A strong foundation

One thing we are learning on this journey is that good community is priceless.  When Chris had the footing forms ready to pour cement, he called a few friends.  His boss, Lynn, came over with his tractor and cement mixer attachment.  Friends Louis, Youssef, and John, lent their time doing the dirty, heavy work too.  My dad, Steve, spent many hours helping out too.  Together they all spent a very full day, working past dark, to pour the cement footings.  Lynn came back the next morning to finish up the last bits.  Many hands certainly makes the work go faster!

Lynn driving the tractor, Chris down in the trench

Its hard work

My Dad helped put the pieces of rebar in the frames before the cement was poured

Lynn on the tractor, John at the top of the hill, Louis at the base of the homemade chute, and Chris on the left.

The homemade chute did the trick....for a little while

The next step once the cement had hardened was the block work.  Chris's dad Adrian, a bricklayer by trade, came from Saskatoon to help with that part. As Chris says, "After all a parent should do their best to give their children a good foundation!"  Row upon row the walls rose out of the ground.  Its nice to be able to see the actual scale of the house.  To see the size of the rooms.  To show the kids where their bedrooms will be.  To see your dream coming alive.
 

The side door on the West wall

The back wall looks imposing, but I've been assured it needs to be that high!  Once the floor is in, the block work won't take up so much of the height

Adrian laying the blocks on the South facing wall

Cutting the blocks was messy, dusty work

They cut out the centres of the top 2 rows of blocks to lay rebar in and fill the channel with more cement

The last block!

Parging the outside of the blocks

The last batch of mortar!

Job well done

Well, not quite done.  After Adrian left, Chris and my Dad mixed the cement in the smaller mixer to pour into the top 2 rows of blocks.  Chris made hundreds of trips up the hill with a bucket of cement to pour into the channels

Rough work on the hands

Now moving on to water sealant, drainage, foam board, and back filling.

Breaking ground

 It has begun!  The digger arrived.  It dug a hole.  A big hole!  It found lots of rocks.  Big rocks!  We have more rocks for landscaping and using in our build than we know what to do with.  We also have a huge pile of dirt, several of them in fact.  What fun for kids who love to get dirty!

This is the biggest of the rocks.  It took about 30 minutes to remove it from the hole!

Who can resist playing in the dirt?

This isn't even half of the rocks!

Ready for the footings!

The view up the hill to the North.  Prettiest sunset I've ever seen

Foxes, and chickens, and bears, oh my!

One morning last week I heard lots of squawking and noise outside.  Finnlee came running saying she saw a fox.  We ran outside to find the chickens all flustered.  Fred was calling out his danger cry.  There was no sign of the fox.  But I found a pile of feathers in the chicken run.  Then at the edge of the clearing another pile of feathers.  Off in the woods I followed a feather trail to the body of our sweet Rhoda.  The fox must have broken her neck in the attack but I scared it off before it had a chance to eat her.  Such a shame to loose one of our best layers that way.  I cleaned and skinned her body and she is sitting in our freezer beside the first one we haven't had the nerve to eat yet.  Inside her I found one last egg, fully developed, ready to lay.  That evening as we were eating dinner I heard Fred's danger cry again.  Sure enough the fox was back.  I yelled out the window and clapped my hands to frighten it away.  Chris ran out of the house barefoot and chased it all the way into the woods yelling at the top of his lungs.  Everyone says you can't scare away a fox.  They will keep coming back as long as they can get your chickens.  Chris must be scarier than anyone else because we haven't seen the fox since!

I took this picture of Rhoda a few days before the fox killed her

To help keep the fox away we have been keeping Molly dog outside all day.  She hunts chipmunks, follows the kids around, and sleeps under the van.  After feeding the chickens one day I whistled for Molly as I walked up the path to the house.  I saw her hunched black form on the driveway ahead of me and called her again.  She nudged my hand from behind as I was looking at the black furry mound on the driveway.  Then it turned its head.  It was a bear.  Then I saw another one.  Both small, but larger than Molly.  Likely last year's cubs kicked out by mom to make room for a new baby.  I kept Molly's attention as I lead her to the house.  I didn't know what she would do if she saw them, and I didn't want to find out!  I put Molly in the house and came back out to watch the cubs.  I was torn by the urge to go get the camera or keep watching.  I decided I should see what way they went and make sure that Mama wasn't with them too.  I stayed on the porch by the door in case I needed to move fast.  The cubs ignored me as the ambled across the driveway.  A car drove by waving and pointing at the bears in front of me.  The cubs took that as their cue to meander into the woods along the road away from the house.  They were so beautiful!  I feel honoured to have had the opportunity to observe them.  Maybe I need to start carrying the camera around when I do chores!

More peeps

So, right after we spent 3 weeks incubating our eggs we had a hen go broody.  The. Day. After the eggs hatched to be precise.  Since we only had 7 chicks from the first batch, we decided to let our broody Salt sit some more eggs.  I gave her 12 eggs to start.  After almost 2 weeks I slipped into the coop after dark with a flashlight to candle the eggs.  To my surprise, they were all viable except for 2.  I moved her from the hens' favorite nesting box into a temporary brooding room I built into the corner of the coop.  On day 21 we woke up to find this darling little face peeking out at us!

