Ta-Da!

I know, I know.   Just where the heck have I been for the last month?   Weeeelllllllll, it's sorta like this.   Jeremy went into the "old" computer I was using and realized that our famously slow internet service here wasn't to blame for the molasses-like speed on the computer.   I think he said something like, "The problem with your computer is that there isn't enough RAM in the hard drive to run the giga byte of the mother board."   Yeah, that's exactly what he said was the problem.   At least that's the story I am sticking with for now.  It was decided that the time had come to get Debbie a computer that was ready for the 21st century.  

So off we three went to Knoxville to the closest Best Buy.   Yes, we do live in the hinterland, and it is  well over an hour to get to any of the big box stores we took for granted when we used to live in suburbia.    But I digress.   A couple of exhausting hours later we were driving back up the Plateau with a big new box in the back of the car.   Whew!   It's hard work picking out a new computer....especially when we three had very different ideas of how to approach the problem of choosing one that would "last" me a while.

And so we ended up with a very slick new Apple....without a tower!    That was a revelation to me......no tower, and no laptop.   Just a huge screen that houses the entire computer behind itself....that's it!    And it's absolutely quiet, no running fans sucking dust up into a monstrous tower at my feet, blocking my legs under my desk.   Can you tell I love it?   I'm getting used to the very different operating system and so far, so good.   Except for one thing.   Yeah, there's always one thing.

I haven't been able to completely figure out the photo "stuff".   So, no pics for the blog just yet.  But I'm working on it.....in between my other daily obligations.   You know, things like.......holy cow!    I didn't realize our strawberry patch was going to produce so many berries the second season after planting.  

I'm serious.   I've been picking enough berries to fill three huge colanders to overflowing......every three days.  Yes, that's a lot of berries, and this has been going on for a month now.   After making strawberry syrup(quite by accident, I might add), and strawberry vanilla jam(oh, yumminess!), and freezing strawberries for future use(by the quart), and dehydrating thinly sliced berries for use in tea later.......anyway, after doing all that, I finally ran out of things to do with them.   Now what?  

Idea!   Sell them.   Yup, that's exactly what I've been doing,   Selling them by the quart.  I pick them myself around 7am, and by 9am I am delivering them along with dozens of our eggs to eager customers.   How cool is that?    I know it sounds crazy, but all the hard work that goes into keeping our little farm running is the most fun I think I've ever had in my life.  

I do hope you'll forgive me for my recent absence.   Besides picking, canning and selling berries, I've also been weeding the potager garden, laying down mulch in an attempt to thwart the tenacious weeds in there, and planting new herbs and flowers for cutting later this summer.   And, oh yeah, I am still preparing 3 meals a day, making our bread, dehydrating herbs, making butter from raw milk and trying to keep our farmhouse somewhat clean.

Um, and then 2 weeks ago I got a call from some of my old sewing clients in Florida.   One called Wednesday, one called Thursday.   Would I be able to make a t-shirt quilt for their daughter/niece for graduation?   Which is June 7th?   Pretty please?    Gulp.   I urged both ladies to get those t-shirts sent to me pronto and I would do my best.   So in between all I just told you that I have been doing daily, I now had 2 quilts to knock out in record time,

I'm proud to say that both quilts turned out beautifully and have been shipped back to my clients who will receive them well before June 7th.   But I sure did put in some late hours in the studio.....and I was able to utilize my new longarm quilting machine to quilt both quilts in short order.  AND.......

.......Jarrad got the results back from his PET scan on May 19th.   There are no signs of active cancer cells in his body!   Praise God!  His oncologist said this was the result he was aiming for and Jarrad would require no further treatment.   We are all so grateful to each and every one of you for the prayers and support you have shown our family this last 5 months.   Thank you, everyone.   Jarrad and Dawn have decided to take some time off and have a family camping trip.   And they're coming up here next week!   I can hardly wait to see them all and to lay eyes on Jarrad again.

So, I'll close now as the sun has come out and dried up the grass from our recent rains.  I think I will rev up my tractor and do some mowing, something that I love to do!   I know, how crazy is that?    It's actually fun for me to hang out in the sunshine, watch the birds swooping overhead and cut paths thru the fast growing grass.  

