some photos, melody goat and baby chicks

random photos of Melody asking me if it is dinner time yet

 

 Our elderly tortoiseshell cat, Minion, taking interest in the baby chicks as they are doing a lot more fluttering and running out at times.  They are getting wing and tail feathers and stretching them out to impressive lengths.  It will be a week tomorrow (today, Friday) that we have had them in the brooder.

 

languages: I have been working on French, Japanese and Turkish.   We heard more Turkish spoken in the crime series we are watching and there is also that one manga about the android girl in the post-apocalyptic world that was only available in Turkish so I had went a bit further in it back then to keep understanding words and it was cool to hear a few words in the crime series and say 'hey, I did understand a bit'

Baby chicks and our dog Charlotte

 

Charlotte is still quite happy to have babies - although she whines when we check on them.  They are eating and drinking - the light and heater are keeping it about 80 degrees or a little less during the night and it is warming up during the day.  They are active and seem happy.  We still think we got five Americanas (as ordered) and one of something else.  The Americanas were also supposed to be all hens.  We'll see.

I need to kick myself up and go fix a hose outside and then drag a bag of new dirt to the main garden and put it into the beds there.  There will probably be another frost here before March is out.  I have ordered some seeds from Sandhill Preservation center a week or so ago and they should be getting here sometime... trying to keep my fingers from itching to buy other seeds - I do have some kale and mesclun greens to plant, and have also went and harvested a little bit of dandelion green from that bed I had gotten that started in a few years ago.  None of the italika rossa (italian red-stemmed) dandelions have survived, but the other native ones I put seeds in there from have - and I did that so I would have a clean source to enjoy some of that in the Spring.  I also have two bean plants that I sprouted last week and they need to go out in one of the beds.  They are 'Alice Whiting' green / dry dual-purpose beans I ordered a few years ago and have kept replanting.

 

 

Baby chicks 2026

 

Americana baby chicks, six of them.  Mark got most of the brooder set up with the heat lamp and now they have eaten some food and drank some water.

Eggs and lentils

 

We finally got the first egg of 2026 - they hadn't laid any, or the opossums had eaten the rare one they had laid, for many months.  We had went all around the fence tightening things and putting bricks up against the fence any place it was loose.  Perhaps that has helped, some.  The day after the first egg I would have been surprised to see even one more, and there were two eggs that day.  We are still looking at getting more chickens, hopefully more like Speck, our golden chicken above - which I've asked the internet and been told that she was probably something crossed with a Crested Cream Legbar, to become the Olive Egger she was sold to us as.  She lays the more blue egg in the bunch, and we've gotten two of those the last two days and a more green one, as well.  

 

We will need to bring the brooder inside, it has sat outside since last summer but it looks in good condition - the lock and door might need to be looked at to see if there is any rust etc.  And we need to fix the footer barrel it used to sit in.  This is the big handmade cage Mark and Esme made from hardware cloth and a plastic 55 gallon barrel for our hamster and rat years ago but has been used as a brooder for two sets of chicks, as well, since then. It still might be a week or more before we actually look to buy chicks, but then we will be ready and not in a hurry one night to make a place for babies.

the first eggs

Esme and I were experimenting with lentils - red lentils a few weeks ago and I had her try some of the brown lentil vegetable mix I made last night.  She said it was nice - and that she couldn't really tell that much of a difference between the two types, spiced up as I had them.

 The recipe last night was :

1 cup of brown lentils, rinsed

2 cups of water

bit of olive oil, celery seed, black pepper 

minced clove of garlic, and a bit of minced ginger

chopped raw carrots from the freezer

bell peppers and onion from the freezer

half a can of diced tomatoes with italian spices

and after it had boiled for a while and was about half-absorbed, I added a teaspoon of paprika

 I served that beside a typical packet of Spanish rice, so she would have something else to eat if she really didn't like the lentils, but that made a nice combination, too - three quarters Spanish rice to 1/4 lentils mix.  The last time I made Biryani spiced red lentils for her with garlic and ginger and carrots - I served it over rice.  That is supposed to make a complete protein, so it is very good practice.

