Magical

A neighbor asked if I was surprised. My blank expression was accompanied by a four-second inner monologue echoing in my brain that went something like this: "Surprised that I'm a year older? That my nearly-eight-year-old spent half the church service hiding under the pew because he couldn't stand the guest-pastor's voice? That we might actually have some chicks hatching soon? That the mohawk fits the littler boy's personality perfectly? That someone broke the unspoken no-birthday gifts rule and did a dang good job of it too!? Oh, no. Wait. What if it's that thing that I joked to my husband was going to happen only because the winner gets a girly girl prize, and that is just my luck."

And yep, it was that thing.

4H kids learn a whole lot of life skills, like the uncanny ability to put together a very very last minute entry for the Fair and still somehow walk away with the super-fancy Champion ribbon. It's a priceless talent to have, really. My Mom will be thrilled to hear that I've still got what it takes.

So I sincerely ask, what in the world will I do with a $20 styling salon gift certificate?

My husband sincerely asked, "What if a man had won it?"

I looked at his partly-bald head and giggled, "I guess you could get your hair cut!"

Anyway, last night topped off a pretty great week with a magical combination of ingredients: My children were sleeping and their Daddy was home to watch them. It was warm out. There was just enough breeze to keep the mosquitoes from being obnoxious. In a quiet corner of the barn, tiny peeps sang to their Mama hen as they fought their way out of their shells and into a whole new world. Electrons from the sun were blasting the Earth's magnetic field, causing the sky to dance overhead.

To the best of my knowledge, none of the psychotic little skunks crossed my path when I was out of the car.

And I stayed up way, way too late.

Magic, I tell you.

Oh... Hi blog

Oh, Hi there Blog.

We're all still here. Plus one.

Arnold is a daddy. Shhh... don't tell Red.

Random issues

Scavenger Hunt at Ashley's! It's been awhile since I played.

1. Seeing double/two

We've fallen in love.

I will send them out to the barn... I will send them out to the barn... I will send them out to the barn... I will...

Yes I will. They've only been in the house a week. It's not an issue (yet).



2. Whatever

Socks with my off-brand Crocs. Crocs? Is that even how it's spelled?

I've already proven that I'm a fashion queen.

*sigh* Whatever.



I have control issues. I had to painfully force myself to switch to shooting in plain old jpg for my own day-to-day pictures. Three weddings worth of RAW images to process pushed me over the edge. (I am not a wedding photographer. Just had a few opportunities to test the water.)

3. Sweet

I have attention issues. I forgot to change back to RAW format when we were under the mixed (artificial and natural) lighting in the coop.

My baby with one of her "beebee peep". So sweet.



Sticking my fingers in my ears while singing "la la la" and blissfully ignoring my white balance issues by slapping the ill-fated jpg straight into black and white... sweet. Okay. Not really sweet, but it works. Sort of.

4. Space

The always variable amount of acceptable minimum space between these two brothers fascinates me.



The amount of acceptable minimum space between the Older Brother and The Bean is not variable. Ever. It's starting to become a real issue.

5. Bright

Did I say I have attention issues? My goal here was to take an artistic picture of grass. Don't ask.



He was sitting on a gigantic round bale of hay (grass). I was just a little distracted by his bright shiny eyes.

Facing Myself - August linky

Every time this happens, I am filled with wonder. I might as well be a four year old clutching my Christmas present, the biggest and most brightly wrapped gift that was underneath the tree. Except, this one is decorated with poop, but really that doesn't matter.

I sit in the barn and stare at it, completely in awe of what has taken place. Of what is taking place.



It's already loud, but I can't help myself. I have to hold it to my ear.



It quivers and quakes in my hands, the strong shell that close to splitting in two as the chick struggles against it, fighting for it's life.



Unbelievable!




For details on the Facing Myself Challenge, click HERE. The linky is open through the end of August. I had a grand plan for my self-portrait this time around, but got distracted by these new babies of ours.

New babies

Lilac's chicks were due to hatch on Sunday.

Saturday we went to The Big City for the day, but before we left I let the chickens out as usual. While I was in the coop I peeked at Lilac sitting there in her corner, as she had been for the past twenty days. I thought, "Girl, your life is about to change and you don't have a clue what is about to hit you".

Her beady eyes met mine and she put her all her feathers up on end. Uh oh. She did already know.

They were early!

All you moms out there know that babies never hatch on their due dates. Then why would I expect chicks to?

And I wasn't the only one doing some peeking.



Their dad, by the way, is learning.

He saw me coming with my bamboo pole today and ran straight into the tall grass and sat down. It was just that easy.

I took these photos on Sunday, when the babies were only a day old.

One day old, and they were already starting to explore.



Mama Lilac was showing them how to peck at spots on the wall, so they tried it too.

She didn't mind my handling, so I actually picked her up off the nest to assess the situation and remove the empty shells. All eight were fully developed. It looked like Mama Lilac had shifted her weight at a bad moment and crushed one as it was hatching. So we have seven babies as new as they come, three yellow and four a beautiful soft brown.



The yellow chicks are Buff Orpington just like their adoptive mom. By the time a hen is determined enough that I realize she is broody, she has already stopped laying eggs. Lilac laid exactly zero of the eggs she kept warm for all those days.



The pretty brown babies are mixed breed, Buff Orpington and Barred Rock.

So soft and warm in my hand.

But things will be different this fall. The chicks that are unfortunate enough to be boys will be so obnoxious they'll practically beg me to get my new axe out. And the truth is, I don't want to keep mixed breed chickens in my laying flock of heritage breed birds.

Do you eat chicken (or beef)? Then don't look away. Even if you prefer someone else wield that axe, I believe it's important to understand where your food comes from, and to actually think about it once in awhile.

