Chicken Snow Angels

Well, we have had maybe 2 or 3 warm days (35 ish degrees outside) the last couple of weeks and I decided to let the chickens out of their coop for a little bit to get some fresh air while I was getting them some food and water one day.  I think they were so excited to be able to run free again that they didn't realize what the white stuff was.  So they flew out into the field and this is as far as they got.  They got out there and stayed put.  But I guess they wanted to make their own snow angels, too, so I let them sit there for a little bit.  Eventually, I had to go and pick them up and put them back into the coop.  Silly chickens!!

 hehe...

 silly..

 Here are the snow angels they left behind, along with a present or two.

They are so fun!  I wish it wasn't so darn cold outside, then they wouldn't have to be stayed cooped up all the time, it makes me feel bad! But I really don't want them to freeze!!!  Maybe I'm too protective of my babies.... (probably)

I have been trying some new recipes lately...these are some Sunflower Parmesan crackers!  My first attempt at making crackers, ever!

The recipe called for 1 cup of sunflower seeds, 1/2 cup of parmesan cheese and 1/4 cup of water. Grind the seeds and parmesan together til its like flower then add in the water until it makes a sort of dough.  Its pretty greasy (natural oils from the sunflowers I suppose).  Then flatten it between two sheets of parchment on a baking sheet, score them into squares or whatever but leave them where they are.  Bake for half an hour and then take out of the oven and break apart to cool.  They were okay.  If they would have been thinner they would have had more crunch to them, but they were alright.  They look a little bit like Golden Grahams, don't they?  Yum!  I wish they were Golden Grahams!! :)  I have a recipe for almond butter crackers that uses almond meal, I might have to try that one, they look really good!  Thank you, Pinterest!

I also tried this other recipe from Pinterest that I found, its for crepes.

Initially, I was pretty nervous to make crepes, but after the first couple I had the hang of it pretty well!  I still don't know what I'm going to use them for, but we have some now!  I tried some the other night with some blueberry cream cheese and strawberry jam.  I think it would have been better if it was plain cream cheese rather than blueberry, the flavors just seemed kinda weird.

Annd...last but not least, this is what was happening outside our house.  This is where the exhaust comes out from our furnace.

That's a pretty sweet icicle... (icicle? That looks like its spelled weird!)

Anyway, I better get ready to go, I'm meeting a guy to get an office chair off of craigslist.  I need a good office chair, don't I?  School starts on Tuesday!!!  I'm so excited!!!!  (kinda nervous too...) Anywho...

xoxo   c

Happy Hatch Day: 7-ish months!

First, the chickens just turned 7 months old!  I have some not very pretty pictures for you to see! Mostly because its been pretty cold for a little while now and -20° the last few days.  Holy Cow!!! I am not suited for this kind of cold!  But we are surviving, not to worry.  Today, however, it warmed up to 3° today! It kind of felt nice, which is funny because that's still really cold.  I was just happy that the air wasn't trying to eat my face.  And the fun part is, we had a pretty good ice storm a couple of weeks ago then it snowed quite a bit, so there was all sorts of snow hanging out on top of the ice, so when the snow melts (or blows back in the driveway because of the wind) you can see the awful layer of ice underneath it.  We also had a nice warm day one day when it got into the late 30s and everything started melting so there were puddles in the driveway.  Then, of course, it got really cold again so the puddles froze.  Now our driveway has a really nice giant layer of ice. I hope all that makes sense.  The good news though, this weekend its supposed to get up to 35° to 39°!  It'll be a heat wave, so nice!  And the following week so far should be in the late 20s.  Not too shabby.  

Well, 9 out of 9 eggs that I picked up yesterday from the chickens were frozen and cracked in half. Because I didn't want to eat them, I boiled them along with a bunch of yolks from last weekend. They got quite the pile of stuff today!  The two muffin things were an experiment that didn't work out.  But they eat them, so I'll feed it to them rather than throw it away.  :)

Here is the thermometer showing that it is 0° outside.  Holy Cow!  Just terrible, but it rose to 0, it was about -20 this morning...

When I went to see the chickens and give them the delicious pile of eggs I looked out into the field and saw some turkeys!  There were 6, you can't see them very clearly, but its pretty cool that they are in our backyard.

 ANNDD....Here are the chickens!  The first fresh air and daylight that they have seen in weeks.  Poor babies.

Here is after I gave them the eggs!  They were in love!

Here is Basil's and his comb...after the frostbite and the fights, here is what we have.  There aren't the traditional ripples since they disappeared, but it still looks pretty good.

Here is Parker and his comb.  Man, he's a good lookin' chicken...look at the blue in his feathers on his chest.  Gosh.  His comb is also smoothing out, but still has some remnants and seems dirty too.

