Growing Young Polish- the first to hatch here!

This little goofball hatched a little before county fair.For some time, the chick only had a little pompapour poof as it ran around the brooder in the living room.

These days, the little White Crested Polish chick with a little dark in front has been working on growing a rather fancy "do", with the poof continuing to grow. It has also moved out tot he back porch brooder, with a few others.  It seems to have a rather dominant personality thus far.

I always hold out hope for girls, especially since these are part of a project for help out the other 4-Hers, and they typically need hens to balance out males they already have, or often aren't allowed roosters where they live.  What do you think? Pullet or Cockerel? I still think it is young enough that the feathers could tell us either way!

Spending the week trying to get our feet back under us!

We are finishing a crazy time in our lives. I have been immensely thankful for having chosen to home school this year. We will spent a good bit of the hot, desert summer finishing up the studies, but we're able to be there with our family when we really needed to.  What a blessing. 

Sunday, we kicked off the week with a fruit tart the boys were craving before heading of to church. . Bailey is settling in to her new assignment teaching the 4 and 5 year old class,  and I got to help while Wyatt enjoyed helping lead games in the last hour of Sunday school next door. 

Monday was a big return to studies, and also the last official 4h meeting of the year. Little Let Your Light Shine wasn't thrilled with sharing his Bailey with her school work, so he embarked on a mission to eat her assignment list.

This was in the back seat on the way to town to go to the meeting. When we walked in to the meeting,  the club president automatically saw Shine, called out, and brought the attention to the club leader . Since Shine was a distraction, he and I were sent outside. 

The youth updated one another, and then voted on officers for the next year. Bailey was elected Vice President, but was the only one who had signed up to run for Treasurer, so she slid over to the Treasurer slot to give her friend the job he wanted for his last year.

After the meeting, we all went down to the park for a potluck.  The kids had so much fun that some of us didn't leave the park until well after 9!

Finally, I rounded them up, with big kids carrying little ones on and over their shoulders, since I needed to open the gym in the morning. 

After my morning shift,  I stopped by to donate my ponytail. I thought we agreed on 11 inches for the donation and enough left for a decent ponytail to stay back from my face while I am teaching, but instead the ponytail was cut off at about 14 inches. 

This is how it came out. It was a bit of a shock for me, but it will be pretty cool for hiking this summer. I have to admit, though, that when the other moms waited for me after girls group, I felt like part of the family. It reminded me of when Charlie had let Bailey take Wyatt ' s ultrasound to school years back (strange, I know, I wasn't going to tell anyone yet) and I got to the daycare after work to find all of the moms waiting for me. I really feel blessed to be finding a true church home. 

Shine is really settling in to living with his people and his four legged friend, Shadow.  He would like to watch the baby chickens in the brooder, but  isn't tall enough to peek. So at this point, he was perched up on a couple of my boxes just below the brooder.

Sometimes he hangs out on the trampoline next to this, but Shadow loves it too, and this was closer to the noisy little ones!

We tried hard so far this week to settle back in to homeschooling, and when the wind wasn't too bad, getting our work done outside. Shadow seems to really be loving that, she curled up next to Wyatt to look at the white board list while he was working on Spanish.

While they were working on this, I tried to figure out what to do with all the ribbons from fair. This pile took more than the bed, and didn't include any from the livestock. The blue rosettes were what they used for purple ribbons for photography this year. I think I will let the kids decide if they want any photos up in their room, and put it all in photo albums by year. 

There is just so much, and they really did learn from the process this year, as well as from the feedback on the judging notes. They have one final photo competition this weekend, but they seem to really enjoy telling a story with their work and having time to dedicate to it.

Shine and Shadow have taken to sharing bowls, but last night he was guarding his bucket of hay pellets. His actual bowl is next to Shadow's, and for as much as Shine is appreciating the company, Shadow is too. We have lost several very special family members this year, including Shadow's brother Vegas, and she likes having a buddy around.

Shine has taken to sleeping on the bed with Bailey, like Shadow does with Wyatt. Here, Shine was practicing Shadow's skill at keeping the kids company during Spanish studies. In the morning when I go to wake them all up, Shadow and Shine lay there awake and wait for me to call them.

The spring hatch continues, as little partridge Cochins joined us, along with light Brahmas and more.

There are three little new ones in the brooder this evening who hatched last night and this morning, with more talking and pipping away in the incubator now. There are also blue Cochin bantams, which came from the same stock as those bailey took to fair this year. They all earned blue except for one, which had a comb injury from earlier on when he had stuck his head through the fence. Wyatt is eagerly awaiting his next batch of Silkies, after selling his favorite hen in the auction and bringing in new roosters to improve his stock. Some are sue almost any day now.

