Double S Farms Chickens and a Giveaway

Effie

I have never raised chickens before and to be honest, never thought of them as all that interesting.

That is until my sister, started raising chickens a few years ago.

 

 

A couple of days old.

I must admit that I was shocked that they arrived in the mail.

They were so cute and fluffy.

Every week, when went over for dinner, we would watch and see how quickly they grew.

Before we knew it, they were almost full-grown.

Sometimes they got a bit dirty and needed a bath....

But we always enjoyed their fresh eggs.

 Now my sister is raising a new batch of chickens.  They are growing quickly and get along well with the older chickens.

All of my sister's chickens are free range chickens and have the run of the backyard.

Which leads me to the following giveaway:

There is a wonderful, new book out about Free Range Chicken Gardens.

To celebrate the new book, the publisher, Timber Press, is having a giveaway with a chicken-related prize.

Check out their contest page:

Free Range Chicken Garden Giveaway Contest 

My Sister's Shattered Circus Dreams...

My youngest sister is quite cool.  She sometimes likes to do things that I would call "outside of the box".  I am more of the "stay inside the box" type.  Because of that, I love to live through some of her experiences, vicariously.

A couple of weeks ago, she underwent a truly unique experience that she shared in her blog and she kindly gave me permission to share it with all of you.

I think it's gutsy and hilarious at the same time and I'm so proud of her....

Do you all remember when my husband gave me a certificate for trapeze lessons for my birthday? Well six months later, I finally got up the courage to do it. I was scared out of my mind.

Once we arrived at Trapeze U, they got my belt on and gave me a quick rundown of what I was expected to do. Hook my knees over the bar and let go? I was the monkey bar queen in elementary school. I had this.

I got to the top and stood on what seemed like the world's tiniest platform where they clipped me in and gave me another quick rundown of what to do. (Look how high I am!).

Ready, set, go! (or "hep" as they say in trapeze speak). The following picture is terrible but I think the hilarious expression on my face says it all. Black Swan I am not.

I tried with every ounce of strength I could muster but I couldn't get my legs up and get my knees hooked over the bar. After hoofin' it up that ladder three more times and still not getting it, I was feeling super spent and super defeated.

My dear friends Laura and Jill were planning to show up and give me support (you gals rule!) but I quickly texted them both and told them to stay home. There is absolutely no way I'd want anyone to witness my lack of trapeze talent. I mean seriously - look at what a mess I was.

At this point, I was ready to quit and quietly watch the other flyers.

Coach Dylan wasn't having that. He gave me a much needed pep talk and pointed out that I was making a simple mistake. I was trying to lift my legs at the wrong moment and the momentum wasn't working to my advantage. 

So...I decided to give it one last shot.

And I did it!

Taking Dylan's advice made the knee hook (or whatever the heck it's called) so much easier. There was a small crowd at the class and I could literally hear the ladies on the side breathe an audible sigh of relief followed by cheers when I got my knees hooked. I was pretty pathetic and I'm sure they felt sorry for me. 

I did it a couple more times and each time I was able to get my knees up. I can't say that I did it with any style or grace but I was just stoked to finally be doing it! Towards the end of the class, they thought that I would be able to attempt another trick. (A little ambitious of them, maybe?). They explained that I would be doing the whole knee hook thing again but when I let go with my hands, I'd swing over to the other instructor and he would catch me. Seriously!?! If I can barely hook my knees how on earth am I going to pull this off?

So I climbed up to the top of the world's teeniest platform for the 10th time (I was wiped) and went for it.

I DID IT!!! I seriously did it.  Such an incredible, amazing feeling. I had to sit down and take it all in. 

While I'm pretty sure I'm not going to run off with the circus anytime soon, I would take more classes through Trapeze U in a heartbeat and am looking forward to signing up again soon. Dylan and the rest of the staff were amazing - they could clearly sense my fear and self defeatist attitude and gave me the encouragement and tools I needed to accomplish something I never thought I'd be able to do. 

Trapeze U 

888.872.7101

 

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You can follow my sister's blog at 

FinleyandOliver

The Gift of a Vegetable Garden: Part 2

In my last post, I undoubtedly left you hanging, wondering how the second part of our project ended (just kidding).

What project is that?  Well, my siblings and I along with our families surprised my mother for her 70th birthday by building her a raised vegetable garden to go along with her existing one.

I posted the first part of our project, which ended up with a lot of muddy shoes as we dug out the grass.  You can catch up on the first part here.


