Half acre homeschool

We got our first duck egg today! Hopefully the rest of the girls will start laying soon too, as the kids have developed a taste for duck eggs.  We put up a second, smaller tunnel in the veggie garden. I moved all my pots there from the big tunnel, so Hubby could build another raised bed in. He also built another bed outside and helped me prep a few overgrown ones. Behold my neat polytunnel! (It's not going to look like that for long, if I know myself as well as I think I do...) The kids set up a paddling pool in the play area, because the goats went to work clearing the middle garden. A did about a hundred trips from the tap to the pool with a watering can, and they put it under a little slide. DIY water park complete! Tomorrow I plant. But for now I'll enjoy snuggling sleeping babies and trying to get through a full episode of a TV show before falling asleep. 

The chicks have graduated to the great outdoors. Well, nearly! They're getting a gentle introduction to soil and grass underfoot (or -claw) in an ibc tank full of compost. They seem very happy, and are getting regular room service of pellets and water from A. The plan is to keep bringing them in for nights until they are six weeks, and then let them out into the orchard with the ducks.  I took a whole day off gardening during the week, so I had an extra helper today to make up for lost time.  We got tomatoes planted into the tunnel, some herbs and peas out into the beds, peppers moved into bigger pots and did some work on the overgrown beds too. I stopped to admire my beans in the middle of my battle with mystery stabby weeds. Between the rooster attacks, nettle stings and what I presume are some sort of thistles stabbing me in the shins, I feel like I have earned my cup of tea by the end of the day! We managed over 8 hours outside today....

The chicks are all three weeks by now, so we celebrated with another photoshoot. Miss W's milestone cards are getting reused! Little pirate man...   We also enjoyed change of scenery with a beautiful evening walk. When I say walk, I really mean a climb/roll/splash!  Nothing particularly productive got done today, but we had fun. 

Our little chicks are not so little anymore - we have a start of actual wing and tail feathers!  We were admiring this new development as the chicks had their morning outing.    I'm trying really hard to be better about weeding the raised beds this year. Luckily I have the best helper, and we got the potato and carrot beds completely sorted today, and the rest of the tunnel started too. There's my assistant, filling the watering can. The garden coming back to life has been great for our 1000 hours outside challenge, the only problem is that I haven't actually been in long enough to add up last month's hours yet!  Anyone else trying for 1000 hours outside for the first time this year? 

Today I became a "chicks roaming in my kitchen" kind of person. And I'm ok with that. Maybe I'll eventually train one of them to perch on my shoulder, and complete the pandemic look I've been cultivating over the last year.  Hubby taught us how to make a stretcher using sticks and rope, and the kids took turns getting rides around the goat pen.    Myself and the little ones checked on the orchard while feeding the ducks, and A got a kick out of one of my cherry trees being a "Sweetheart" variety. So I had to take a picture of my Sweetheart with my other sweetheart.  Another five hours for our 1000 hours outside challenge today, and a happy, tired mama here!

 The title definitely doesn't refer to me, but we'll get to introductions later. I thought showing off our first clutch of chicks as they're hatching would be a nice place to start. Exactly a year ago we got our latest batch of hens, and a rooster. We lost two, but the remaining girls have given us a steady supply of eggs. We've sold some, eaten a few, and even traded a couple for a bale of hay for bedding.  We bought a small incubator a while back, and tried it, unsuccessfully. I nearly lost heart, but decided to get a better incubator and try again. Yesterday, after 21 days on the spot, we saw little cracks in three of the 11 eggs. We kept watch throughout the day, and finally one little guy made an appearance! This morning two more had joined the crew, and yesterday's arrival had gotten nice and fluffy. One more egg has a definite crack, but we're not giving up on the others yet either! As you can guess, our learning topic ...