The Greenhouse Effect

Oh, Memorial Day, the start of summer. Is it ever actually nice out on Memorial day weekend? Here, it has been a rain/snow/hail kind of weekend. I have been told by a number of people that planting anything outside before June 1st is a terrible idea. I thought they were pulling the newbie's leg, but now I am a believer!

Fortunately (for many reasons!) we are moving this summer and I had already deceided not to plant anything in our massive (at least an acre) outdoor garden space, but I have been planting as much variety as humanly possible in our section of the greenhouse.

While it's been frigid outside, the greenhouse has been producing! I think a greenhouse here is worth its weight in veggies! So far this is what is planted in my section of the greenhouse: kale-that has been producing for months, it's really amazing!, sugar pumpkins (hopefully for brewing a pumpkin beer!), 2 kinds of summer squash, broccoli, beets, carrots, green beans, (at least) 4 kinds of lettuce, spinach, arugula, leeks, 4 kinds of tomatoes, and in planters that will be taking with us when we move: more tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and and eggplant. Wow, that seems like a lot! I've planted pretty much everything 'too early'-but clearly it wasn't too early because everything is alive and growing! I guess a pro on not knowing what I'm doing is that I have no rules to live by!

I am most excited about the green beans. Oh, my little green beans! I am thinking that by the time we get back from our kayaking trip, we will actually have some to eat! I only wish I had started more, but I will be starting some to plant outside in our garden when we move. (I want to move right now!)

I am second most excited about all the greens. In this row I have romaine lettuce, red lettuce, and little baby winter density lettuce. I also have little baby spinach and tango (a curly leafed) lettuce right next to them.

As I said, I really don't know what I'm doing, but that makes everything more fun. What I have learned so far is to water everything more that you think they need and to just try whatever you want-because really it's just veggies, not rocket science! And I am jealous of you Midwesterners! With all of your thunderstorms and tornados-at least you could grow all of everything I'm growing in the greenhouse outside with less work or worry!

Out and about!

What a beautiful day! After days, weeks, months, (years?) of long cold, cloudy, snowy and rainy days -the sun is finally out today! What else is there to do on a beautiful Tuesday but let the chickens out to play and clean the coop.


The question for the chickens was should they or shouldn't they. It took them a while to decide if they should leave the safety of the coop.



One flew out, then scrambled back up the chicken wire. I didn't realize this was possible and it was pretty impressive to watch!


Once they were out, they were out running and flying around!


BJ had to get into the action and say hi to all the chickens. They didn't seem to mind getting their butts sniffed at all! BJ was very curious, but very cautious and I was very impressed!

As you may have noticed, these ain't chicks any more! We know that we have one rooster-a black Australorp. The big question is what in the world are the crested ones!?! We have no idea. The bigger they get the more they look a like, we really have no clue!

Rooster:

Libération!

The chicks are finally out of the house! While the chicks are still getting used to their spacious new coop, it is Keith and I who are enjoying the glorious freedom of not having a dozen chickens in the house anymore! We happily don't have this in our front room anymore:

We had a few final touches to finish yesterday before the whole coop could be opened to the chickens. Keith and Hugh installed a roost for the chicks. Hopefully being able to chill out on the roost and look at the mountains will inspire loads of eggs! I got in there to stain the remaining bare wood to seal up everything.

The chicks could not have had a more beautiful day to move into their new house!


And these chicks are monster sized compared to the tiny little chicks they were only 7 weeks ago. (and the black one in the middle is a rooster-we now refer to him at Col. Sanders!)


Just a reminder: chicks day one:


Moving into the coop is a learning process for the chicks. They haven't learned that they need to walk up the ladder to sleep up in the cozy coop. While they did quickly learn how to walk up the ladder, they never stayed up there very long. As the evening got colder and darker, they didn't move upstairs. We paused to movie we were watching (Chicken Run) and manually moved them all up.