Now we all gathered again the next Saturday and were excited to finish the project.

We worked on building up the remaining sides.  It helped that my brother-in-law had a portable table saw, (if you don't have one you can always have the store do it for you).

My 1-year old nephew Danny, (one of my brother's twin boys), is just fascinated about how things work and he was wondering how much older he would have to be to use his dad's cordless drill ;-)

Almost finished with the sides!

My mother put out a blanket for the twins to play on and then the other grandkids came to play with them too.

Once we got all the sides up, we lined the bottom with newspaper, which helps to supress weeds and will break down.

My sister takes the twins, Danny and Dean for a walk around the backyard.

Here I am with my two sisters.

Okay, enough with all the family photos, let's get back to finishing the garden.

I don't think that there is anything quite as wonderful to a gardener then a trailer full of compost, do you?

Here is an action shot...

One of the clients that I write for wants gardening 'action' shots, so I try to get them whenever I can.

I love the fragrance of compost or as I like to call it "black gold".

My niece Sofie (left), and my kids Ruthie and Kai had fun spreading the compost inside.  They kept getting higher and higher up as the garden filled up with compost.

We finished the project by connecting the garden to drip irrigation and also put up support for the shade structure.

Some of you have asked me how we did this and you can see how it was done with the first vegetable garden...

The supports are made out of rebar.  Two pieces form each support and they were bent by hand and fastened in the middle using wire.  The support is used for shade cloth in summer, frost cloth in winter and bird netting all year to keep the chickens out of the garden.

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My mother was so excited about her new garden and she fed us all a fabulous lunch that day.

Later, we celebrated her 70th birthday with two cakes....

A few of her grandsons were more then happy to help her blow out her candles :-)

The Perfect Birthday Gift - A New Vegetable Garden

Have you been faced with the dilemma of what to give someone special for their birthday?  Well, the stakes are even higher when it is a 'milestone' birthday.  My siblings and I were faced with this very dilemma in deciding what to give our mother, (Pastor Farmer) of Double S Farms, for her 70th birthday.


After some deliberation, we decided upon building her a vegetable garden.


Now for those of you who are familiar with my blog, you may recall that my mother already has a nice vegetable garden....

But, for those of you who enjoy vegetable gardening; don't you sometimes wish that you had more space to grow vegetables?

We knew that our mother did, even though she never mentioned it.  So, we got to work planning on what we needed to build a new one.

My brother-in-law, built the first garden by himself...

For the new garden, my brother-in-law and I planned on what we would need and where the new garden should be placed.  

Actually, my part was easy.  I just figured out where to locate the garden and how many cubic yards of compost we would need.

Well, the date was set when we would all congregate at Double S Farms and start building the new vegetable garden.  

My mother had NO idea we were coming or what we were going to do.

Early on a Saturday morning we showed up with shovels, rakes, picks, drills and wheelbarrows.

My mother wasn't there when we all arrived.  She was at the local farmer's market - at this point, she was still clueless that anything was going on.

First, my other brother-in-law and my brother hammered in stakes so that we knew where to remove the grass.

Then came the fun part (just kidding).  Digging out the grass.  Actually, it wasn't too bad because the grass had been soaked two days before so that it was easier to dig out.

 There were a couple of rocks that we used a pick to get out.

It has been years since I have used a pickax, as you can probably tell from how I'm holding it.

  Soon, we had the grass removed and a muddy area left behind, which was absolutely irresistible to my 5-year old nephew, Finley.

At this point, my mother returned home from the farmer's market and was surprised to see all of our cars parked out in front of her house.

She was quite shocked when she came into the backyard and saw us working on her birthday present.  She was so happy.  She then got busy making us food, including the cinnamon chip bread that she had just bought at the farmer's market.

After a break for lunch (pizza), we began to add some loads of composted leaves and soon, it was time to start putting up the sides.

Sodapop and the chickens took time to come over and see what we were doing.

This is Francie, and this is how she is supposed to look - she is a 'naked neck' chicken.

From time to time, we would take small breaks to play with Sodapop, who would drop her ball at your feet and wait hopefully for someone to throw it.

Of course, there was also time for the cousins to play catch too.

At this point, we had to quit for the day because it was almost dinner time. We all decided to come back the next Saturday to finish the project.


I went home and while my husband cleaned our mud-crusted boots, I put a load of very dirty clothes into the washing machine.

Please come back for Part Two and see the end result of our labors :-)

**Many of the photos above, were taken by my sister.  She is a very good photographer :-)