And today is Joel's and my 29th wedding anniversary.    What a blessing to celebrate it here on the Plateau, breathing in the fresh mountain air all the while I marvel at our fortune to live out our days at Whispering Oaks.   It's time for me to sign off, but I'll be back real soon.
Debbie

Believe It or Not

Yes, believe it or not, we are still dealing with computer issues.   You know how it is, when they are working, a computer is a wonderful tool to have access to, when they are NOT working, it's enough to drive you around the bend.    And, as my husband likes to say, that's a short drive for me.  ha! 

Well, the second case is what we are dealing with right now.   In an effort to be frugal, we took a couple of older computer towers to the computer geeks in town and they loaded all my pics and music from my dying computer onto an external hard drive.    At least now all of that info is safely stored.   Next they put all my remaining info onto the one older computer they felt was the best choice and we brought it home, hooked it up and turned it on.   It's a putz..........barely works...........very annoying........

So, I dragged out the baby laptop(I despise typing on this thing) and that is what I'm going to be using for the next bit of time while we figure out plan B.   Grrrrrr......anyway, that is my explanation as to why I have been AWOL for the past few weeks.  

I hope all you ladies had a wonderful Mother's Day yesterday.    As for me, welllllllllllllll, we picked up the longarm quilting machine Saturday afternoon......after Joel, Jeremy and I did a lot of grunt work moving stuff out of the studio to make enough room for the huge machine.    By the time Joel and I got home with the quilter loaded onto the trailer behind the Suburban it was already dinnertime.  

Jeremy and Joel brought the machine into the studio, piece by piece.  And a short while later it was all leveled and set up and ready for me to try.   Whew!    But we were all so pooped all we could think about was eating some dinner and crashing.   Which we did.   Promptly at 9:30.

On Mother's Day, though, I had lots of energy again and spent the better part of the afternoon reacquainting myself with the longarm beauty.   It is going to take a lot of practice until I can consider myself even somewhat proficient with this new skill,   But it sure is fun to play with!

So, that's what is new here on the Plateau.   We are now up to 19 baby chicks and that is all we will have this Spring as the nests are cleaned out once again and the proud new mamas are strutting around the chicken pasture with their babies in tow.   It's so cute to watch the babies following their mama and mimicking her behaviors like giving themselves a dust bath, scratching the ground to expose little bugs to nibble on, and pecking around my garden for tasty morsels.  They have given us hours of enjoyment watching their antics.

And that's all there is to tell today.   I hope to get back to posting pictures next post as I get more used to using the laptop.   Meanwhile, there is a mountain of sewing, gardening, planting and housework awaiting me.    Sigh......it's good to be useful......I think!  

Enjoying the sunny weather,
Debbie     

It Pooped Out

My computer, that is.    Yes, it pooped out on me.    And just when I had tons going on here!  And of course, it had to happen during the two weeks when I had a crazy schedule so I haven't replaced the old broken down computer yet.   At least I can type this quick post on Joel's computer......enough to let you know I'm working on it and will soon be up and running once again.

Just as a quick update:
We now have 17 baby chicks running around the coop.   And we still have one mama diligently sitting on her nest, so, who knows what the final count will be?

Last week we finally had several days in a row of beautiful, sunny, clear crisp days which allowed us time to work on some long overdue outside chores.   Unfortunately, I tried to cram 3 weeks worth of work into 5 days.   Yikes!

Then we had wonderful company from Florida last weekend, ending in a quick trip to Chattanooga to join up with other friends.   What a fun whirlwind of activity we had.    Thanks for visiting us again, Joyce, and for bringing Cathy and Angel with you, too!

And, now, drumroll, please.........Jarrad had his last day of chemo last Friday, got his shot Sunday(the one that stimulates his body to make white blood cells, but causes him terrible pain).   Now we wait for a couple more weeks to have his PET scan to see if the tumor is completely gone.   Praying, praying....

One final tidbit about me......I've been wishing, dreaming, wondering-if-it's-possible to obtain a longarm quilting machine for well over 5 years now.   It just so happens one of the lovely ladies at our quilt guild is moving and I am purchasing hers!!!!!   So, besides all the other things we've had going on, I've been driving an hour each way to her house to have her teach me as much as possible before we move the quilting machine here to my studio.   That should happen one day late next week when we are certain to have dry weather.

Oh, yeah!   One more itty bitty change happened this week.   We replaced my 12 year old Tahoe with a pristine 4 year old white Suburban.  It's gorgeous and a dream to drive.

Ummmm......yeah, my head is spinning.   Even for me, this has been a lot to absorb in such a short period of time.   And I still have the gardens to finish prepping and get them planted.  I think I need a clone! 

