waving as I go...

There are times when life seems like a parade route with slow moving floats that never want to go anywhere. And then there are times when it seems like something from a movie where the floats take off in fast motion and the people are waving frantically as they whiz past the crowds.

Spring is always one of those crazy times when things pick up the pace faster than should be allowed, but there's not a lot that can be done about it.  But there are some really good things happening among that craziness.

The two teens who help us out some assisted me in putting up the fencing around the garden area yesterday. It made a world of difference having two extra sets of hands. One rotated the roll of wire, one pulled the wiring taut, while one of us attached the wires to the posts. We rotated positions some throughout the procedure, and hopefully that made it a little easier on everyone. I think it looks so much better than the first section of the garden I did a few years ago.  I've planted most of my pole beans (though not all!), and everything else will be slowly planted over the next 6 weeks, depending on when the seed should be planted. I'm excited, but also a little sunburned and wondering what on earth I've gotten myself into this year. :) And in the midst of cleaning out the garage to get the brooder box outside where it belongs, the rain water barrel we bought almost 10 years ago is finally outside near the shed where I should have put it years ago. :) Finally!!!

I swept all the dust (much of it coming from having the biddies and the brooder box inside the house the last three weeks) last night, then mopped the living room a few minutes ago, and it STILL looks dusty in some spots to me. The rain last night washed a yellow line of polled against the dam, and I can't help but wonder if some of this is pollen we've tracked inside and not actually dust. I've been off my allergy meds since January, and I've noticed an increase in congestion and pressure, but am holding off on taking anything as long as possible. And despite the complaints of many people, I am THANKFUL for the rain coming when it is, both for staving off a summer drought AND for hopefully making some of the next 3 pollen weeks less miserable.

And this weekend is the kids Easter party at church. Due to a lot of changes and transitions in how things are done, this is a last minute planned event, and I've got a LOT of stuff to do between now and tomorrow at 2pm. So starting in a few hours, our schedule from now through Monday week is way busier than I care for it to be. I'm trying to keep my focus on one thing at a time and what IS being accomplished and not what is waiting by the wayside. So far that's resulted in a few mistakes (typing in our address backwards on an order, etc) but so far nothing that is so drastic that life is truly messed up.

And with that, I'm signing off to make my Wal-mart list.

95% done

From the side, everything looks just like the old one. :)

Still need to make and add the front door. There's no decoration in the top like on the old one,
 but we added handles on each side to help with moving the house. :) That's worth way more than any decoration!

My boards on the back don't line up quite right, but we'll be adding the last pieces the end of this week,
and for the top open spaces, I think I'm just going to make a hen house sign to cover it. :)

Managed to get the posts in for the wire fencing for the garden area before the rain started,
 but will have to wait until my helpers are back to unroll and secure the wire. 

On the rooster front, Old Poppa is slowly healing, though we are having to be very careful to make sure his son, who his now the dominant rooster, does not come in contact with him. The hens have almost totally switched their allegiance, so I think the only thing we can do at this point is find a new home for Old Poppa. I never dreamed I would feel sad about losing a rooster.

birds and buildings

The youngest rooster (who was also messed up the most in the last few days of fighting) has been relocated to a new home where he can hopefully rest and recover and enjoy the rest of his life in almost celibacy. We did rehome one of our egg-eating hens to the same farm, but no one has seen a sign of her since we dropped her off. Knowing how good she was at hiding in the hen house here, I think she's found her a spot in one of the many barns and sheds there. Hopefully the young roo and the strange hen will find each other and be at peace with one another.  One down...one more roo to see about.

And here's what else is happening on the bird and building front...

 The last two Saturdays one of the teens from church has helped me assemble the walls to the frame of the small hen house.

 We were able to reuse the old nesting boxes, but with a new board re-inforcing the bottom, a new support beam, tile, and a good coat of fresh paint.

 And we used the old perch, but added a second one lower down for the smaller birds. I think they'll like that a lot better, and I'll feel better that they're not on the ground when it's damp or cool.

 Above is the pen I've built over the last few weeks. It doesn't look pretty, but it's standing upright and doesn't fall over when you bump it (like the one it's replacing!)

 And here's the old, rotting boards from the old little hen house. I used them as a pattern for the new one.

And this afternoon it was finally warm enough to paint!  The side vents and roof is salvaged from the old version, with new (and more) staples over the chicken wiring and paint over the boards. I could see where the carpenter bees had done their drilling, and I'm hoping by painting these boards it might help stop that. Time will tell.

So tomorrow morning we'll add handles to the base for moving the house, attach the top roof and side vents, then hopefully attach trimwork and side roofs, then add a screw/hook near the nesting boxes so I can hang a heat lamp inside. Then all the biddies will move out of their nesting box and have twice as much space to run around, plus experience the world around them while still being protected from the fox and hawks!

