RIP Snow Flake and Clover Flower GF Pancakes

 Life can be hard sometimes. Being in a subdivision, in a fenced garden, and in a cage, we thought our sweet pets Snowflake and his girl Crow were safe from harm. The girls went out a couple of weeks ago to find something had reached in and taken their heads off. :-( Heart breaking!
It has been weeks, and writing this still makes me want to cry. 

Full grown and still tiny. They may have been tiny but they were large on personality!

 We borrowed a live capture trap and caught a Opossum. What a nasty rodent! Not sure if he was the killer or not but we were glad to get him out of here anyway.
We are pretty sure there is a Raccoon because something kept getting the food out of the trap without getting caught.

On a brighter note, I am getting our garden in and the kids have been helping out this year! Wanting to help! This has caused thing to go much faster than when I am doing it by myself. It also makes me very happy. 

Free food that grows so effortlessly!

 I saw a video on you tube where they were deep frying battered Clover flowers and that gave me the idea of making "pancakes" with them.

The kids went out and picked a bunch of them for me.
Then I made a batter of Brown Rice flour, Millet flour, eggs, honey and a couple fist fulls of clover flowers. Four out of five kids liked them with syrup. The 5th asked me, "Is it a salad or is it a pancake? Don't mix the two!" That made me laugh. Hubby said they needed onion. So this morning I made them again without the honey but put 1/2 an onion and some cheddar cheese and they were pretty darn good!

 Now to find stuff to do with Dandelions and Violets other than picking them with my salads and throwing them in my green smoothies.

Are you into edible weeds? What ones do you eat? How do you fix them?
I like the idea of working with what wants to grow instead of fighting with my Spinach that does not want to grow well for me.

Clover pancakes.

Chicken (and cat) Photo Shoot

Asia the rodent killer, enjoying the sunshine.

I call this one fluffy, well, because she is fluffy! Haha she has a fluffy back side and is really a hoot personality wise. I thought she was going to peck the camera she came so close! 

Mr Rooster making sure that black thing making the clicking noises was okay. He watched me like a hawk! He is a friendly guy though and a quiet crower (is that even a word?). I am very pleased with him! Not to mention he is beautiful!

This is my favorite! I need to play with it and make a button for the web sight with it.

Buffy watches me from afar. She is antisocial. ;-)

Fluffy getting a drink.

Sweet ol Reese soaking up some sunshine, while staying close to me.

Dust bath time!

Scratch and peck.

This is Fluffy's brother. He is getting beautiful, long, shiny neck feathers. Plus an attitude. 

He will be finding another home.

Scratch and peck. It's what we do!

 It was so nice out Saturday that I went out and had a photo shoot with the chickens. It was funny! They were so curious about what I was doing. So anyway, here is some of our flock for your viewing enjoyment. The Silver Marans have started laying, but I have not downloaded the picture of the eggs yet. I will soon!

Spring Is Around the Corner!

Frizzle/Silky chick. I named her Gwendolen

Snowflake the Frizzle chick. Maybe a rooster?

I have not done a blog update since June. Life knows how to throw you for a loop sometimes!
I won't go into all the morbid details of my life. but will give you an update on the homestead.

First off, Jo Jo the bunny lived only a few happy months with us and then passed away. I was worried that it may have been something we had done, or not done, but I talked with his previous owner, and he was just an old boy and it was his time. That was a very hard loss for Bug-a-boo, but a few weeks later I took her to our local flee-market/animal sale and she picked out a dwarf Rex and named her Starlight. She is a little, furry, spitfire! Bug-a-boo trained her to a leash and has worked with her and she has been a good pet/manure maker.

I couldn't help myself. My honey was out of town and I found a couple of Frizzle chicks for sale in the local want ad and I think they will ad a fun mix to our little flock!  

My 20.00 green house from Tractor Supply

Started seeds. Too early?

We had a day in the 70s and it triggered something in me that caused me to start some seeds indoors, and buy a green house. It is only 40s-50s right now, seeing as it is only February!
I have never been successful at starting seeds indoors, but I am not giving up! I have them on a heating pad and we will see what happens.

I want to give an update about the red rocks training chickens to not eat tomatoes...It does NOT work! Not only did the chickens eat 2/3rd of my tomato crop, they ate every one of our water melons, and everything else that looked tasty to them!
The chickens that are in the pen he build in my garden are on probation and if they get out and peck one tomato, we are getting rid of them and only keeping what is in the wonderful Port-a-coop! Or we could build another port-a-coop. ;-)

The have chickens in your garden that some people seem to be able to manage has not worked for me. I say off season let them roam, scratch, peck, and poop in your garden. (You will have to fix all your paths though)
While there is fruit, seedlings, or any other green herb you want for YOUR consumption, keep them far away from you garden.

Starlight the Rex bunny.

Yes, this goes for bunnies too!
Have you ordered seeds? Started any indoors yet? Are you tired of cloudy, cold, rainy or snowy days?
Stand strong my friends, Spring is just around the corner!

