The week of the chicken

So the title of this post might be giving you some hints as to where this post (and perhaps several more over the course of the week) is going. Our chicks have a hatch date of today. They are supposed to arrive between Tuesday and Thursday. Knowing how the mail works around here, I'm hoping they make it on Wednesday, but it may be Thursday. I just hope they all do ok with the hot temperatures right now!

I'm so very very excited! These are the first animals we'll have brought home to the property (other than our 3 dogs who we already had when we moved here). They will be the first chickens we raise as a family, and the first layers I've ever had (not the first meat chickens though, not by far!). We've got most things ready, although likely a few more things could be done on the coop before we get the chicks here. The basics are there, and the few extra things that I would like to get done are really not going to be needed until the chicks are weeks old.

I don't think I've posted yet about the types of chicks we are getting, so I'll share the list :) We've ordered a total of 25 chicks:

9 meat chickens:

• all are white broiler - straight run
  

and 16 layers (all female):

• 2 barred rock
• 2 black australorp
• 2 silver laced wyandotte
• speckled sussex
• ancona
• ameraucana
• rhode island red
• buff orpington

They are going to be so cute! Oh baby chicks :) I hope Little M loves them! Don't worry, I'll take lots of pictures.

Garden update - July 2011

Well after 2 weeks away, my garden was looking rather green when I came home. One of our neighbors came up occasionally to water, which was great; I wasn't looking forward to having all the plants I worked so hard to grow this spring die! Unfortunately, the green was mostly weeds! The plants were all there, all doing well, but they were surrounded by a sea of weeds!

I spent the better part of a day hoeing and then snatched bits of time here and there to get the weeds raked out. I still have a side path to weed, and there are still several piles of dead weeds on the path, and weeds between the individual corn & bean & pea plants. But, we've been eating strawberries and peas, I've had to put more dirt on the potatoes because they were getting that tall, and the raspberries are looking like they will have a bumper crop in a couple weeks or more.

We've had sunny days every day since we got home, its been above 90 the last couple days, and boy does it ever feel like summer is finally here!

Exercise & prioritizing priorities

I've been having a bit of a problem making progress on some areas of my life that I have been wanting to improve on. Namely, getting back into the habit of regular exercise, getting up earlier, eating from (and enough of) each of the four food groups each day, and doing a better job staying on top of household chores. And then a couple days ago I read a great post where Crystal of MoneySavingMom talks about how to deal with exactly that problem here (scroll down to point #4). She had a great suggestion to make a list of all the things you want to work on (done), and then prioritize them.

Ahah. So I'll do that next, here we go:

1. Regular exercise
2. Eating from the four food groups
3. Household chores
4. Waking up earlier

Her next suggestion is to focus on one thing at a time, starting with the highest priority item, for 3 months, then moving on to the next one. Well, that makes a lot of sense to me! And it works out great that I have items to focus on for the next year, and also that waking up earlier is almost a year away, as Little M still is waking up once or twice to nurse throughout the night so I need my rest in the mornings often! So I guess I know what I need to work on through July, August & September - regular exercise!

I'm lucky in that I have an erg (inside rowing machine) out on the sunporch that I can use whenever I want. It's a Concept II for those of you who care about that sort of thing, and I make use of all the great online support and challenges that Concept II offers - check them out here. I am also lucky in that we live in an area with lots of trails and wild space for recreating, with public land literally right outside the house (the vast hillside across the road is all public land).

I am also a fairly active person, we go for walks with the dogs regularly, and I do yardwork on a regular basis as well, but I don't have a routine that makes sure I get enough each week.  I also find that even though I am out doing things often, because I am not out for the purpose of exercising, I don't feel like I am exercising as much as I should. So since I am pretty much a goal driven person, I'll set monthly goals - slowly increasing my exercise each week over the next 3 months. Because I am already fairly active, I'll try to intentionally do activities that are more along the lines of 'real' exercise, and not just yardwork to make up my weekly exercise quota :)

July - exercise 1 time per week
August - exercise 2 times per week
September - exercise 3 times per week

I think ideally I would want to exercise more, but with a little one, 3 dogs, a big garden & yard, not to mention being a working mom, 3 times a week is likely all I can fit into my schedule at the moment.

