Candling
With almost one week left in our chicken egg hatching exercise, we have candled all the eggs and have culled the bad ones (ones that ended up being infertile or “died”) As with such egg operations the success rate is quite erratic. Out of the 6 d’uccle eggs we have culled 1/2 (one had a hairline crack and the other two were infertile. In hatching you expect to loose the eggs within the first week or at hatching time so we still have yet to see if these 3 make it. Unfortunately, the black cochin batch has a worse percentage of “bad eggs.” Out of the dozen cochin eggs – 1 was fertile, 9 were non fertile and 2 had “blood lines” (meaning that the embryo went bad during incubation) Thankfully, we aren’t relying on this hatching operation to expand our flock. Next week we’ll be getting a shipment in of day old chicks. With Jordanne reselling most of the order to local backyard poultry folks we are looking at ordering over 50 chickens! Back in 2001 when we started our backyard flock we placed the minimum of 25 chickens can’t imagine what 50 peeping babies will sound like. Should be fun! 😉
Spanky helping out with sewing, vintage apron pattern and recycling old sheets
“Second Life” Aprons
Work on the aprons using old sheets are progressing thanks to the help of our kitty (well, not really but he does look like he is interesting in helping out) A friend gave us a vintage full apron pattern that we using. Pictures of finished product will be coming soon.
Pasadena Foothill-billies
We know our readers just love looking at our photos; however, one of the objections is “there’s no people in the photos.” I know, I know. When it comes to taking photos we much rather take pics of the garden, animals or the exciting projects that we have going on. So it’s great when a photographer comes in with a writer who’s doing a story – they can take photos of the folks behind PTF.
Back in January a writer and photographer assigned to do a special story for the German newspaper,FAZ, on the urban homestead spent a day with us and took these photographs. [btw, we’ll let our readers know when the story runs; however, I am afraid it will all be in German and we’ll need to get someone to translate it.]
Photos are courtesy and copyright Chris Kelly
Jordanne hugs Blackberry, Jules picks winter salad mix, Justin & Jules talk
about biodiesel Justin talks about the deep freeze, obligatory family photo, Anais, Jordanne & Jules
Anais makes bread, Anais juices oranges (by hand), Justin hauls out the homebrew biodiesel
Jordanne feed the goats, Jules with winter squash harvest, Anais & Jordanne read incubator instructionsOK, enough of our mugs. Next posting some photos of the urban homestead.
No Comments
Jeff S. says:
March 14, 2007 at 1:01 pmI love the casual family pictures. Thanks for posting them. I am guessing Anais doesn’t need to wear a hat in the kitchen any longer! 🙂
Mia B. says:
March 14, 2007 at 6:14 pmI cant wait to see the finished aprons. I need to make myself a few as well.
Jill says:
March 14, 2007 at 7:34 pmThese are great! Thanks for sharing them.
Esther says:
March 14, 2007 at 8:51 pmHi! I have a personal question… I was wondering what the younger generation’s ages are and how do you see yourselves live in 5, 10 years from now (with own family possibly)?
Any thoughts on that?
Love the pics.
Clare says:
March 15, 2007 at 7:01 amLOVE the pics! Thanks for sharing. That does look like a fun apron pattern. I’ll have your new aprons to you pretty soon, too!
kristine says:
March 15, 2007 at 2:38 pmit’s great to see the faces behind all the words! thanks for sharing a glimpse of your personal life.
Jennifer says:
March 18, 2007 at 9:20 amThanks for the pictures. Nice to see you guys in action. We can’t wait to see the new chicks. We’ve built a new fabulous chicken coop for them.