This was the first Polish to hatch from the ones we brought home this Spring. Cannot wait to see how it comes out!

Well, we did get a little going to try to finish the new pen, and Charlie brought home the wood we asked for for the doe barn project.  We will see what we get done tomorrow! What's going on at your house?

Friday Saturday Fun Time and Chore Time!

A happy beautiful morning to everyone!  I love watching the sunrise while I do morning chores!

These are the little tomato starts growing along int he kitchen on the window seat.  They are growing much more slowly now, I will be so excited to move them outside!

Bailey, Wyatt and I went to the Desert Museum on Friday with the 4-H Photography group. We had a great time in beautiful weather.  This is a sculpture by where they do the raptor free flight display.

This mountain lion seems to love attention!

With the rodeo in town, folks are moving their wagons to town for the parade, we followed these two from the hills by the museum.

A very happy (and decorative, thanks to his love of the stamps around the museum) boy passed out on the road home.

While I was out watering and doing chores, I caught the rising moon and sure enjoyed the beauty.

This is my little asparagus patch. I am thinking of expanding it to the left.

more of the moon rising as it grew dark

my "tattooed" boy being silly

We enjoyed a sunshine cake as a family.  I used the hearts my mom tried, and thankfully Charlie and the kids didn't mind that it came out fo the pan a little lopsided.

The barley I had soaking was ready, so more of the newly scrubbed fodder boxes went back into service!

Saturday, I stewed tomatoes and canned 7 quarts of tomato sauce!  Then, I found another box of tomatoes... yup that's me!

I am also trying a green bean salad experiment. We will see how it goes!

Hope you all have a wonderful Sunday! Love to all!

The Polish Project

After the freak loss of Bailey's little showmanship hen last week, she was down to her one and only backup bird for showmanship, and right before the 4-H ownership deadline for our county fair.  We were looking for another blue bantam Cochin hen, but didn't find any that would work alongside those she already had. Some cute ones, but not really what she needed.

Then I was talking with the 4-H leader about leg bands and some other things, and she said the club had been made an offer earlier yesterday. It seems that a local breeder was needing to refocus and downsize, and was going to offer the club a small flock of Polish in order to help the youth and carry on the line.

There was a cute little Splash colored hen, as well as a few white crested Black ones. And one Blue rooster.  There were a couple of other families who needed backups, as predators have been on an all out offensive lately, and a few odd things had happened.  But the leader wasn't sure what to do with the rooster, and part of the thought was that the youth would work with the breed.

To be honest, I don't know if she had already had the thought when she called or if it came in our talk, but we decided that one of the hens and the rooster would come here to our place, the birds could serve as my daughter's backup, and any chicks we could hatch out in our breeding program here would be next year's birds for youth in the 4-H club.

So, after teaching this morning, having a run in with the salesman at the tire store and picking up Wyatt's special order lumber, we met up with Connie along her road back from picking up the birds.  These two silly sweethearts have moved in to the quarantine pen as of this afternoon... 

FOr some reason, this boy really tried to escape when they were capturing him, but he rode home in Bailey's lap.  THe goofy hair has her talking about naming him torpedo.  Silly kid, silly bird, I guess, right? I suppose the silly name goes with it.

He really doesn't want to look at the camera for his cameo, though!

Here she is cuddling with the hen, who coincidentally rode home in my lap!  And for some reason, the name Checkers is rising to the surface as her name...

She kind of complied with looking at the camera, but it is pretty hard to see with those crazy Polish crests!

We will do our best to keep you up to date on this project.  Watch for the labels Polish Project, and others noted in this post, and feel free to follow the blog to keep up with the latest. 

Now it is time to let them settle in, and then hope for fertile eggs and a good time at the county fair!

Kids and Animals Mark the Passage of Time

Sitting at the park yesterday, working on math with Wyatt Clay when a coach came by and asked him about homework, I thought how funny it would be when children began asking him what school he attended and, for the first time, he learned to start saying, "I am home schooled."  I left the boys at the park, and headed home to manage the animals and do the watering.  Shadow had gotten to stay inside with her brother, Vegas, during the day. The only thing we found out of place was a large stuffed Shamu, and he still had his eyes (the first thing she remove when destroying a stuffed animal.) As the dogs and I headed out to feed and water and collect eggs, I thought about all of the things coming full circle, and how children and animals really do mark the passage of time.