This morning Keith opened up the coop at 7am and I fed them at 8am, but the chickens were not ready to face the world until about 10am. They figured out that I moved the food down on the ground, so the only way they were going to get breakfast was to mosey on downstairs. Eventually they'll figure everything out that they need to!

What is this white stuff under my toes?

Answer: not snow!

After a crazy day of travel, we woke up to the first of many gorgeous, relaxing mornings in Florida.

We made it to Fort Meyers beach, so now we know if we ever make it back to skip it. It's half beach, half ashtray and full of skanky spring breakers...next beach please! The next day it was St Armands Beach in Sarasota and it was perfect! It was a huge beach and barely anyone was there (they were all shopping in the little square near by). Keith spent all day playing in the water while I did an amazing impression of solar panel on the sand.

The next day was Easter. We started with french toast and bacon and ended with goat cheese crusted rack of lamb. In between there was a lot of laying by the pool. It was wonderful.

Before picking up Keith's family at the airport on Monday, Keith and I got a chance to stop at Thomas Edison and Henry Ford's winter estates. Thomas Edison and I go way back, since as a toddler I peed on a rug in his childhood home in Milan, Ohio-we have a bond. For as close as I thought Edison and I were, I had no idea that he was kind of best friends with Henry Ford or his quest to find a plant that could produce rubber as a way to make the US less dependent on foreign producers of rubber. The estates were beautiful. They were full of gardens overflowing with both native and non-native plants. I would recommend stopping there if you ever get a chance!

Now we had Keith's dad, step mom, brother, brother's fiance, sister and sister's friend all to hang out with-it was time to get out on the ocean! We had a beautiful and relaxing day of bobbing around on the boat.

We stopped at Boca Grande on Gasparilla Island. It is an adorable little village that has a ton of massive banyan trees-the trees are truly impressive! We walked to a little beach and played in the water-after Keith's dad informed me of all the different kind's of shark around-great!

The day before we left we got a chance to visit Keith's grandma. This was one thing Keith was really hoping for while we were in Florida since we so rarely get to see her. We had a nice visit and got from her the only souvenir we brought home: a beautiful hand knitted blanket.

It was wonderful to hang out with everyone and and lay in the sunshine! Now we're home and it's still snowing. The Subaru got us all the way back-I think we should be in a commercial or something!

The Story

Stop me if you've heard this one...if a car flips in the mountains and it still gets you to the airport, did it really flip? (yes)

Keith and I got up at 3:30 am on Thursday for our epic journey of a three hour road trip to the airport, then three connecting flights to get us to Florida. And we made it!

We didn't expect that it was going to snow at all on that day and when we looked outside and saw that about an inch of fresh snow was on the ground and it was still coming down, we knew we had to get on the road ASAP! As we climbed into the mountains the snow was coming down even harder.

The trip was going slow and steady until everything got turned on it's side. As we were coming around the bend, still high up in the mountains, the car started to slide. It kept sliding until it bounced off a snow bank and flipped onto the driver's side. This all happened in the slowest of slow motion-I almost didn't spill my tea.

Keith was kind of sitting on the driver's side window as I was braced against the seat and the dashboard, kind of hanging in the air. With a surprising lack of screaming or crying (I think it's called shock) we did the 'You're OK, I'm OK' then quickly moved on to the 'How the hell do we get out of here'. Opening the door was not a good idea since we had gravity working against us and it just came crashing back down, but the windows still worked so we rolled down the passenger side window. I half hopped/got pushed out by Keith and he followed soon after-with my hat, gloves and a blanket. At this point we tried to push the car over. We made a valiant effort, but it was lodged in the snow. (And for those of you who want a picture of this, sorry, that just was just about the last thing on my mind at this point.)

