The First Two Eggs!

Gracie was thrilled to find our first two eggs inside the mobile chicken coop today! After 5 long months of caring for the chickens and waiting for the coop to be built we will now begin to finally enjoy the fruits of our labor! They are tiny pullet eggs right now (about half the size of a normal egg) but within just a few weeks we'll have full size eggs to eat and sell!

This egg scale belonged to our kids' Great-grandmother, Frieda Beckmann. The tiny egg is not even registering yet. (shown with the bottle of beer for comparison)

Luke and "Butler"

Luke is shown here with one of our roosters, "Butler". Amazingly, he can still catch him and Butler shows no aggression. In fact, after putting him down, Butler continues to follow Luke around.

Chicks-Day 11

Quick summary of our first week with the chicks:

1. We didn't read the instructions correctly on the "chick starter" and added way too much to the water! (You try reducing this fraction: 4oz/55 gallons!) Yeah....we know now, it's less than 1/2 t. per gallon!) We're not sure, but this may be why we lost 8 out of 56 chicks in the first 48 hours!

2. Had to travel to Lincoln to find chick feed without antibiotics. Can't get "organic" feed shipped in until March 11th!

3. Gracie and Gemma have done a fantastic job of keeping the area clean and providing fresh water and food every day.

4. The kids convinced me to buy 16 more chicks to replace the 8 that died. Not sure how that math works out but we now have a total of 64 chickens.

5. The kids have spent hours just sitting and watching the chicks. I sneak down there every now and then too and must admit, it is very relaxing.

6. We've had lots of visitors to see the chicks but they are growing fast so if you want to get a glimpse before they get ugly, come soon!

7. Overall things have gone very smoothly so far but the chicks will be able to fly over their 12 inch containment wall in just a fews days, so it's time to build the taller cardboard walls!

Seems like their little wings sprouted overnight!

That's "Longshot" on the right. She's one of the new girls.

She's a smaller breed of chicken but the kids fell in love with her.

Don't write her off just yet. These chicks were trying to intimidate her.....

....but Longshot stood tall and backed them up!

The Chicken Adventure Begins!

After nearly 10 years of buying eggs directly from farmers who raise all natural, free range, pastured laying hens in mobile chicken coops, we've decided to try it for ourselves! Not because we want to become farmers, but because we want to give our children an opportunity to own their own small business, learn responsiblity that comes from caring for the animals and to teach them the connection between our soil, the animals and our health. We are excited to raise these laying hens with no antibiotics and no hormones in the most natural environment we can possibly offer them. If you've never tasted an egg from this kind of chicken, get in touch with us in July! You're in for a real treat!

We will brood the chicks in our basement (then garage) until construction on our new mobile coop is complete and it becomes warm enough to move them outside. The mobile coop is being built on a flatbed trailer which we will move around Grandma and Grandpa's farm every week with a 4 wheeler. It will look something like this (ours will be a little cuter of course!):

To see all the photos from our morning click HERE!

With chicks on the way, the children were very eager to get started on the brooder pen!

Gracie, in her jammies, is speading wood chips over the plastic.

We got a call at 6:30am this morning from the post office to inform us that our 50 baby chicks had arrived by mail from the hatchery. I don't know if the children were this excited on Christmas morning! We piled into the van and headed straight over to pick them up! I warned the kids that one or two might not have survived the trip but they were all in excellent condition.

At the back door of the post office.

Our friendly US postal worker presents the chicks to the kids!

The adventure officially begins!

We can't believe there are 50 chicks in that little box!

Ready!!

Get set!

Open!! All 50 have made it safely!

Six different breeds and 3 different roosters. Should be a colorful bunch!

It's so hard not to handle them but they are very fragile this first day.

And so the chores begin!!

Kids are little late to school but chicks are happy and the principal says they had a "GREAT" excuse!

Shaking The Hand That Feeds Us

There was no school today so the kids rode along with me to pick up milk. Our winter milk source, the Divino Nino Family Farm in Palmyra, Nebraska is about an hour and fifteen minutes from our house. Either I or our friend, Sue Briggs drives to this farm every Friday to pick up fresh, whole, unpasteurized, unhomogenized whole milk from grass-fed Guernsey cows. These pastured cows are never given antibiotics or any type of hormones and are fed a natural diet intended for cows, GREEN GRASS! YUM! You can see the whole role of film from the day

HERE.

Home From San Fran

The WAPF Conference was awesome!! To my friends back in Ohio.....did you know the 2009 conference will be held in Chicago?? Remember, you don't have to be a member of the WAPF to attend! (I'm talking to all you Farm-To-Table friends!) Reserve November 12-15 on your calendars now!

It's taken me a whole week just to settle down and begin processing all the information. Between the many lectures, the information at the vendor booths and the conversations at the meal tables, it was ALOT to take in!! On top of all that knowledge was time spent visiting with old friends and making new friends. We dined 3 times a day at tables of 10 so there were always fabulously interesting new people to meet.

Gracie did wonderfully and would often rush me through the meals so she could get back to the children's programs. She was in a different room than Marshall but would frequently check in on him for me. I was very proud of how mature and outgoing she was. Gracie also impressed me with her poise and her courage all weekend as we navigated through the airports, the cab rides, the subway and the city. I couldn't have done it without her!

Our roommate, Sue Kirkpatrick, from Lincoln, NE was a gem. Not only was she a GREAT roommate (lots of fun and easy to be around) I consider her a new friend. We have a lot in common and I look forward to seeing more of her and meeting her husband Tom.

Here we are at the Rainforest restaurant on Fisherman's Wharf.

This is Aunt Karen's mom, Marilyn. She drove herself downtown, parked in a parking garage and walked about 20 blocks to Chinatown to meet us for dinner. After a wonderful meal and two glasses of wine she shopped with us, showed us around downtown and then walked back to her car. What's the big deal you ask?? She'll be 85 years old in May!!

Here is Gracie on the subway train at 11pm at night!! After a $56 cab ride to Fisherman's Wharf we decided to take the $5.35 train back to the hotel!