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The Chicks Arrive!

I had strategically scheduled my staycation to begin one day before my batch of 12 chocolate orpington chicks and 1 mystery chick were supposed to arrive at the post office in my small town. I had ordered from a hatchery id never used before and it had mixed reviews so i was nervous about whether they would arrive and what shape they’d arrive in. Mcmurray was my favorite hatchery and the favorite of pretty much every chicken owner ive talked to here and in the surrounding three towns. They’re up north. They’re not local, so that tells you, if each of us found them independently and prefer them, they must be good. Ive never had a bad experience with Mcmurray, but they didnt offer chocolate orpingtons, and i really wanted chocolate orpingtons. So i ordered from this other place. It was the only hatchery that offered chocolate orpingtons that had the orpington wide 10 lb body and didnt look like whatever kind of chicken they were crossbred with. They actually looked like orpingtons, just brown. Thats what i wanted. I didnt want just any old brown chicken. I loved the size and fluff and temperament of the orpingtons. So i reserved a batch months in advance and hoped theyd arrive all right. Well, unlike Mcmurray, they dont put them in the cargo hold of a delta airplane and ship them to you overnight. No, these geniuses put the day old chicks in the regular old postal service mail and even though they were marked priority, they did not have a delta cargo air travel tag and they stayed in transit two days rather than overnight. They did not call me at dawn and tell me to come pick up my chicks. No, they arrived the following day at 3 pm, by which time i was pretty much in an unreachable state. The tracking service for the package said it was still sitting in a distribution facility in ohio and hadnt moved at all for a day. The postal service itself told me they had no record of or evidence of the location of the package and we would just have to wait and see if it produced itself. Then i got an email that said “delivered” while the tracking still said they were in ohio, a day late, and the post office didnt call to tell me there were live birds up there until two hours after the email. Tracking still says they’re in ohio. I put shoes on and high tailed it to the post office like a bat out of hell or a woman on a mission. I was crazy by then. These people had lost my chickens. God knows what condition this iffy hatchery packed them in. Theyve now been in the box 2 whole days. It was cold outside. I was on a f***ing mission to get these birds.

Im not sure what i looked like walking in there in pajamas with hair disheveled after pacing the floor for two days and trying not to rip out every eyebrow hair wondering where these poor baby chickens were with next to no resources left. The yolk sack would be absorbed now and the seaweed gel typically only lasts a day if the hatchery even puts any in there; some dont. McMurray always puts plenty of seaweed gel so they dont die of dehydration if delayed in transit but this hatchery did not specify whether they used the gel. With mostly menopausal chickens, everything hinged upon me being able to obtain and socialize this batch of chocolate orpingtons for a week over my staycation. We used eggs for barter, to obtain vegetables, other supplies, and even favors. We also used them to tip repair people with. It was a way to incentivize them to make the drive all the way out to our small town next time. The chickens were old ladies now and our egg supply was drying up. With the nearest legit orpington shaped chocolate orpingtons in ohio, i needed to make a go of this because they were already booked ip through september. The next non spoken for chocolate orpingtons chicks could be purchased in december of 2026. The post office guy was the younger newer employee and not the one id known for years. I didnt care. I just really wanted that box. I was in a state by then. I signed for it and went to take the box home and get them situated. Everyone and their dog wanted to see the new feathered babies as soon as they heard they were found. They wanted me to stop by on the way home. I only obliged my best friend. Everyone else i told no. Basically, the day old chicks on this timeline would not be in the greatest life-compatible condition. They’d be cold, hungry, dehydrated, and stressed. I needed to get them home pronto and see who could be salvaged, and it was cold and windy outside on top of that.