So, please bear with me as I work on replacing my computer so I can once again upload pics and posts to the blog.

Stay tuned,
Debbie
  

Guess What's New?

Baby chicks, that's what is new.   On Saturday when Joel went down to put the chickens to bed for the night, he heard a little "cheep, cheep, cheep" coming from just outside of a nest where a hen has been faithfully sitting on some eggs for a couple of weeks.   It was a baby chick!   He/she jumped out of the nest and couldn't get back in and mama was still sitting on some eggs.  

Well, actually, there were three little chicks.   He scooped them up and brought them into the house since it was an especially chilly, damp night and he was afraid they would die of hypothermia overnight since mama didn't appear to be budging from her perch.   We quickly put together a little pen for them with straw in the bottom and some water for them to drink.  And of course we managed to clean up the heat lamp for them to keep them warm for the next couple of days while we determined if we could put them back into the coop with all the other chickens.  

Well, by the time we went down to the coop on Sunday morning, we had another and then another baby.  All yellow and fluffy and cheeping as they tried to wander around on the straw on unsteady legs.   Joel had to run into town quick Sunday morning to buy chick food for the wee-ones since they need a special diet when they are first born.

Doesn't she just ooze cuteness?   Well, this morning(Tuesday) we took the makeshift pen down to the coop and reintroduced the babies to their mama.   You see, she hatched more chicks over the last day and a half and now there are 8.   And since she is done sitting on her eggs, we decided that it was safe to have all her babies in one place.....where they belong....with their mama.    Joel has gone down to the coop several times to check on how the chicks are doing and he said mama is proudly strutting around the inside of the coop with little chicks flopping and tumbling around behind her.   Just.  Too.  Precious.  

We'll keep checking on them to make sure none of the other chickens pick on the babies.   But, so far it appears all is well in Chicken Land.   Ahhhhhh......

We've had a lot of rain this Spring......it seems like almost every day we've had drizzly, foggy, or rainy conditions.   When we got a break in the weather yesterday, we loaded our caffeine up in our mugs and jumped in the Polaris to do some work in the orchard.   We had planted quite a few trees last Spring only 2 months after arriving here on the farm.  Unfortunately, six of them didn't make it thru the harsh weather this winter.    We've pulled them up and now it was time to do some orchard maintenance.

This is our crabapple tree in full bloom.   And the blooms smell incredible.   We put new tree rings around the base of all the trees in hopes of making our job of mowing around each and every one a little easier.   Then I trimmed up a few of the branches and we took stock of what new trees we would like to acquire in the next few weeks to round out our selection of fruit.

 

Our McIntosh apple tree has blooms popping out all over its branches.   I sure hope we don't have a freeze this year after the blossoms drop so we will have a harvest.  Last year, it snowed on April 15th and it cut our harvest down to almost nothing.   And since the fruit comes on the tree where the blossoms are now, it's important to  not have a freeze from now on this spring.   Keeping my fingers crossed.

I also decided to put some of my own personality on the outer edges of the front yard.  We have an old stump that is slowing decaying.....not especially a pretty sight.   Until now, that is.   I picked up some flowers at the store and used potting soil to create little pockets of posies on the sides and top of the stump.   A few larger blue-eyed daisies and red geraniums around the base completed the picture.   After dumping a bag of mulch around the perimeter and watering, now all I have to do is wait for the petunias to drape down the sides of the trunk and the eyesore is now something fun to look at.   I think I'm going to paint a sign that says something like, "Just plain rotten" and stick it in the dirt around the trunk.   Ha!   That should get the locals talking.

Anyway, lest you think everything on the farm is clean and pristine, think again.    This is what the front seat of the Polaris looks like on any given day.   Plastic coated wire, bug spray, eggs and work gloves....all these items are part of our daily work outside.  We may not be a big farm, but we're doing our best to be a "real" farm.

Wouldn't you know it, this morning as I was all set to take Molly outside for her walk, I spotted this big turkey strutting around the back of the potager garden.  Do you see it?   It's the dark grey object with it's head down eating bugs behind the garden off on the right side of the pic.   Well, as soon as we went outside the turkey high tailed it out toward the back of our property and the tree line.

