To Heat or Not To Heat

Heating the coop. We have not heated our coop in past winters but this winter we installed a heat lamp. My thought on heating the coop is based on stories my Dad has told me about the coop that he had when he was a boy. He lived smack in the middle of South Dakota and the winters there were not kind. In the midst of blizzards and deep negative temperatures he and my grandparents had chickens for their eggs and meat. Never did they heat the coop. As my Dad tells it, chickens are like little mini heaters. They put off a bit of heat all on their own. Now this doesn't mean that a chicken isn't going to freeze if she was left out in the brutal cold of the dead of winter. What this does mean is that if you are smart about your chicken keeping in the middle of winter the chickens natural body heat will enable them to keep warm.  If you had only a few birds you might want to add a heat lamp to help them with staying warm. A few chickens will put off a little heat but not enough in the bitter cold temps to keep them warm. The more birds, the more heat they create. We have a group of 13 clucks and by their numbers should really be able to stay warm enough on their own without the need of a heat lamp. However they will be using all the energy they have to stay warm, taking away from energy used for laying eggs. In those brutal South Dakota winters my Dad would close up all the chickens in their coop and they would stay warm. He had quite a few chickens, so there was no need for a way to keep them warm. The clucks did it on their own. So for winters sake and staying warm without the use of a heat lamp the old saying "the more the merrier" applies. Or perhaps it should be "the more the warmer." The more chickens there are in a coop the more heat they create. This is all providing you have a draft free coop with deep litter to help insulate the floor from the cold.

Ideas

      Tossing around ideas for around here. Lots of them. Not necessarily because it's the new year. But because we as a family have had some good down time these past few weeks for Christmas and New Years. We all had some good time off from work/school and in general being busy. So we were able to talk about our ideas for what we wanted to see done around here.

-Ideas like a walking path from the patio to the clucks coop and then over to the fire pit area.

          -Raising the roof of the clucks run. Our son is nearly as tall as I am now and even he has problems with squatting down to get in the run area to put down the food. Time to raise the roof so the run is more kind to our backs. I think the clucks will like the taller space too. We will be finding some large tree branches to put inside for them to get up on to roost. We will all be much happier.

        -Adding more clucks to our little flock. Husband and Son are both wanting to add some little banty hens to the flock. I would like to add another Easter Egger and a Wyandott or maybe some Faverolle. Not sure but wanting good egg layers. So we'll see what's out there this year in the way of choices from our local farm supply. 

      -We want to plant a garden this year. Since we took last year off. This year something smaller and started from seeds. 

           -I would like to see the porch cover done that Husband has been wanting for several years too. Not sure if we'll manage that but we'll keep it on our list.                -Moving the strawberry patch to a different location.                                       - Planting more trees.       Then there is all the up keep. Trimming up the berry vines, staying up with the

  weeds when the time comes and preparing the garden area to be planted.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

No Resolutions; Continuing Growth

There's a lot of talk this time of year about resolutions. I am not one that usually makes resolutions. This year has been nothing but change for us here at 3Beeze. Lifestyle changes. Those are the kinds of things I think of when it's time for resolutions. My strength of faith, my courage and core have been put to the test over the last year and a half. I learned a lot about myself and about living life.  So rather then one or two things I could put my finger on to resolve to change, its more a whole package thing for me. Growing my faith, standing firm on the strength that I have, not only on the surface but the deep down inner strength that stands firm at my core,  pushing aside doubt and allowing my courage to remain solidly on the surface. Not trying to make a difference in the lives of others but living my life in such a way that it makes a difference in others lives. Seeing things as they are, not how I think they should be. Noticing the small details in the life around me and not being so busy that all I see is the big picture. Life has so many things to share with us. To keep moving forward and being thankful for my blessings, even the ones that don't seem so much like blessings at the time.  

                                                                             

Keeping Traditions

     Keeping traditions. I find myself doing this a lot. Most of the things that make good sense around here come from the knowledge and activities from the past. One of these traditions I find myself doing often is sewing. I come from a family of seamstress'. Both my Aunts on my Mom's side are accomplished seamstress'. As well as my Mom. My Mom is always up to making something. She makes a lot of her own clothes as well as clogging outfits for her clogging team. She is constantly sewing. When she isn't sewing clothes she is making something creative. Usually for my niece, like costumes or doll clothes. When my Sister and I were small I remember my Mom sewing for our Christmas gifts. She made us pj's, new dresses for Christmas eve church service, dolls, doll clothes, quilts. She was always sewing something then and has continued to do so through the years. She even took on making my wedding gown. No easy task, I assure you. A treasure in it's own right. In keeping traditions I found myself doing what I know my Mom did so many years ago when I was little, spending hours with her sewing machine, except now it's me. Sewing up some love and giving it as gift treasures. Oh and by the way, I am sure that my Mom is still spending hours  with her sewing machine. That I think will never change. 

The quilt I am making for my son for Christmas. Born from a comment he made while we were talking about how we were going to have a light Christmas this year in gifts and instead enjoy being with each other. He told me that all he wanted from me for Christmas was a box with my love wrapped up inside. The quilt was the best way I could think of to give him my love in a box.