Hello little one!

Salt did such a good job sitting her nest that all 10 eggs hatched out without a problem!  I have to say, its so much easier letting a hen do the incubating, hatching, and chick raising!

Salt all plumped out to make a nice warm place for her babies

We named this one Happy Feet.  Doesn't she look like a baby penguin?

Our first babies are more friendly with us than the new chicks because they imprinted on us from the start.  This is Amelia, our best flier named after Amelia Earhart of course.  As soon as we open the brooder she flies up onto whoever's head is nearest!

The new babies look so tiny

And the older babies look HUGE next to them even though they are only 3 weeks older!  They look like awkward teenagers now!

The older babies have most of their adult feathers in now.  Its very interesting to see their markings coming out

These 3 certainly have their father's legs!

Salt has started to take her babies out of the coop for walks.  She's a great Mama and makes my job so much easier!

Peeps!

We started with 16 eggs in a homemade incubator.  After the first week, one egg stopped developing for unknown reasons.  The other 15 grew fast!  We marked the growth of the air sack, rotated the eggs, maintained the temperature and humidity, and waited.  Chicken eggs incubate for 21 days.  On day 18 one of our eggs pipped.  The pip is the first crack in the egg.  The chick pokes a hole with the tiny tooth at the end of its beak.  This pip means the baby can now breath air from outside the shell.  It can take 24 hours or more to hatch from the first sign of a pip.  This first chick made its pip at the wrong end of the egg though, it was breech! 

See the pip on the right side of the egg on the left?  A chick should pip through the air sack at the wide end.  This little guy got turned around somehow.  Often breech chicks can't get a good enough grip on the inside of the egg to push out.  Then they suffocate and die.  We left this little one for 24 hours monitoring to see if it was still alive.

Soon the egg next to the first pipped too

After 24 hours, I was worried about the first little guy, so I helped him out a bit.  I peeled back a tiny bit of the shell and she poked her beak through right away!

I helped her out a bit more after several hours and then she did the rest on her own!

Hello baby!

Sister joined her soon after

Hatching is hard work, they needed a rest.  Notice the pip in the next egg?  The stars written on the shell were where we guessed they would pip.  We were pretty close with all of them except the breech chick

We spent a lot of hours watching these eggs jump and bump around waiting for them to emerge!

By the end of day 20 we had 6 fluffy peeps!  2 chicks died as they were hatching, not uncommon and nothing we could do about it.

On day 22 the 6 were joined by another tiny peep, likely a rooster by the little dot of white on his head.  The other 6 eggs never even pipped.  Again, not unusual, and nothing we could do about it.  The chicks and eggs that didn't make it will be buried in our pet graveyard

We can easily tell who the father of most of the chicks is.  We had 2 roosters, but only one of them had feathery legs!  Well done Fred!

They're imprinting on us

This is the overdue peep.  See his white spot and white wing tips?

Each chick has different markings and we can easily tell them apart

Each of us has a favorite!

Their first outdoor adventure

They stayed pretty close

So soft!

Welcome to our family little peeps!

Keeping busy

There is certainly no shortage of excitement around here!

The children gathered some frog eggs in a bucket

There were two bunches of eggs.  One of them was farther along than the other (right)

Our first hatched tadpoles!

Our first meal of wild fiddleheads harvested from our property!  So yummy!

Sprouting some sweet potato slips for the garden

The children are very excited to finally be using the trampoline they got for Christmas

About 300 bulbs of garlic planted last fall sprouting.  Can't wait for the garlic scapes!  This garden is protected from deer by some fishing line hung at various heights

A work in progress.  An incubator built from 2 old aquariums and a heat lamp.  We wanted to build it without spending any money, so the temperature is controlled by hand.  We really should have it on a thermostat.  We have to manually adjust the lid to vent it to keep the temperature in an acceptable range.  It takes almost constant monitoring.  I would be surprised if these eggs are all viable by the end of the 21 days of incubation.  In fact, I would be happy if even a few hatched.  So far though, I have been able to see growing embryos in almost all 16 eggs!

Thermometer, hygrometer, wet sponge for humidity, wire mesh for air circulation, beautiful fertile eggs from our own chickens 

And our biggest excitement!  This will be our new house!  The building plans are finished, the building permit has been approved, and the foundation is staked out!  Phoenix (left) is standing in the laundry/ mud room.  Zander (middle) is standing in the pantry.  Finnlee (right) is standing in the dining room.  In the back, you can see my parent's house.  Its not done yet, but they are already living in the basement.

Looking to the road from what will be my kitchen window.  The view will be much improved once the mobile home is gone.  You can see the chicken coop to the right

Looking left from what will be the front door.  The coop is just to the left

Looking right from what will be the front door.  That bit of red at the right is the newly painted shed Chris built a year and a half ago.  Next step, heavy machinery!