Mark also made two hamburger patties and split the second one in half so we put that with our meal and French bread.  With meat being so expensive I want to make sure Esme learns to cook the way I did in college and can stretch things and keep dry goods like rice and lentils.  Also, it is a good way to add vegetables and she will eat a lot of them prepared this way.

I put the other half of the lentils mix into a clean quart jar and put a lid and a ring on it, and when it was cooled some, I put it in the fridge to blend up into lentil soup for my lunches this week.  I ate the pea soup all last week with extra vegetables and spices each day and it was some of the best soup I've had in a long time. 

I have a few beans coming up in the windowsill to plant outside when the first frost has passed - and I have been upping my levels on the languages in Turkish and Chinese, German and French.  I haven't touched the Lithuanian all week... a break here and there helps to know what you really know.  Just like the German, it's been years since I actually did many lessons, and I had to re-orient my grammar in it which I have had that specific issue with it before. 

a soup and kick tail

 The first step to making this great soup ALL week long, has been that I made a pot of pea soup on last Sunday, and stored it in a quart jar in the fridge.  That is the standard of a cup of split peas to two to three cups of water, a bit of butter, celery seed, black pepper and a bit of onion, all blended together once it has cooked until the peas are soft.

Then, I took about two to three tablespoons of the slightly solidified pea soup in a container all week with a bit of rice, frozen zucchini, more frozen onions, frozen beet greens that were in the freezer, and garlic parmesan seasoning and black pepper.   I added some water to that at work and made a VERY tasty soup that I kept coming back for.  One of the days I added some spicy seasoning with cayenne, and another I put some furikake rice seasoning in it.  The beet greens were a very small amount in each bowl - but it has used that up VERY well.  The picture below shows the soup with the furikake and sesame seed combination in it.  This is a soup I could eat much more often - and would work very well with what I typically grow in my gardens, beet greens and/or kale, zucchini and summer squashes.

 I also checked the little car today, after it had sat dormant for almost two months.  I've been kicking myself that it wouldn't crank, or it would choke on the fuel pump - it still might.. but it cranked, and it ran really well on my usual 'runabout' trip that makes sure it is not overheating and is working well enough for emergencies.  I was feeling quite bad about letting it go so long with all the cold and the ice storms that really required more maintenance of it... but it wasn't going to get any better for not knowing and I finally kicked my own tail today.

I tried to make gnocchi last night, and it was a learning experience.  I needed to add more flour, as the first batch disintegrated in the water - but the second and third bits that I had put more flour in turned out edible.  Tonight, I made leftover rice with kielbasa, diced tomatoes, garlic and lots of other vegetables, mandarin oranges and an egg for each of us on the side.  We're still trying to stretch to make sure everything works out from the lost wages with the ice storm.

I've been catapulting forward with my German on Duolingo - taking the tests to try to get up to my actual level on my phone, and working at my level on my computer account, in between Japanese and Turkish.

It's time to start the garden - I planted a few little things that I don't know if they will take, and ordered some seeds from the preservation society.  I need to go out and do some more work after the hopefully last freeze on Sunday.  We haven't seen opossums, or eggs though, since we went and tried to fix the fence.   Store-bought eggs work in recipes, but they are definitely not the same as having your own chicken's eggs.

 

chicken yard at night

Esme and I went out and tried to secure down the chicken yard a bit more with zip ties and bricks etc et al... two more opossums were in my hen house last night and my big Beau rooster (second in charge, half-blind) did his best to alert me and face them off but they wouldn't leave until I came out. He has a terrible noise he emits when they are out there - between that and the dogs I'm up even if asleep. We'll see if we've managed to close up the places they were getting in at or we'll have another round of checks and fixes. The other bigger rooster, (pictured below, I don't really have a name for him, but maybe Sarge) was on top of the henhouse with all of the hens pushed up under his wings keeping them safe, so both roosters were doing what they could.