All's Quiet on the (Mid)Western Front.

Not a lot going on at the moment.  We're doing the dailies, of course, and waiting for snow.  Other than that, things are slow.  It's been gray and overcast for most of the week, making for lousy picture-taking conditions as well as an acute case of homebody-itis.  I had an death-defying bout of what we'll politely call "gastro" last week, and actually went so far as to spend a full day in bed and drink several bottles of vile Gatorade.  (UGH.)  That, combined with the dismal weather, has made me feel like curling up with a book and a mug of hot soup and blowing off the real world.

But the guts are doing much better, thank you, and we actually got some snow this afternoon, so I'm a tidge  more chipper than I've been.  My new cell phone is on its way--- since the old one disapparated two weeks ago and, providentially, I was due for an upgrade.  Those of you who haven't heard from me in a fortnight can rest assured that I'll be programming in your personal ringtones by Tuesday evening.

The kiddos and I are dreaming of the garden we're going to create this spring.  Milwaukee has finally passed its chicken law---city residents are able to have up to 4 chooks---and Akiva is bursting with mini-coop plans and breed options.  The girls are eying seed catalogs and debating the virtues of raspberries over blueberries, and I'm trying to fathom our 95% concrete back yard growing anything.  Lots of raised beds, I suppose.  Yup, feels like January.

My Creative Space: Where the heck has she been?

I've been flying off the radar these past few weeks, not being very creative at all.

There's been loads of baking---The "Honey Bears" are an annual Rosh Hashannah tradition chez nous, and Shani and Chevi were especially helpful this year.

With all of the preparations for the holidays, I've had ample opportunity to sit back and giggle at the spontaneous cleverness of my offspring. (The tin reads "Salmon (cute fishy drawing and arrow) except dead and baked."  Droll, no?)

: 

There's been sukkah-building, and the inevitable "small-child-with-sharp-object" interlude.

Of course, we've done our share of chicken-wrangling and egg-hunting (Akiva discovered an egg in the water dish yesterday!)

And with the return of the (marginally) cooler weather, there's been some comfort food on the stove.

Pardon my stultifying lack of food styling skill---this stuff was too good not to mention.  Sauteed onion, garlic, and diced tomatoes simmered with lentils and bulgur and a little tomato paste.  Basil, thyme, rosemary and a pinch of red pepper, combined with wholewheat noodles and scarfed down by a notable majority of my constituency.

So, next week, I hope, I'll be a little craftier.  Meanwhile, you can get your fix over at kootoyoo. 

Drumroll, please....

Since the appearance of our first egg, we've been adding them to the blue bow l and waiting for there to be enough of these homegrown beauties to taste. We gave the first egg to our super-fab, chicken-tending neighbor, EJ, and finally racked up 5 more---sufficient to scramble, serve, and dole out to the hungry masses. (never before have I felt so much like the lead in a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie...)

The verdict? These are some gooooood eggs. Even the kids noticed. The yolks are more orange than yellow, and the shells are thicker than those of our usual, bulk-bought eggs. They taste "eggier," Akiva says, and I'm inclined to agree. All in all, worth the wait, the work, and the worries...now if the rest of our little brood could get their laying in gear, we'd be in business!

Mazel Tov!

With unbridled gratitude to the One Above, 

we are pleased as punch to announce 

the long-anticipated arrival of...

our first egg!  

Moshe Yosef found it on a routine water check. 

Whoo-Hoo!

Good Intentions

A Good Wife has the foresight to go to the feed store to pick up bedding and feed for the chooks, who'll be in the care of her Patient Husband while she's off playing at camp all summer.  Knowing the Rampant Educational Opportunities that await behind those heavy glass doors ---plants! critters! tools! commerce!--- a Good Mother  brings a handful of her offspring along for the ride.  While the aforementioned mother blithely debates the merits of grape versus cherry tomatoes , her vigilant spawn rescue an unfortunate sparrow from the masticating maw of the feline-in-residence.  Having accomplished his good deed for the day, her son endears himself to the proprietor (and owner of the bloodthirsty beast) and interrupts the Tomato Quandary to share some noteworthy news.  Proffering cupped---and peeping---hands, he whispers gleefully, "I got a present!"

