New chicks

We are on our third batch of broiler chicks. In the short video you can see how Kelli set them up in a kiddie pool, which by the way is sitting on our dinning room table. Also shown in the video are some of our own chicks hatched in our newish incubator. We just got the incubator this past spring. We already hatched two batches of chicks in it earlier. Actually we didn't do it, a Lutheran school were our friends kids go did it as a class project. They got to try it out before we did. We gave one of the batches to our friends and we kept one. We have many breeds in our barn yard so they're kind of a Heinz 57. None of the chicks are a pure breed. They're all mixes of Rhode Island Red, Buff Orpington, Barred Rock, Sunnyside Red and others.

The reason the chicks pictured here are in the kiddie pool is because our brooder is currently occupied with our last batch of broiler chicks. And the reason the brooder is still occupied is because one of our chicken tractors has guinea's in it. Are you wondering why the guinea's are in the chicken tractor? Well, they were eating seeds we planted in our garden!

Planting for the CSA has been a challenge. Up until recently the temperatures have been very cool. I say up till recently because the past couple days it's been in the 90's. But, it's been a slow steady warm up. I mean gee, wasn't it just a few weeks ago that they had snow in ND? So couple a cool spring with guinea fowl tearing up the garden, we are in my opinion, a little behind. We had hoped to already have had CSA pickups by now but, it will probably be in another week or two.

A person can plan all they want but, life happens and has a way of changing plans. A recent example for us was we were going to go out to Prairie Days in North Dakota. My in-laws got it all lined up to come up and take care of things while we were gone. We notified our garbage customers that we would be picking a day late that following week and then Kelli's sister had a heart attack. It happened a little over a week before hand. But, then complications arose and she had another much more serious attack. So we spent the weekend at the hospital instead.

Bill and Jeanette my in-laws, were here in case we went to ND which was good because then they could be with their sister in the hospital. Actually they still did chores for us while they were here which they seemed to get a real bang out of. It was fun watching them have fun feeding the poultry, moving chicken tractors and moving the sheep. In fact they had so much fun their youngest son Jeremiah got to have 4 new born chicks to take back with him. Country chickens turned city chickens.

By the way if you feel so inclined to pray for Kelli's sister her name is Doreen. It was touch and go most of the weekend but, she is now doing better and is stabilized. Actually she is remarkably better than she was, which we account for all the prayers already said for her. But, there was a point when the medical professionals didn't think she was going to make it. She is only 39 years old. It looks like she will have to spend some time in a nursing home for rehabilitation after she gets out of the hospital. Also she has no insurance and the bills have gone out of site. We are praying that God will take care of all that for her somehow. Already people are helping out financially but, as you can imagine lengthy hospital stays can be unreal as far as expenses go.

Well, I have to say blogging has definitely taken a back burner these past couple months. When I have so much to do and think about my mind turns to mush and it gets tough to cough up any kind of blog post. So from time to time I'll cheat and copy and paste some interesting headline related to the things I'm interested in. Or posting a picture or two helps also. Like the short little video above. Something quick and easy. Oh I still unwind in the evenings and check out news sites and other blogs but, putting anything down is a different matter.

So on that note..........

Until Next Time