I am definitely not eighteen anymore.This photo is several years old, I believe the second Halloween after Wyatt was born. He has always been so big, the in-home day care talked me into dressing him up as BamBam, Bailey was a flapper girl in one of her dress up dresses (she has often been silly and fun in such a simple way), and Charlie went all out in his leaf suit. I had an old gypsy outfit, and was very nervous dashing out in it, you can tell what part of me never sees the sun! Funny, Charlie was between TDYs that weekend. 

As moms, we often note that when something happened, the younger one was around so old, or like looking back to losing Callie Jo, our first family dog, January before the first county fair when Bailey joined 4-H, and Remington coming come while the club kids were preparing the animals for show.  

In a military family, we have extra things, like oh, no, we were in San Diego then while Daddy's unit was flying against their F-18s. Or, no, we went to that chocolate factory in Phoenix when Daddy was up there on deployment briefings and we went to visit.  When I first started hiking with the kids, we used to go to this place a little North of here, where there are petroglyphs on the rocks. Back then, Bailey didn't mind posing for pictures. It was before the bullies.

I look back at photos like this, and am reminded if part of why we chose to home school. In the balance of trying to deal with bullies, and life, and meet the constant expectations of others with life where we live, there was no time for hiking and family fun in the driving and craziness of live.  This was a component, along with the refusal of the school to deal with the bullying, in our decision to home school.  There are so many important things to learn in life, and a number of them are not taught while spending an hour a day practicing standardized testing to prepare for a test after the regular lessons.  Hands on experiments and trying out random thoughts, chasing dreams and building things from scratch cannot be ignored.  Now my hiking buddies are as tall as me!

Right after 9/11, when I had just begin working for the Tohono O'Odham reservation, this little dog was hit by a car. Charlie was away hunting, I didn't even know Wyatt was on the way yet.  I brought the puppy home, hoping to bring it back to health and find its kid.  Hopper Spark would be Wyatt's first best friend, getting him through long stretched of not speaking and withdrawing from the world during Charlie's deployments. We lost her right as Wyatt was turning ten last Summer.  Wyatt and I still talk about how special she was, and how she loved him unconditionally, never complained and was such a special element is him rejoining the world. 

On one of the many trips to San Diego, while Charlie was working and we would go to Sea World and help some around my aunt's house, she licked out this great place, with the history she knew I enjoyed teaching the kids- about explorers int he area who had traveled all the way around South America to make it there, and these neat little tide pools. She had once worked nearby in bunkers built into the sides of the hills. The kids loved the stories!  You wouldn't think they would remember from being that little, but Wyatt still brings it up sometimes, and Bailey mentioned it while studying WWII last year.

Fast forward a tad to when Bailey joined 4-H. This was one of her first goats, Vital. Vital used to sit in Charlie's lap, when he was in town for 4H shows.  Such a silly goat, and a great ambassador! He boy, Obediah, took over as lead buck this year. Talk about the passage of time!

Maybe not the best picture in the world! Anyhow, Wyatt always liked the bucks better than the does. Our bucks are cuddly, though you won't want to go anywhere in the clothing you were wearing when you cuddled them!  Initially, we had Huey and Steely, they came along in Bailey's second year of 4-H. I will get to Steely in a minute.  Huey is a beautiful black buck with a great personality. When shown, the most common thing for people to say about him in the line to show is how strangely sweet he is. He was so well conformed, and folks told us to go ahead and breed him as long as he wanted to.  Typically, once his belly was full, he would be interested in girls more than anything else.  This year, when Bailey put him in with his best girl, Glory, he went to see what was in her food bowl.  Bailey called me over from the garden area, and said, Mom I don't think this is going to happen. I think he is retiring.  I told her to give it an hour, and just rake the next pen over and watch.  Yup, he laid down and ignored Glory, until Glory went to the fence and complained to Bailey. Obediah, his son with Vital, took over as lead buck.  He was all to happy to, and funny thing is, he and the new guy, PowerStroke, spend most of their day calling to ladies from their fence.  They give Huey first shot at the food, and pretend to head but him and are so gentle with him but play hard with one another.  A far cry from the days of Huey's rough and tumble play with Steely and calling to the does from the show ring.

Steely, Wyatt's smiling buddy, is shown with him below in the monsoon sunset.  When we brought he and Huey home, there was another we also liked, named Mr Wiggins, but he was Steely's brother, so we wanted to keep different blood lines for the bucks in our small herd. After losing Steely and Bailey seeing PowerStroke show for a couple years, the son of Mr. Wiggins, Bailey bought PowerStroke this year to round out the breeding stock. So, not only has Obediah taken over as head buck, but Powerstroke, Steely's nephew, has come to Patriot's Dream as well.