Blueberry Picking and Jo Jo the Bunny

My garden from the view of my bedroom. This was about a month ago.

Nate the Great who never liked blueberries till he had these.

Tina hard at work. Note the bare feet, yes. this is my child. 

My eldest son proving you can be cool, and pick berries at the same time. 

Bug a boo!

Joy Joy was working hard. She might have been able to fill her bucket had she not eaten so many while picking. 

We all ate a LOT while we picked. None of us had ever been blueberry picking before  & I really wanted to go and make memories, and have LOTS of blueberries. We were having fun picking, we had our friend Sarabeth with us, and it was hot but not to bad. We were watching clouds roll in and that cooled things of. Then it started raining on us but we kept picking. Then it got heavier and Nate the great went to wait in the car. The wind really kicked up and started pouring so we ran to the car with what we had only to find I had left the windows down! LOL Then we put our pickings into the buckets we brought for this use and found we had just over 4 gallons of blueberries. I then had to run through the sheets of rain and put the money in the honesty bucket. By the time I made it back to the car I was soaked to the skin! We had the heat on high to try to warm us up, but I had to turn the air on up front because my window was fogging up! All together we had a great time and we will never forget our blueberry picking adventure! 

If you want to go Blueberry picking ,I suggest Green Mesa Blueberry Farm. The girls help Miss Arlene  make the BEST blueberry smoothies you will ever taste on Friday nights at the Wilkesboro Open Air Market and it is her blueberry farm we went picking at.

This is the Hauser Homesteads newest addition. He is a sweet dwarf bunny who was in need of a loving home. Bugaboo takes good care of him, and Jo Jo provides her with something to love and care for.  

Jo Jo taking a nap in a bed of clover. He gets to run around in the garden in the morning and (evening if not to hot). He will hop, run, nibble and if Bugaboo calls him, he comes bounding over for a treat. He is delightful! 

Hawks, Gardening, and New Chickens

One of our Red Tail (I think) hawks that have taken up residence in our back yard and surrounding area. He/she even took a dip in our little garden pond. I like them but I am glad our chickens are covered!

Mom's sweet potato slip experiment. This is the two "top halves" of the potatoes.

These are the 2 bottom half's. Next time I will cut of the point and put them in upside down. I think they will do better that way. You see the one is growing a little but under the water! I am put them in the dirt soon and see what happens. 

This is a Amaranth plant that seeded it's self in the middle of the yard. Frank  put wood chips around it, so I teased him and called it his pet amaranth plant and called it Bob. He told me, in his no nonsense voice not to be silly. Amaranth plants are not named Bob, its name is Jimmy. So this is Jimmy the Amaranth plant.   

This is 4 zucchini plants. Notice how big and lovely the one in the front left corner is?  That plant happens to be over a spot where I had dug a big hole last fall and started dumping kitchen scraps into it. We would carry out the kitchen scraps, dump them in, then I would water it and cover with a little dirt, then we would do it again till it was full. This picture was taken over a week ago and this plant is twice as big, I have gotten 2 zucchinis off of it. The other 3 plants look about the same. This is what I need to do all over my garden. 

The tomato plants that have the chicken litter that came out of the Port-a-coop this spring  are very happy. The ones where I just put the wood from the tree trimming around them, look sad. Sticks with one branch ,with a leaf and maybe a sad tomato on it. Yes, my soil needs HELP!

A watermelon plant for Nate the great. I planted 5 and I hope for his sake they  bring forth fruit.

A pretty flower I planted because I wanted too. 

Lettuce plants that lived through the winter and have gone to seed. They are taller than me and lovely. 

Half closed Comfrey flowers. This plant is doing well in it's tire  planter. I took some of it's leaves and put into a bucket of water to make a tea of sorts. It is supposed to be a great fertilizer.

A couple of Japanese Beatles. There are a few but really have not done any damage, possibly because the chickens get to run around the garden a couple times a day and help keep the bug numbers down. These two did die a quick death after the picture. 

Our young Male Coco Maran chick. I hope to keep him for breeding.

One of our 2 female Coco Marans. They are known for laying very dark brown eggs.

It looks to be a very hot summer and my garden is already feeling the heat. I noticed my pumpkin plants are wilting badly even after I pored a lot of water on them, so when it cools off I am going to check for vine borers. (I HATE evil vine borers!) I am rather frustrated by how little I have been able to do in the garden. First by not being able to work on the soil this winter like I had hoped. I had been making good progress before I shattered my elbow and lost 6 months while healing. I feel as though I am running uphill trying to keep plants alive in soil that is empty. How much blood meal and concoctions can I poor on these poor plants? I guess I will find out. I don't have a lot to lose at the moment. There are some plants doing well though so I should not complain. I have been making walking paths through the garden to help keep the weeds down and it is looking very nice. With exception of the Thyme I planted, my herbs are doing very well. On my to do list; clip and dry herbs, learn how to gather lettuce and herb seeds, dig out a couple of beds and start my kitchen scrap dumping, as that seems to have been the best thing for my soil, and finish rolling the wood chips down and finish my paths I started.