And so that is how I started my day today.   A little bit of light fog, some drizzles, and lots of birds singing to one another from tree to tree.   And then as I looked up I saw the light clouds skimming the far away top of the mountain again.   You can see the grey mountain looming up behind the tree line.   Ah, yes, it's good to be here, even in the fog and drizzle.

Grateful for our first live births on our farm,
Debbie

Mud Room Reveal

 One of the blessings of having an enclosed 4 season porch is that it gives us a place to store things.....one of the problems of having an enclosed 4 season porch is that it becomes a dumping ground for anything that doesn't have a permanent home.   As my friends and family know, I like to keep things organized.....from my Tupperware filled pantry to the boot tray where we drop our muddy shoes and boots.    I despise piles!   I feel that any and all items in a home should have a place to store them.   You know, a place for everything and everything in it's place.

Well, for over a year now, we've been using our enclosed porch for everything from a sewing porch(until we finished off my new studio) to a holding area for coats, hats and mittens dumped on an overused clothes tree.   As we continue to find "homes" for all the loving items we brought up from our much larger home in Florida, I feel more and more satisfied that we are not living in total chaos.   Building a mud room cabinet wall was a natural in our progression toward that end.

So this is what we built this week:

Nothing fancy, this space just to the right of the kitchen entry door is all about function.   With a little country cute thrown in to make me smile.  We bought 2 pantry cabinets from Lowe's and installed them first with the amount of space we had available between the kitchen door and the 2 meat packed freezers.

My only request was that this fun vintage wire shelf fit in between the cabinets.   Now our coats have a designated place from which to hang, and there's plenty of space for hats, and whatever else we use on a daily basis, depending on the weather outside.   I love this shelf and have been waiting ever since we moved here to find a permanent home for it.   I think this space suits it just fine, don't you?

We took the extra shelves out of the bottom of both pantry cupboards and reused them in the upper section, which gave me a safe place to finally store my platters where they won't get banged around and chipped.   My electric griddle even fits up there.   Yippee!  Another big kitchen item finally has a home.

As these cabinets were meant to have shelves in them and not hanging coats, we had to come up with a solution to attach a bar for the coats that would be secure enough to hold a bit of weight.    Ta-da!   Joel came up with the idea to use 12" wide melamine shelving and it worked great!    And I'm so happy we can hang our winter coats out of sight until we need them again next year.   I also had extra door knobs from our kitchen project and we used them on this project so as to make it blend in with the new kitchen.

All winter long we three would drag our muddy boots into the kitchen so we could sit down on a chair to put them on before going outside.   You know what that meant.  Yup.   Caked on mud always ended up all over the floor as we walked around.   Joel put together this really sturdy bench seat in between the cabinets so now we have a place where we can pull out our boots from underneath the bench, sit down and put them on before going outside.   Problem solved.

Unfortunately, my flash washed out one of the details I just love about this project.....we put vertical slats of beaded boards on the wall behind the bench and wire basket.   I'm sorry it didn't show up in this shot, but trust me, it looks really farm house-y.   You know, my kind of decorating look for our house.   The basket on the right is from Joel's Aunt Ruth and I use it to bring in flowers and veggies from our gardens.   It's just so much more satisfying to me to use pieces with a history while going about my daily chores.

As for the bench, well, I used the stain from our step into the kitchen and then sanded it in between each of 3 coats of polyurethane to make sure it will stand up to years of use and abuse.  Joel made sure it is good and sturdy with 3 supports underneath the 2"x8" bench boards.    And now there is a load of space beneath the bench to store our boots and shoes.   One thing about living on the farm, we track a lot of mud, dirt and grass into the house.   A lot!   I'm hoping that by pulling our mucky shoes off and placing them under the bench we can eliminate tracking so much dirt into the rest of the house.

When we were at Lowe's yesterday, I purchased 2 of these solid boxes and organized our hats, gloves, mittens and scarves in them.  Now they won't be a jumbled up mess when we go to use them next winter.   I still have plenty of room to install another shelf above the mittens and I'm sure I'll fill that space later today as I unpack yet another of the few remaining boxes in storage on the other porch.

I know what you're thinking, who knew it would take me over a year to finally finish unpacking?  I've always been the woman who was unpacked within two weeks of a move....pictures on the walls and everything!   But in my defense, it's kinda hard to unpack when we have such small closets and no garage.   Now we're finding more and more ways to be creative in our storage solutions and this mud room fix is awesome.

