Answers to dumb questions

remember me complaining about dirty chicks?

apparently you can wash chicks. as long as you don't allow them to get their heads under water. Do it with warm water. and dry them well before they can get a chill.

At least according to people on the the backyard chicken form

Backyard chickens is quite the information packed site about ummm...everything chickens. funny how that works.

I found it through the site hencam.com, which was talked about on the scratch and peck blogspot
Lauren is such a cute illustrator, and writes with such a passion about her little flock you can feel the love she has for them. Totally worth checking out just because it's so darn cute.

Dandelions

I won't even go into how many times I've cursed at dandelions in the yard at all our other houses.
I've attempted to dig them out by hand, be satisfied with just popping their little yellow heads off before they can go to seed and usually end up resorting to some sort of chemical spray rather than continue the never ending battle.
Of course this yard is larger than any of the others we ever had. And proportionally the dandelion problem seems to be even bigger.
I have to tell you I am less than enthused about even attempting this time to dig them out.

But at the same time. Knowing our water source is below us, Chemicals to me become even more of an issue in my head.
Chris and I have already battled about this. His point is that the farmers all around us are spraying their field with round up or whatever chemical they choose. So if it's in the water the small amount we spray is hardly going to compare.
but it still bothers me

I did a web search of organic dandelion control and came up with this...
dandelion fix Corn gluten meal
Although it sounds like I may have to go on quite the hunt to find it. And I'm not sure it will work this late in the season. Since it sounds like it needs to be applied just as the grass is turning green in the spring.

Nothin' runs like a deere...

Except maybe Nathan,

chasing after Dad when he wants a "Tractor ride"

I was so impressed we parked the Deere in probably October. and the little thing fired right up this week.

The boys had to do a couple of quick zips around the yard. Hopefully the actual mowing will get done this weekend.

Blessing in disguise?

This is my little fireplace in our mud room. It serves no real purpose at least not for heating the house or anything. But it made it oh so comfy cozy to strip off all that horrible wet winter clothing in the coldest months this winter.

When I went through our insurance policy because it was up for renewal. I found out they had excluded our fireplace. That just didn't sit right. I could just imagine (knock on wood) any fire in the house would automatically be blamed on the fireplace and therefore not be covered.

Thinking I was pretty smart. I decided to change insurance brokers and make sure it was included in the policy.

Well

a month later.

a lot of pictures. E-mails and phone calls later

our new insurer has deemed that we will not be covered unless we remove the fireplace.

So with Chris home for the long weekend we finally managed to get it out.

I miss it already. and am not looking forward to how cold that room gets in the winter when it wasn't lit.

It sure makes the mudroom look huge with it gone.

and with it out of the way, I went back to painting the walls. (much easier when your not hanging off a ladder sideways trying to reach around a stove pipe.)

And honestly when we took it out and looked over the condition. I'm not surprised the insurance agencies where worried it was a fire hazard.

The bricks in the back had obviously heated up so much most of them were cracked.

the stove pipe wasn't properly secured it was resting full weight on the top of the stove.

and the metal mat? we thought was underneath it?

turned out to be some sort of spongy mat with a thin metal coating on the surface.

Not impressed.

I guess it was probably a good thing we took everything out when we did.

My Evil Friend

Can you see what's made it self at home on my hay bale?

How about now?

For the first little while I couldn't figure out if it was injured and dying up there.

At one point I took the dogs into the field and tried to get Jasper to put the run on her.

( In case you haven't guessed I'm not a fan of geese, In fact I have pictures of Nathan and Daddy feeding geese in Lethbridge and went through the entire album when I uploaded them to Facebook and tagged each one Evil goose 1, Evil goose 2 etc.- so there was no way I was going to investigate on my own)

But Jasper couldn't get her off that hay bale. She stood up spread out both her wings to make herself as big as possible and hissed. He decided this was not something he wanted to tangle with and took off into the other pasture.

This incident combined with the fact she's been there for nearly a month now. made me think the stupid thing has probably made a nest on there.

None of this would be a real issue but I would have liked to pull apart that hay bale and use it in the chicken coop. and her there hissing has caused that plan to go out the window.

But 2 days ago she finally disappeared. I immediately sent Chris over to investigate the bale (still not going anywhere near it in case she came back meaner than ever.)

He reported that there had indeed been eggs.

They were all broken in rather large pieces, and there are small chick like feathers scattered around.

So I'm not sure if she hatched them, or if they fell prey to something. (although Chris said there wasn't any gore to make him think that something happened)

Now I've seen a goose hanging around our front dugout. I'm wondering if she's moved the chicks to the water finally (would the weeds around the pond not have been a better place for a nest in the first place?) I just have to work up the nerve to get close enough to sneak up for a look.