Spring...Finally!

Though we have had a mild winter, it feels as if it would NEVER go away!  Finally the birds are singing and the flowers are blooming!  We are staying busy with school, soccer, dance, girl scouts,  and cub scouts so the time is slipping by.  More and more we are outside enjoying our yard and pining now for summer...

April 1st.
Crazy little hail storm one day after one of the warmer days of the year so far.  Gotta love spring in Texas.

Kids enjoying the outdoors one warm evening.

The baby chicks are growing!  They have been enjoying some free-range practice in the evenings when the weather is nice.  We have eight chicks in all, though two are being raised for a friend.   We expect to have 13 laying hens by July. 

Penny enjoys the bluebonnets on her recent Girl Scout camping trip to Kerrville-Schreiner Park.

Our rose bush in bloom!

Bluebonnets in our backyard.  We have three times as many as we did last year!

Adventures in Chickening

Elsa (the rooster), Peck,  Zoe, and Cocoa.

The last week has unfolded a noteworthy chicken event around here.  About a week ago, Daddy went to put the chickens up for the evening and found our first two eggs!  Through the week we found three more eggs in the coop, though two were broken.  (Amateurs!)  On Friday, our friend's son found a cracked egg on the porch of the playhouse.  This led me to believe that their had to be more eggs!  As our girls are free range, we had to do a thorough yard search to see if we could find more eggs.   This morning...Eureka!  We found a clutch of ELEVEN eggs!  So exciting!  Though not exciting for the chickens...they will now spend the next week confined to their coop and run so that they learn to lay IN THE NESTING BOXES!

The hidden cache.

Our very first eggs.

Zoe and Cocoa take a dirt bath.

Peanut, Maia, and Cocoa look for the hole big enough to fit through the pool fence.  They like the spilled seed from our bird feeder in there.  Poor Peanut is too fat (or too dumb) to fit through and has to look on longingly while the other girls enjoy the spoils.

This guy, though very handsome, is noisy!  He loves to cock-a-doodle at random times of day.  He does seem to keep the flock in line and protect them so I guess we'll keep him for now.  

Life on the Farm

Somebody besides the kids have been enjoying the playhouse...

Thankfully Spring is here and we have been spending some time outdoors!  We don't live on an actual working farm, but it is starting to feel like a funny farm for sure!  We spend a lot of time enjoying our little plot of land with yard work,  rock-moving, cactus-killing, chicken care, gardening, and just plain playing and running around.  With three kids, NINE chickens and a dog we stay pretty occupied and entertained!  We couldn't have anticipated the dimension that "farm life" has added to our lives, but add it has.  I couldn't help but want to document some of the scenes we've had before us in the last week or so.

Ellie has discovered her love for the outdoors...and the indoors of the playhouse.

Penny likes that the chickens are all girls...

Except SOMEBODY has been cock-a-doodle-dooing...
We recently had a chicken run off and we couldn't get her in the coop for the night.  The next morning, I went out early to let the chickens out, hoping it would lure the missing chicken back.  Elsa, whom we THOUGHT was a hen, started calling for the missing chicken, hence I heard the first "cock-a-doodle-doo", confirming our suspicions of a rooster in our mix. (The missing chicken, Peck, came back by the way.)

I am not much of a gardener but it's on my list to change that!  We finally got our vegetable garden in last weekend so we'll see how I do.  (Luckily the hubs is a little better at it than I.)  Since I can grow almost nothing, I couldn't help but be proud of these green onions I grew over the winter.  Seriously, who knew they would do that???

The babies of the family...Emily, Apple, and Peppa Princess

Baby meets baby.

Coop in the coop.  We love watching him love the chickens!