While I had the stain and polyurethane out, I decided to finish up the butcher block we installed last Fall in the butler's pantry.   It sure looks a lot prettier stained dark and all smooth from multiple sandings in between coats of the poly.

  Oh, yeah, this is much better now.   And, it's also easier to wipe the counter clean since it's a smoother surface.   This little space packs a lot of function into one narrow room.   The washer and dryer are behind me in the photo and the repurposed old kitchen cabinets provide tons of storage for Ball jars and canning supplies, large kitchen electric appliances like blenders and extra staples such as flour and sugar sacks that are large and heavy.

While I was in the mood to clean up our messy enclosed porch, I asked my guys to bring the old wash stand down there.   We removed the shiny brass handles and replaced them with drawer pulls that match the kitchen.   Ahhhhh, I see a theme developing here.    Dark handles against creamy white painted cabinets.   Yes!   It's all coming together now.

And since Spring is officially here to stay it was time to bring out a sweet little nest with 3 little eggs inside it.   I love to stack plates inside the huge glass cloche and layer the whole thing on top of a cake stand.   That's how I decorate for Spring!

So, there you have it.    Our "little" project of the week.   Oh, yeah, in between all the construction, we spent 6 hours mowing for the first time this year.   It's been raining so much we had to take advantage of the one day when the sun was out and the grass was dried out enough to mow.   Soon it will be time to plant the gardens.   And our muddy boots now have a new home......

.....in the mud room,
Debbie

Violets Everywhere

I know it's Spring now, for sure, as the wild violets have begun popping up all over 2 separate areas of our yard.   Last year when they bloomed, I was so surprised to see them and simply admired them each day as I walked around outdoors.   But this year I knew I'd be doing more than only admiring them.   This year I am harvesting them. 

Yup.   Harvesting violets.   For what, you ask?   You see, you can use violets and their leaves to make tea.   Isn't that interesting?  Ok, maybe you don't think so, but I do.

It took about an hour to collect enough violets and leaves for the few yummies I wanted to make.   First, I pulled the stems off the flowers and placed the flower heads and leaves on one of my dehydrator trays.

I simply put the tray into the dehydrator and turned it on for 12 hours at 95 degrees.   The lower heat is used for herbs and delicate flowers.   By morning they were nice and crispy and ready to be put into a Ball jar for storage.  

By putting 6 dried flowers and 3-4 leaves in a teapot and adding boiling water, in 5 minutes you will have a lovely light blue shade of tea.   This recipe and many more for teas and tisanes are in a book by Cassie Liversidge entitled "Homegrown Tea".   I've grown many of the plants she suggests in the book and have enjoyed the tea from them over the winter.   This year I plan on expanding the teas I grow in the potager garden.

 And then there was one last item on my list of "try something new" with the violets.   First, the recipe required 2 cups of dark violet flowers pressed down in the measuring cup so as to make a dense and copious amount of violets.   That took a lot of violet picking!

The two cups of pressed violets were doused in 2 cups of boiling water and left to sit overnight to steep.   By morning the water was a beautiful deep shade of purple.   I squeezed the flowers so as to extract every single drop of purple water from them.   The violet water was put in a pot on the stove and I added 1/4 cup lemon juice and 4 cups sugar and brought the whole thing up to boil, stirring the whole time.   Once it boiled I added 3 oz. of liquid pectin and brought it up to a boil again for 2 minutes.   Then the liquid was ladled into canning jars and processed for 10 minutes. 

Voila!   Violet jelly!    Isn't it pretty?   How lovely it will be to bring this out to use for a tea party.  Can't.   Hardly.  Wait.

Just one more "food" to be found on the farm,
Who knew?
Deb

Postponed Projects.....Done!

It's been just over a year since we moved to our sweet little farm.   In the first frenzy of activity last year we had way more projects on our list than time would allow for us to complete before winter set in.   And so it was that when our weather finally broke last week and the sun came out over the last 5 days Joel and I hopped on some easy projects that were leftover from last year.  

Here's what we did:

 With the help of a little caffeine to jump start our energy, we cut posts and notched out areas for 2x4" cross bars.    After digging holes for the posts, we set them in cement and let that cure for 2 days.

Those posts became our new washline!   We applied caps to the top of the posts and pretty scroll work to help support the cross bars and ta-da....we have an adorable farm-y clothesline.    I can hardly wait to hang our sheets out there this week.   Nothing smells as good as sheets dried in fresh country air.....I am sooooo looking forward to crawling into bed after making up the bed after laundry day.