I sat in the drivers seat and my best friend sat in the passengers seat of my car. I took a baby chick out of the box and set it in her hand. I sat there like some kind of helicopter chicken mom demanding she not squish their legs, hold cupped in her hand with the other hand on top for warmth, and keep them against her body or in her hands instead of holding them out in the open air to examine them. She was very polite about my helicopter bossing. She followed all instructions and then thanked me for letting her see the baby chicks. Once she’d seen them i continued on towards the homestead at a the highest pace i could go and still abide by the speed limit. i got them all into the brooder with the heat lamp on as quickly as i could and dipped a few chicks beaks in the water so theyd know where it was. I dont do all the chicks this way, just a few, and then once they start drinking the others typically copy the behavior. This is because when you dip the chicks beak in the water, sometimes they just hold it in their beak and swallow and sometimes they inhale. By letting the group watch and copy the first two, they tend to drink at their own pace and already know what its about when they begin the activity. Theres less risk of pneumonia. So i dipped two beaks in the water and sure enough the others observed and followed. I made sure they knew where the food was. Then i built them a shade corner. The hatchery had deleted everything non alive that i paid for in my order. No electrolytes (those were a mandatory purchase so im surprised they didnt send that) no thermometer (every time!) and no gro gel. I had to make a complaint and they tried to just give me a refund but i told them as far as the thermometer, i needed them to send that again because i needed the thermometer. They decided to try sending the order again and it arrived 2 weeks later. -_- By then i was pretty happy to have the thermometer cuz i was previously using their behavior yo tell me whether it was too hot or too cold in there. One chick arrived with a very poofy chest. My friend stated that she was cute and i should keep her, but i understood the poofy chest was not a good thing. It was an abnormality that ended up being incompatible with life. She had a pocket of air inflating beneath her skin in her chest area and she was finding it difficult to breathe. She would not eat or drink and if pressed on, her chest was full of air and made a crackly noise. She died the following day and i had a little funeral for her and buried her in a chick sized grave over by where the mosquito net tent garden had been years earlier. There was one mystery chick that was yellow and had these pudgy cheek floofs and we determined she is probably an americauna. I named her “nana pudding”. There were at least two roosters in the batch of all hens, one with a crop so far displaced it was nearly on his back. He hung on for over a week and then died and i had to bury him alongside his sibling. The chicks had not one evidence of seaweed gel in their box when i took them out. I dont know if they ate it all because they were in transit two days or if they didnt put any in. They were very thirsty. I did my best but the chicks were touch and go for the first four weeks and pretty fragile. Some were stronger than others. Mcmurray always sent healthy, vibrant, feisty chicks. I also never had a chick loss with them. And, they’ve never accidentally sent me a rooster when i bought all hens. I had so much trouble with this hatchery, when i realized there was a rooster i decided to purchase an incubator and an egg storing 60 degree mini fridge so i could breed my own chickens and never have to deal with them again. I needed to start socializing them so i wanted to hurry ip and separate out five chicks and give them to my coworker. We finally made that work on thursday so friday, saturday, and sunday i got to spend all day socializing the chicks, but being more fragile than mcmurray’s chicks, i only kept them against my chest for short periods of time before returning them to the brooder under the heat lamp. I wont name the hatchery but just trust me on this, just use mcmurray. I have no other ones i like. I have plenty of procedural reasons. Theres another hatchery i wont use because they put the heat pack above the bedding and not underneath, so if the box is jostled a chick can get crushed by the heat pad. Just use mcmurray or hatch your own. The problem was, literally no one in the entire texas chicken group im part of had chocolate orpingtons, so it wasnt like i could drive over a couple towns and get some. I had to use a hatchery. My plan is to breed chicks myself and hopefully also cross breed some buff and chocolate orpingtons this winter and hopefully make them available to more people around here.

The americauna started out bigger than the orpington chicks but they’ve now well surpassed her in size and i have to keep an eye out because they’re aware that she’s the only chicken that looks a little different and occasionally they’ll rip a long white feather out and chase each other around the brooder for it.

So i began the process of socializing the baby chickens. My friend and her daughter came one sunday to help with that. It was a much needed reprieve from the task for me. They were so little and fragile and always cold. It was necessary to socialize them but also stressful. I just wanted to leave them under the heat lamp and have them be warm enough. they didnt have the same pep and energy that McMurray buff orpington chicks did.

Butters was the loudest of the bunch. Boy she had a piercing chirp that she could make you aware of from across the house and perhaps outer space.

Nana Pudding started out the friendliest. She was smarter and more resourceful than the orpingtons. First to figure everything out, including flying and escape. Pretty soon the docile orpingtons warmed up to me and the americauna chick nana pudding decided she was kind of over me. I think she resented that i wouldnt let her roam free in the house.

Back when nana pudding thought she liked me lol

The poofy chested baby with an abnormal air pocket expired and had to be buried day 2.

Poor thing. It wasnt her fault. She was just not compatible structurally with long term survival.

This is the original group of seven that i kept after giving five chicks away. I picked the ones that most looked like hens and were healthiest and of course kept the mystery chick, nana pudding.

Nana pudding was initially bigger than the orpington chicks.

See his tiny little t-rex wing? This is how you know Jujube is a rooster.

Little Mochi was also a rooster. But something was wrong with his crop. It was twisted around and almost on the right side of his back. He would eat very infrequently but when he did eat he’d eat like he was starving. Then the crop would not empty. I’d try to massage some down but he’d usually throw up a good portion of it. When he did poop it was mostly water with tiny little bits of food in the water, and not very many. Poor mochi’s death was not quick. I separated him out, gave him coconut oil to kill any parasites or bacterial infection of his digestive system. I emptied his crop a couple times worried that he had sour crop and to my surprise the contents were just clear water. He had pretty much stopped eating. I gave him coconut water for electrolytes. He liked that but chicks need food for survival, and whatever was wrong with his crop, he could not eat food. He took two weeks to expire and then i buried him. He never grew a fraction of an ounce. He always looked like a day old chick.

This picture above shows nana pudding. Jujube is the surviving rooster. Then there’s butters (short for butterscotch). Her feathers are just a tad silver rather than all brown. Everyone else is all brown. Ginger is the biggest orpington hen who sometimes bullies nana pudding by ripping a feather out. She’s the healthiest largest hen but not my favorite because she throws her weight around because she can. Nutmeg is sometimes Ginger’s accomplice and also picks on nana pudding at times. Nana pudding, ive already had to deworm and treat for a respiratory infection by week 4. Im not happy with this hatchery and the health of their chicks but im fighting to make it work. Cinnamon is slightly smaller than nutmeg and can sometimes be found snuggled up to the smaller rooster chick, Jujube.

After a week, i went back to work. The chicks stayed in the brooder and i fretted about them day and night. Just do yourself a favor and order from McMurray. Save yourself the headache. they’ll all arrive alive, kicking, and feisty….not as fragile.