I have said it before, these lives are not a gift to take lightly.

This is where it starts.

The difference

Chicks, like all babies, grow up fast. These photos were taken four days ago, and already they look different.

They have tiny feathers growing out of the fuzz on their wings.


I could sit in the coop for hours (except that I can't because I must keep my own children alive) and watch the interaction between the hen and chicks. This is so different from brooding orphan chicks in a cardboard box with a heat lamp.

It fascinates me to no end.

They make the happiest little trilling sound when they are falling asleep underneath their mom. I never heard this noise from our other chicks.

Despite being totally new at this, Momma Hen has turned out to be a really great mom. The transition from sitting to mothering was just seamless.

I was worried that she wasn't eating enough, so I brought her a bowl full of pieces of moist bread. (I did this often while she was sitting on the eggs.) She tasted it, then she called the babies out from beneath her and gave them every last piece. They ate it too.


Our orphan chicks would run like crazy when they got a snack. It was a game of keep-away with absolutely no rules. But these chicks, when they get a snack, are so calm and just step aside to eat.

It's almost like they know mom will give them more.


Chickens scratch.

It's what they do.

All the time.

Momma Hen thinks she needs to teach her babies to scratch. This has been our one problem. She scratches their bedding into mountains that cover their feeder and waterer.

I take bedding out. She manages to do it again. I take more bedding out.

Those birds have almost no bedding left.

But they're all happy and healthy, and it gives me another excuse to check on them, so I think we're doing okay.

Yellow

Beth's You Capture photo challenge this week is "yellow".

This road, one that has caused the locals to grab their pitchforks, light their torches, and gather in angry masses, does have some yellow. Some. I searched long and hard to find a stretch of yellow that extended this far.


To be completely honest, there were other stretches of yellow paint, but I would have been more likely to be flattened. Some of you know the luck I tend to have. Like having eggs smash in my pocket, or getting human brain DNA all over my face (which might, actually, explain a lot of things), or having to walk over areas of washed out road (yes, that one) on planks when I'm in labor.

Right.

It's always nice to have a road there when you need it.

What was the theme this week? Distracting skies?


Oh, sorry.

Yellow.


If you read my Mother's Day post, then you know that I've been holding out on you.

Yes, we have babies.

Four of them, two of which just happen to be yellow.

I will get better shots of the chicks than this one.


It's the best I could do shooting through chicken wire, in a dark coop, while tipping a cardboard lid up with my foot, leaning over and wielding a three pound lens (don't hate me) while working with a shutter speed of 1/25th of a second and manual focus because the light was that dim. Not a word about the white balance, okay!?

Now click here to visit Beth!

You Capture - "Yellow"

Next week's assignment is a technical one, shallow depth of field. My absolute favorite! YAY! I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with.

Holding my breath

It's Mother's Day.

If you read about my determined hen you know that I have been counting days. Specifically, I've been counting the twenty-one days until today, Mother's Day. Not because it's Mother's Day. That happened to be an appropriate coincidence, and nothing else.

Today is the day our Nest Queen has been sitting on her eggs for twenty-one days, the day I marked on my calendar "Chicks due!".

I didn't expect to find babies this morning when I visited her, and I was right.

She has oatmeal all over her beak in this photo (which was taken with my unbelievably amazing, obnoxiously large new lens which I am, by the way, absolutely head-over-heels in love with) because I brought her a treat. My husband, by the way, thought I was a freak for using a telephoto lens in the coop.

Whatever.


She was sitting there. Grumpy. Doing her usual thing. I tried to prepare myself for the fact that they just might not hatch. So many things could go wrong.

We got home late from church, and had to get the kids fed and the baby down for a nap. I raced out to the coop the first chance I got.

Something seemed different, but I wasn't sure exactly what.

I squatted down quietly beside her nest. She wasn't happy with my presence, but she didn't move. Her body was in the same position on the nest that it always is. No fuzzy little heads peeked out from beneath her.

Then I heard it.

I could so easily have missed it.

If it wasn't for the three-day-old baby chicks that my chickens used to be a year ago when they arrived in the mail, I would have missed it for sure. That sound is imprinted on my mind forevermore. My heart beat faster before I even realized what I had heard.

I very carefully reached beneath her and gently pulled out the most beautiful shiny brown egg.

It was hot.

It quivered and vibrated ever so slightly in my hand.

It was alive.

I held it to my ear. After a moment, I heard the tiniest "peep peep peep" you could imagine.

Quickly I tucked it back into it's warm space under it's Momma.

As I sat there, every so often I would hear one of the babies, "peep peep peep" from within it's shell. Every time I heard it, Momma Hen heard it too. She would put all her feathers up on end, and glare at me. She knows, although I wonder if she really knows. What mother truly does know what she's getting herself into?

There are still at least a hundred things that could go wrong. But right now, I am completely amazed. An egg, people, it's an egg. You know, those things that you crack into a hot pan and cook. But these ones are ripe with life. It's a mystery to me really why, or how... but right now, at this exact moment those baby chicks are probably only hours away from hatching.

This is my gift on Mother's Day. I am once again overwhelmed with awe of my creator, filled up with excitement of this mystery, in anticipation of the joy of seeing those fuzzy little beady-eyed babies.

I know for a fact that Momma Hen didn't lay a single one of those eggs she incubated, and chances are good that they won't all survive. But they are all hers, and she is their mom.

Happy Mother's Day.

Happy Mother's Day to adoptive moms, to stepmoms, to moms who have given birth to babies, and to moms who hurt today because they have lost children. We are all moms, and what a mystery it truly is. My love to you all.