Blog a la Cart

Happy Chick

Sunny’s feeling pretty dang happy that she’s made so many other people happy with all these ridiculous chick pix.

Last night, we transitioned the flock up to the barn. They’re still living in an oversized dog crate with a brooding lamp inside the chick coop – but they are too big and smelly and flighty to be dwelling inside our home any further. We’ve been letting them spend their days frolicking in the Peck and Play, which simultaneously helps us prep our raised beds for planting (they scratch and poop and generally help get the soil better fertilized and primed for epic vegetable growth). And now, they’ll hang up in the barn with the full sized hens by night. It’s a good stepping stone to get the hens acclimated to the new flock. We won’t integrate them until the chicks are larger and better able to defend themselves (as the larger hens may not be so thrilled with their new coop-mates), but all of us (save Sunny) were ready to get the birds out of the house and up to the coop where they are better suited for the longterm.

They are in the supremely awkward adolescent phase – half fluff/half feathers. Some of the breeds are flightier and less friendly than others. These four Blue Cochins are still delightfully mellow and easy to handle, so they are Sunny’s current favorites. The Rhode Island Reds are proving quite mischievous. We wasted a solid twenty minutes chasing one around the vegetable garden when she decided to fly up and out of the Peck and Play before we’d secured the top. Never a dull moment here at Cartwheel Farm.

Sunny’s wearing this dress (though her particular pattern is no longer in stock) by Tea Collection, courtesy of her Fairy Godparents. We let her open their birthday gift Monday morning, knowing it was new clothing that she could proudly wear during her birthday week. Dellie and Jeremy, she’s now worn this outfit two days in a row. And she’s using the silver and gold shoe laces as a belt. She’s one very happy kid, indeed. THANK YOU! 

HUFFPOST!

Sunny and I and the flock of baby chicks are featured in Huffpost today.

As the chicks keep bringing the cute… and the media… I slip deeper and deeper into crazy chicken lady status. Feels fairly appropriate.

My conversation with Sunny about the media blast went as follows:

Me: Sunny! We’re featured in Huffpost today!

Her: Mama, I don’t even know what that means. Please show people my crown of bows that I made since my flower crown wilted. That’s way more exciting. (Behold said bow crown here).

Huffpost article here. Thanks for helping to share the chick love!

Hanna and The ACL

Last week, our Hanna Banana had a long-awaited surgery on her rear-left ACL. Back in the fall, she’d torn the ligament, and had been limping ever since. Despite no change in spirit (she’s as googley-eyed and slobbery and wiggly as ever), the limp slowed her down and we knew that we needed to get it fixed. We tried acupuncture and herbal supplements and rest with no success, so finally caved and footed the multi-thousand dollar bill for proper surgery. Life has been complicated by the recovery. She’s got another week left in the cone of shame, which she bangs and knocks into everything (including our heels) to show her displeasure, and then another six weeks of quiet and rest and quarantine from play with Gladdy. She, of course, is eager to run and play despite the gapping wound on her leg, which is heartening, but difficult to manage. How does one explain to a canine that while she may feel awesome and in tip top shape that she must rest and recover to maintain that feeling of awesome?

We have her gated off in one part of the house, and the kids spend plenty of time visiting with her and loving her up. As you can see, Sunny even brings the chicks over for a visit from time to time. James has taken to carrying her up the stairs to our bedroom every evening so that she can sleep by our bed as she always has, and then lugs her down the stairs every morning. While life chez Cart feels rather frazzled with the dogs and baby chicks and exploding indoor garden (I need it to be June 1st so we can finally (safely) garden outside sans frost), we’re chugging along. We had a lovely visit with friends, despite 5am wake ups and a toddler who prefers 10pm bedtimes, but things may be a tad quiet here as my work life kicks into high gear for my biggest event of the year and life around the farm buzzes on. As always, I post regularly to Instagram and Facebook for daily snapshots.

Some days feel like a fairy tale…

Yesterday afternoon, we picked daffodils and made flower crowns and bathed in the sunlight.

And I spent the evening farting rainbows. It was that stupidly magical.

#dailydoseofchick

Things are a bit, um, chaotic on Cartwheel Farm. We’re living under a jungle of vegetable plants and peeping chicks and muddy puppies and convalescing super mutts. And Sunny’s FGPs and their baby boy are coming to visit. They arrive this evening, so we’re trying to create some semblance of calm and cleanliness. Ha!

While this space may be a little quiet until next week, the kids and I have been having a blast creating ridiculous Instagram posts of the wee chicks. Follow along @blogalacart and the hashtag #dailydoseofchick for a ridiculous hit of adorable every day. And don’t hesitate to spread the word – it’s been amazing to see how much people are enjoying these photos. And I must admit, we’ve had a blast staging these pictures. And we’ve got some fun ideas in the works… so keep an eye out!

Chicky Babes

To say that Sunny is The Chick Whisperer is the understatement of the century (at least chez Cart).

She is so sweet and gentle and loving with our latest flock. She asked to hold them immediately upon arrival home, and suddenly she went from having one little lady in her lap to all sixteen. They snuggled up and were more than content to just laze in her arms. She was in fluffy, peep peep heaven.

This stage goes by so quickly, and by next week this lot will be a gangly, awkward, semi-feathered bunch, so we’re letting Sunny enjoy it as much as she can. People have asked why we have so many new chickens, and, well, these little ones are not just intended to be egg layers. About half the flock (and potentially more) will become meat for family supper.

Sunny already named two Tenders and Nugget.

Farm Life sure gives a kid a sense of life cycles. Be sure to watch the video below of the sixteen flock chick snuggle in action.

For those interested in where we source our poultry and what breeds we’ve selected:

Our full grown hens are down to four. We have one Buff Orpington, two Plymouth Barred Rocks and one Araucana (that lays blue eggs!). We ordered this latest flock from Murray McMurrary Hatchery. We order three Black Austalops, two Buff Orpingtons, three Araucanas, three Rhode Island Reds, four Blue Cochins, and the hatchery threw in one random exotic (Mohawk Baby) chicken for good measure. We ordered a few males in the hopes of getting at least one friendly-ish rooster to help protect the hens from hawks (our farm’s biggest predator for the chickens thus far). And we’d love to incubate our own eggs, so we need a rooster for fertilization. We’ll see. I’m gunning for one of the Blue Cochins (the poodles of the chicken world) to be a most effeminate, friendly rooster for Cartwheel Farm.

Around The Farm // 20

Spring has arrived. And we have only come inside for sleep, food, and a bath here or there to wash the earth from our fingers and clothes.

All the while knowing that by tomorrow, the temperatures will have plummeted back into the frigid zone.

hashtaglifeinnewengland

hashtagBOO!

We’ve owned Cartwheel Farm for just over two years, and this is the first spring where James and I have invested time and sweat into a proper spring cleaning of the property. We’ve been raking and pruning and poop scooping and planting like mad. All the while, our dependents running around the dull brown lawn awaiting the Vitamin D boost to inspire shades of green to usurp the doldrums of winter. Swings and hammocks have been hung. Bikes and wheelbarrows and see saws and sprinklers have been unearthed. Bathing suits have been pulled from the depths of our drawers. Life has looked a bit like this of late…

^^She had never before experienced a sprinkler. I think you can all see that she took to it quite unabashedly, proper water dog that she is.^^

^^Our sweet Hanna heads in for surgery on her rear left ACL the last week of April. Fortunately, recovery will be swift, far swifter than that of our bank account.^^

^^The flock was put out during our bi-annual deep clean of the chicken coop. Bunty was less than pleased. But they were quite delighted when they experienced the resulting cleanly quarters. A dozen baby chicks will be arriving chez Cart the last week of April. The girls have no idea what’s coming. And James and I are readying for the adorable, albeit shockingly messy, onslaught.^^

^^Can you find the potbelly pig? We’ve been giving Penelope free range of our back yard. She’s been mighty helpful in ridding the lawn of last season’s fallen apples. She’s also very likely intoxicated (ya know, given the state of those apples). But she doesn’t seem to mind in the least.^^

^^We have quite the green house going in our laundry room slash downstairs bathroom slash future residence of baby chicks. Such a multi-purpose space! This season we’ve really made an effort to get our vegetable garden going early. We had a rather major set back when Gladdy overturned a fully germinated tray of tomatoes and peppers (our most precious plants!) – but we’re trying to regroup, confident that we’ll still wind up with plenty of farm fresh veggies this season.^^

^^Waiting on forsythia cut from our back yard to bloom inside, while Kaki helps James prep our kitchen garden beds outside.^^

^^The zip line – a Christmas gift – is an even bigger hit in warmer climes.^^

^^The always popular horse tire swing!^^

^^Garlic (which we plant over Columbus Day weekend and cover with straw for the winter months) has been unearthed and is going strong. We’ll try to document our garlic growing slash braiding process this year. Such an easy and amazing crop to grow – I recommend it highly to all.^^

^^This fall we redid our retaining wall and front porch, and we’ve been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to plant some fruiting plants in the resulting fresh dirt. We’ve invested in two crops of blueberry bushes – including the “Pink Lemonade Blueberry.” How could we resist a literal pinkberry?^^

^^We’ll resume our house painting project in just a few weeks, beginning with our renovated front porch – in the hopes that all sides of the house finally match one another by fall’s end! We’ve also started some strawberry crowns along the inside edges of our fence as delicious delicious ground cover. While we won’t have any for harvest this year, by next year we should have enough homegrown strawberries and blueberries to get us through a full year.^^

^^We’ve also begun an asparagus patch. As we’d read, time and time again, the most challenging part of starting a perennial asparagus patch is the work on the front end. That trench was not yet the necessary 18″ deep – but we got there eventually – and in a year or two – should have our own crop of asparagus annually. Oh, I am beyond excited!^^

It’s been a busy, exciting few weeks on the farm, and I am continually inspired and awestruck watching green life emerge from the recently thawed Earth and our future food burst from seed to seedling seemingly before our eyes. Every year I learn something new. And every year I’m inspired to have more and more of a hand in these important, amazing, magical life processes. I now understand why spring was always my mother’s favorite time of year.

Nemo

Another bird down.

On New Year’s Eve day, Nemo was taken out by a falcon.

While no tears were shed, Sunny remarked, “Aw, that’s sad. She was the most adorable hen!”

And she was. She was absolutely our favorite, as poultry favorites go. Super sweet and easy to handle. A consistent and predictable layer, always sticking to the nesting boxes unlike some of our flock *coughBuntycough*. And she laid the prettiest blue eggs.

Such is life with free range chickens. We’ll be getting chicks in the spring to replenish the flock as we’re now down to four hens.

I can’t help but think that it was because I was about to launch my new blog header, which features only four hens. Sorry, Nemo, in this instance, life imitated art.

While on the subject, many thanks to the talented and wonderful Robbi of Idiots’ Books for the updated header. I needed a new look for 2014 reflecting the shifts in our family. I love the pile of Cartwheel critters, and the nod to critters past. I hope that you too enjoy the change!

Where’s Bunty?

And by Where’s Bunty?, I mean, Where in god’s name has that damn hen laid her eggs?

Shall we play a game of “I Spy”?

We shall!

I spy with my little eye, four days worth of eggs… no where near the chicken coop.

But rather, buried in the garden, next to our house and kitchen garden beds. At least 100 meters from the barn and coop. Last week it was in the feed bucket of one of our horse stalls. There are no horses, so why not monopolize a feeder that is sitting vacant?

This is the ongoing Bunty Egg Saga. Upon discovering her hiding spot, she promptly changes laying locale rather than just giving up and submitting to laying in the cozy array of five nesting boxes we’ve established for the flock up in the safety of our barn.

Much like how the girls prefer to roost on the kids’ swingset rather than on their sturdy branch roosts we’ve installed in the coop.

Oh these silly birds. They free range all over our property – and the neighboring road and fields – and I can’t help but adore their presence as it provides daily amusement (I dare to you watch a chicken in full sprint and not keel over with laughter) and really sets the country, farm vibe that James and I are going for. Great ambience, those hens. Oh, and their eggs are pretty outrageous, too.

Hanna loves nothing more than to play round after round of tag with them. They torment her by lingering nearby, and then she lumbers after them, catches them, pins them to the ground with her chin, and then releases, to resume the activity all over again. The hens could easily escape her antics by hopping the fence (a feat they do constantly to get between our house and their coop) and yet they remain with Hanna as they must get some enjoyment out of the game, which may be just as fun as betend. What that enjoyment is, I know naught. I can only assume it’s the vision of Hanna, full googley-eyes and bologna tongue, lurching around the yard in pursuit. It is almost as funny as their full sprint waddle.

Regardless, we’re a year in to this backyard poultry adventure, and enjoying it immensely. Chicken ownership is indeed as rad as I’d suspected. And even James agrees. And we’re still happily married.* Now that’s a win for all.

*James once told me the only reason our marriage might fall apart was if I purchased chickens. And hey, look! 12 months since that fateful day, and we’re still hitched. It’s a good thing my hunch that chickens were a totally awesome addition to the household played out in reality, eh? Or James just loves me a whole heck of a lot more than he suspected.

Dotty Chicken

Our dear friends headed west yesterday, on the move to California. As a farewell gift they gave the girls these adorable tees.

I am totally and completely obsessed.

Surprise surprise.

You can buy the shirts here from Silk Oak.

We will miss you so, J & J!