Hang In There, Chick!

This is Roxie. Roxie is a good girl. She is a pretty little girl, and quite the little model, but not too long ago things were a little different.

See she had a little boo-boo on the back of her head (we think the rooster was a little rough while he was rooster-ing her), and ended up getting picked on by the other girls. It looked really bad. We almost thought we may have to put her down, but decided she deserved a chance to fight!

This was before they really got her. I'll spare you the graphic before picture.

We built her her own little pen within the chicken yard, and her own little house. She was separated, but still with her flock. She stayed in her house for the first week or two. Her wounds started scabbing over and started to look like they were going to heal up. We had hope. The day she ventured out of her house and into her little run was an amazing sign.  Eventually she had little feathers starting to grow on her neck. Then the skin starting growing back on her head. The feathers starting coming in. After another week or two she starting laying eggs again! Its been about 2 months now and she is almost completely healed up. She is happy, healthy, and itching to scratch around the yard with the rest of her flock.

Whats left of Roxie's boo-boo.

The moral of this story is when the world knocks you down and pecks the back of your head raw, hang in there chick, eventually your feathers will grow back.... or something like that.

There Is No "I" In Eden Hallow

Life on the homestead doesn’t get put on hold. There is always work to do, and the work always has to get done. It stops for nothing, not even this.

The garden doesn’t care that I had surgery on my dominant hand, it wants watered!
The chickens don’t care that I have a cast on, they say “if you got a hand, you got a hand to feed us!”

Figuring out how to do things left handed is hard enough, but using ONLY my left hand has been really tough. However, my German/Belgian heritage has made me extremely stubborn and if I want to do something dammit I’ll figure out a way to do it!

One handed dishes? I got this. Hubby wants me to make something with this rhubarb we got? BAM! 

One handed Rhubarb cake... half eaten because it's DELICIOUS!

But I’ve also had to learn how to ask for help, probably the hardest part of this whole ordeal. I have always been insanely independent, so admitting that I can’t fill up the chickens current waterer by myself was like admitting failure.
I've learned that in marriage, friendship, relationships,and life in general it takes it takes teamwork. The key to a successful homestead is everybody working together. Yes, everybody has their job (animals included!) and its important that we all do our job, but its also important that we all work together towards our goals. :)

Weekly Update 7-19-19

I have spent a great deal of time watching the baby chicks this week. I mean, come on, if you had a box of little fluffy babies at your house wouldn't you want to spend every moment possible starring at them! They're so fluffin cute!

The two older chicks are twice the size of the other pullets (baby hens), but this week we decided to just put them in together and see what happens. Surprise! They did just fine. Everybody is doing great together. The little one we hatched (that I am bout 85% sure is a cockerel, a baby roo) was play fighting with some of the bigger meat chicks (that are more than likely cockerels as well), but that is pretty normal, healthy chicken behavior. 

Ever since the raccoon attack, we've been making it a point to lock the chickens in their coop at night to keep them safe. The first couple nights some of the hens decided they may be safer sleeping outside the coop. It took several nights to try coax them in. The crazy leghorns, surprisingly, were the easiest. It's little miss Rita that is being the most difficult. It is still a struggle night after night, but she is getting better. Were also working on getting them back in the habit of laying their eggs in the nesting boxes again. I've been keeping them in the coop in the mornings until they've laid their eggs, hopefully it does the trick. 

Trying to keep cool in this crazy heat!

... The Best of Times.

Sometimes awful things happen at he homestead, as seen in the last blog, but many times the good out weighs the bad. Just days after a raccoon attack wipe out most of out flock, Eden Hallows very first chicks hatched. We missed both hatches, but there will be more as this was a great experience!

Baby on the left was born first. We were out of town for the weekend and my mom had stopped by to check on the coon attack survivors and discovered the little fluffy in the incubator. She named it Tanna after her husbands grandma. Tanna is very vocal, and rambunctious, and appears to be super healthy and thriving. Baby number two hatched over night a little after its "due date". Is is considerably smaller than Tanna, and came out of the shell with part of the unabsorbed yolk sac and a piece of "umbilical cord" attached to its tummy. It took its time being ready to come out of the incubator, but after a couple days it had to come out. Just before hatch, the chick absorbs the last of the yolk sac into its belly through the cord. The chick is able to survive off of that yolk for about 3 days after hatch without eating or drinking. This is how hatcheries are able to ship day old chicks. The two of them had to be separated in the brooder box for a short time because Tanna was picking at Baby2's belly, but I guessed they were OK to be together when i went to check on them and found Tanna on Baby2's side and they were hanging out just fine.

I really wanted to hatch our own babies to rebuild our flock. I set out to find somewhere to get some different hatching eggs to diversify our flock. In the end we decided to order pullets (baby hens) from a hatchery. I found a hatchery that would ship them to us right away, so they and the babies we hatched would only be a week apart and close enough to grow up together.
Watching them grow up is going to be so fun!I can't wait to see what kind of feathering and markings Tanna and Baby2 end up having. I can't wait to see every bodies little personalities. I can't wait to have a basket full of eggs again!