Here the quilt is almost finished. Hand finishing the binding to the back is all that is left to do and it will be complete.

A pillowcase for my niece. A tradition that began when she was a little one. She loves the cases. I make a few for her each Christmas and on her Birthday. 

She has quite the collection now. I always have fun making them and I know she really diggs using them . Never too many cases right? ;)

Matching pj's for my niece and her extra special stuffed rabbit. 

                                           

Never Ending To Do's

Outside preparations. On going it seems. Or never ending is a better way to put it. It seems that I have been trying to wrap things up outside since September. Every time I think I am close to the end - the end seems to move farther away. I have been trying my hardest to get things complete before the bad weather sets in. I did manage to get some of these things done in some really beautiful weather. One of those things was the cleaning out and resealing of the gutters and their joints. No pictures of this, cause well, gutters are not that interesting and who wants to see dirty gutters. I know I didn't.

Stain. It could be a spot of something mysterious from who knows where on your favorite shirt of pair of jeans but in this instance it's wood stain. You can see in this picture how dry the wood is for the fence of the coop. The front and one top plank on the side of the fence have been stained. The bottom two planks along the side have not yet had the stain applied. The difference was amazing. 

Once again stain. We treat the coop with stain about this time every year. Whether it needs it or not. Clearly, as you can see by the picture it is in desperate need of a good staining. The right side around the window has newly applied stain. The rest hasn't yet been done. 

What a difference stain can make. The coop has a new coat of stain all the way around. Protected against the elements for another year. The clucks may not notice or care but I do. Now when I look out my kitchen window I smile at what a beautiful coop the Lady Clucks have. 

I moved all of the plants in from the patio to the mud room. They are quite happy there and have gifted me with some new blooms. 

Last week was a busy week for us here. All of that busyness tumbled right over into the weekend. 

Thank You

The words thank you do not convey the depth of our gratitude for those who have given so much of themselves for this country we call home. We have many family members and friends who have served and are currently serving in our great nations military. We here at 3Beeze Homestead hold great pride and are humbly honored to call these people friends, fathers, uncles, aunt, cousin, grand fathers and great grandmother.                                                                                                         

Weekend Recap

    We have had one busy end to October and start of November. I can not believe that we are nearing the end of this year. With birthdays and holidays around the corner we have a busy next few months ahead as well. Note to self-don't forget to stop and smell the coffee.  We had lots of to do's this weekend and only managed to check a few off of our list. (We didn't have a list. But you know what I mean.) 

I love Geraniums. I remember my mom always having them when I was a kid. Hers were pink. So each summer I go out and get my Geraniums. Red ones. Love the red. Each year when we get the freezing temps I lose them. The leaves get all sucked up looking and brown. This year I intend to keep these little pretties alive in our mudroom/laundry room. No sense in wasting these happy, colorful bits of summer. You all know how much I love summer. 

So I trimmed all of the brown sucked up leaves off. To find that these plants still had some life left and not all was lost in the recent below freezing temps. Very happy about this. I had to replant them in some smaller pots in order to move them indoors. They seem quite happy in their new digs. Now all I have to do is not forget to water them.

We had some raking to do this weekend as well. We still have lots more to do. I managed to get the area around the coop and run raked out. The roof to the run raked off and the run raked and cleaned out. Now that the walnut tree has lost all of its leaves and the dang walnuts, it was safe to get in and get things all cleaned up with out the worry of being assaulted by walnuts falling from the tree. They hurt when they hit you. 

As you can see in this picture and the one above our ugly girl is finally getting some feathers back. She has been in a molt since February. I am happy to see signs of her getting her feathers back. Our other hens have been molting here and there but not with quite as much gusto as this Australorp. Our egg production has dropped off considerably the last months of summer and this past week we have been two days with not a single egg. We got one egg on Saturday and nothing again yesterday. These clucks better get laying. I need eggs!!!

In all of the activity this weekend, raking leaves, moving trailers, cleaning gutters and the clucks coop and run we managed to enjoy the outside and had some nice weather. While we were outside we let the clucks out to forage in the yard and piles of leaves. They can really do a number on a nice pile of leaves. Our Easter Egger rooster Little Bit was working hard at his rooster duties. We have a resident mama hawk who resides in the trees by the creek and guess what? She decided it was time to do some hunting. I heard her and kept an ear open to where her squawks were coming from. Most of her noise was coming from a distance but one was directly over head. I looked up and sure enough there she was. Looking to mark her target. I looked into the yard and saw that Little Bit had all of his ladies gathered underneath the big pine tree. He had heard her too. What a good boy.

I told the guys and we hurried to get the ladies into the safety of their covered run. Little Bit was quite happy with that and remained in the yard with us guarding his precious ladies. The lady clucks were quite happy to be in their run. Preening themselves in the sun after foraging in the yard. 

Not everything that we had intended to do this weekend got done but we did do some of it, as well as some things that we hadn't intended on doing. Most importantly we enjoyed each others company.