  There's blue/splash orpingtons, swedish flower hens, black/blue marans, speckled sussex, and silver laced wyandottes.

12 more of these "rare" breed eggs are supposed to hatch on Monday.  However, 4 of the eggs pipped late yesterday - a couple of days early.  I was worried that the chicks would hatch with intestines hanging out and stuff like many chicks do that are incubated at too high of a temperature and hatch early.  But when I went out to the incubator this morning to check on them, there were 4 seemingly healthy chicks in the incubator (and no guts hanging out).  

I could tell that one was another speckled sussex.  There were 2 white chicks in there that I was baffled as to what breed they may be.  From searching google images, I believe they must be splash orpingtons.  That is, if the breeds in the description are the only ones I have to choose from.  The other chick looks like it is black, so possibly a black maran, but there were no dark maran eggs in the hatch so that's weird.  I will be able to get a better look at the 4 new chicks once they dry off more, I mean they are brand spankin new :)  So I will post pics of them once they get all fluffy later today or tomorrow.

Still in the incubator are 12 helmeted guineas and 6 cuckoo orpingtons that are supposed to hatch on Thursday, 8/7.  Despite the fast shipping on the guineas, it doesn't look like many at all are going to hatch out of that batch.  The cuckoo orpingtons look pretty grim as well.  They took almost a week to get to the house, so I understand why that hatch rate would be low.

Finally, there are 15 more guinea eggs due to hatch on 8/14 (guineas take 28 days to hatch instead of the 21 days for chickens).  Those look very promising - I think there are only a couple that didn't have a chick growing in them when I candled them last week.

I'm not sure why I find hatching chicks so much fun, but I assure you it is!  Maybe next year, we will have tons of eggs out at the farm from all of these chickens.  Might have to do away with our 2 blue english orpingtons (I call them hussies - guess it shows my disgust with them...) because they have yet again gone broody after only laying again for a week or 2 since the last time they were broody.  It's funny because our new roo (got him as a chick back in March) is fighting with one of the hussies.  Here's a pic of it.  It was an interesting sight.  I've seen 2 roosters fight like that, but not a roo and a hen!  Her laying ethic equates her more to a rooster than a hen though...

That's the hussie in the air and the roo down low

Roo on the left, hussie on the right

Here are some of our promising birds for next year's egg laying.  This is the very first chicken I hatched out this spring (well, ever actually).  She is a white wyandotte.  The other 2 chickens are chocolate/buff orpingtons.  I got 4 of them from a lady in Newnan, and they look to me to all be turning out to be roosters unfortunately.  With all of these roosters, I'm thinking of trying to find someone locally who will process chickens.  It's either that or sell them on craigslist, but I'd rather keep them and enjoy the free range birds for dinner.  Plus, we could probably sell some of the meat too.

Our white wyandotte hen

In front is another chocolate/buff orpington.  There's 2 blue orpingtons in the background (both hens) - these can hopefully replace those damn hussies we have now.  There's also a welsummer hen on the very right and 2 welsummer roos.

There's a hussie drinking some water.  That one on the left is not my favorite either.  She's a rescue chicken and doesn't seem to lay any eggs.  She needs to go at some point.

This is one of 2 buff orpingtons that we have.  These ladies are wonderful.  They lay eggs for us almost every day.  They did go broody a couple of months ago, but not for nearly as long as the hussies.

Just gotta throw this one in there.  I let the goats out of the fence and let Dolly llama go out there as well.  She enjoyed chowing down on some "other side of the fence" grass for about an hour.  She's more of a goat llama than a llama llama.