Jip and the Goats

Jip loves to play with the goats. They tolerate him. One way he gets their attention is to lie on their food... He stood up the split second before I took this picture. 

Fritz will headbutt Jip if he gets too annoying, so will Svetlana. Gerda is too timid and she often ends up 'stuck' on the woodpile to get away from Jip. 

Sometimes he'll climb up and sit with her though!

Maybe once the little kids are out, Jip will have playmates. 

Castiron

Our castiron skills continue to improve. G has cooked eggs in it without them sticking. I made pancakes and Geman pizza in it the other day.

I was a little nervous about things sticking, but the trick is to make sure it's hot enough before putting anything inside. I've also found there's a point when the item is cooked (not sticking) and if you leave it in too long after that, then it burns/overcooks/sticks to the pan. 

PS - The potatoes in the above dish are some of the ones from a previous post with the super long sprouts. Still taste good!

Snow No More

We got some snow on Sunday, light fluffy stuff that fell in huge flakes. The birds had a heyday with it... our ducks waddled around snapping it up and the wild birds flitted around our deck. You might be able to see a few in the picture. 

And just like that, the snow melted. One minute there was snow, the next time I looked outside it was gone. 

More birds have returned. I saw three cranes yesterday (one landed in the pond and the other two flew overhead). The swans have made an appearance again. They never stay long. 

Our ducks have been wandering. They made it almost all the way down to the pond yesterday to enjoy the puddles from the melted snow. Unfortunately, they're also wandering over to the neighbor's house. We heard from them that our ducks have been pooping where the grandkids play and the chickens are eating the first flowers coming up. 😬 

G built a short chicken fence to continue the existing fence dividing our properties and so far it seems to have worked. Still, I keep a sharp eye on them. If they go around the fence, we're going to have to put them in the pasture. 

Baby Wearing

How do I get so much done in a day? Baby wearing. I have three types of carriers that I alternate wearing depending what I'm doing or hoping to achieve. 

This is the Boba wrap. I used this the second day we got home from the hospital. J fell right asleep! 

This is the Ergo carrier. Very sturdy, has pockets, good for out and about. It takes two people (one to hook the back), so I don't use it at home a lot. Instead I use the Baby Bjorn (second picture). Either way, J still conks out! 

Last style is the ring sling. It's super quick to get J in and out of and I love the color. Very portable. This one will be better once J has more head support. He likes to look around and this one doesn't have much behind the head.

Potatoes

Five months is a long time to be gone. Slowly but surely G and I are getting our house and homestead back in order. 

The potatoes we harvested back in November (or I should say my father-in-law harvested) are sprouting...

Did you notice a few have grown through my harvesting basket? 

Interestingly the variety of potatoes affected whether they sprouted or not. I think we had planted four varieties of potatoes. Of course they're all jumbled together in the bin, but from what I could see, the tallest sprouts are from the red potatoes. One variety didn't sprout at all! That might be Kennebec or Yukon Gold. I definitely want to plant more of those this year! 

Incubation

We have 41 eggs "cooking" in our incubator. Not all will be for us... my dad wants some and G's cousin wants some. Also, not every egg will hatch; a 75% hatch rate is typical. One website says it can be as low as 30% for beginners, 50% for intermediate experience, and 80% for experts. Not sure where I fall. 🤔 I incubated eggs with my dad as a kid (don't recall the hatch rate) and did it once with my class (0% hatch rate 😅 due to faulty temperature gauges), so I have some experience. Will it be enough for 75%??

We borrowed two incubators from my dad and plugged them in a day before setting the eggs. This was to make sure they could hold the steady temperature chicks need to grow.

Unfortunately, both did not meet the requirements. One looked like it would be okay but then it spiked a temperature way too hot; the other held a temperature lower than necessary. So we bought a new one. We went to three different stores before we found an incubator. I guess with the price of chicken eggs these days, everyone is hatching their own chicks! 

We didn't have room in our house for the incubator, and our garage is not insulated, so we set the incubator up in my in-law's heated garage so that it would be in a location with a constant temperature (their cars aren't going in and out much these days).

Next came choosing the eggs to incubate. My dad sent three dozen which meant that seven wouldn't go in. A chicken care book I read said to pick eggs that are less porous and round not pointy for best success. 

We candled the eggs to check for porosity and removed the most porous. Those eggs will loose moisture more rapidly. You want eggs to loose moisture, but at the same rate. 

After that we selected for roundness (makes it easier for the chick to hatch and something about the air pocket too). Our third selection was shell color. We want a variety of breeds, so we need a variety of shell colors. 

Finally, we put the eggs in, pointy side down. Our incubator has an egg rotator, so we don't need to do that by hand. 

It also has a slot to insert water to increase humidity. We want 30-40% in the beginning and will increase/decrease as we candle and check the air pocket size. At the end, it will be much higher, in the 60-80% range.

Gorgeous

The weather is glorious, so we brought Mama and babies outside to soak up the sun. 

G made a pen for them so they can be together and not bothered by the rest of our managerie. 

These two are still doing great. Girl on the left, boy on the right. 

The dark one (female) has stood up for short periods, but she's not in the clear yet. We keep helping her to nurse. 

Jip loves coming over to check them out. They are so tiny and wobbly! Tails wagging non-stop as they totter around. Their bleats sound like squeaky toys. 😆

We haven't named them yet. Each is a slightly different shade of brown. I joked about calling them dark roast, medium roast, and light roast.