The Hill Country Sky

Mock Florida Staycation

11 years ago i took a week off from work and flew to st petersburg florida. I stayed in a barely operating run down hotel located right on the beach. There was no room service and during the entire week i only saw one other couple walking the halls there. If you needed towels you could ask for them at the desk and if you were done with your old towels, uou could drop them off in the laundry room hamper next to the vending machine. There was a kitchenette and i’d taken a taxi to the nearest grocery and picked up some food to live off of for the week i was staying. Every morning the sun would rise and i would go to the beach. When the tide was out i would shell. When the tide was in i’d swim in the ocean with the pelicans who would land just feet from me in the water and dunk their heads under and grab a fish. They were huge birds with unblinking eyes and big yellow beaks. The memory has faded now. I wish it were cemented better, but i remember how massive they were floating next to me in the water and how absolutely unbothered by my presence they were. I may as well have been invisible. Not one of them looked in my direction at any time during their fishing expedition. They were busy and i was irrelevant. This was the best vacation of my life, and probably always will be. As an introvert, to be able to experience nature while also being irrelevant and not having to interact…chef’s kiss! The beach was full of people drinking cocktails under umbrellas and scantily clad ladies laying out getting a tan under the sun, on the beach behind the expensive and bustling hotels. Then just as if there was an invisible fence under the sand separating the rest of the beach with mine, behind the run down hotel there was nothing and no one. No beach chairs, no umbrellas, no cocktail bars, and no people. Just how i liked it! Just beach. I could watch all the people doing their people things while i shelled with their noise a safe distance from me and no chance of requirement for interaction. The perfect vacation for a neurodivergent introvert. Again, chef’s kiss!

There was one interaction i didnt mind and that was the couple who had flown in to bring their toddler to the beach for the first time but they were only staying a day and they’d come at high tide…all the shells were under water. I was so recharged from no peopling for days at this point that i knew what to do. I took some of my collected shells and buried them back in the sand, letting the parents see where they were. They then directed their youngster to dig and lo and behold, he found treasure in the way of sea shells! They thought this was so cool. I wouldnt mind interacting with people so much if i only had to do it once a week. Then i might even enjoy the conversation. But, this is not possible as a living in this day and age, so you learn to enjoy the vacation when it comes around and tolerate interaction with people politely daily the rest of the year.

Come noon time a fierce looking thunderstorm would roll in off the ocean and i’d retreat to the hotel room to wash and sort my catch and take a nap to the sound of the rain and thunder. The storm was always followed by a rainbow and a trip back to the beach for further shelling. I shelled so much my eyeballs became scratched by salt spray and i could barely see by the last day. I spent most of it napping in the bed with my eyes closed because i had damaged them so badly but it was worth every minute spent on that beach. It was where i wanted to be, and i somehow understood that i wouldnt be back. My body felt the need to absorb and store as much of the beach as possible as it didnt see a return in my future. I forgot to eat at times. Sometimes i ate two meals a day. Sometimes one. I was singularly focused on shelling and pelicans. I dont think i did much talking besides conversing with the toddler and his parents that one day, the entire week. It was peaceful. No words. Only the sounds of the ocean and birds. Ocean…birds…thunder…ocean birds…..rinse and repeat times 7 days. It was a good time period of my life; that week. All alternate reality melted away and i was just there; present.

Well, 11 years later i was in a different logistical situation. I couldnt just up and leave the homestead. What would i do with the chickens and dogs, the orchard and green house? I also had to think about transportation differently as back then i was willing to fly to florida on a plane and nowadays im deathly afraid of both air and water travel. If i wreck in a car, the ems crew may put me back together. If i wreck in a plane or a boat, i dont see too many tv shows where they’re interviewing survivors, you know? Its a three day drive for one person in the car. Logistically and financially, a trip to Florida was just not possible. The hotel i wanted to be at also didnt even exist anymore. It went under shortly after my stay there. So, i bought a toy tub, a few bags of sand at sutherlands, and $400 worth of shells on etsy. (This is absolutely where i came up with my retirement plan to move to florida, rent an apartment, and sell shells to suckers on the internet where they pay $40 for twelve shells that i picked up for free and pay their own shipping as well. with the prolific shell collector i am, i could collect thousands without ever getting tired of it and then sell them to people on the internet who were not near an ocean.

So i began day one of my vacation by emptying a bunch of sand into the toy bin and hiding the entire box of shells in there. I probably could have done with more sand, but once i realized how heavy sand was, 3 bags would have to be enough if i still wanted to be able to move the tub to drag it in the house. Ants and mosquitos dictated that the activity be carried out in the house.

Then i began the tedious task of unearthing the shells, washing them in a home depot bucket, drying them, sorting them, and placing them in categorized bags labeled by type and size. All the while i had a youtube video of st pete beach playing on the laptop in the background so i could hear the ocean.

It was a most enjoyable staycation. The shellers on etsy did not disappoint. They shipped me some really nice specimens and i enjoyed cleaning and sorting them all.

Wild Turkeys

I have heard wild turkeys in my town but ive only ever seen them in the adjacent town, where theres less fox and coyotes. There, they roam around in peoples yards and walk down the driveway like they own the place. The day before my vacation, i arrived home to find a little band of wild female turkeys just walking around outside my front gate. They continued along the fence-line, up the road towards the drug and alcohol rehab facility.

A Friend Brings my Original Greenhouse Design to Fruition

When i first began the project of adding grow lights to the greenhouse, i very much didnt know where to start. I was overwhelmed with which lights to pick and where to get them from. There were so many options. How was i to know which would be good for what i needed them for? A neighbor said the project really wouldnt be that hard and suggested a brand i order off amazon.com. I took his advice and ordered ten lights. When he had some spare time, my neighbor came over to get the grow lights set up and hanging.