It's a Guinea Fowl.  By way of endorsement, the girl at the checkout assured us that Guinea Fowl are both loud and stupid, opening up a plethora of potential names for our newest pet.  They're great "watchdogs," she said, and have a quirky tendency to lay their eggs in other animals' dens.

We call it Kit.  Kit the 'keet.  It peeped piercingly through the first two hours of the evening, and was finally soothed to sleep by the sounds of  KIOA: Iowa's Greatest Hits.  Who woulda thunk it?

(And, yes, my camera is back---and all fixed!)

Girls' (First) Night Out!

Thanks to a heroic effort on the part of the whole littlegreenbums crew, the chooks spent their first night in Ye Olde Chicken Coope on Friday.  We got the door hung, the run covered, the roosts up, and the straw bedding down, (in addition to the usual Shabbos preparations) and introduced the ladies to their new home an hour before candlelighting.  The were a little shell-shocked at first,  but we spent a pleasant couple of hours watching them forage in the run this afternoon.  It takes a bit of coaxing to get them to use the gangplank (in either direction) but they seem to be more than a little intrigued by their new homemade feeder.  Still need to put up the shingles, extend the roof a tad --look, Ma, more blonde measuring skills!-- and do some touch-up painting on the morrow. 

Right now, though, I'm off to the sewing table to whip up some wide headbands---to camouflage Shani's sister-inflicted haircut. 

nifty photo by allatseawithabucketandspade.wordpress.com/2008/06/16/seco...

My Creative Space: MIA

I'm taking a little break this week to celebrate Shavuous with my family. (Think cheesecake.  And Bananagrams.)  The coop is milimeters away from finished...the run is attached, the roof is up, and all I need to do is add the people door and a boatload of shingles, and the chooks can send out the invitations to their coop-warming party.  (Think I'm kidding?  I'm inviting any dubious neighbors to meet the girls up close and personal!)
Make sure you check out the rest of the Creative Spaces on Wednesday night over at kootoyoo!

In which I soar to new heights of housewifery, carpentry, and general spazziness

Baked my first kokosh cake.  (You might call it a babka, but, really, the two are vastly different.  Pay attention.)  Really yum.  Really over-the-top fattening.  Really worth it...on occasion.

Built the nest-boxes, which have (sadly, literally) kept me awake nights.  Lots of nights.  I am so not a spatial thinker, and this was an absolute nightmare for the likes of me.  It actually came together fairly well in real-life, but while I was working it out in my head (over and over) it was terrifying.

Still need to add the flap, lock, and paint the whole kit and kaboodle.  But this is big progress, gang.

The coop, from the street, is a sedate coppery color, which blends nicely with the peachy brick of our humble abode.  But on the other side, where the neighbors can't see it, we have...

The Gangplank of Utter Fabulousness!

Makes me giggle just to look at it.

Gigantic plans for the morrow include putting up the roof (!) 

making the laptop sleeve my eldest has requested, 

and cooking and baking for Shavuous.

(Also trolling for nifty birthday ideas for our littlest princess' second birthday!)

My Creative Space...ad nauseum

 Ha!  I'll bet you thought, just for a split second, that I was going to write a creative-garden-space post this week and that you'd finally be freed from the h-e-double-toothpicks that is Ye Olde Chicken Coope.  I know that the checkout girls at Hy-vee have stopped making eye contact with me, and the guys at Home Depot run for cover when The Green Machine pulls into the parking lot.  So it would stand to reason that you were hoping to hear about the peonies blooming in my yard, or the ferns invading the compost heap, or even that I've yet to transplant the seedlings that are growing in egg cartons in the Haven O' Craft. Even you, Gentle Readers, must be getting sick of hearing about Ye Olde Chicken Coope.  Heck, I'm getting sick of it, but the Coop Fairy seems to have taken a sabbatical this spring.  Either that, or she hates me.  Regardless, she's nowhere to be found, so I plod onward.

Let's zoom out a bit, shall we, and see what this week's Creative Space is looking like:

Yeppers.  More framing.  But we're making progress, I tell you...the wall that you're looking at will contain the official escape hatch for the chickies...allowing them entry to their luxurious run.  (Assuming, that is, that I manage to finish the blinkin' thing before they reach the end of their natural lifespans...)  This little adventure in carpentry reminded me why I'm not a quilter.  Well, it reminded me why I'm not a good quilter, anyway.  That old adage "measure twice, cut once?"  Whoever came up with that gem clearly didn't have me in mind.  "Measure thrice, come up with three different measurements, go for the average, cut once, and end up short anyway," seems to be more my style. 

Here's how the wall looked when I called it quits this afternoon.  The windows are functional in thet they'll allow light in to the coop, but they don't do much for ventilation.  The middle of the middle section there is going to be the "pop door," which will (please, G-d) open and close guillotine-style.

If anybody out there is feeling the urge to get creative with power tools and OSB, feel free to drop in by.  I'll make cookies...

Check out kootoyoo for more creative spaces!

Framed!

I took woodshop in middle school.  I spent an entire nine weeks cutting, shaping, and sanding a...pair of salad tongs.  Not sure what the logic was behind the tongs, exactly, but that was the assignment, and by golly, that's what I made.  They were lovely.  In making my tongs, I used lots of large, noisy tools.  I wore eye protection.  With that kind of carpentry experience tucked snugly under my belt, my chicken-housing project should have been little more than a walk in the park, no?  No.  No park-walking here, boys and girls.  Let me share with you an excerpt (verbatim) from today's episode of Power Tools in the Playroom.

Me: (on cell phone, having reached the frayed end of my proverbial rope) Honey, I'm having a tough time with the back wall.  I can't get the kind of leverage I need to sink the screws all the way.
Jess:  How come?
Me:   Well, it's 6 feet tall, and I just can't get behind the drill like I did on the others.  How would you do it?
Jess:  I'd frame it up on the floor, I guess...butt it up against the wall.  That way you've got all the leverage you need.


Me:   Uh-huh.  (meaningful pause.)
Jess:  What's wrong?

Me: Just to clarify...
Jess: Yeah?

 Me:   This process should not involve me standing on chairs?
Jess: (coughing suspiciously) Um, no.  Not so much.

Me: Because that's how I did the first three.  On a chair.  With a lot of swearing. In Pig Latin.
Jess: You're breaking up.  I'll talk to you when I get home.

Yeah.  So the final wall went together like butter...in roughly a third of the time it took to assemble each of the others.  Which brings me to another handy little trick-of-the-trade I thought I'd pass along for those of you less-than-savvy carpenters out there:  The Pre-Drilled Hole.  When your husband tells you to pre-drill the holes for your screws, he does not mean that you should drill each hole just before you put in the screw, while standing on a chair and cursing in fluent igPay atinLay.  He means, Clever Clogs, that you should put the amnday board on the sawhorses (NOT  on the arms of the playroom couch) and drill all 7 sets of holes before you do anything else.  And then, while you've still got the drill bit in the drill, go ahead and do the other board the same way.  Then, my little Ty Pennington wannabe, you can switch to the Phillips bit and attach the whole kit and kaboodle at once.  Just sayin'.

So the framing is done, and tomorrow I'll be digging a trench to put the pavers on before we raise the walls.  Meanwhile, those chickies were growing like a time-elapsed National Geographic special from 1978, so the kids and I rigged up a halfway house for them. It's a bit more spacious, and allows the girls to get reacquainted after their long separation in two separate brooders. 

Growth spurt, gray skies, and a little ingenuity

The chooks seem to have gone from featherweights to almost-hens  in no time flat.  I went in this morning to feed and water them, and realized that they're fast outgrowing their brooder boxes.  Hence, Yours Truly needed to step up production on Ye Olde Chicken Coope.  And yet, the weather outside has been grizzly and cold for the past few days---certainly not conducive to fun-filled family times in the yard with power tools, but what's a gal to do?  In this particular case, the only tenable solution was to make (yet another) lumber run (making sure to fork over a roll of quarters for the guy in the orange apron to do my dirty work for me) and to shlep all those freshly hewn studs down to the playroom for a good, old-fashioned coop raising.  (I'll leave out the part about running out of gas on the way out of the parking lot.  And the part where the guy who's "been in lumber for 25 years" spent a solid 15 minutes of my afternoon trying to convince me that there was no such thing as a 2x3. )  Anyway, the only hitch in my plan was that the big kids seem to have burned out on the idea of building.  So it was me and the three littles (all noteworthy for their precocious construction skills) assembling the first 2 walls of the hen-house-to-be.  There did seem to be some significant benefits to the "inside construction" plan, though.  I found it much less nerve-wracking to supervise the munchkins whilst I toiled, knowing that there were locked doors between them and passing vehicles, friendly dogs, and curious Child Safety workers.

My Creative Space: A Little Bit Wonky

So, getting the lumber pre-cut was a good idea.  The framework for the run went up pretty durned quick ,to my unabashed delight.  The tricky part (you know, the bit that's consumed the most of two days and will, no doubt, devour my Thursday in huge, hacking gulps?) has been screwing the hardware cloth to the framework.*  We're talking quadrillions of screws and washers here, folks.  (Not to mention more trips to the hardware hop to buy said screws and washers than I really care to recall...) 

And in case you're wondering, you can't just walk into Lowe's and tell the guy that you need some 3" screws.  Because then, he will indubitably give you regular screws, when what you're really after are exterior deck screws.  And obviously, there is a vast and endlessly significant difference between these two sorts of screws, and you should really, really know better.  (If you think for one millisecond that I returned to the hardware store to exchange the inappropriate screws for a box of hardware better suited to the task, you thought very wrong. I'll take the consequences of my recklessness on the chin, thank you very much, but I will not make a  Lowe's run thrice in a 24 hour period.  Nuh-uh.)

Tomorrow is Hinge-the-Fourth-Wall-to-the-Existing-Three Day, and we're all looking forward. 

*  In case, heaven forfend, my little venture in carpentry has inspired you to try building a chicken run of your very own, take heed: 

If your hardware cloth is 3 feet wide, you should not, for the love of all that is holy, skip blithely forward and make your run 3 feet tall.  Read my lips:  2' 8".  How I wish some enlightened soul had shared this single pearl of wisdom with me.

Zip over to Kirsty's and "chick" out this week's Creative Spaces.

A forkful of humble pie

I fully intended to build Ye Olde Chicken Coope out of reclaimed materials.  I planned to do it myself, without any help from the Hubs or our pal Dan, The Handiest Man On Earth.  I was sure I'd spend less on the whole shebang than I would on a single carton of free-range eggs.  I envisioned a whimsical-yet-sturdy home for my little chooks that would  make Rosie the Riveter proud.

I scoured Craigslist, Freecycle, and the occasional Dumpster for free materials.  I visited the local Habitat for Humanity store---and emerged with just enough hardware cloth to cover our existing brooder.  (I did, however, score a trio of vintage windows from our wonderful neighbor---Thanks, EJ!---but have come to terms with the fact that, um, I have nary a clue how to install them.)  

Gentle Reader, mea culpa.  Under cover of darkness, I liberated Jess' pickup and hightailed it to Lowe's.  Well and truly chastened, I blew a chunk of change sufficient to keep my entire neighborhood in organic eggs for the foreseeable future.   Reckless and utterly without shame, I even had the guy in Lumber cut the wood to size; for a quarter a cut, I bought my way out of the inevitable Equation of Carpentry Mortification.

