Monday, September 9, 2013

My quest for easy to peel fresh boiled eggs comes to an end





It worked WOO HOO easy to peel fresh boiled eggs :D

Room temp water to start add salt, boil... while boiling eggs get a bowl of ice cold water ready to place eggs in...
move eggs from the pot straight to the cold water, adding more ice as needed to keep really cold.. 
 we never have an on hand supply of ice so I used frozen water bottles ( took 3 of them to keep the water cold )
I've tried the ice thing before but guessing I didn't keep the water cold enough long enough... I got busy and left them in about 30 minutes.... worked great :D

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

little ones

We have wanted Jersey Giants from the start of our chicken keeping...
 
a few weeks ago hubby sent the guys and I to get layer feed thinking it was safe as they haven't had any chicks for awhile now...
well he would have been right if someone hadn't placed a special order that the owner added a few extra to just in case..
         we were at the right place at the right time :D





meet our new pullets :D







Just before this happened two of our hens went broody
our game hen and one of our production reds
after fighting them for a few days I gave up thinking they would give up themselves as they have before
not this time...the game hen was clearly stealing eggs from some of the other hens.. we found brown and green eggs under her ....still not sure how she pulled that off....lol

After a few days with less eggs in the other nesting area we went looking under the red...some of the other reds were laying along side of her and she just took care of them....we found 41 eggs in the nest with her...we pulled 31 and marked the ones we left thinking we could tell the new ones from the old...all the other eggs we placed in the incubator...I couldn't just leave them to die..it worked for a few days...but the markings came off...at about this time we found a chick by the game hen...she wanted nothing to do with it...into another brooder area for it as it was too small to go in with the others...the next day one hatched in the incubator...cool it wasn't alone.. such a sweetie needed a friend...while we were working inside with that one another was hatched in the coop...well almost hatched...the game hen sat on it poor little guy...at this point I got tired of not getting any eggs to eat ( what can I say I'm hooked ) we pulled all of the eggs under both of them...the red had managed to get another 20 or so eggs under her.. plus the 10 we left...
We removed the rooster weeks before this as he was getting really ugly...thinking it was a pure waste of eggs we wanted it over with....not knowing what ones were old or new coupled with being out of time and no batteries for the flashlight we just put all of them in the incubator.....without candling them

these 2 hatched earlier today  





 
these two are now out of the shell drying
 
 
 
soon to be put in by these guys
so far we have 16 not counting the two who didn't make it out of the shell....with more peeping going on...they are so cute and sweet even though daddy was mean. They look like him he was an australorp although some have red around their combs....

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Jorden's garden

Jorden has made a lot of changes to the garden this year, some due to our pets...like the repurposed wood fence to keep our doggie from eating all the chili and tomatoes lol
 


We saw a post on FaceBook where they were using their empty feed bags as planters...we needed to give that a try...works great...he wanted some onion seeds so we let a few flower :D
The garlic chives, parsley, catnip and oregano are coming along nicely

Our white sage is doing great


The red sunflowers came up on their own this year...the grapes are doing better than ever thanks to the chicken droppings :)

 
 
 
 
 
 
common sage is flowering again
 
 
 
 
 
The only issue right now is this little guys they are so small they can get through the fence right into the garden...so we need to replant a lot of the greens...at least they had a good meal if it lol
 

Seed bead earrings with chart ( 9 across )



Monday, June 3, 2013

Seed bead Butterfly earrings with chart # 2



Seed bead butterfly earrings with chart # 1



Seed bead earrings

I have always loved playing with beads, long before I started to knit I had a stash of beads....in so many shapes and sizes, I can get lost for hours looking through them lol
 
I saw a pair of earrings one of our friends had on ( thanks Kamy ) and needed to try my hand at making a pair or two ;)
you can use so many different kinds of beads, the possibilities are endless, they are quickly made and best of all FUN to make
 
 
I started out small
 
           
                                        I love fire polished glass beads so....
 
 
even beads that have a less then uniform sizing can be used
 
with as many colors as you like