I thought they should hang directly over the plant boxes, lengthwise in the direction that they were facing, so the light would be evenly distributed as much as possible directly over the plants. My neighbor asked me if i had any lumber. I did have plywood. I produced the plywood i had in the shed. He just shook his head. He said we needed lumber, like 2 by 4’s. I said we could go get some at home depot and come back to finish the project another day. He shook his head again. He didn’t want to come back another day. He wanted to finish the project now. He said that we wouldnt be able to hang the lights lengthwise the way i had envisioned because we needed lumber to cut and put in between the wood beams of the ceiling or there’d be nothing to put the hooks into. He told me there would be plenty of light for the plants if he hung the lights the opposite direction of the lengthwise boxes. So, he put the hooks where he wanted them in the existing ceiling beams and the lights hung across the plant boxes width wise instead of lengthwise. The plants never did get enough light and they were stunted and eventually wilted or molded and died. For years i struggled to grow anything for very long (besides spinach) in the greenhouse. Then one day my friend and her daughter were over helping socialize a new batch of baby chickens and she asked me what i was talking about when i said that my neighbor said the lights couldn’t be hung lengthwise. I told her thats what he said and she stared at me with a look of confusion. She asked me if she could try something with the ladder because she was pretty sure they could be. I said sure and fetched the ladder. So she and her daughter set about promptly moving the location of about half of the hooks into the ceiling beams and now all my grow lights are hung lengthwise in synchrony with the plant boxes below. She shook her head and said, “Men.” I was stunned, and super grateful, because i had just taken his word for it when he said hanging the lights lengthwise was impossible. I suppose i should have just used my eyeballs. You can place both hooks in the same beam or you can put one hook in one beam and the other in another. You can hang the lights width wise or length wise. For the first time in its entire life, the greenhouse is actually working pretty well! It’s actually functional! I am so grateful that my friend does not take the professionals’ word as gold. I heard a quote once that reminded us noah’s ark was built by amateurs and the titanic by professionals. I think the message was, certification isnt everything, and one shouldnt be afraid to try their hand at things they dont necessarily have paper certification in. I am so lucky my friend looks at the world as a series of problems to solve because had she not pointed it out i would have gone on living with a barely functional greenhouse for ten or fifteen more years.

Under the newly turned grow lamps the tomatoes took off in a way that had me raising the lights two chain links every other day. They were thriving and requiring regular watering, which meant they actually dried out and didn’t mildew.

Soon the sungold tomatoes started turning color and i realized we had finally done it! The Iron Rose Homestead finally had a functional greenhouse.

Emboldened by this new progression of events, i drove back to the plant nursery and picked up 15 okra plants. This year i would not waste time and money on plants i wasnt sure i could keep alive. This year i went for the tried and true tomatoes and okra that i knew would do well and could be pollinated by myself instead of the bees.

The okra plants were in but they were much smaller than the tomato plants and would take their time getting to a point of maturity where they began flowering.

There were two of the fifteen okra plants that sat directly under the grow lights rather than adjacent. Curious enough, they grew much larger than the plants that were light adjacent but they were the last to flower.

In the meantime, i started picking little tomatoes around every 3 days. They were good. Sweet but not too sweet; still a little sour kick to them in there alongside the sweet. I could not wrap my head around the idea that i had a functional garden.

Eventually the tomato plants grew very tall. My coworker was unhappy with how leggy the plants were and told me i needed to prune them so they’d grow out rather than up towards the lights. However, in an environment where i struggle to get anything to grow at all, if something survives, my policy is let it do whatever it instinctually wants to do. Let it follow the light. Im mot going to look a gift horse in the mouth and ask for more. It is so difficult for these plants to grow here, i am very hesitant to take off leaves that are absorbing light in an environment where the plants are starving for light and ive finally established a sustainable ratio which involves leaving the lights on all day and all night. I recognize i could be happy with the tomatoes the plants are providing or shoot for more and kill the plant in doing so. Let the plants be leggy. They’re providing a regular supply of a handful of tomatoes. Im not unhappy. If there was a constant supply of sunlight and fresh air id prune the heck out of those things to get a maximum yield from a well structured plant but currently, i am just threading the branches of the leggy plants through the loops of the chains and using them as makeshift tomato cages.

