The Chickens are Coming!

I got the call this morning that our chicks from My Pet Chicken are on the way! We should be receiving them sometime tomorrow.

They did have to substitute a Welsummer (photo below) for the Wyandotte, but that's okay.

I am so excited about these cute new additions!

Canning Tomatoes

Inspired by our recent Foodcrafting 101 course at The Institute of Domestic Technology, we've embarked on some new adventures in canning. We've made peach jam twice, but today we are attempting to can some of our own homegrown tomatoes.

We are lucky in that tomatoes LOVE our yard. In fact, we have a tomato plant happily growing IN the chicken enclosure that receives no watering or care at all. We didn't plant it - it sprung up on its own, presumably from some tomatoes we gave the hens as treats.

And....here's the result....


We got a little "separation," but overall not bad for the first try. I'm not sure why the contents of jar #3 reduced during canning, but hopefully this doesn't spell botulism for us. :0

The Worst Blogger Ever

Yes, that would be me. While I never intended this to be a daily blog, it has now been almost a year since I wrote an entry. Yikes! This will change - I promise! I have lots of garden and hen news to catch everybody up on.

First of all, we now have a super cool egg storage vessel. (Photo at left.) My husband found this at the Rose Bowl Flea Market and it is supposedly from France circa the 1950s. I love it!

Secondly, and sadly, our noisy hen Wanda died last week. It was unexpected and sad, and we still don't know what happened. Luckily we still have Lottie (our black and white) and Maude (the non-colored-egg-laying Easter Egger) and they are in good health. They seem to be a little depressed and this has resulted in very little egg-laying the past week.

We did place an order for three new chicks, which should be arriving the week of September 12. We ordered an Australorp, a Golden Laced Wyandotte and a White Leghorn. (photos below!) It felt a little soon, but we didn't want to wait until Spring to replenish the flock.



Okay, that's it for now! We are in the midst of a major garden/backyard renovation, so I will be posting about that soon.

This Blog is Interrupted By

a cat at the desk! While I wish I could blame my lack of updates on Mr. Winkles here, the truth is, along with getting sidetracked by work and a fun horse event this past weekend, I haven't had anything very exciting to report. It has been raining in Los Angeles for about a week (very unusual for this time of year) so the chickens have only gotten out a couple of days when the weather has cooperated.

All in all, the ladies have really become just a part of my routine. They get let out and fed breakfast scraps in the morning, then I give them a snack of flax and sunflower seeds if I'm home in the afternoon, and then it is time to herd them back inside with an old hummus tub of layer mash. Occasionally Maude will stubbornly refuse to go in the cage, but for the most part I've got her number now and can herd her in within a matter of minutes.

I have to laugh when people ask, "Aren't chickens a LOT of work?" They were at the beginning, but not anymore. I think they take as much work as a cat. They're pretty self sufficient, self exercising, and you just feed them and clean up their poop!

My horse, Africa, is the most time consuming of all my pets, but she is also the most fun! (And I get help with her care since she doesn't live at the house.) Here she is after I gave her a haircut the weekend before last, right before the dismal weather rolled in: