Free Range Chickens and Eggs

• Free range chickens are the happiest!  We have found out some interesting facts about free range chickens lately. 
• They like treats in the evening.   The treats will make them want to leave you presents.
• Leftover garden scraps make greast snacks.  So do leftover stale Panera bagels.
• Without clean water they will quit laying eggs.
• Multiple hens will lay in the same nesting spot
• Our eggs are the most delicious and nutritious eggs.
• You will never go back to store bought!

 Yummy, garden scraps!

 Chicken scratch!

 All farm implements are fair game to roost on when chickens have access to them.

 Chickens are so fun to watch.  They are relaxing and theraputic!

 Roosters on the log splitter!

 Time for a drink!

I never get bored finding eggs. 

 This hen is saying, "Excuse me, I am not done laying my egg, get out!"

 More presents!

Cock-a-doodle-doo!!

The orchard and buildings

A co-worker mentioned that the pictures of the chicken coop were great, but she couldn't tell where it was in relationship to the property.  Good point!  I am including some pictures that will show you the layout of the land around and including the house.  We have some really big decisions to make about the rest of the property.

I have been researching Upick operations among other things.  We don't have all the infrastructure necessary though.  Our big building right now serves as a two car garage, a place for the 4 wheelers, tractor, baby chicks, tools, hunting and fishing and my grandmother's crystal in addition to my Holiday decorations!!!  And...we want to create an outdoor kitchen to process chickens, deer and canning in the spring.   That's right.  All of that in one building.  We actually need at least two or three more buildings.  One building needed is a gargage to hold the vehicles and ATVs.  I would like that building to have a loft where I can organize and see my seasonal decorations.  The second building we need is a barn where we can use the bottom portion as a store for the Upick operation and the upper portion as an apartment for my daughter!  It would be nice to have a building for feed and lawn equipment. 

Right now we have a wood shed that is in o.k. shape.  One side of it is our outside chicken coop.  This is attached to a small building that has a log exterior.  It was called a machine shed, but we use it as our chicken coop.  One side is for the chickens and the other side holds our rakes, shovels, etc.  Then we have our big building and then we have our house.  I hope the pictures will give you a better idea of how the layout of the buildings are organized.  I like that they are not spread out, but I wish I could watch my chickens from my window. 

I need a new camera.  Sorry the picture below is blurry.  This shows you how far apart the building is from the house.  I want to put a two car garage between the two, but hubby has different plans.  These are some of the difficult decisions we face.  Space planning is very important. 

 This is probably the best picture to see the layout.  The house is first.  Then the building and then behind the building is the chicken coop. 

 My husband just bought a plow from an auction.  He won it for a great price!  I love a deal.  He started plowing up our garden spot for next year.  In the background you can see the neighbors property.  They have 2,000 acres that they farm.  The land that surrounds ours is used for hay bale storage.  Their land that is behind ours is not used for anything except maybe a cow or two.  Across the stree is a corn field.  At least this year is a corn field. 

 This is a view of the field from the side of our house. It is difficult to tell, but we have planted apple trees here and at the back of the picuture is old cherry trees.  We have ten apple trees so far.  We will try to plant a lot more next year.  I would like to have a Upick place up and running in five years. 

400.00 Egg

Hubby just went outside and we have our first egg.  He calls it the 400.00 egg because that is probably about how much money we have spent to get an egg!  Ha!  Then he went back ouside to check for more eggs and another hen was squatting in the same spot and she laid one too.  Now we have two beautiful eggs!  Way to go girls.  Keep them coming!!

Cottage Tour inside pics

I finally made time to take some pictures of the inside of our little cottage farmette.  We still have work to do, but this gives you a good idea of what it looks like.  Where the grey rug is, that is the front entrance so, you walk into this room.  This is our only eating area in the house, but that is o.k. because we are naughty and eat in front of the t.v. most of the time.  We need to change out the chandelier!  It is not at the top of our priority list though.  The floors and woodwork are original.  We painted the wall a nice cream color. 

 This is our fireplace.  We don't like the painted bricks, but haven't figured out what to do with it just yet.  The fireplace has been closed up for some reason.  We are trying to decide how to heat our house.  We know we want wood heat but, there are many options.  We could do wood stoves up and down, we could do an outside wood furnace and we could do an inside wood furnace.  I will let you know what we decide.  This fireplace will receive a transformation soon.

 I knew before we moved in how I was going to stage this area.  The small buffet was purchased for 20.00 at an auction.  I saw a picture of it and told hubby, bring it home and he did!

 This is my daughter's room.  She has a closet with stairs that go no where.  It is just a fun little quirk to the house.  She also has the only laundry shoot in the house.  We don't use it though.  It is really small.  All of her furniture fit like a glove, literally, that tight, but it fit!  She has a cozy spot that is all hers. 

 These are the dressers in the Master.  The Master bedroom is very small, but we have a deck off our room.  The tall dresser was my great grandmother's dresser and the mirrored dresser was my grandmother's dresser.  I love being able to use family pieces in my house.  We have no storage and very little close space so, we make due with what we have.  We have purchased 2 additional armoires that are kept in different parts of the house.  We love our antique fan.  The stand weighs about 50lbs. and it is very loud, but there is something about using antiques that makes me happy!

 This is the other view of our bedroom.  Our king size bed barely fits.  We need to get a head board, but I have been wanting to make one so, we will see.  The picture above the bed is special because it is art from our favorite vacation spot, Sanibel Island in Florida.  I bought the frame at Hobby Lobby in the clearance section for next to nothing.  It had a floral print in it at the time.  I took that print out and put our print in. So, instead of spending a fortune on framing, I framed this picuture for around 30.00.  Hubby says I am cheap, I prefer, thrifty!  Just like he says I am crazy and I say fun loving!

 This is our family room.  The marble top tables were in my grandparent's house, but they were originally my parents.  My parents traded my grandparents for some unknown reason.  Well, they are mine now.  I love them.  The marble is very heavy and beautiful!  The door leads out to the front porch.  This would have been the original entrance to the house.  At some point they took the stairs out and just made a little perch of a porch.  It is so lovely to sit out there on cool days!

 I want to reface the cabinets and yes, I must have granite eventually.  There is not much counter space so, I don't think it will be very expensive.  I love this little nook though.  I put my cook books here and I think it adds a nice charm to the house.  The floors have new tile.  That is the only thing staying in this kitchen.  Well, that and the new fridge. 

 This was my solution to books and videos.  This area is acutally a mud room.  I have the three bookshelves, some cute storage bags for shoes and the armoire below.  The armoire holds some of my pants and games and such.  These bookshelves were all oak colored and I painted them white.  The two on the ends are matching.  I love this space.  Hubby thinks it is cluttered, but it makes me happy.  Everything is neatly put up and in its place and we won't have to buy new videos when the grandkids come along one day.

 I got this armoire for 89.00 at a local antique store.  They had already painted it a faux white and antique color.  I probably would not have painted it that way, but it is o.k.  The antique mirror is very heavy so, I lean it against the wall instead of hang it.  To the right of the mirror is a set of 5 steps that goes up to the kitchen and the main part of the house.  If you hang a left at the top of the steps you go up 5 more steps to my son's man cave.  I didn't take pics of that.  I am sure you can guess why.

This is a picture of my basement.  Even though it is an old basement, it is pretty neat.  We have this lovely pine cupboard which will be filled with canned goods next summer.  We also have bookshelves with canning stuff on it.  Our washer, dryer, extra fridge and a shower and toilet closet are all located down stairs.  Well, I hope you have enjoyed the tour.  We still have projects to work on and I can't wait to post pictures of the finished projects.  We are so thankful that the Lord has blessed us with this wonderful farmette.  We look forward to making many happy memories here.  The one thing I have learned in my 40 something years on this earth is that we can live with much less than what we think.  I live in the smallest house I have ever lived in and I couldn't be happier!

From the Garden

This year was the first time we were able to plant a garden in several years. We were excited to be able to eat what we grew. We planted tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, watermelon, basil, and several different kinds of peppers.

We got a couple of watermelon, cucumbers, and peppers. But our tomato and zucchini plants really took off.

We got more cherry tomatoes than we could count! We also had quite a few of the bigger tomatoes. There is nothing quite like eating tomatoes fresh from the garden. My dad ended up making salsa with the tomatoes and some of the peppers. It was delicious!

Even though there were a lot of tomatoes, we got even more zucchini. It seemed like everyday we went out to check the garden, we had several new zucchini ready to pick. And some of them we didn't see right away. Although, I am not sure how we missed this one.

We had more zucchini than we knew what to do with. We ended up grilling some. We also shredded some. We froze some of the shredded zucchini, and we also made some amazing zucchini bread from my great-grandmother's recipe.

 

Our little garden isn't producing much anymore. But being able to eat fresh food straight from the garden has been wonderful.