Hail and Tornados

I remember looking at the radar and seeing a green stretch with a big red blob in it with a purple circle in the middle of that and a black circle in the middle of the purple circle, meaning no rain there, just a see-through area that showed down to the color of the base map. There was already a report of a tornado on the ground in bandera. The storm system was moving from bandera to my town and i figured this purple circle with no rain falling in the absolute middle was probably where the tornado would be, right? As i watched the diagonal trajectory of the storm system i realized that it was either going to skirt right below us by a hair strand’s width or the purple bit would hit us head on and we’d go through the full length of the red blob as it passed over us, blessing us with this purple circle misfortune. I called my neighbor and enlightened her as to my realization, sending her the screenshot of the map. as it turned out, it did not slide under us. It hit us head on, blessed us with the purple blob, and made us endure the entire length of the red hail-containing blob that housed it. As i watched in horror, this thing scooted over us in no particular hurry for twenty whole minutes. Just like the hailstorm that put dents in and broke the tail lights of my last car, it hailed for twenty minutes straight…11 of which were furious and unceasing and 9 of which were quieter and dropped occasional baseballs or golf balls here or there instead of ceaseless peas, dimes, and quarters. I had just totaled my old car hitting a deer and bought a new used car which was parked under the carport outside but with twenty straight minutes of hail, you never know how a car is faring under a flimsy carport. I was praying and asking friends for prayer that the windows and the car survived the hail storm when an alert on my phone told me that a tornado was on the ground in my town. I guessed it was probably the same one that had so nicely traveled over from bandera and in all likelihood it was probably in that purple circle on the radar. I checked the radar map on my phone and noted that the purple blob was sitting directly over my location. We were no longer experiencing any rain. However, occasionally there would be the loudest “BANG” as a baseball or golf ball sized portion of ice descended from the sky and struck either the roof or the carport. I realized that we were probably experiencing the middle of the purple blob, where there had been no rain shown. Where there’s a break in the rain and the largest balls of hail, there you will find the tornado. The wind whipped against the house outside, moaning and whistling like an eerie siren song. I unzipped the mosquito net tent over the bed and tied the flap up out of the way as quickly as i could. I grabbed Sili first. As i lifted her onto the mattress, i tried to be gentle with her now arthritic joints. I had flashbacks to the first year we lived on the homestead, hiding under the mattress to avoid our first tornado with bags of rice shielding our legs and my back from any possible flying debris that might come through the window, watching the curtains sway with the wind even though no doors or windows were open. We were all younger then. Cashew was a baby. Sili wasn’t elderly yet. We were young and limber and didnt have to worry about hip dysplasia or arthritis. Now the three of us were old ladies and couldnt bend like younguns anymore. I laid sili in the bed and then went for cashew. I lifted her into the bed and climbed in behind her. I zipped the mesh tent closed and huddled both dogs against me in the middle of the mattress, trying not to allow their nails to snag the mesh on the outside of the tent. Cashew was shaking and drooling everywhere. Both dogs were flailing their legs about trying to stand up or reposition. I pinned them to the mattress and petted their fur firmly while we layed there. The alert continued its air-raid siren warning on the phone “tornado on the ground”. I texted a couple people asking for prayer and put the phone down next to us in the bed while i held the dogs. It was silence and then “BANG” for a while, which was eerie. Then we must have reached the other edge of the purple circle because all the rain and the smaller assortment of hail began again. It sounded like the apocalypse out there. The hail was so loud and it went on seemingly forever! Every once in a while a hail ball would bounce up and hit the metal door or a window and i had the thought, “i dont know how much longer the windows and the carport will hold.” I just wanted the hail to stop, but it dragged on. I prayed aloud, asking Jesus to protect us and spare the car and windows.

When all was said and done, i opened the door to this sight.

The hail balls punched holes in the mailbox lid, tore more holes in the rain water collection container lids, smashed up all the plants on the porch…especially the aloe vera, and dented the carport.

Footage of the storm moving away after dumping a ton of hail and a tornado that thankfully did not stop at my homestead but was on the ground somewhere in my town.

The yard was flooded but something else began happening as the ice balls started melting. An eerie mist started rising from where the ice balls were melting and the property became covered in fog. It had the same effect as the mist in the bathroom when someone takes a very hot shower. Now the view of everything was obstructed and seemed to be shrouded in mist, causing everything to be blurred or out of focus. I traipsed about the yard in my flip flops with the head lamp trying to see what was damaged. Both potted pecan trees were laying on their sides strewn about the yard. They’d been ripped off the shed porch and moved about twenty feet.

The window unit had yet more hail damage to add to the storm damage from the last time it hailed.

The yard was flooded. The car was covered in debris all the way to its roof but it appeared dent free and crack free, just very dirty. The carport did its job and looked as if it had been through it but didnt allow any hail balls to fall through. I would assess those dents on another day in the daylight. I was grateful to my friend who had prayed for us. It seemed that twenty minute hail storms were becoming the norm more than a historic event. I knew the weather wasnt playing and if we were going to live here long term, i needed to come up with a better plan than what we just did. I could have thrown the dogs in the car and made a run for san antonio, but that was the only nearby city that didnt also get creamed by some part of the storm before or after us. It would have been an hour’s drive there and an hour back, and the trunk was full of feed bags and not ready to house the dogs. Living out here without a garage or storm shelter really is living by prayer. The weather can always take everything you worked for in two seconds. The Lord was good to us and we did not get to see the tornado. Eventually the storm moved on and the dogs and i licked our wounds about the window unit and carport roof. Somehow, the chicken pen roofs survived; probably thanks to the cedar branches catching the hail balls above it on the way down.

The carport a few weeks after the hail storm rolled through (i forgot to take pictures)

Chicken Math

Disclaimer: This is meant for entertainment purposes only and is not entirely based on my real life experience of chickens but instead mine and a handful of other amateur chicken enthusiasts stories all rolled up and mashed together…

With the state of the world and the rate of inflation, it would probably be a smart thing to look into, raising my own chickens. I’ll just purchase 2 to 12 books on chicken rearing and read up on whats involved. Once i do my research i’ll know whether or not this life move is worth it.

How can you not purchase an animal that shits breakfast? You could use the eggs to barter with friends and coworkers for all the vegetables that the biblical amounts of grasshoppers keep rendering non-existent in the garden.

I’ll just go to tractor supply and see what they have. Im just going to look.

Okay so what happened was, i was at tractor supply and they had this box of chicks who were too old and so they’d marked them down to 50 cents a piece, and i thought, “oh my God, how can you pass up 50 cents a piece? When are you ever going to find live animals for 50 cents each?! This is a steal. We have to get them.” So, there’s a car full of chicks i need help unloading, but just know, i only spent $15.00”.