Thanks to Pinterest for the idea for the pretty clothesline.  After a couple of coats of crisp white paint Joel and I attached the hardware and line so on washday I can hang out our sheets.   It's been years since I hung clothes on a washline.....probably almost 30 years.   Can't wait to do it once again.

Next on our agenda was to build supports for the thornless blackberry bushes we planted last spring.   They have long canes now and they need to be supported up off the ground.   The bushes are planted in an "L" along one edge of the potager garden and that's where we put the supports.   It feels really good to have these projects completed and the posts from both projects should last us years and years.

Last year I planted so many different types of plants......and only a few of them yielded anything(except, of course, the garden veggies) since most of them take a couple of years to produce fruit.   These irises were one of the few bloomers that were gorgeous and I am excited to see them bloom once again.   To the right are the Rosa Rugosa bushes we ordered special.   Last year they were hardly anything more than sticks in the ground.   But this year they are already tripled in size, they have many more branches, and all the branches have buds on them.  

Rosa Rugosa roses are special in that a mature bush produces large, edible rose hips.....the result of letting roses die on the bush late in fall and those turn into "hips".    Rose hips are very high in vitamin C and can be eaten after the the tiny hairs are removed from one end.   The hips can be put in the dehydrator and dried so you can preserve them for use all winter long.    Not only can they be eaten but they also make a lovely tea.   So many uses besides having lovely flowers.   And for this farm girl who is allergic to the vitamin C from all citrus, the vitamin C from the roses is one way I can get my vitamin C without sneezing.

Many of the plants we put in the ground last year are perennials, which means they come back each year without having to be replanted.   Rhubarb is one of those.   You can see the rhubarb on the right side of this pic is already a foot across.   It's amazing that just a few weeks ago everything on the farm was covered in ice and snow....and now we have green popping up everywhere!

Our asparagus bed yielded several new spears yesterday, and the oregano and thyme are already greening up, too.   The strawberry bed is starting to perk up as well as all the lamb's ears from last year.   The blackberry and blueberry bushes are also starting to show signs of life once again and this year we may even begin to get our first small harvest from those bushes.

Now, all the plants I talked about are in our little potager garden up by the house.   The huge main garden back by the chickens is still asleep.   We have rearranged the movable white poultry fencing to include the main garden and the chickens have been happily scratching their way around in there, eating bugs and pooping on the ground, fertilizing it for me!   Win-win!  In the next few weeks I'll have to chase them out of there when I start to plant but for now they are helping me get the garden ready with all their scratching and bug eating.

Go, girls, go!   Thanks for your help in the garden.

And over by the chicken coop, we have the side lid that flips up to reveal the 5 nests where our "girls" lay their eggs for us.

We check the nests twice a day and find at least 1 or two eggs in each nest.   Pretty, light brown orbs of yummy goodness with the brightest golden yolks I've ever seen.  Thanks, ladies.

Speaking of our ladies....these two hens have gone "broody".   They sit on their nests 24 hours a day....staring off into the distance with a glazed look as they keep the eggs under them warm.   They only get off the nest long enough to get a quick drink and eat a bit and then back on the nest they go, gently shifting the eggs around beneath them so as to turn them from time to time.   We're going to let them continue to brood to see if any of the eggs actually hatch into baby chicks.   Won't that be fun?  I'll let you know when and if that happens.

Meanwhile, our egg production is down from around 11 eggs per day to about 7 or 8 per day.  It really makes a difference having 2 broody hens.  Plus, Joel suspects that when the broody hens get off their nests to drink, another hen goes in there and lays her egg on top of the ones that were meant to hatch.   And we can't tell if that has happened unless we catch the nest empty and can count the number of eggs in the nest.

Last month, Joel had to clean out a nest where a broody hen had been sitting.   She got up so many times that we finally had somewhere around 15 eggs in that nest from all the hens contributing to her egg count.  And there was no way any of them were going to hatch as some of them had gone too long without the heat of the mama hen.  So, we went in there and cleaned that nest out and put down fresh straw and sure enough, another hen is now broody in that nest with her own eggs.  

Giggle.....this is all a learning process for us.   We're not sure if we'll ever have any chicks hatch, but it'll be fun to watch the ladies try their best to bring a new brood of chicks into our coop.  Personally, I'd like to see that happen.   The more food we can produce from what we already have, the better.

Happy it's Spring,
Debbie