Sunny Weekend...Whaaaat?

It's true, the wet soggy Pacific NW had SUN! Both Saturday and Sunday! 

Saturday was my Girl's Breakfast Club...that was my project for the day. I thought that I would do some stuff outside in the hoop house and the garden boxes, but not a lot happened. Actually, I did do some weeding,  but these two little goobers happened:

Seriously, these two are so cute and they don't venture far from either of us. This made for a short weeding session in the garden boxes. Which was fine, because this is what happened next:

Yep, it was easier to just sit in the grass with the boys and enjoy the sun! I don't know if this is a good thing or not, they just don't go too far from either of us and they LOVE to hang out close to me. Actually, Leonard (gosling) is more attached to me, Sheldon just follows his big brother (from another mother). I am concerned that they might not want to commune with the chickens when it comes down to it. Maybe we need to plop them into the brooder with the little ladies sometime soon.

I don't know though, these are the little ladies in their almost feathered state. They are older and the boys are only 13 days old...not terrible aggressive and quite needy. 

Overall, the weekend was good and our feathered friends all got some time outside in the sun. The forecast is calling for showers/rain/drizzle after tomorrow (Wednesday) so we'll have to at least get the little dudes out as much as possible. They will be missing their time out foraging in the yard.

Here are the boxes - 3 of them weeded and the one at the end is chock full of clover. Got out last night to get the Kale, Spinach, Mesclun and Romaine seeds sown. If I'm lucky the peas will go in tonight.

It was easier to plop these two in with the leeks while weeding. They were enjoying foraging the weeds in the box and then sunned themselves for a very short time. 

FINALLY...

tired of the stinkin' stupid rain.

You'll remember from my week off -

Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5

Last week was a whole lot of rain with major downpours a few days even.

This past Saturday was decent - until the evening and it started up again. The good thing is that we were  at a charity event and having a lot of fun while the rain came down. Then Sunday was fairly decent again with only spits here and there.

On Friday evening, the little ladies were taken on a field trip and got to go out on grass for the first time! It took a minute or so, they weren't sure what exactly they should do. After awhile they figured out that it was warm and they started to forage in the grass...you know, act like chickens. One even found an itty-bitty slug and commenced to run around in their very cramped enclosure. She finally decided to settle down and gulp down her prize. The others were still getting used to the great outdoors and one figured out that being outside meant more than just Chick Starter food.

They were treated to a second trip after church on Sunday. There are no photos, but their enclosure was a little more roomy. I thought why not use the corner posts from the Electric Poultry fence kit for now. So this fence material was zip-tied to the posts at the opening and the bin that we used to transport them was a safe place/block for the open side. While they enjoyed their little trip out and we had to bring out...

The baby duck and baby goose. Yeah, we came home with a couple more birds for the brood. These little ones were 3 days old on Saturday when we brought them home. In all the time that we (my family) had all the chickens, ducks, geese and other winged creatures, I do not remember ducklings or goslings. I'm guessing that we had broody ducks and geese...who  knows? I think there were little ducklings running around the property...how else would we get more?! Anyway - I promptly forgot what breeds we went away with. I want to say that the goose is an Embden, maybe. The duckling? Unsure. Maybe if we find ourselves out at Wilco again I'll see if they still have some of these little guys.

The goose is very sweet and very needy. As of today they are both 6 days old and still very much babies. I have to keep reminding myself of that. They don't have a momma to help them get food or to keep them warm, so we have  to do our best to keep them fed and watered and happy. Boy do they cry A LOT! The moment they lay eyes on us it's time for them to start talking! So we do what needs to be done and then pick them up and give them some attention and a little bit of time out of the box. They will be stuck in the box until they get too big for it and we have to get a bigger bin or until the Jersey's are big enough to get out of the brooder. However, I have a feeling that they will grow faster. Which would be okay, because as soon as they are able to defend themselves better we'll introduce them to the flock and they will need to start living together with some understanding that they both belong.

This coat has a duck pocket!

Another thing that will most likely happen within this week is the addition of some older pullets. We made a trip to Thrifty Feed yesterday to take a look at which breeds they had and about how old they are. I had my eye on the Cuckoo Maran chicks a couple of weeks ago and the fortunate thing is that they still have quite a few in the brooder. YAY!

I found out that these little ladies were delivered to the feed store on March 24th. So they are supposedly all pretty healthy and active. The question now is how many and where do we house them?

Since the Chicken Mobile is essentially finished they could live in there - and I'm thinking that 5 or 6 would be a good start for the egg layers. The reality might be different, but a girl can hope right? However many we end up with will have super deluxe accommodations for sure since the Chicken RV is 6 X 6 and will seat many chickens comfortably as well as the goose and the duck :)

Soooo, the weather forecast for later this week is predicted to be in the 80s. Okay, that's just not right. Why can't we ease into the heat? We are thinking that the weather is just a tease and that it will be back in the high 40s and 50s for a little while longer. Summer will arrive and last precisely one week.

Wouldn't that be awesome? (she said with a sarcastic tone)