May Day 2013

It's usually been a tradition on this blog to have a beautiful picture of my garden on May Day.  Well . . . we don't really have a garden.  Since moving to our new home, we've had several interesting issues and challenges that have hindered our progress in having a garden like we've always had in the past.  We've discovered that the soil here is extremely hard and void of nutrients.  There are gophers everywhere and bunnies who love eating anything yummy that pops up.  We have scorching sun where even though it hasn't been very hot yet, everything gets baked, and baked, and baked some more.  The whole time till now that we've lived here, I've been pregnant and unable to do some of the harder labor needed to get the ground ready for a garden and Bryce is doing the very best he can just to keep up with the mowing and string trimming.  So, we've had to adjust.  Instead of trying to do everything we want right now, we've had to just focus on projects one at a time.

The project that we have been most focused on has been the chickens.  I figured that since we couldn't really do a garden at this time, chickens was something very do-able for right now and since it takes a while for them to actually be able to start laying eggs, the sooner we get started on these creatures, the better.

This picture was taken today and you can see that the chicks have gotten quite big.  They are about seven weeks old now and are so fun to watch.  We have them in their new home that we finished about a week before Baby H arrived and they absolutely love it.

Here is the just finished outside of the coop/run.  The shed part was already there so we cleaned it out, made some repairs and then fenced it in.  We still have a little bit of work on it, but you get the idea.

 This is the actual chicken coop that we made for the chicks to sleep in at night.  Bryce actually designed it, drew it out and built it all himself.  He didn't think he could do it but I had faith in him.  We are thinking we may need to add another window on the side and we are still trying to figure out what to do about nesting boxes but we'll get it figured out.

Now just because we don't have a garden, that doesn't mean that we haven't been trying out our hand at growing stuff.  Here we have our potato cage.  It's an idea I adapted from an idea off of pinterest.  The idea here is that you have a cage you plant the potatoes in and you keep filling it up with dirt as the plants grow.  After a certain amount of time you will have a whole bunch of potatoes.  We need to pile up some more dirt on our potato plants, but so far this project is working out nicely.  The potatoes seem to be flourishing and we are excited for harvest time so we can see what we actually got.

 We are also trying our hand at growing carrots and onions in a burlap "barrel."  This doesn't seem like it's turning out to be a great success because they are getting baked by the sun.  We also think our garden soil may have not been the best choice but we shall see.  We do have growth however.

 Now this is a very recent project, but I've been trying out growing wheat grass for the chickens.  So far it's been a success and the chickens love their little treat of fresh greens.  I got the idea for this HERE --chicken wheat grass  (I don't know if I'll do this very much longer though because I just learned that wheat can heat chickens up which is not what we want during the summer months).

We also have started our herb plants again.  I've really missed not having ready fresh herbs whenever I want.  We actually got the barrel locally for a great price.  It's been fun meeting new people up here and making connections.

mint

And then of course is our biggest project of the year and most important -Baby H.  He's one week old now and growing so much.  Even though he wears us out, we are so happy he is in our lives.  I promise I'll have more about him and his birth coming up soon. 

And there you have it.  Happy May Day everyone.  May you have wonderful Springs and wonderful days. 

Meet Baby

I know it's been a while and that some of you may have been impatiently waiting for some kind of news.  Our computer crashed while I was in the hospital and it's taken a few days to get back up and running again.  We are up and running again and I wanted to take a quick few minutes to introduce to you the fourth McGhie baby -Baby H

Baby H

5lbs. 12 oz.

19 inches long

I will have more to say later, but for now I need to go rest while the rest of the family is at church. 

I'm Still Here

39 Weeks

Well I'm still here and still pregnant.  It's been an interesting last few weeks with lots of contractions, false labor and barely being able to walk.  With all the signs I've been showing, any normal, reasonable woman would have already had this baby by now but I'm still just hanging out.  I guess it's a good thing because I realized today that I have not taken any pictures of my belly with this pregnancy.  None what-so-ever!  So this afternoon I had Bryce take a few pictures so that we could document this.

 I'm not one of those types of people who likes to take lots of pictures of myself and plaster them all over my blog or social media sites, so this is a rare picture indeed.  But, it's for my kids.  I know they will appreciate having it someday.  And now you also get to see what I look like at 39 weeks pregnant!  Here's to hoping this baby comes soon . . . 