I'll be glad when this project is over. :) The big hen house we're jobbing out to someone else.

rooster update

Not sure what is going to happen with our noisy, grumpy old birds, but the dominance has clearly shifted from the Poppa of the flock to the largest rooster. He actually slept in the hen house last night, with the old rooster hiding in the corner, and the new Alpha hung out with the hens all day yesterday and part of this morning. But this morning the hens aren't totally cooperating and are rotating between the two roosters, so I'm not sure what is going to happen. I may wind up having to capture a rooster or two to keep them isolated, a thought that does not thrill me at all.

Meanwhile the rebuilding of the small house for the biddies is making slow but sure progress. Hope to paint boards tomorrow afternoon and finish assembling and moving everything Saturday morning. And at some point there will be pictures!!

focus

Isn't it funny (in an ironic way) how when we should feel on top of the world, we don't?
And when we should be in the depths of despair and our emotional heart physically hurts, we have that inner peace?

Last week I had a biopsy - one of those "we don't think it's anything but since we have no other explanation and things are clearly out of whack we need to double check" kind of things. The dr didn't think it was serious; I didn't think it was serious, and yet, when he didn't call with the test results Fri morning like he said he was going to...I was ticked. When I got home from Quilts of Valor it was too late to get through to anyone at the office, and of course my charts online had not been updated. So I called Monday morning and played phone tag with the nurse, only to find out a few hours later we were all correct in our assumption that everything was fine. So I should have been elated, (and I am truly relieved it's nothing), but I was mostly aggravated. What was supposed to have been a 24 hr wait was a 5 day wait.

I've taught two classes now and have had very positive feedback, and yet, I feel as if this is the most unprepared I've ever been teaching for these classes. This year the staffing team did a 10 minute video during our dry run so we could watch it and critique ourselves. After seeing it there were a few mannerisms I have that I've made a conscious effort not to do while teaching, but overall I was mostly appalled at how fat I looked. I'm not even sure I watched the whole video.

Since Christmas we've been following the 9" plate method suggested by the American Diabetes Association. Simply by following their suggestions for healthy eating guidelines, I've now lost 19 pounds, without any exercise. January was probably the hardest, though there's been some days here and there that have been a struggle. My doctor was hoping for a weight loss of 1.5 lbs a week, so I'm already 3 lbs ahead of schedule. I should be elated, but I'm not. My brain keeps reminding me that it's been 20 years of bad eating habits that have resulted in where I am today, but I still would like for all of it to change overnight. And yes, I know that is totally unreasonable and insane.

Yesterday when I got home, I found two of the roosters fighting. They've skirmished a time or two, but this was a full out fight. We now have three injured roosters; one I'm not sure will make it. I was really hoping that all the biddies were adding to the flock this summer would alleviate the rivalry, but I fear it's going to be too little too late. If I can capture the one that is injured the most, we might relocate it so maybe it can recover. I'm not sure what we'll do about the other two. We've never had hens successfully hatch and raise eggs before (meaning we get both young roosters and hens) until this past year. The fox (which has been back twice in the last two weeks that I KNOW of) and the hawk eliminated all the females and one of the mother hens, but all the young roosters survived. So out of three sets of biddies our hens hatched out last year - we only have two roosters left. That's part of why I've always loved getting biddies from the hardware store - girls guaranteed. I feel sick, and I'm not sure how I'm going to capture the injured rooster without it attacking me. Today when I fed it, a goose bit it and it thought I had poked it. For the first time ever I had a moment of fear with one of our chickens. Thankfully I had the bucket of corn to distract it.

And yesterday I was determined to get my sugar snap peas out (planting time for them here is Feb 15-March 15, so I'm a tad late). After blocking off the area in my garden because the chickens kept coming in to scratch up the dirt I was moving, I finally got half a row planted. At that point I turned and saw a relatively fresh pile of scat. My first thought was rabbits, and it very well may be. Rabbit and deer feces are often similar, though I don't think rabbits would leave quite that big a pile. I know we've had both here in the yard, so there's no telling which was in my garden area. We joked that the rabbits know the shoots should be coming up so they were simply scouting for them, but I hope it was deer and that the fence with the enclosure will now keep them out. If it warms up Friday I hope to finish fencing off what Bobby dubbed "the garden annex" last year so I can plant a few of my early spring crops.

There's a lot more rambling through my head right now and a lot more happening, but that's all I have time to write for today. My goal for the rest of this week is to discipline myself to do what is essential first, and not to worry about the rest. We'll see if I make it!

suppertime

Barred rock (blackwith yellow rump), leghorn (yellow, white), Ameraucana ( chipmunk stripe), two Rhode Island Reds, Ameraucana, Leghorn...now at 10! The leghorns are one week older than the new chicks. Amazed at the difference in size already!

chicks

The picture above is not the best, but the two hawks above are some of the reasons why I'm rebuilding our small chicken house and pen. I need something sturdy and not half rotten to keep these guys safe:

I haven't made pics yet, but I am a significant step closer to having this project completed. While I'd love to say within the week, the reality is it might be two-three weeks (three weeks is when the birds above will need to be moved out of the brooder box and into the small house/pen). A young man from church helped me out Saturday, and we were able to get 3 of the 4 sides up, as well as the first part of the inner frame for the T that supports the nesting boxes and perches. Once those are done, then it'll be time to repair the roof and attach it to the frame. I'll paint it last, after we have it outside and the weather is a little warmer. Meanwhile, we'll pick up more little girls tomorrow. :)

minute progress

Well, my over-ambitious soul is NOT finished with rebuilding the small chicken house, though by the end of this weekend I should be finished with the pen, and hopefully a small portion of the house completed. Let's just say my cutting skills are even worse with wood than they are with fabric. My husband, who has refused up to this point to allow me to have a circular saw finally gave in this week. :) He's still convinced I'm going to saw into an artery in my leg or cut my fingers off, but he's finally come to agree that his nephews are very busy people and are not always available to help out. And since I'll be asking a man in the church to redo the big chicken house, it really and truly does make sense for us to tackle the small house, especially since I'm re-using all the boards and expensive wiring that it still in good shape. So I now own a circular saw, have read through the instruction manual, and when I finally have part of a free day on Saturday I hope to attach the blade, shape up the crooked boards on the house, and get to work assembling the walls. I mostly finished the pen tonight, though there are three areas that need some touch-up work (let's just say I had to re-do part of the lid tonight due to my lack of planning in some of the assembly) to make it look more finished, as well as attaching the handles to move it. But I'm just so excited that one portion of it is near completion!!! I'll try to post pictures this weekend.

machines

I took a class this weekend (Thursday night show-n-tell, aka "trunk show", and Friday actual class time), and during the class the instructor, who also happens to be a representative for Bernina made the comment that in Europe people actually trade their old machines in for new ones. (Like trading in a car) But in America the reps laugh that the Americans only collect machines. And we all paused, then sheepishly laughed.

So I found it a bit funny today when one of the quilting blogs I followed asked how many machines people owned, as well as the story behind them.

I have an old singer that belonged to my Grandma White. She was having problems with the tension when she gave it to my mother while I was in high school. Mom had my uncle, who had been a sewing machine mechanic for Arrow Shirt Factory, look at it. He made some adjustments to it, but before she could finish sewing a garment the problem had returned. I "inherited it", and my mother-in-law took it to a man who repairs all the old machines she has bought over the years. He said it was working fine, but I ran into the same problem. Half of all the seams sewn have to be ripped out because the tension won't work correctly. I read several things online offering suggestions from trying a specific kind of bobbin (hard to find due to the age of the machine) to actually replacing some of the hardware inside. But the  machine sits inside this incredible desk-like cabinet, which I have stuffed full of things, and the machine still sits inside.

Singer was having a sale around the same time we gave up on making it work, and my mother-in-law actually purchased my "first" machine for me. I think we paid around $150 for it. It worked well for many years, until I started quilting with it. I almost killed the motor, and the free motion work I was doing ruined the needle holder. Yikes! It was becoming dangerous, so I upgraded to a Janome 8900, designed for quilting. But I still kept my old Singer because while it refuses to quilt, it can still do basic seams.

And  my dream Janome 8900, which is not cheap and VERY heavy, is not ideal for taking to class. At the same time I was supposed to teach a young girl to sew who was unable to use her legs, so I purchased a small machine with a start/stop button from Hancock's (also a Janome) that was very inexpensive. After I learned to use it with the button and not the foot pedal, the family decided not to do the lessons. So I kept the machine to use for classes and quilt meetings. It's lightweight and does basic seams okay, so it protects my larger quilting machine from traveling abuse.

When Bobby's aunt (his dad was one of 10 kids and 6 of them were girls) died, no one else in the family wanted the old pedal sewing machine. I think it was purchased the first year Bobby's parents were married, because my mother-in-law remembers teaching Bobby's grandma how to use it. Go guess who has it? :) There was a receipt inside where the belt was replaced in 1982. I've not tried to sew on it, though I did make a skirt on one in China. It took me a long time to get the rhythm down of pumping the pedal back and forth while sewing with my hands. My Chinese friend who owned the machine kept saying "It's just like riding a bicycle!" I thought she was implying it was easy, though now that I look back on it I don't remember learning to ride a bike as being that easy, so maybe she was simply reminding me that it took practice and coordination - both things I'm not great at.

Then a few months ago my mother-in-law gave us back a Featherweight Singer (very lightweight machines that quilters used years ago because they could take it to quilt gatherings; it came in a small metal suitcase) that we gave her several years ago for her birthday. She's no longer quilting, and decided it should be returned. I know many older quilters prefer them because they are simple and "make beautiful stitches."

So I have three machines that semi-work, and three that work well.  That's kind of sad. We have a friend who would call that hoarding. I have actually considered gifting my Grandmother's to someone, but I'm not quite ready to do that yet, especially since I do use it as a desk in my quilting room. Maybe one day.