Take 2

 Baby giant angoras, born December 22nd

and getting some fur, December 27th! This is the 2nd litter for our giant angoras, Chalcedony and Galena.  The first litter was born in October, just before the freak snowstorm and none lived.  Mama Galena repeatedly picked up the babies from the first litter, tearing the backs of their necks.  The two that didn't bleed to death didn't make it through the 10 days of no electricity/heat.  These little guys are doing wonderfully!

I do like green eggs and ham

I DO like them, Sam-I-Am!

My little Ameraucana is all grown up - she laid her first egg this morning :)

End of the first growing season

Spaghetti pucchini

The oddest squash ever.  Our zucchini, pumpkins and spaghetti squash cross pollinated.  They start off looking like a fat zucchini.  Grow to the shape of a spaghetti squash, while keeping the dark green color of a zucchini.  Then the color mottles to the greens of an unripe pumpkin and they turn a peach color.  Not yellow like a spaghetti squash and not orange like a pumpkin; something in the middle.  Very hard shell like a pumpkin, insides stringy like a spaghetti squash, but slightly sweeter.

Broody

I thought there was something wrong with her.  Every time I've gone into the barn since Friday, our littlest (not youngest, buy physically smallest) chicken has been sitting in the same nest box.  At first I figured she was just sleeping there; I generally go into the barn in the early morning when some of the birds are still roosting, and again in the mid to late afternoon, but when A went into the barn at almost 10 am yesterday and said she was in there, I started to worry. 

I went to check on her as soon as we got home last night, thinking she had hut her legs or her wing or something.  She didn't protest when I pulled her out of the box.  I put her down and she just looked at me - she seemed fine.  Then I noticed she had an egg in the nest! She's not hurt; she's broody!

So I put her back in.  Today, Holden put both eggs that he found in the barn in her nest in the hopes that she'll hatch at least one chick.  Of course, we have no idea if the rooster is actually mating with the chickens (A says he's seen him do it and it doesn't seem to be working), so there's no guarantee that the eggs are even fertilized, but we're excited at the prospect. 

The on egg she's been sitting on is tiny, and she hadn't been laying yet.  So either she laid her very first egg and never left the nest box, or she saw the guinea lay in there and decided she needed to sit on the guinea's egg.

 
Good ol' Roadrunner!

Excuse me, I can't talk right now, I have to feed my squirrel

Yes, I said squirrel. 

 Monday evening, A and the kids were taking the path up to the barn to check if there were any eggs before the lights went out.  Kenna comes running back to the house shouting at me to come out there RIGHT NOW!!

In the path, about 25 feet below a big squirrel's nest, is this little baby squirrel, who is chirping up a storm.  I realized that the chirping is the same sound I have heard for the past couple of hours as I cleaned up around that side of the house, so he's probably been there for a while. 

We've had orphaned baby mice die on us.  An orphaned baby bunny just this summer.  Not to mention the countless chickens and guineas we've lost in the past few months.  The last thing I wanted to do was take in another baby that was surely going to die.  Another thing for the kids to get attached to and then be heartbroken.

But A had other plans.  I think he was worse than the kids with the sad face when I said I didn't think we should take it in.  So now we have a squirrel.  We're on day 4 with him and he's going strong.

We're feeding him a mixture of kitten replacer milk and pedialite.  He's living in a little box in a nest of my fabric scraps, with the heat lamp over him.  We find him in odd positions like upside down with his butt in the air and his feet resting on his face.  The kids think this is hysterical.  He's gone through two name changes already - from the original "Squirrley" (Kenna said this one "just didn't stick") to "Quince" (I have no idea why).  I suggested Earl, as in he children's book, "Earl the Squirrel" about a squirrel with a little girl who knits him a scarf as a friend, but the kids looked horrified, because, as Holden yelled at me, "But MOM! Earl had to DIIIIEEE!" (see the Dixie Chicks' "Goodbye Earl" for clarification)

So now we have a squirrel.  A wants to give it a room with potted oak trees.  Or let it live in one of my currently unused rabbit hutches.  This morning, I asked A how he was, he'd been up for 2 hours by the time I got up at 7, and he said fine, other than the lack of sleep.  Clearly, he's never had a baby.  He's been getting up 4 times a night to feed the squirrel and make sure he's warm.  I think he needs a baby ...

World's smallest watermelon

The watermelon bed looked great all summer - lots and lots of flowers, vines growing over the sides, lush and green ... and so many little watermelon!


Well, they never really got very big.  They were like mini-melons.  Just slightly bigger than a baseball. 

(That's a quarter for scale)

But they sure tasted good! And little Farmer H is *very* proud of these little mini-melons!