Veterans Day Twenty-Eleven

What a beautiful day in NE North Carolina!  We enjoyed a great day outside in the garden playing with the pups!

Our six pack!

Max sunbathing in the garden

Eight chicks joined the flock this week. Another successful hatch by one of the local home school groups.  More should arrive this week from one of the schools.  It's kinda late for this project but we just can't say no the the school kids.  We love that they ask for our eggs for their embryology project.

We finally got the fall garden planted....put in some radishes, lettuce and spinach.  Hopefully these will still come up in time for us to enjoy.

Fall Planting

The first tomato and the Chicken Swap!








Where has the time gone?!  So much has happened out in the gardens!  Beautiful gardenias are blooming along with zinnias, petunias, and the daylilies, omg, the daylilies have started to bloom! 



The young hens



growing up fast

The young hens are growing up fast, and are now laying, I have been collecting some small brown eggs the past week. 


The Chicken Swap!

I went to a chicken swap last weekend.  What is a chicken swap you ask?  Approximately 20 people showed up and lined the parking lot of our local feed store and had their boxes, crates and cages with chicks, chickens, turkeys, and some even brought goats!  I took 13   2 1/2 week old chicks and some pickled eggs.  Sold the eggs before I could get my cooler unloaded!  Yippie!  It was sooooo funny, everyone was talking chickens....even had a few folks show me their trick to deciding if the chicks were hens or roosters.  Okay, I did bring home some chicks : )   I sold 5 chicks, bought 2 day old chicks and traded for 3 more, they were soooo cute I couldn't resist....




Happy Dog Barb!



Sissy after a hard day at work...



Zinnia Sprouts!

19 new chicks arrived yesterday!!  boy they are cute! 


Zinnia Bed



This is what I came home to the other day, a new zinnia bed!  We planted the flower seeds right away....

been eating asparagus like crazy, they are so yummy...the radishes are doing great also.

These are the chicks from the feed store,
 boy have they grown!






Max hangin' out

 

Zinnia Sprouts!



Nice View - planting iris's

What's in bloom: Dogwood Trees, Azelea, and Iris....



Azelea



White Iris



  



Pixie and Barb

 


Happy Hens!!



Mexican Sunflower
I only got about 1/4 of this one cleaned up


What a great day outside today!!  I was able to get about four large plants cleaned up and weeded...which took me half way across the front of the house and part of the south end of the house...the asparagus had gone crazy these past few days with the rain we had, I cut about 2 lbs. of asparagus today and we had some for dinner, yummy! 





Clara Curtis Mum

 Let the new young hens out and they are being curious and cute.  Note to self take pictures of the young hens.....I was also able to pot up some mexican sunflowers and coreopsis, I love yellow flowers. 






Happy Hens hanging out in the front yard



Whats in bloom: cherry tree, daffodils, carolina jasmine.





Yummy Radishes!

What a great weekend out in the yard!  Everything has grown so much the last few days...we moved the chicks to their inside area to make roosting with the others easier for them.  I hope we can let them out to play this weekend.  The grass is starting to turn green, it's so bleak here in the winter all brown and dead, and then it rains and rains and it all turns green, it's beautiful.  The cherry tree is blooming ooooh and the iris's, did I mention the iris's, early bloomers here are the purple and the white ones. 

Radishes



Sugar Snaps



Day Lilies and Onions




Max and Barb!




Pixie



Front Garden, looking a little bare, needs mulch bad!



Yummy radishes!  Small but oh so good!



A Beautiful Day in NE NC!

Washington Hawthorn



  

Magnolia

Today was an amazing day in the yard!  It was 60 degrees mid-day with lots of sunshine!  We planted three types of onions and sugar snaps....The new young hens are growing like mad, today they got to play in the sunshine.  They live in a spacious rabbit hutch and have been in the box part of the hutch with a heat lamp, but today they went out in the wire part and had fun flapping, flying and running all around enjoying some fresh air and sunshine.  I collected 2 1/2 dozen eggs today, and it will only get better.  We had a great time wandering around checking out what is blooming. The trees are busting out all over the place.




Planting Onions



Whats in bloom: Washington Hawthorn, Cleveland Pear, Bradford Pear, Forsythia, Daffodils, and Quince.

 The Maganolia and Weeping Willow aren't flowering, but they were so pretty I just had to share.

  

Radishes!



Weeping Willow



Planting Sugar Snaps

Forsythia

Pixie resting in the shade

All Done!

 



Pixie loves her some chicks!

She would stand there all day if we let her. 

The new chicks are one and a half weeks old and have been moved outside to their new home for the next month.  They kept trying to escape from this tub and with five dogs in the house that's not a good thing. 

What's blooming:  Haven't had a chance to walk around and check out the flowering trees, they should be busting out soon.

New additions to the flock



5 rhode island reds; 3 golden sex links, 2 black sex links



We have 10 new hens added to the flock this weekend.  They are soooo cute!  We wanted to add some 'new blood' to the coop, so I went by the local feed store and picked up week old pullets.  These girls should start laying in as soon as 4 months. Didn't get out in the yard much this weekend, it rained ALL day today. 








What's in bloom:  forsythia

Forsythia



Sunflower Seeds Planted!



Crocus



Quacker and his Ladies

 

The resident rooster 'Friend' and a hen



Today we planted sunflower seeds, 8-10 foot sunflowers! We have had these before and they are amazing.  Also did some work in the veggie garden, just some clean up and got out the fencing for the sugar snap peas, yummy, can't wait to plant these. We got the water barrel in the chicken pen moved and a nesting box set up for more places for the hens to lay eggs.  It got up into the 60's today and mid day was nice and warm. 

In bloom today:  nandina



You can't really see them
but there are radishes popping up





















Saturday in the Garden!

 

Daffodils



Crocus






Sissy



Barb



Today we we're able to get outside, lots of sunshine and a warm 50 degrees, at least for a few hours.  The radishes planted two weeks ago are up and look good.  The spinach has started to come up also.  The flower gardens around the cabin look really good, the weeds have not started to grow and we have been keeping up with our weeding program.  It was decided that we would removed one clump of grass from the flower bed each day.  We weeded the quince and it looks GREAT! 



Max


What is blooming now: early daffodils and crocus



We counted 60 hens today, they were beautiful out free ranging in the yard.  The egg count has gone up from 8 a day to 11 eggs a day.  The hens are happy and ready for spring!