Okay so you know how i was going to tractor supply for more feed crumbles and electrolyte mix? Well, so what happened was, they had this box of chicks they were putting in the dumpster because they had dried poop on their butts. Like they were still alive but they were just going to throw them away like trash. So they said i could take them for free if i wanted to try and get the poop off, so ive got them all in solo cups of warm water in the bathroom and i need you to grab one of these cutips and start rubbing. We’ve got a lot of work to do.

Okay so remember when my friend Beth came over and she said that it looked like Sofie and Reba and Mabel were possibly boys? Well this morning about 40 percent of my flock began crowing at the arrival of dawn so i figured i had better remedy the situation since none of these roos are going to be laying eggs anytime soon. But don’t worry, i learned my lesson with tractor supply (who will not take any of the roosters as returns, i already checked) im not buying anything else from them. They lied to me and told me all those chicks were hens. So i got on google and read that hatcheries are generally more accurate at sexing day old chicks so i went ahead and ordered some hen chicks from the best rated hatchery i found online.

Hey, did you know theres chickens that lay blue and green eggs? Wouldnt it be cool to have blue eggs? I’d better just get a few of those…oh, they have a 15 count minimum before they’ll ship the order. Apparently there have to be enough to huddle together to keep warm in transit. Well, i dont want them to get cold. Better get twenty just in case.

Hey did you know theres chickens that are all black? Like their skin and their feet and comb and everything? That looks cool! We should get just a few of those! Oh, they only sell them in a straight run… well, i’d better get twice as many as i was going to in case half of them turn out to be roosters.

Hey, did you know chocolate orpingtons can get to be up to 10 lbs and basically look like a walking feathered fudge bar? Look at this! They’re bigger than most possums. They’d probably be great at predator control. I had better get a few of those.

Ugh. My experience with that hatchery was awful. They sent chicks with birth defects. Sick chicks. And one that got crushed by the heating pad. They lost them in transit for an extra day on top of it, and they forgot the thermometer, twice. I know nothing about breeding chickens but i bet i could do a better job than they did.

Hey, look at all these people on this chicken forum looking for chocolate orpingtons and easter eggers that lay pink speckled eggs. It seems like theres a market for certain types of chicks in this area.

So i bought an incubator, i’ve watched 22 videos on hatching your own eggs on youtube, and im going to breed chocolate orpingtons and americaunas in the bathroom now.

So i dont have many hens in my small operation but i read somewhere that you could store eggs between 50 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit while collecting others for 7 to 10 days and then put them all in the incubator at the same time and they’ll all hatch around the same time because it pauses the growth and development of fertilized eggs. So i bought a cosmetics refrigerator and im having it shipped to your house. They wont do PO boxes so they wouldnt ship it to me. Let me know when it gets here.

Okay so one of the two rooster chicks died so i need to find another rooster, but its okay. This morning i was on ebay and i realized people will sell you fertilized chocolate orpington hatching eggs on ebay and ship them to you in the mail. I can try to hatch another rooster but they only sell them in batches of 30 so id better get another brooder.

Okay so i was watching this video and i saw this lady explaining how her geese were kind of like guard dogs for her flock. I have a bunch of foxes and raccoons and hawks in the area. So i was thinking i should get some geese. I’ll just run to tractor supply and get another enclosure.

So i went to pick up the geese but the lady was also selling baby turkeys and she said if i wanted she’d give them to me half price because i already bought the geese. I need to run by tractor supply. We’ve got to build another enclosure.

Oh my gosh! Look at this! Okay, i need to look up if its legal to raise emus in this area. I mean, theres no hoa. They cant tell me what to do out here if theres no hoa right?

Okay so my bird raising operation is kind of getting big now. I think i need to invest in a livestock guardian dog to protect against predators.

So what happened was that the livestock guardian puppy just wasnt learning anything and my friend told me i needed to get an older already trained dog and use that one to train up the puppy. It worked to an extent but see the people who sold me Duke swore up and down that he was neutered. And he was not neutered. And now my nearly grown puppy is out on maternity leave, but dont worry, i solved the problem. I read somewhere that donkeys kick mountain lions in the head and protect herds of animals from them. So i got a donkey, but then everything says they’ll get depressed without a companion, so cookie got delivered yesterday and is still settling in as Dusty’s companion donkey. Dont worry. I checked. They’re both boys. Learned my lesson this time.

So i was thinking, with all these extra birds to clean up after and puppies to train, i dont really have time to mow the grass. I got a couple kune kune pigs coming tomorrow. They’re the only pig that actively eats grass. So i figure i’ll just let them roam and i wont have to mow the grass.

Hey so, incubation is going really well. I think i have a system figured out now. I have about a 70 percent hatch rate. I was going to sell them all but these buff and chocolate crosses came out so cool! I should keep some of them for future breeding projects. I should go to tractor supply and get another pen.

So i was looking at the catalogue and theres this mixed bag called “hatchery’s choice” where they just pick whatever and throw an assortment of chickens into your box. Wouldnt it be cool if i just put a rooster in with all these different kinds of chickens and crossbred everybody and see what feather patterns result? I should go to tractor supply and get another pen and coop. I’ll be back.

HEYYYYYYYY!

What?

Didnt you say we were going to get chickens because of the price of eggs? We were going to save so much money by raising our own chickens and collecting our own eggs. And we’ve now spent money on several pens, several coops, a crap ton of feed, shipping fees, dogs, vet bills, donkeys, pigs, kiddie pools, incubators, make up refrigerators, extra brooders, and various tinctures and powders for all sorts of chicken ailments that i didnt even know existed? We’re paying for all that in lieu of supermarket eggs?! This seems more expensive!