Also, one of my red sex link hens is getting a black comb...Hopefully it heals or something...

My poor baby chickens...They will be super excited when it starts warming up!  I'm super excited to let them out again and not worry about their little faces freezing off!  

xoxo

c

Happy Hatch Day! 6 months old!

Well, I just got back from seeing the chickens this morning and getting an egg before it froze. Yay! It is a whole 15° outside, sunny and windy where I'm living now.  It wouldn't be so bad but the humidity makes the cold even colder and you add the wind on top of that and its super bitey cold! We've been getting a lot of eggs lately, which is really great!  Most days we get about 3 or 4! I would think more of the bantam hens would be laying, but I think we only have one that is at the moment.  I guess when they are ready they will.  We are not in any hurry to be overwhelmed with eggs!  Currently we can keep up with the eggs that we get, thank you weekends and egg whites! We only eat a few eggs with a bunch of egg whites and then we cook up the yolks to give to the chickens.  That way they can get some extra fat in their diet so they keep warmer during this cold winter.  Here's what we did over the weekend.

I realized that boiling the yolks just like you do boiled eggs works way better than breaking them all up in a skillet, its a lot cleaner!

With the temperatures getting so cold we had to go and get a heated waterer.  I really hate this one, but it keeps the water from freezing, so it will work during the winter.

For a while it was leaking and getting the shavings all wet and that is not good for the chickens or the coop.  I later realized that maybe the spout you can fill the unit up with at the bottom of the base wasn't all the way on, so I think that solved the problem.  As you can see I sacrificed one of my turkey pans from Thanksgiving to prevent everything from getting wet.  It worked pretty well! Because we wanted the chickens to stay warm during the winter we decided to insulate the coop!

For the ceiling we used regular house insulation that came in rolls and wrapped it through the raftors and then we got some ape tape (the black strips you see up there) and used that to drape it the other way, so its double insulated on the ceiling.  On the windows we used foam insulation and cut it to size.  In the pic above you see the triangles of window peeking through, that was my cutting mistake...haha!  But it still works! :)  In the picture below on the bottom left of the window you can see that some of the chickens are already pecking at it...Argh!

 And the window in the door...

We all played around before it snowed, so here they are the day after hatchday.

 I can't believe how big the combs are on these leghorns...

Cute 'lil red...

We also had a fight in the yard a few weeks ago.  I didn't see it, but when I went to put the chickens away for the night I saw the aftermath.  I think that maybe Parker lost, he was on the floor resting and had lots of blood on his comb.  One of his eyes wasn't open either.  He is since healing, sort of, I think.  His eye is open, so that is good.  Here is a few days after the fight.

Here is Basil, he didn't fare so well either.

It looks like he might be getting pecked on too, you can see the somewhat bald spot behind his head...

I think some of them are getting frostbite too, so I imagine there might be some of that in there too. I don't know what to do about it though!  We have never dealt with frostbite before!  So we insulated the coop, I put 2 heat lamps out there, I don't let them out especially with the temperatures as low as they are and with snow on the ground.  So they are all cooped up and probably going crazy!  (See what I did there with the "cooped up"?  bwah ha ha! Sorry, couldn't resist.)  Anyway, I just don't know what to do about the frostbite.  I've read on chicken sites to put petroleum jelly on their combs, but I seriously doubt they are going to let me do that.  Especially the roosters, who I don't touch very much.  I know it is something we need to stop right away, but I am just so lost and frustrated about it!  When I went outside to see them a little bit ago, I gave them some bread and scratch, which they enjoyed.  I've also been putting electrolytes in their water.  We have the two heat lamps going but I could still see mine and their breath in the air...anyone have any ideas?  

xoxo

c

Precious birds...and mini tractor pulls!

Well, its that time of year!  Thanksgiving!  So that means its time for me to bring out my Thanksgiving decorations!  YAY!  One of my good friends in Utah made me this last year!  We call it an owl-urkey because its supposed to be a turkey, but it kind of looks more like an owl!

And I have these awesome Lego turkeys that we got for free with some things we bought from Lego a few years ago!  Awesome!!!

There you have it!  Those are all my Thanksgiving decorations!  haha!  I kind of like, though, how little I decorate!   I have some Lego Christmas houses that I'm planning on building on Thanksgiving this year, so those will go out in December! And those should be my only Christmas decorations, I think.  I'm not sure if we will have a tree or if I will make a paper tree or maybe we just won't do anything.  I haven't decided yet! :) I really really want a Lego nativity scene though, I think that would be really fun!  I'll have to see if I can find plans to build one.

Well, we figured out how my little chickens are getting out of the fenced area.

Silly chickens....but how can you say no to this sweet little face?

