Goings On

Woops, I forgot I had a blog. Again. Guess I should update, at the very least about the chickens.

Of that huge batch of eggs I gathered from my flock, only 3 hatched, and then 2 of those survived. I think the incubator was to blame. The temperatures started fluctuating dramatically again, and we also lost power for half a day about halfway through incubation, so that surely didn't help either. I sold one of the babies as a young pullet, and I kept Lily, the daughter of my favorite hen, Padma. I wish I could say she's as sweet and fearless as her mother, but she's not. Maybe it will help her live longer than Padma did.

Miss Lily is in the middle. Left is Gertrude, right is Jasmine.

I'm not sure when I'll incubate another batch. I sold Athena along with the rest of the roosters I got as part of a classroom hatching experiment. They were all fighting constantly and harassing my poor geriatric hens I took in as retired egg layers. Now all I have left are my girls, and things are much more peaceful. I spend much more time with them and don't have to worry about getting kicked in the back of the legs by an ornery rooster. They always came at me when my back was turned, the little cowards. If I do decide to incubate another batch, maybe I'll try to raise a tame rooster somehow...keep him away from the flock in his own enclosed area and dote on him. I have had tame cockerels before, but they never had their own flocks and were cage-raised. And if I do ever get roosters again, I may just let my old lady hens sit on the fertile eggs and raise their own babies. They've gone broody so many times already this summer, if I still had roosters, there would be oodles of chicks by now.

We're constantly working on the pasture, garden, and barns. We've got sheep now, and I love them all so much. Ewan is the sweetest one. I thought his curious and docile nature came because he was tame, but shearing him taught me otherwise. He's my brave, fearless, independent boy, and he will FIGHT you if you try to restrain him. Luckily, that's rarely an issue. Annabelle and Bebe, my two ewes, are loud and inquisitive, but still flighty. Violet is my big, shy boy, who used to be the smallest, a runty triplet. It took him months to finally let me even touch him, and now he tentatively takes treats from my hand. Ewan used to jump on me like he was a dog. We put a stop to that. Hooves don't feel great jammed into your thigh, even if it's done affectionately.

Annabelle 💜

We tried our hand at the local farmer's market last year, but didn't have much success. We stopped going about halfway through the season because I became pregnant early July and couldn't stomach the morning sickness. Now we just have too much to do repairing and upkeeping the farm and raising our sweet baby boy. I don't regret trying though. We named our farm and I made a logo design for it and a Facebook page that I update every now and again, so it was worth it.

My latest obsession hobby has been dabbling in entomophagy (bug eating). I still have yet to actually eat a bug (on purpose, anyway), but I have been reading books, researching online, and collecting bugs from the garden and storing them in the freezer until I muster up the courage to just do it. It's all been very fascinating. I'm trying my best to do better by the planet, and I truly think eating insects is one way we can lead more sustainable lives. The book Edible by Daniella Martin is probably the most important book I've ever read. I'm probably one of the few gardeners excited to see my squash plants wilting because I know that means the patch is overrun with very edible squash bugs.

Other than that, just working, reading, writing some, trying to stay afloat. Not much art lately. I'm thinking that's going to be a winter time activity. Loving on my baby, kitties, dogs, and my new pet Axolotl, Miss Vanjie.

Miss...Vaaaaaanjie

Summer has been fun and busy. As much as I hate the heat, I have really enjoyed being outside more. I'm excited to finish the summer strong and ease into fall and winter and rest.

A Ray of Sunshine

WOO!

Let me explain.

After that last round of disappointment and anguish, I took a few days to collect myself and get ready to try again. This time, I took eggs from my own flock. I gathered 32 total. 

Between then and now, I had some thermometer drama and stressed out a TON because of that. I basically had no hope that any of these would hatch either.

Fast forward to today: Day 7.

My new incubator thermometer came in!! http://incubatorwarehouse.com/eggometer.html

Since I had to open the incubator and move some eggs around to put this in, I took the opportunity to candle the eggs. Of the 32 I put in there, 30 (yes, THIRTY) of them are developing right on schedule!!!!!!!!! :D I even saw a tiny heartbeat on one of them!!!!! <3 br="">
This tells me a few of things:

1) My incubator temps aren't as far off as I was worried they were. The previous digital thermometer I bought is definitely going back. I'm hoping this new thermometer gives me an accurate reading in case I need to make minor adjustments.

2) The eggs I purchased before were, indeed, junk, like I suspected. Not sure if I'm going to bother talking to the hatchery or not. There's "no guarantee" on hatching eggs, but I kind of feel like they used that policy as an excuse to rip me off. They were tiny, misshapen, and dirty. Not a good combination for any egg, but hatching eggs especially.

3) Athena is a stud muffin. You go, boi.

Day 18

I went to take the egg turner out of the incubator and put it on lockdown. I candled the eggs one last time.

None of them made it.

Status Report

Things I'm doing in my life right now:

* Incubating eggs. It's been mildly frustrating as the eggs I got were definitely sub-par, but I've got at least one little chick in there thriving. If it ends up being my $114 chicken, so be it.

* Planning a garden and gathering supplies/seeds. Probably going to get started on seedlings near the end of the month :)

* Researching sheep and alpacas and making plans to purchase some in the near future. Sheep sooner than alpacas due to both $$ and ease of care.

* Protesting.

* Sleeping. A lot.

* Got some fillings done yesterday, so trying to get used to the new way my mouth feels. Might need to go in again if this left side keeps bothering me, but we'll see.

* Crying. A lot.

* Trying to stay up to date on the goings on in the world. There's a lot to keep up with. Making informed decisions is hard and kind of scary, but a necessary part of life, especially in today's political climate.

* Making more of an effort to get involved in the community.

* Making more of an effort to hang out with friends. I have a hard time balancing friend time and me time.

* Thinking about babies. Idk if the biological clock theory rings true for all, but it's ringing on my ovaries something fierce.

* Regretting the time I don't spend drawing, but then being scared to death to spend time drawing. I've been writing and editing a webcomic a lot since November (nano), but whenever I get to the point where I need to start character design, I wig myself out.

* Struggling. A lot.

* Questioning my faith. Or maybe moreso questioning what I thought my faith was, or what other people expect my faith to look like. Worrying about this all the time.

* Probs getting more bunnies too :3 Emailing breeders and getting info on some fuzzy friends.

* Trying to balance all this and way more.

Candling 1 Week In

I candled the eggs today and found both good and bad. Most of them, I'm pretty sure, are duds. (The only experience I have with this was when Margot went broody and took over a nest of eggs. At 1 week, they all showed much more obvious signs of development, like one of the eggs pictured below.)

None of the Lavender Orpingtons are fertile from what I can tell.

This one has weird bubbles going on inside it.

Not sure what that blob is, but it looks more like a blood spot than a developing chick.

One of the Ameraucana eggs was fertile, but has the red ring of death inside. 

Red Ring of Death - Not just for Xbox.

I think a total of 5 are fertile and developing, 3 Ameraucanas and possibly 2 Marans. Though really, only two of these look like they're doing really well.

Not super convinced by this one, but maybe?

Another possibility?

Yes, go baby! Keep growing! This is what Margot's eggs looked like.

I super hope this is a chick and not just a super dark shell.

Dubious at best about this one.

So. I guess we'll see. Overall still pretty disappointed in my "fertile" hatching eggs. I think from now on, I'll stick to buying chicks, then try incubating from my own flock.

A Lesson in Forced Optimism

Well, I've decided to dust off the old blog for a potential exercise in futility. After writing draft 1 complete with bile and vitriol, I've decided to dial it back and hope for the best. I've never actually hatched eggs before. (Which is what I'm doing. Have I mentioned that? I guess now I have.) I've only ever read about it, and books tend to involve more cautionary advice than real life tends to warrant. Maybe things will be just fine.

SO. Here's day #1* of my hatching adventure.

I'd like to say I left this moring giddy at the prospect of retrieving my purchased hatching eggs from a local-ish hatchery/breeder 4 hours south of where we currently live. The truth is, even though I went to sleep early, I was barely able to drag myself out of bed and get out the door on time. Maybe it's post-election depression, or maybe it was a vague precognition of the anxiety I would be facing hours from then when I would discover the less-than-stellar condition of my hatching eggs.

Did I say I was done with the vitriol? Yeesh.

Maybe it's because I've spent years building up to this point, finally got myself an incubator for Christmas and ordered purebred hatching eggs, a less expensive option than ordering live purebred chicks, but still not cheap. My whole money-saving theory is built around the idea that the eggs will hatch. And going to a local breeder, driving instead of having them shipped, will give me the best chances for success, right?

I guess we'll see.

Anyway, I get there (ok, yes, at this point having squealed with excitement as I approached the final freeway exit) and prepare myself to meet my eggs. Disappointment does not begin to cover how I felt. As the owner came outside and gave me the eggs, she opened them up and showed them to me. I could see from the cartons that they were smaller than an average chicken egg, which my book studies explicitly state can result in sickly hatchlings due to stunted growth.

Ok yes, my hands are big, but not THAT big...

But hey, I've never hatched my own eggs before, so what was I to know? Maybe that was fine. Then I saw the dirt/poo smears. SHE also saw the dirt/poo smears and seemed surprised. Was this the first time she'd seen the eggs too? She then proceeded to tell me to just wash them off with a wet paper towel and they would be fine. Every book I've read on the subject says not to incubate dirty eggs.

But again. I've never done it before. Maybe that was an overly restrictive view and they'd actually be fine. How was I supposed to know? That's the entire reason why I decided to buy from a local breeder. I thought I could trust a higher standard of care than I would get from a commercial hatchery. So, not knowing if or how to confront any of this due to my lack of experience, I just took them and left. Then about a mile away, pulled over and called my husband to complain while I inspected them more closely. Almost all of them are half the size of a normal chicken egg.

Seriously! Look at the size difference!!

And I also noticed that some of them were almost as round as a ping pong ball. Another hatching no-no I came across while reading.

"Too Round" Oh, you mean like this almost identical example from real life? Great.

Even that big brown one pictured above next to the small one looks eerily similar to the oblong egg pictured in the book.

SO.

I'm letting them rest, blunt side up, in a cooler area of the house for a few hours. Then, I'm going to mix up a warm, very diluted bleach mixture (internet** says 1/2 tsp of bleach per 2 quarts of water at 100 degrees) and gently remove the ick from the dirty eggs. Then I'm going to put them in the incubator and hope for the best. Because I haven't done this before, and maybe this is all just my anxieties getting the best of me.

Guess we'll find out in 3 weeks.


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*If you don't include the years of planning, dreaming, researching, and gradual implementation that led us up to this point...and also led to my deep sense of disappointment.

** Yes, I frantically googled all of my issues the minute I got home to either confirm or discredit my fears. It's about 50/50, as it usually is with anecdotal evidence on the internet.

Fun With Fluff

Last week, I got rid of some spinning stuff I never used that was just taking up room in my closet (for the curious, it was a flyer for a wheel I didn't have and, sadly, will not be getting anytime soon). I was able to make a trade with someone on Ravelry for some old carders and a bunch of lovely dyed fiber! I got a beautiful assortment of Merino, Corriedale, Alpaca, Mohair, and even some silk!

After I opened the package, stopped drooling, and watched a few tutorials on Youtube, I got to work with my new-to-me hand carders! I blended some of the red mohair with Ellie's white hair at about a 70/30 ratio and got this:

Guys, it is SO SOFT. I made about 5 rolags of it and found an appropriate home for the delectable fiber. It even smells like chocolate now!:

Since then, I've spun two rolags onto one of my drop spindles. At first I was terrified to mess up, but you know what? I've got a renewable source of fluff in my back yard. If I mess up, I mess up, and I'll learn from it and move on. Here is what I've got so far:

I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with it as I don't really know what qualities these two fibers have (memory, drape, etc.), but whatever I make, it is going to be SOFT! I'm thinking probably fingerless gloves. Easy first project for my first hand-carded fiber :)

Also, for anyone interested, the person who traded with me has an Etsy shop. You should go check it out!

http://www.etsy.com/shop/Taneliearth

Have a good Monday, everyone! :)