No my love, we are paying for all that in loo of antidepressants, adhd meds, supermarket eggs, therapy, hospital bills, and the divorce lawyer you are gonna need if you touch one feather on any of my crucially necessary new babies that can definitely stay here well into menopause because we know ladies dont cease to be valuable as living beings the moment they stop dropping eggs.

🤦🏻‍♂️. I’ll see you when you get back.

The Greenhouse Remodel

So, when i began the project of installing grow lights in the greenhouse last year, i envisioned lights hanging down 7 foot chains that could be adjusted to be shorter as the plants grew. I figured i would start with the lights right above the little seedlings and then raise them up higher and higher as they grew so that the lights were always just a foot away from the plants. Well, we didnt start out with enough chain. The lights came with very short chains. I wanted to go to the hardware store and get longer chains but the neighbor helping me with the project said there would be plenty enough light if we left the grow lights inches from the ceiling and the plants would grow no problem. The reason i couldnt easily restructure the project myself had to do with the outlets and the cord length of the lights. The outlet on the ceiling was where the original lights cord was plugged into and every light after plugged into the end of the one before. To bring the lights down lower i’d have to plug the originating light into a socket mid wall and then the hooks directing the extension cord lines along the ceiling would be useless and the cords would just hang in amongst the plants. It took a period of 5 months to collect enough 98 cent vs 3 to 6 dollar chain to complete the project. The chain came on a spool and you paid per the final length you bought. They had a cutting tool to break the chain where you wanted it severed. The problem was, it was a small town and they refused to order each type of chain but one spool at a time. So, to make 14 seven foot lengths of chain took collectively 5 months. I had to do the same thing with the pavers for the chicken pens. Those took a collective 3 months to get enough terra cotta pavers to go around both chicken pens (74). I also had to figure out how to stack and carefully drive that many pavers on sheets in the back of my suv to protect the seat upholstery from tearing.

Last year the veggies were rather stunted and took 6 months to start producing a handful of tiny okra. the eggplant and sweet potatoes never produced, and the tomatoes remained unproductive after the first batch save for a couple here and there. I decided to switch the greenhouse around so that the lights could be closer to the plants. This design was less water proof as now the windows were light height. The windows would likely need to be shut during rainy weather. However, something had to be done to give the plants a better chance at growing. It was Texas. Perhaps i could just keep the windows closed during rain. How many days a year could that really entail? With the lights closer and the chains longer i’d also have to worry about wind moving the lights and whether they’d catch anything on fire. But, again, something had to be done to give the plants a better shot at growing and producing food.

I hung longer chains from the ceiling than the ones that came with the lights. Then i cut off the hooks from the original chains and used key rings to attach the hooks to the new chains. After that i threaded the hooks through the tops of the grow lights and turned a few of them on.