The Worst of Times...

Keeping up a homestead is work, but usually the work is somewhat enjoyable. Believe it or not, cleaning the chicken house isn’t really that bad. Many times there is a hen in a nesting box to keep you company, and the others are in and out to visit and see what your doing. I like to think they are there to thank me for being a good chicken mama, but in reality they are probably saying “oh good, our servant is here and she is doing housekeeping today.” 

Tending to the garden isn’t so bad either when you know you’ll be rewarded with baskets of yummy fresh fruits and veggies!

However, homesteading isn’t all fun and games, sometimes this go wrong. 
Chickens get sick... 
Critters eat your plants before they produce your veggies... 

Six Brussel Sprout plants.
A critter ate one right after we planted them. Its catching up!

Bugs destroy your fruit. 
Chickens destroy you garden.,,

What used to be an onion patch and some cucumbers.
The chickens has other plans.

Critters destroy your chickens... 

I was reminded of that this week.

I went out to gather that mornings eggs, and walked into a murder scene. Feathers everywhere and we lost more than half of our hens. We did what we could to secure the survivors, and threw a game camera out there to see if maybe we could get some footage of the suspect. 

And just as we suspected, we got us a big evil raccoon. We set a live be trap. We caught it. It has been taken care of. 

Rufus is missing most of his tail feathers. The girls are terrified. Some of them won’t sleep in the coop at night. It took us all week to get the last girl to spend the night in the coop! It will take time for them to get back to a new normal. It will take time for us to recoup our flock, but the homestead is resilient. We will get there! 

Rufus is not amused.

Treasure is in the Eye of The Beholder

The great yellow detector of  riches.

Last year my husband and I stumbled upon a new hobby. Metal Detecting... It all started because he had a old cheap detector that we wanted to play with, but it didn't want to be played with. SOOOO my super awesome husband found a nice new one, and the treasure hunting began!




We live in a turn of the century farmhouse, so we set out to find a coffee can full of money in the back yard. Hours were spent wandering around our property, and many many holes were dug. We haven't found a coffee can yet, but we found other treasures!

Before we get to the moral of this post, let me tell you about the first time we took our new toy to the beach. We combed that beach with gusto. We dug up a bottle cap, an old pop can tab, an old looking nail that I swore had to have been from an old shipwreck, a piece of wire, among other things. Along the way we acquired a group of children who were watching us on our treasure hunting adventure. With our audience of children we got a good signal and starting digging. After all the time we had spent detecting and the zillions of holes we had dug, we finally pulled something of monetary value out of that hole... A PENNY! We jumped around celebrating like crazy people. Our audience wondered why these crazy people were so happy about a penny. See where this is going?

Our bounty from that day.
We found a dime on the way back to the car!

Most times you see a penny on the ground, you pick it up (or you don't) and its just a penny, no big deal, but we put a lot of time and energy into this particular penny. The penny itself wasn't what was valuable.  The time and energy we spent together finding it is what made it treasure. The memory of that moment is treasure.

All the coins we have found treasure hunting so far.

Hubby's detector and the hand held detector he got from his father. 

When Life Hands You Lemons... Make Chili Seasoning.

Things don’t  always go as you plan them; it's an ongoing theme here at Eden Hallow. We've stumbled across many issues when turning this place into our dream home, but its helped us to learn how to do the best with what we have.

Hubby wanted chili for dinner. I usually always have the ingredients to make certain things on hand, and chili is one of them. Its easy to throw together in a bind, and what is better on a cold day when you just can't seem to get the chill out than putting some chili in? So I grabbed a can of tomatoes and a can of chili beans out of the pantry, but when i went for the chili seasoning I was horrified to discover I didn't have any. How could I not have chili seasoning?? So, it was time to do what I could with what I have, something I'm not half bad at in the kitchen if I do say so myself.

This is the stuff I found in my cupboard that I thought I could use:

Into my $2 mortar and pestle that I scored at a rummage sale and my husband laughed at me for getting, I started with about a quarter tsp of garlic powder and red pepper flakes and a half tsp of onion powder:

Then I added about a full Tbsp of chili powder:

Followed by about a quarter tsp of black pepper, and a full tsp of smoked salt:

Before we grind it all up, the FUNNEST part about using the mortar and pestle, lets talk about the smoked salt for a minute. My step-son brought it for us from North Dakota when he came to visit one summer. Were not sure where he got it, but we LOVE it! We love using our smoker because that smokey flavor is amazing.Using this salt adds that little bit of smoke to my dishes when firing up the smoker isn't plausible. Yummy!

After adding it to my chili and letting it simmer for a little bit we thought it needed a bit more heat, but it was better than store bought chili seasoning. 

I ended up mixing up a big batch of this (with less chili powder) and we use it in place of taco seasoning as well, just adding more chili powder to the pot when making chili. It taste better, and it has less sodium so its better for you. No more store bought taco or chili seasoning packets at Eden Hallow!

Big batch recipe. I used 97 cent Great Value Chili season jars. I also had rock salt that I ground up myself, so you may need less salt.