Also!!! 4 of my hens are laying eggs now!  We got our first bantam egg a few days ago!  Its soooo precious and small!

Here are all eggs from my hens...Bantam on the left, red sex link in the middle, and one of our brown leghorns on the right! Yay!

We've already gotten quite a few eggs this week!  The consistency is kind of weird though.  We get an egg from a chicken every other day!  So, one day we'll get one red sex link egg and then the next day we'll get all 3!  Its kind of funny how they alternate!  But, I'll take it!  Love eggs and they are so good!  I don't think I'll have to buy eggs ever again!  YAY!!!  We've already got 9 this week, so it'll be crazy when they all start laying!

We went with some friends a couple of weekends ago to a farm toy show over in Dyersville, IA. Dyersville is where they filmed the movie "Field of Dreams"!!  The old house is still there and the ball field is very well cared for!  It looks just like in the movie!  Very cool!  Anyway, we saw some pretty cool stuff there, tons and tons of toys!  We also saw some pretty cool tractor pull stuff! These are some pictures that I took in that area!  I think its put on by the national mini tractor association or something like that.  But, they do some mini tractor pulls!  Here are a few of them up close...

Here is the cute little sled they use for those pulls, they are real heavy weights and they use a tape measure to measure the distance that the mini tractor pulls it!  Cute!

Here's a picture of people fixing and tweaking their machines...its a huge deal!

Right next door to there was a kids tractor pull!  Isn't it cute? One of our friends' kids did it and he got first place!!!  Only out of two 5 year old kids, but its still really exciting!!!  Its pretty cool to watch that kind of stuff!!

Something we thought was funny, in general.  We went to a real tractor pull a few months ago with my brother in law and there weren't many John Deere tractors in it...there was a lot of red tractors. :) Very interesting!  It was still really, really cool!
Well, better get ready for work!
xoxo
c

Yummy food stuff and a Chili taste test!

Okay, its been a pretty crazy last week or two!  I started my new job last week and I am really enjoying it so far!  I think working in the bakery will be something I'll really enjoy but we will see how things progress!  I'm very optimistic though! :)  Plus, it will be fun to see how the inner workings of a real bakery work.  Yesterday I got to make stuffing bread.  They just throw older and smushed bread through the bread slicer so that it is in slivers, but that bread slicer is a crazy machine to operate!  It was pretty cool though!  Speaking of baking and stuff, I've been making all sorts of delicious things lately....

For example, I found this recipe for Double Apple Cinnamon Muffins.  I've been looking through pinterest land for some good muffin recipes and found that one, and I also had a couple of apples that I probably wasn't going to eat.  So, voila!!  Here they are!  I made them into jumbo muffins instead of standard muffin size.  They are soooo good!  Moist and delicious! :)

I've also been wondering what all the hullabaloo is about with Greek yogurt, so I got a container a few weeks ago and decided to try it.  

It seems like the section for Greek yogurt is overtaking the area for regular Yoplait yogurt!  Crazy! My thoughts?  Well, first of all, its a dollar for one container (too much).  Second, I do kind of like how much protein is in it and that there is a gram of fiber.  But, and third, I didn't like the texture. I think people like it because it is thicker than regular yogurt, but for me? Not so much.  I didn't even finish the container because of the texture.  And the "fruit on the bottom"?  To me it seemed just like a little raspberry jam put on the bottom...that didn't really do it for me either.

I've also been making a TON of pumpkin chocolate chip cookies...

I got a recipe for them from a friend and forgot that we didn't have any pumpkin, so we got two small cans of pumpkin puree.  Come to find out we had two BIG cans of pumpkin puree in the food closet.  The recipe calls for 1 cup of pumpkin and there is about 3 cups in one big can, so I pretty much have to triple the recipe.  I doubled this recipe and it made just a hair less than 9 dozen cookies.  They are almost gone (because they are soooooo delicious!), so I'll have to use the other cup here soon before it goes bad.  Oh dear...no...not more cookies! ;)  heeeheee....But its full of veggies, right? Pumpkin is a squash which is a vegetable...Right?!?!?!?  Yum! I usually don't like pumpkin cookies either, but these are waaaay good!

Also, I've been super into scones lately.  Not the ones you fry in the deep fryer for Navajo tacos, but the English kind.  I figured I would give this recipe a try, it is Simple Sweet Scones.

This recipe calls for a stick of butter, so they aren't necessarily healthy.  But they are so good! The first several times I made them I cut them into little circles like biscuits, but today I decided to cut them into wedges.  Hubby likes them too, so I've made them several times already.  No complaints here!  When I did the biscuit circles the recipe made about 14-15 scones, but today we did 8. And we always have them with some raspberry jam.  YUM!  The texture of these is kind of interesting because its kind of biscuity but its also kind of not.  They are pretty moist and buttery (obviously...).  They are really good! (did I already say that?) ;)  I really want to try some cinnamon scones that I found in Pinterestland too...but we'll have to wait for when I have some free time again.

