Leaving on a Jet Plane!

I am sorry I have not updated since the baby chicks were hatching. We were very fortunate (or not!) in that 12 of 14 hatched! Sadly we lost 1 somewhere in the zip phase and the other never hatched at all. I know that we are not supposed to help them out of the shell so I let nature take its course. All of the chicks are black except 2 that I called Frankenchick as they were black bodied with yellow heads. That would be due to the buff rock momma and the barred rock papa. It will be interesting to see who grows up to be a Roo and who grows up to live in my back yard. Of the 12, we sent 6 to live with a friend in Mass. I have NO idea if I handed her 6 roosters or if I handed her all the hens lol Being straight run, we will have to see what happens. I am sure we will know in just a few months and then probably will spend some time finding homes for Roosters!

The children (I can hardly call them that anymore can I?) and I are headed out tomorrow morning bright and shiny. We will be flying to Florida to visit my mother who has been living down there alone since my dad passed away last spring. It will be nice to see her. Unfortunately husband cannot come with me as he is on call this week as well as we need someone to take care of all of the critters in my absence. It was meant to just be a trip for me, however, I decided at some point to take the brats with me to see their grandmother. I am not sure how this is going to turn out. I am tempted, since we are taking southwest airlines, to sit completely far away from them as there is no assigned seating. This will give me some sanity. I have many positive attributes but I must admit that patience does not come easily to me these days. They are almost 17 and 14 and it seems like I want to smother them more than hug them lately. I am sure this is a phase of life we all must go through!!

SO for the above reasons I will be away from blog for about a week and then I will be back at it. When I get back, we will be starting our seeds for the super shmoopy garden and I will reveal some of the plans for S-wood. Its all very exciting and I cannot wait to share the progress with you once again. We did not spend as much time on S-wood last year as we hoped. We needed a hiatus due to all the family troubles we had but we (husband and I) are eager and raring to go this year!

Sidenote: I promised Linda a recipe and I promise I will write that out for you!

Counting Your chickens as they hatch

Interestingly enough, today is hatch day and I am proud to announce that eggs actually hatched! Imagine my surprise when something that I have attempted actually worked!

We set 12 *cough* 14 *cough* eggs in the evening of 1/15/2010 which put us all the way on 2/5/2010 for a hatch date. Yesterday we were excited to see that by bed time, 5 eggs had pipped. Pipped means they are starting to crack the egg a bit to come out.

I kind of knew that when I got up in the morning, I would have 1 baby.

I did not realize that when I woke up, I would get to see the 4th chick zip out of his/her shell! It was fantastic and so cool. I even got one picture but before I get you there, I want to state that these eggs are mutt eggs from our boy Ted + NH's, Buff rocks and black stars. So they are going to be shmoopywood barnyard mix mutt chickies. One of them even has a yellow head and a black body hee hee.




Wish us luck as we have 4 born, 2 pipped and 8 more eggs to go!