 

New Arrivals and All Grown Up...

The chickens are enjoying their outside pen and the garden scraps!  Our garden has produced an enormous amount of zucchini.  The chickens love zucchini!  I have frozen 2c. Ziplocks of zucchini so I can make some delicous zucchini bread during the winter months.  My grandmother's recipe is my favorite.  I will share it with you all soon.  My friend Sylvia says she has a great recipe for zucchini cake.  I can't wait for her to share that with me!  Our chickens in the above picture are getting huge.  We now let them free range for a couple of hours each night.  They love it!!  They actually wait at the door for us to come and let them out.  They know what time we get home or they hear us and they wait to be set free!  We have our eyes out for coyotes though.  Entire flocks can be wiped out.  We love our chickens, so we are keeping a close eye on them.  Below is a picture of our new arrivals.  They are so sweet and funny!  They spook easily and tap, tap, tap around their pen.  We have 51 of our older chickens, which should be laying eggs any day, and we have 22 new ones.  Of the new chicks three of them are turkens.  My son wanted them.  They have the funniest looking necks.  I will try to get closer pics when they are a little bigger and less spooked.  It is so much fun getting chickens in the mail, but I think we are done for now.  I will post pictures soon of them free ranging.  They are so beautiful and fun to watch!  How can you not love chickens?

Home Pics Before and After

This posting is much belated.  Between school starting and working on the farmette, we haven't had much time to post.  I am glad we could finally take a breather and share our progress with you.  Below we have before and after pictures of the house. We have taken out huge bushes and had the house painted a lovely gray with black doors and creamy yellow trim.  I love the results!  We also used Behr deck-over and finished two of the three deck areas.  We still need to do the main entrance to the house.  It took 3 days to do the other two decks.  Plus there are the chickens and garden and life in general.  I am sure you all can relate.  God is good though, and there is not a day that goes by that we are not thankful and grateful for the blessings that we have!

 

 

 

 

 The above and below pictures are of the side of the house, but it is where the main entrance is.  We took out the six bushes on the side of the deck, and the house has been painted with Behr paint from Home Depot.  The gray color which is the base of the house is called Elephant skin.  The doors are painted with a black color called Broadway, and the trim around the windows is Behr Cream Puff.  It is a cream with a yellow tone to it.  The painter was skeptical, but he liked it after he saw it all together. 

 Our front door.  I can't wait to get some mums and pumpkins and deck out the deck!  We have talked about eventually covering this entrance, but it would be a challenge and probably expensive.  So, we will see. 

 Above is the picture of the house before we painted and completed the deck over.  We had already taken out the three large bushes from the front.  I believe in an earlier post I have a picture of the house with those bushes still intact.  They literally blocked the entire deck.  I planted azaleas and I have some perennial daisy plants that have done pretty well. 

 

This is the after picture.  I love, love, love how it turned out.  I will try to take some better pictures with better lighting.  I am not sure this picture does it justice.  This deck is wonderful to sit on in the cool, crisp air and look across the street at the cornfield.  May sound boring to some, but for me, it is paradise!

This is the other side of the house opposite from the entrance.  The deck boards needed staining something horrible.  We decided to use deck-over.  Now, we did do something wrong with our remodel. Live it; learn it!  We used Minwax stain which is actually for interior uses only.  They had that printed nice and small on their packaging.  The stain looks great and is a great contrast to the soft grey deck-over we used, but we don't know how long it will last and what it will look like once it starts to do whatever it is going to do.  I googled it and we are not the only ones who have had this happen.  We will see!  We removed more bushes from this area.  There were two tall bushes on each side of the stairs leading up to the deck.  We hope to have an in -round swimming pool installed in the next couple of years.  We would put it on this side of the house.

 Here is the after picture.  I will repost better pictures soon.  The contrast of the stain to the deck-over is really pretty in person. 

 This is the back of the house.  We had some wood rot that had to be taken care of before they could paint.  We are planning a two to three car garage between the house and the building in the future as well.  All of our lighting fixtures on the outside of the house are white.  I am thinking about spray painting them black to match the doors.  It will be cheaper to spray paint them than to buy new ones.  I think the house really pops now.  The next step is landscaping and of course finishing the rails and steps on the entrance side of the house.  I love that this house is shake shingles and all wood.  The problem with that is upkeep, and it was a difficult house to paint.  The nice thing about having an all wood sided home is the character and charm.  We love our little farmette!