Wendy + reciprocating saw = just plain crooked.

No two ways about it, people.  Worth every penny.

My Creative Space: In Over My Head?

The construction has begun in earnest, and everything else has been left by the wayside.  (Including---but not limited to---regular mealtimes, dishes, laundry, and any semblance of sanity I may once have possessed.)  The two bigs and I spent the better part of the morning assembling the floor of the coop-to-be.

  This ridiculously simple 5'x8' structure nearly bested the lot of us several times over, and I've developed a healthy respect for power tools and the proficient users thereof.  (Who knew it would be such a challenge to cut straight bits off of a bunch of 2x4s?  I was relieved to finish with everyone's extremities intact!) 

After our rigorous morning, we spent a little downtime on the lawn with the chicks.  This was their first venture outside the brooder, and they were understandably befuddled for the initial moments of their backyard debut.

After a while, though, they were having as much fun as we were.  (Well, it seemed that way to the casual observer, anyway.)

We're hoping to knock out a wall a day this week, and have the whole shebang ready to inhabit by the end of the month.  Still a little unsure as to what we're actually cobbling together, here...I seem to build pretty much the same way I sew.  (And the way I do most things, actually...I was less than a hairsbreadth away from naming my blog "A Little Bit Wonky"  at the get-go, and I'm pretty sure it suits.)

Make sure you click through to Kootoyoo to see what Kirsty and the gang are up to this week!

Under construction!

I finally took the plunge: I headed over to our local ReStore and purchased some coop-making paraphernalia.  The chooks are getting pretty big these days, so it won't be long before it's time to move them outside.  With this in mind, and armed with my trusty copy of Chicken Coops: 45 Building plans for Housing Your Flock, I packed the kids in the car and we were off.  We emerged $21 poorer, but bearing all manner of reclaimed goodies: a roll of hardware cloth (for a buck!), some neat-o switchplates (also a buck apiece), a whole lotta 2x4s, and a pair of pallets (for my fancy-shmancy compost enclosure-to-be).  Stay tuned for our progress reports... 

(And, yes, I did fully regret having brought my little creepies to the hardware store.  Some things are just wrong.)

Hangin' with my peeps...

The much-awaited day has arrived, and we're the proud parents of 5 Black Australorp and 5 Silver-Laced Wyandotte chicks. They make quite a racket, considering their diminutive size, and the kids are positively entranced. The biggest issue we're facing at the moment is this: they all look strikingly similar. Chevi plans to name "her" chick Barbie (strenuous eye roll) and has spent the last 45 minutes trying to figure out which of these cheeping fluffballs is deserving of that esteemed moniker.

Any chick-rearing advice from the peanut gallery will be gleefully accepted.

Just call me Noah.

Photo credit: puravida from morguefile.com

We're scrounging for wood. And nails. And chicken wire. And maybe a little paint. Because, ladies and jellybeans, the time has come...to build an ark. (Well, it's a "chicken tractor" here in the States, but the UK-inspired "ark" sounds like much more fun, dontcha think?) I never fancied myself a carpenter, but I did take Woodshop in middle school, and I'm hoping that the chooks won't be too terribly particular about their living quarters.

Believe it or not, this chicken-selection-process is pretty challenging. We at Littlegreenbums Ranch are looking for a flock of cold-hardy, kid-friendly, prolific egg layers, and I'm pleased as punch to share our secret chicken-pickin' tool with you, my loyal readers. (Hi, Jon! Hi, Karen!)  Based on our particular needs, we'll most likely be ordering a half-dozen Australorps and a pair of Easter Eggers.  The Easter Eggers lay blue or green eggs, and I just can't help myself.  The 'lorps will lay brown eggs, and plenty of them, and both breeds are purportedly docile and friendly.  We're being inspired by the folks over at Urban Chickens and Little House in the Suburbs, as well as loads of other chicken-keepers out there. 

I'll keep you posted as the chick-prep progresses!