I went searching for three plants this year: sun-gold tomatoes, okra, and Japanese eggplant. Ive decided: those are the things that can self pollinate and produce well in the green house. In the interest of trying to grow food i can actually harvest and eat, i shouldnt push my luck with other things. I decided to just grow what i thought i could actually sustain. Its too early for okra and eggplant but yesterday was the first day the plant nursery in fredericksburg had tomatoes. They did not, however, have sun-gold. So, i called the plant nursery in comfort. Typically they order early and dont move product very fast so their plants are always older than you expect a sprout to be. They were the only nursery in 3 surrounding towns that currently had sungold tomato plants. They had 9 plants. They agreed to hold them for me. However, the owner made sure i knew and understood that the plants were taller than usual tomato sprouts in a nursery. I knew what this meant as i’d dealt with them happily in years past and had seen how seedlings grew uncaged and kind of downwards off the side of the table unless their buddies were by their side holding them up. I always just planted the ones growing an odd direction at an angle in the soil and just trained them up a tomato cage. They produced tomatoes. However, i wasnt just shopping for me. My coworker also wanted a sun-gold tomato plant. I made a decision that id keep the smallest nicest most upright one for her and the rest would be for my greenhouse. The smallest one, however, ended up being kind of sickly looking and possibly not even a sun-gold…it had a tag for sun gold tomatoes in it but it was in a different location from the others and had a differently colored stem. Its possible somebody just switched a tag either by accident or just the event of a bored child passing by with a tag they’d picked up. I picked out the most upright healthy one growing in the right direction and standing on its own and offered it to my coworker. I had said if it was not to her liking i’d just eat the bill and she could have it for free, but unfortunately, she didnt even want it for free. She said it was way too big for transplanting. I said i understood and that i’d use all 9 for me in the greenhouse and i’d left her phone number with the nursery in her town and they would call if they found a sun gold supplier in the next two weeks. She didnt answer. I knew she was silently disagreeing with my decision to put the plants in my green house and try to grow them as she’d been very vocal about it last year. She said that stunted plants cannot be salvaged and would never grow right. She was a master gardener; super good at it. She’s probably the most efficient and prolific gardener i’ll ever meet. She’s growing asparagus in texas right now. And they’re growing well! Im not saying she’s wrong. She’s not wrong about the best possible conditions to grow vegetable plants in. She’s right. We just fundamentally disagree on a plant’s ability for resilience. She handles plants with gloves so finger oils dont disturb the plant. She never touches a plants roots. I detangle them with my fingers and gently spread them apart if the plant is root bound. I arrange and handle all the plants with my bare hands. Basically, she grows food for sustenance and i grow food for therapy. I need to see that the plants that didnt get what they needed in the beginning can be given the right conditions and then nurtured into a good productive life. This is because i did not have the best and most nurturing of conditions during childhood. I am the overgrown plant in the tiny seedling cup that has now been planted in well draining, nutrient rich, and regularly watered soil. I am producing good fruit in this period of my life. I dont view myself as stunted and useless, and the more i can put plants into soil and give them air flow, light, and just the right amount of water and watch them grow…i am re-enforcing the idea for myself that there are second chances in this world and not having the right conditions in the beginning doesnt make you something to scrap and throw on the compost heap because you’re less than perfect and the start was less than ideal. I need to believe that every living plant is valuable and can be salvaged, because God has salvaged me. I planted all the tomatoes, added cages, put in my two dill plants, turned on the grow lights, and watered them so their roots could get a drink and get nice and settled. I thought of how much trauma i’d been through in my 37 years of life and how broken i’d felt at various times. I thought of all my health issues and all the medications it takes to keep me alive. But, im now in a season of my life where i have people around me who love me and get something valuable out of being around me. I am more fulfilled than i have been in 2 decades. I have all these projects im working on with people or for people. I have great friends. Im about to have a whole new batch of chickens. I love my dogs. I love my land. I love my job. What if somebody had said at the beginning of my life, “hup, non-ideal start to life…trash this one…” ? I would never have met the people i care about in life. I wouldnt be here to train and love my dogs. I wouldnt be here to provide the chicken retirement center for menopausal chickens who have worked their whole fertile lives in the egg factory. I wouldnt be here to take care of the elders that most of the world has forgotten. I wouldnt be here to own the land i do so the trees can live in peace without fear of being cut down. I wouldnt be here to pour into the lives of my friends with children who are too busy raising them to do things like make ragdolls. I would just be dead. What a waste of a perfectly salvageable life. The thing is: i’ve seen this mindset before. We had it in nazi germany. Only the best of the best. Everything else must be scrapped. For hitler, this meant people who were disabled, dwarves, jewish people, and just generally anyone who did not have the physical features he considered best. God creates diverse life. He does this for a reason. Life would be terribly boring and hard if we were all the same. Many of the world’s brightest problem solvers are those who are outside the box thinkers. Many of the world’s greatest leaders and problem solvers are those who have been shaped by pain and hardship. The world is full of different kinds of people and most of them did not come up in the most ideal of situations, and that doesnt make them useless. I am reminded of all the plants ive ever seen growing out of cracks in the concrete or growing up the pole and out a screw hole of a stop sign…. Plants grow in unlikely places and unlikely conditions all the time. Its called resilience, and resilience is both a choice and a gift from God. The fact that we have it to choose is God’s grace. I dont believe plants should be scrapped because they are less than perfect. In fact, last year, while this coworker entrusted me to put a cage over one of her tomato plants after work, i snapped off a major branch. Not wanting to let her down, i taped it back to the plant tightly with scotch tape. Just like human skin heals when two sides of a cut are taped together, the plant healed itself and continued to feed the leaves of that particular branch until its eventual death at the end of the season approaching winter. Her own plant proved my point. Resilience exists. For her, gardening is a precise and exact science that must be gotten just right each time. It involves measurements and log keeping. For me, gardening is messy and miraculous and involves no math…only love, awe, and instinct. I will admit to anyone who will listen; her garden yields more food than mine. But like i said; we garden for different reasons. She is seeking to create food for canning and i am trying to heal my wounded inner soul, which i believe is best done through light, dirt, water, and green things. I dont need those plants to be perfect and i dont need them to yield a million fruits. I just need them to make one tomato each, and then i have seen a miracle of God, that something once deemed beyond help became something thriving enough to support itself and then had some energy left over to produce fruit. For me, the reward is in witnessing the tomato more than eating it, and knowing that the tomato is a possibility. I simply think scrapping a living thing because it is less than ideal is a sad way to walk through life because there’s only one man that ever was able to stay ideal from start to finish and that’s Jesus. The rest of us are less than ideal in some way or will be at some point and if resilience is not a notion you have in your vocabulary, will you scrap yourself when you get there, or try your hand at resilience, like the crooked tomato plants? God can take the most lost, broken person and use him for good, redeem him, put him back together in front of the world who broke him apart. So why not plants? They pump water and nutrients into limbs i tape back on. They regrow leaves when frost kills the first batch a tree puts out. They sprout roots from stems that lay against the ground. They do all sorts of things to survive in a less than ideal environment or set of conditions. I refuse to garden with only the barbies and kens of the plant world. Mine will be mostly shreks and donkeys and i will celebrate every little quirky tomato that arrives.

This is the side of the greenhouse that is yet unused at this point. Later it will hold okra and eggplant.

More Shooting Practice

I am still aiming low. A consistent theme, it seems. It is nice to have the target in the yard so i can practice whenever its still light when i get home. I dont have to drive anywhere or pack up anything. I think with time i can return to the level of comfort i had when i was practicing on my neighbor’s property regularly. Im happy with the purchase. It seems to work well and its a much less social alternative to the gun range in the nearest town.

Roma

This is Roma, the first orb weaver of the year on the iron rose homestead. I’ve already warned her to stay away from praying mantis. She was hanging out on the greenhouse door but it did not appear to be a permanent spot for her as she did not construct any webbing. I’ll see if she posts up somewhere and i can find her again.