I'll try to keep you updated with how my exercise goal is coming, and look for more of these sorts of posts in 3, 6, and 9 months time as I move on to the next priorities!

Alaska 2011: Ketchikan to Juneau on a 42' Grand Banks

I wrote a paragraph or two every day we were on vacation, so that I would be able to remember places we stopped and things we saw and did, but I'm not going to go into that much detail here. Instead I'll share mostly pictures of where we went and what we did, so I apologize in advance because this will be a bit picture heavy.

 

This is my husbands Dad & Stepmom's boat. A 42 foot Grand Banks.When we flew into Ketchikan we took the water taxi across to where they were docked. We got some groceries at the nearest grocery store, and slept our first night on the boat! We stayed in Ketchikan that night because it was rather late in the day by the time we were done shopping and getting all oriented with the boat stuff.

This is my husband's stepmom (grandma), our daughter Little M, and my husband's dad (grandpa).

Little M had a lot of fun walking around the deck in her life jacket. I was a bit worried that she would hate being in it, but she quickly realized that putting it on meant going outside, which she has always loved.

We went into Misty Fjord, see the signs of glaciation on the rocks? It was so pretty in there!

My husband loves to fish so we went to many little creeks and kayaked up to fly fish and spin. Little M and I enjoyed hanging out by the water while he fished.

We went to Wrangell and then Petersburg, then headed out towards Juneau. We saw several glaciers when we were up there; this was the first. It was gorgeous!

Sometimes the creeks were fairly flat and the flats were very grassy. Its not hard to imagine sneaking up on a bear by accident in this sort of habitat! We were pretty careful and called out to the bears "hey bear, hi bear, how are you bear" to let them know we were coming :)

We saw lots of beautiful wildflowers. Here is a lupine on a sandy shore. My husband saw a beaver further up this stream, and there were moose tracks nearby. We didn't catch any fish here though.

 Not only did I see my first icebergs on this trip, I also got to touch icebergs, kayak amongst them, and we even saw & heard a glacier calving to create more icebergs! The day we spent in Tracy Arm with the icebergs & glaciers was so amazing!

Whenever we could (especially on the second half of the trip), we got off of the boat and kayaked to shore to get Little M walking around and seeing different things than the boat. We saw bears and dolphins in Fords Terror, not to mention cool water plants!

Little M thoroughly enjoyed herself on the boat and off. She got rather wet playing in streams, that's for sure!

We hiked in to some spectacular wetlands and lakes, and got to see some rare plants while we were at it.

We saw killer whales many times, and humpback whales too. And we had dolphins jumping off the bow of the boat! It was pretty great :)

We saw several black bears (one a mama with 2 cubs), as well as some grizzly bears. We got quite close to some of the bears, both in the boat, and the mama black bear with cubs my husband unintentionally got close to while fishing. We got really close so numerous seals, even some mama seals still on icebergs with their babies!

One of the great things of the trip was that got to see so many new-to-us bird species! This marbled murrelet (thanks to my good friend Kyle for helping me ID the murrelets) was just one of the great birds we saw. I was very glad we had taken our Sibley guide, without it I would have been so frustrated - nothing like a great field guide :) For new birds, we had pacific loon, red throated loon, common murre, pigeon guillemonts, arctic tern, surf scoter, white-sided scoter, and greater scaup. We also got some great pictures of other birds that we had already seen in other places, like spotted sandpipers (including shots of a baby!), bald eagles, winter wren, barrow's goldeneye, and harlequin ducks.

Needless to say, the trip was pretty amazing. I'm sure hoping we'll be back someday soon!