The sweet little chickens have been laying pretty steadily this last week.  We have gotten one egg a day since the 1st, so today we got our 9th little egg.  But!  Oh wait...there was another one today! Yay!  So now we have gotten 10 total!

The brown one on the left is the same size as they were last time, they haven't really started getting super jumbo yet.  Both of the red sex links are laying eggs like that and alternate days because of the lack of daylight outside.  If we wanted as many eggs as we could get, we would probably put a light out there so that they would lay very regularly.  Something about the amount of light they get regulates their egg laying, its kind of weird.  The one on the right is a regular store bought egg and that sweet little white egg in the middle is from one of our brown leghorns that we got today!  (I only know that it is a leghorn egg because the leghorns are the only ones that will lay white eggs.) I'm so proud of them! :) Because we have so many of our own eggs now, we decided to weigh and see the difference between store eggs and ours to adjust for baking and all that.  The store eggs were 47 grams (without shell) and our eggs were about 42-44 grams.  I think that with the large eggs we don't need to adjust for baking but with the bantam eggs we definitely will need to.  Also, since we ate a bunch of eggs for breakfast this morning we decided to eat ours.  Yum!  Something interesting we noticed was the color of the yolks.  See below:

(Hubby was in charge of cracking the eggs and getting them ready...he got a little excited with the quantity!  But...we do love eggs!)  I think it is really interesting how dark our egg yolks are compared to the store bought.  Maybe its all the delicious grass and bugs and wormies they get, or maybe that is what you get with happy hens?...I don't know, but they are very good!!!

And last, but certainly not least...we got some delicious baking potatoes straight from Idaho that some of our friends gave us.  Yum!  So we decided to eat them with chili.  Because hubby and I don't hardly ever eat chili, we were wondering which kinds were best.  So, we both did some research, made a list of chilis that we wanted to try and we did a small chili taste test!  Yum!!  So here are the kinds that we did and some information about them.  I'll give the full name of the chili that we tried, the price that we paid for it, and a little bit of nutrition information.  All the cans provided 2 servings per can.
#1.  Campbell's Chunky Chili, Beef and Bean Roadhouse.  $2.59
Calories 240; Fat 8 g; Cholesterol 25 mg; Fiber 6 g; and Sodium 870 mg.
#2.  Hormel Chili with Beans.  $1.59
Calories 260; Fat 7 g; Cholesterol 30 mg; Fiber 7 g; and Sodium 900 mg.

#3.  HyVee Chili with Beans (store brand).  $1.49
Calories 280; Fat 11 g; Cholesterol 30 mg; Fiber 7 g; and Sodium 1300 mg.
#4.  Wolf Brand Chili, Mild, No Beans.  $1.34
Calories 340; Fat 24 g; Cholesterol 30 mg; Fiber 5 g; and Sodium 950 mg.

Unfortunately, we didn't have much criteria for the test, mostly taste and kind of texture.  A couple of things I would like to note before I give you our winner.  The first one, Campbells Chunky chili had extra chunks of veggies and stuff in it that hubby doesn't care for, but that didn't sway his decision.  I kind of liked the extra chunks that were there and it seemed really smooth.  The HyVee chili (#3) was a bit too salty or there was too much of something, not sure what (now that I Look at it again, there is 1300 mg of sodium, so that makes sense).  Also, the Wolf Brand chili (#4)....look at that texture!!  It looks soooo bad!  And when I opened it it smelled a bit like wet cat food or dog food.  Not very good.  Also, it has 80 to 100 more calories than the others!  And holy fat! 24g?! And not as much fiber either!  Wow!!!  But we proceeded with the test as planned regardless of initial thoughts.  And our winner?  That would be Hormel Chili with Beans (#2)!!!!  We both decided that we liked that one the most!  And number two was Campbells Chunky chili (#1).  The last two is where hubby and I disagreed, I put HyVee chili above Wolf Brand, and hubby put them the other way around.  So, we ate a little bit in the taste test then mixed them all together for the potatoes and ate them for a couple of dinners later that week!  It was kinda fun! :)

P.S. I really don't like daylight savings time.  Its 6:30 and so dark outside.  Feels like it should be so much later.  So annoying!
P.P.S.  What is the deal with microfiber cloths?  Why does everyone like them so much?  I do have a few and I kind of don't like to use them, but maybe I'm not using them for what I should be...They do hold a lot of water, which is kind of cool!  So, here's a question that anyone that reads this can answer if you like!  Why you like microfiber cloths so much?  Please tell me!  :) Have a good evening!
xoxo
c