This was Bailey at her first county fair.  The little girl to the back left, who Bailey met st fair this year, went to leadership camp with her a couple years back, and they are still friends now.

This past year was year number seven in 4-H for Bailey. Despite the ups and downs, she loves learning about her animals, and loves to help the younger ones. When she went to meetings this year, the older ones were asked to teach more, and help the younger new members learn.  Working with the other kids is one of her favorite things, and this Summer she got to be a camp counselor for her first time.

This was one of the first baby goats born here at Patriot's Dream.  I just showed Wyatt this photo, and asked if he remembered getting along this well with his sister!

Well before Wyatt could join 4-H, he began asking for chickens. We kept getting stuck in the poultry area of the petting zoo at functions, and he figured out he could teach children about them, and look after them, but never have to speak with the adult. (He doesn't care for crazy show parents, but then again...) He spent a year taking care of the dogs where all I had to do was check, and then as his birthday came around, he wanted to start looking for birds for his own flock.  This polish was Sgt Winger, his very first, who laid in his arms the whole drive home from the other side of town.  After Wyatt had his established flock, and the economy went south, friends of the family would find abandoned birds in their rentals, and call Wyatt, leading to him learning about quarantining and flock management.  Before long, the flock grew, and grew, and now his eggs are sought after at the farmers markets and by local customers who come directly to us. While the research is all over the place, this week we make the transition to non-soy, non-corn, non-GMO feed, since we finally have a source again!  Looking at this photo, I can see where the pens are now that was once empty and how different things are! Remington, on the left, learned to be a flock protector then.

Remington, who came home at eight weeks old, right before that first county fair, while Charlie was on his way back from that long assignment to the Border deployment up at Silverbell Army Air, learned to warm up cold babies who fell in water buckets, helped raise a bottle baby goat (remember Nathan from the sidelines when Bailey was on the basketball team?) and shared her home and bed dutifully, even when she didn't want to. Plume Snowflake, here, followed Remi around the lining room during Christmas after getting wet and coming in hte house, nestling up to Remi until she cuddled it.

Remdog was my buddy, who adored the older dogs she was raised with, and who we lost the Christmas before last, but when Hopper passed so soon after, We moved back to being a two dog family and Wyatt brought Shadow Paws home.  Here she is with Vegas, about six years ago.  How do I know this, because she was still skiny, not fully filled out, and look at Vegas' face.

This photo really shows the passage of time.  Old man Vegas has been with us fourteen year, but the animal control estimated him at seventeen to eighteen year old.  Shadow Paws dotes on him, and makes sure he always has food in his bowl, the door opened on his whim and someone to play with or help him chase lizards when he wants to.  Wow, those photos next to one another sure say a lot about the goofy buddy presently at my feet.  Wyatt snuck some arthritis happiness in a treat for him this morning, hoping he feels good as the storms rumble overhead.

Speaking, of Wyatt, you saw him as BamBam, you saw him with his first chicken, here he is with his d'Uccle hen, Millie, when they went to sing Christmas carols with the 4-H club at the elder care facility.

These juvenile chickens he was holding a few months back are some of this year's new layers.  That little Brahma in the middle may have been one of his champion heritage meat birds this year, too.  Those chickens are in the 9-11 pound range at this point! And then hens are all laying, most of them up to full size eggs. some with eggs in the incubator in our work for determining the best breeding stock moving forward.  That Millie, above has babies in another part of the county (don't tell her, though, she might want visitation!)

This photo was from Wyatt's first year in football, when they were lucky enough to play at half time in a scrimmage on the field of the Arizona Wildcats.

Here he is about a year ago, back to back and out-sizing his adult cousin, Jamie!

And, as we begin a new football season, here he is this morning working tire drills, with Shadow Paws in toe, doing extra training for this season.  I am adding obstacles to the obstacle course daily for us, and this tire is five feet tall.  Where did my baby boy go?

Well, I am just back in from checking on the Javas out back. They came home about nine weeks ago as tiny chicks, and I just switched them to big chicken food mixed with the baby food, in preparation for their move out to the Buttercup pen.  The cycle continues, as always.

Got any before and after photos to share? This would be a great place and time. Maybe the first day of Kindergarten alongside the first day this year? Or any of those photos and stories that show the passage of time.  Your thoughts and experiences are ALWAYS welcome!

Hugs to all,
Erin