The "First" EGG!!!!!!

Yea!!!! It's finally here. One of the hens laid the first egg yesterday. It is so pretty, if eggs are pretty. We had been raking leaves all afternoon and redoing part of their run (more about that later). We finished up and decided to check out the coop to make sure everything was in order. There it was laying on the poop shelf. Fortunately Vince had cleaned off all the poop earlier that day so it was clean. It weighed 1 and 1/2 ounces, was 2" long and 4" diameter. We brought it in and cooked it. Vince fried it over medium. Yummy. I had forgotten what a bright colored yolk fresh eggs have. The flavor was more intense also. So there should be more to come. They are supposed to start laying between 16 and 20 weeks and this is 18 so they're doing pretty good.

Thanksgiving day was great!!!

Thanksgiving day is over but giving thanks continues. We had a wonderful time with Matt, Jenny, Kevin, Kelley, and Irene (aka Gwama.) We cooked all sorts of food and enjoyed a very relaxing afternoon. Even Rory was tuckered out.

It is such a blessing that we know our son-in-law's parents and can have a holiday with them. I know it makes it a lot easier for Matt and Jenny too. Plus they're really cool people !! We even took them on a tour of the chicken condo.

Making Laundry Soap

Here we go again, another experiment. I like trying new things so I thought I'd try making laundry soap. I'm not a big fan of strong scents and most detergents now have very strong scent added to them. First I tried the liquid method where you melt the shredded soap in water then add 1/2 cup borax and 1/2 cup of washing soda, mix well then add hot water. This recipe makes 2 gallons and it works fine. I didn't really have room though in my laundry area for the two gallon bucket so I thought I'd try the powdered. I shredded 1/2 bar of Fels-Naptha soap and a little bit of Dr. Bronners all natural soap mixed that with 1 cup of borax and 1 cup of washing soda. You use 1 tablespoon per load, 2 for extra soiled. It works great. You have to get use to not seeing a lot of suds. I'm told that's all just for selling anyway. But if you put your hand in the water you can feel the slickness which is what allows the cleaner to slide through the fibers. Most exciting is it's pennies to make. I haven't calculated yet, I'll get our family mathematician (Jenny) to do that and I'll let you know exactly but it was hardly what you'd pay for commercial brands. Off to do some more laundry!!

Closing the Pool :-(

Oh boo, it's time to drain the pool :-( Rory really isn't too sad, she prefers lounging on the deck just in case a morsel of food should drop. Annie is sad though. She really loves her pool. She even had a friend stay a week this summer and play with her. Her friend, Cody liked the pool too. It actually stays pretty clean. You can't see in the picture but Vince made a filtering system using two barrels and a pool pump. The black hose is from the gutter so the rain water kept it pretty full this year. I'm sure Annie wouldn't mind if it froze over. She would still be ready to jump in. But we don't want to take a chance on it cracking, nor do we want the dogs "cracking."
That's what happens to them when they go swimming and the water freezes on their hair, they crack as they walk.

Raking leaves with the chickies!

Raking leaves isn't much fun unless you happen to have children (or old people that act like children) or chickens that like to climb into the piles and begin to spread them back around from where you just raked them. I read that about a 6 inch layer of leaves makes good bedding for their run so since I have a yard full of leaves why not. Well chickies see the pile and can't wait for it to get into the pen so they jump right in. They seemed to have fun, if chickens have fun that is. At least it keeps them busy for a while. Then after I put it in their run I tossed in some scratch grains and they got really busy trying to find it. That is actually good for them in the winter as it helps them warm up.

Operations Christmas Child

Our church decided to be a relay center for Operation Christmas Child this year, and it's been loads of fun. Since we are an Age Intergrated Church our families chose a night to come a serve together. It's a lot of fun to see the people come in and there are sooooo many boxes and yet probably still not enough :-(

Pizza Day!!!

AAAHHHH, my house smells sooo good. I baked my usual 12 loaves of bread today and decided to try the pizza dough. I hadn't tried it in the mixer yet so I thought why not. I tripled the recipe and used the hard red wheat, prairie gold and just a couple cups of the soft wheat or pastry. I added a few tablespoons of herbs de provence for flavor. The outcome was 8, 12" crusts. We gobbled up one right away, wrapped 5 prebaked ones for the freezer, put one ball of dough in the fridge and one in the freezer. The last two are experimental. I want to see how they recover. The only bad thing is once you make your own dough it kinda spoils you and it's hard to get take out again. But oh well. Now I'm just plain tired but good tired.