SUweeetnesss!

The Baby Serama's are here!

Look at these colors!! :) that red is mahogany.. wonder what their Big Bird feathers will come in like?

The ducks have Their Eye on Something... (an airplane)

This is Farm Cat (otherwise known as Tiger) and this is how she is usually seen--as a blur.. here... then over there...

Farm Cat wishes for a bigger fence post...

it is only slightly satisfactory for viewing the

Cat Kingdom

Cuteness overload!

Uno and Dos are good mamma's to the Three Amigos .. They are sharing motherhood nicely.

Terrible luck with the incubator!

NONE of the eggs made it..

BUT.. the duck eggs under the silkies are all pipping, so I am very hopeful that some of those hatch out nicely. Call ducks are so hard to hatch!

So keep your fingers crossed for me that these little guys make it outa those eggs over the next few days!

I have also put several more eggs under the latest broody hens. Yay for broody hens! :D

****UPDATE****

so far, this morning before I left (4/26) there were THREE little cuties under Silkie #1

~woot woot!~

*****UPDATE 4/28****

Only 3 of the 8 eggs under the silkies hatched out and survived. What a challenge Calls are! But these little guys are so tiny and cute, they have been worth it. I learned several things for sure this go 'round. I'll put up pictures this weekend.

Some Spring stuff going on around the Holler...

Ignorance is bliss... or Call before you DIG... that fence post is awfully close to a gas line!!! oops....

Big Bird (our ONE standard chicken--she is a Light Brown Leghorn)

PLLLEEEEZE come feeeeed meee!

Here's Cam trying to sweet talk the babies to eat corn out of his hand... Tufty is unfortunately a roo, but he is going to a GREAT home very soon.. Black Bird will stay and be introduced to the main flock soon.. She will join Susan in laying beautiful blue eggs for us! :)

~~ getting ready to split our hive~~

The main hive.. it is doing well and is very strong this Spring... It's a little cool today, so the girls weren't flying much.

Here is the new hive..we have more supers to put on top as soon as the bees are ready. The original queen died, so we replaced her last Tuesday. So far everything seems to be doing ok.

Little Baby SPINACHES! :)

And little baby Snow peas!

sad news..

But probably to be expected with my inexperience... all but 3 of the 9 call duck eggs in the incubator died at some point. I believe it was from a temperature drop that was pretty drastic a few days ago, and improper humidity levels. So, Cameron and I keep a really close eye on that thermometer at this point and are crossing our fingers for these last three! I am trying something to help with the humidity, we will see if that works. I have a damp paper towel in there with the eggs. I might try a sponge as it gets closer to hatch time to keep levels up.. *crossing fingers* Hatch day for these guys is May 6th--which at this time seems like light years away!!

The duck eggs under the silkies are due to hatch next week--Monday or Tuesday-- Those eggs seem to be pretty healthy right now. :)

So.. We went away for the Easter Weekend..to do what we love to do as a family -->play at the dunes on our quads with a bunch of our friends. Check out our pictures HERE! :) As you might imagine it can be really hard to find someone to take care of The Farm... Taking care of the farm is always relaxing and I love to go putter in the yard with the goats and the chickens after work--I find it helps me wind down and just reconnect. But it's definitely not for everyone! :) as Nathan reminds me--"it's just MORE TO DO!"

We found someone to do it for us, she actually does pet sitting as a business, although, don't know if 'pets' included chickens and goats! ~lol~ She was excited to do it either way. Being the nervous mom that I am, we did a run thru and I pointed out what was going on around the yard, said I'd also leave a detailed note on The Care and Feeding.. I told you I am a nervous mom right!? Mostly all I care about is that no one's food and water run dry, all else will be on cruise control for a few days. In my note I said DON'T TAKE THE EGGS FROM UNDER THE SILKIES! Unfortunately the note wasn't read immediately and the eggs were removed. I was terribly sad, but on the bright side...I had gathered up 9 duck eggs before we left and stuck them in our little incubator. Cameron and I put those new eggs under the girls, so they continue to sit for us and the new eggs are due to hatch April 26th.... I also found another clutch of duck eggs to put in the incubator--which I did last night--nine more! :) It will be warmer by the time these new babes hatch, which is good. So all in all, despite the disappointment, it will probably be better.

Here's some of the eggs in the incubator... hard to get good light there so it looks funny...

a sittin' silkie--that's her bottom poking out there...

And the other sittin' silkie.. I did try to get some pictures of the actual eggs, but I just can't get it to turn out very well. There is a post on Backyard Chickens that shows really great embryo development... you can view those pictures here... Really really -- go check them out! :)

**I LOVE to use cardboard boxes for nesting. when they are gross, you can just compost 'em!**