Knowing getting towed was probably the only way out, Keith got on the phone to some friends to see if we get someone out there soon. I was doing my best at looking pathetic on the side of the road and apparently it worked very well. First one truck pulled over, then another! This is 6am, in the middle of nowhere, it's freezing and it's snowing-I really love these guys! We had a plan of all four of us trying to push the car over by the time Keith got off the phone. We all got up on the snow bank, held on to the roof rails and gave it our best-and it worked! One of the guys had obviously been in the situation before and told us that we should let the car sit for a couple minutes to get all the fluids drained back to where they should be. While we did that, Keith dug the back tires out of the snow with a giant roll of duct tape (you really can use it for anything!). He sat down, tuned the ignition, and the car started!

Our plan was to drive it towards the airport until it wouldn't drive any more and it got us all the way there. Not only that but we made it to our flight with time to spare. The rest of the day was a breeze, with all of our flight on time. We made it to Keith's dad's condo at around midnight.

It was time to get this vacation that almost never was started!

I believe I can fly

We have had chicks living in our living room for four weeks now and wow,  how things have changed! About two weeks ago the chicks were upgraded to a giant refrigerator box that is taking up a large portion of our front room. This is great because they are getting huge and feathery, but it makes having chicks in the house a little more interesting because the box has kind of low sides and the chicks can-and do escape.




Add to the list of things I didn't know: Chickens can fly. They can only fly for a very short period in their lives and if we just clipped their wings we wouldn't have to worry about them escaping, but they are going to be so big so soon that I'm just not really that worried about. Plus it is a lot of fun to watch all of this going on! You may notice that the baby gate that we are using to deter flying is really not very effective!


The chicks are getting so big! The Crested Polishes are still the runts, but their flair is fabulous! And they are the main escape artists of the group.



Keith thinks they look like Helena Bonham Carter. They remind me more of a muppet, maybe Beaker or Red from Fraggle Rock.

The Bovan's-good lord they are massive! They don't tend to escape very often, but orange feathers are always erupting out of the top of the box!



The Australorps are still the mellow ladies of the group. They don't really even try to escape. They can fly, but don't fly way. Generally the just want to hang out, eat, and bask in the glow of the heat lamp. Should I name these chicks?? There are only two of this kind. No names are coming to me, I can think of slacker guy names, but hopefully these are girls.


When we get back from Florida, these ladies will be moving on up to the fanciest coop of them all! And finally it is completed! Do you notice anything funny about the coop?


Maybe that we accidentally ended up painting it the almost exact same colors as our friend's house, where we were building the coop.... Yes, it was an accident! We picked out the green trim color, but the body of the coop was another $5 'oop's' gallon of paint and well, it looks pretty good!

And the chicks aren't the only ones moving into fancier digs! We are going to be moving out of our crap-tastic doublewide rental as soon as our lease it up to move into a great farm house in Enterprise-of course we are at the beginning at this process, so we are keeping our fingers crossed that the inspections and all go well!

What a difference a week makes!

It's not every week that you get to wake up everyday to a view of beautiful snowy mountains-oh wait, yeah we do! The main differences between this past week in Park City and a usual week in Joseph is that we had SO many restaurants to go to and no animals to take care of! While Keith was learning how to do stress tests during the day, I was going to the movies, the spa, and shopping-just about anything instead of what everyone else was there for-skiing. Even though it seems like it's been forever, all it takes is a walk down a steep hill to put me and knee in it's place!! Keith did get to go snowboarding a couple times and had a blast!

Now we're back and the chicks are huge! They had a lovely time at Liz and Nic's and were a hit at Malachi'a second birthday party. After a week the chicks have quite a few more feathers and are so much bigger!


The funny looking ones are even starting to develop their gooofy fluff!


The Bovan chicks are getting enormous! They are so much bigger than the Australorps and the crested Polish's. Still we have no idea if any of the chicks are males yet. There are a number of things written about this and pretty much we need to wait a few more weeks to see if any male traits arise or we may not figure out it for a few months...I guess we'll just wait and see!


By the end of this week the chicks will probably be moving on up into a larger box and in about two weeks (I hope!) they will be outside in the fanciest coop ever!