Back in July, Penguin got a very sweet gentle Easter Egger chick in a bantam assortment from Ideal Poultry. As a chick, it was kind of pale buff and grey colored. As seen in the photo below on the right, in comparison to my other bantam Cochins, it is a little larger than bantam. As it grew, it was generally lavender (pale gray) with accents of yellow and a little buff around the neck and chest. Based on temperament and…
Back at the beginning of the school year, my 13 year old son took on the responsibility of caring for his own chicken. Actually, he leased it with the option to buy. I know it sounds weird; the post can be found here. One of my conditions was he didn’t get to name it until the end of the lease period. Toward the end of the lease, my daughter and I began offering all sorts of cutesie suggestions for white…
We have been eagerly waiting since late May for the flowers on the Vincent Kiwi to turn into the yummy egg sized fruit. It didn’t help that i was frustrated with the two vines this spring… just as the Vincent flowers were fading, the male vine finally began to open a few blooms. There were only about 50 female flowers remaining, out of 400 or so it had initially. Therefore, I took matters into my own hands. I spent the…
Last year was the first time I tried making my own soy candles as homemade Christmas gifts. I enjoyed the process so much, I did it again this year. So if you are a friend or relative…guess what you might be getting! My daughter, B, also eagerly helped me this time. This morning, she even took the time to make 3 extra purple soy candles. This way, we had some of them for ourselves for Advent. Soy is a good…
Yesterday, my neighbor, G, and I processed 1/2 of the frozen concord grape juice we made at the end of summer into jam. As I mentioned in my previous post about the first half of the grape project, Learning to Can: Concord Grape Jelly- part 1, G has been teaching me what she knows about canning, how to can grape jelly to be specific. She was mentored by an older friend, whose mom passed down the knowledge and skills to…
Almost 2 years to the day, we had a red tailed hawk kill one of our free ranging chickens. Obviously perturbed at me for ruining its meal, it watched from overhead on the telephone wires as I cleaned up the carnage, with tears running down my face. After that, I became more cautious about when I let my chickens out and for how long. With supervision, I do let them enjoy at least an hour or two most days for…
In February 2009, I purchased three tiny 4″ goji berry Lycium barbarum plants from a fellow edible plant collector during bare root planting season. At the time, I was reticent to pay a premium for a small plant I knew very little about, and even worse, never tasted. I like collecting edible plants, especially ones that are exotic for Socal backyard gardens, hard to find the fruit sold as organic in stores, or would cost me more than other common…
There are regular sightings of opossums, squirrels, and rats in our neighborhood; and the majority of these sightings are along the Furry Freeway, as my husband calls it. It is the system of the power and utility lines that run overhead between the park and the houses. The connecting lines are a safe expressway where they are able to by-pass the dogs and cats below on the ground, confined in fenced backyards. The power poles down into the yards are…
Just after dark, on Halloween evening, Peter Pumpkin, a Giant Pumpkin, usually makes an appearance at our house. He is a Big Mac Pumpkin that comes to life on Halloween to talk to the neighborhood kids that stop by. Peter once told me he is the cousin of the famous “Great Pumpkin,” mentioned in the Peanuts Cartoon, Its the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. Over the years, Peter has also learned Spanish and is sometimes bilingual. The pumpkin gained a bit…
My son, J, came to me at the beginning of September and said “Mom, I want to buy that white chicken. How much is she? I have my own money.” He knows I regularly sell my chickens and wants us to keep this one. But then again, my kids would like to be able to keep them all. J explained he would be responsible and take good care of her. But as most parents will attest, when a kid buys…