My Chickies

 Yesterday was a warm day at our house and the chick brooder (kept in the garage) got a little too warm for our baby chicks, even with adjusting the heat light.  So I thought to myself, "these chicks need a change of scenery."  I brought our little brooder box (made by my awesome husband) out and set it on the grass.  This immediately drew my other little chickies over and they enjoyed watching for a little while.

It is amazing to me how fast these little guys are growing.  We are guessing that they are a little over a week old but really have no way of knowing for sure.  We are quickly formulating our plans for our chicken coop (and possibly a larger brooder box) as it is clear these chicks are growing up fast and will need something bigger very soon.

It's also fun to see all the different little personalities coming out.  Some are very timid while others are very curious.  Some like to hang out on the little roosting bar while others like to run around.  There is one in particular that I'm pretty sure is a Rooster because of the way he's already strutting around.  Time will tell though.  In the mean time we are all having fun just watching them grow.

And speaking of things that grow, I think I'm starting to nest myself.  It's not too crazy yet.  I do still have a month before this baby is officially due, but the need to constantly be busy and preparing has hit me pretty hard.  We shall see :-)

Baby Chicks

Well today we embarked on a new adventure.  We are now the excited and slightly nervous owners of seven Rhode Island Red baby chicks.  I've wanted to have chickens for a very long, long, LONG, time.  However, we've lived in the city for the past eight years where having chickens was against the rules.  Yes I know there are lots of people in the city who own chickens (some of our old neighbors included), but we didn't want to break the rules.  Besides, if we did, we would have been the ones to get into trouble instead of the other people because you know that's just how things go.

Anyway, one of the first things I decided we would do when moving back to the foothills, was that we would have chickens.  Bryce was somewhat on the fence about the idea but if you've followed my blog for any length of time, you know how I am when I get a crazy idea in my head.  If it's something good that will bless my family, I go for it full steam ahead.

So why seven?  Well to be honest, they were FREE!!!  We are avid listeners of our local talk radio show KMJ 580 and heard an ad for Evans Feed that said "get seven free chicks when you purchased a bag of chick starter feed."  I got to thinking about it and comparing prices, and after adding everything up, we determined that this would be an awesome deal for us.  We called them this morning just to make sure the chicks would be there, then drove out to Madera for this awesome deal.  Bryce had a customer to visit out there anyway, making the drive doubly worth it.

Now the only bad thing is that these are straight run chicks, meaning that the boys have not been separated out from the girls.  We only really want hens so we have no idea how many we will actually end up with.  But, again, they were free.  And don't they just look so cute?  And now that it's dark outside, I need to go check on them.  You can count on hearing more of our chicken adventures later.

FHE: Thankful For This Earth

Tonight for family home evening, Bryce was in charge so the lesson he gave was on being thankful for this beautiful earth that we have.  So after a song and a prayer, we went on a walk around our home and looked at all the beautiful things that are all around us.

 March is probably my second favorite month (October being my first) and I love it when everything starts to spring into life.  The trees bud into leaves, there are blossoming orchards and everyone gears up for new life.  This spring feels especially meaningful for us because new life is springing up even in our family.  In just a little over a month our family will have a new baby boy, and these four people who I love most in this beautiful world will increase to five.  I am grateful I have the blessing of being on this earth and traveling through life's journey with the most wonderful husband and children in the world.

Crabapple Jelly

 I've been making jelly.  Last Saturday I made two batches of Orange Marmalade with fresh oranges from our orange tree and today I've made a batch of Crabapple Jelly and Pear Jelly.  I've had Crabapple and Pear juice in the freezer for quite a while now and I figured it was finally time to start doing something with it.  The Crabapple Jelly is an absolutely beautiful gem that almost looks too pretty to eat. 

And speaking of things beautiful, last week it actually snowed at our house.  Usually because of our lower elevation we wouldn't get snow and if we did, it would never be this much.  This storm dumped big beautiful flakes on the ground during the night and this is what we woke up to the next morning.  This shot was taken at 6:30am when there was still a lot of low clouds.

Ok, that's it for now. I've got about eight loads of laundry to fold, soap to make, a kitchen to clean and a child to pick up from school.  Let's see how many of these things actually get done before I crash in bed.  :-)

Imagination

Just my Little Girl being herself this morning.