Ducks

I saw some Rhoan/Khaki campbell ducks for sale on KSL classifieds (which is one of my favorite places to look for stuff). I wasn't sure about this cross as the add said they hadn't started to lay. Yesterday I finally decided to ask about them. Don't know what took me so long. Even with the coop mostly in planning phase, Ducks could've worked. Ducks aren't as picky as chickens so I could make due with even a box in the garage at night for them.




Anyways the seller got right back to me (which doesn't usually happen) and said that they had just started to lay everyday for the last 3 days and aren't sure they want to sell them.... maybe for twice as much. Then a few minutes later he sent another email that his wife had decided she wants to keep them.






I thanked him for getting back to me and said if he didn't mind I had questions about raising ducks. He was nice enough to get back to me. I really appreciate the info they gave me, mostly about if you have ducks and chickens you have to keep the ducks out of the chickens' water.




I also wanted to post some valentines from Hannah and Natalie that I put on my door at work. Natalie also sent a sparkly name but I felt I had better leave that at home.

Presidents Day

My presidents day was awesome. Mostly because I was going to have to work and then didn't. So I spent the first half of the day in my pj's! I read lots of farm/homesteading blogs (I want some icelandic sheep now) and such. Here is a hillarious video called "The Bridge Of Peril" that makes me laugh.



The rest of the daylight hours were spent a bit more productively.



I set up my spring hoop house.... hmm could use some more water bottles. Also the plastic sheet was too fat and not long enough so maybe I'll need to buy a new one. It looked ugly so I didn't take a picture.



I can tell its been a long winter when I got tired just turning over one bed, sawing up 10 rebar pieces and chopping down the rest of the main garden. .... ohh my aching back! Now just need to chop up the flower beds. I also planted some bulbs we were given in the fall. Hope they make it cause I do like tulips.











This feral cat has decided that he isn't that wild cause he likes to be scratched. Sometimes he remembers that he is wild and will get scared. I think getting Pongpong fixed made him even more friendly. The other 3 are still not very friendly but gradually get closer. Nangua is still not fixed. I think she had more kittens but she is too quick for the cages. When its warmer (and her possible kittens are able to be without her), I'll try again.









The evening was spent again less productive but I did get some laundry done and started some more sprouts so I wasn't a complete lazy bum.





This is my mini tray sprouter which I really like. I keep it under the heating vent in the living room as its warmest there and they sprout really fast.








Yes this is a different combo of sprouts then the previous picture.

action shots

Iwas in a bit of a bad mood yesterday but not sure why. Maybe cause I got some bad news from work. Maybe because I took a short nap (generally a mistake for me), maybe cause I stayed up late the night before and woke up later then I meant to. Maybe because I didn't eat breakfast or lunch, just grazed. Anyways it was a good Sunday our sunbeams were good and after church there was chocolate which is always good so really I shouldn't have been the least bit ornery.

I even did a crockpot meal of pork, onions, and shrooms so there wasn't much to do besides mashed potatoes, cornbread, and reduce the gravy. I think I like beef better then pork in this combo btw.

Anyways here is another camera post:

Thorpe got a new "Monkey" for christmas. He always goes right in and gets his new lovey every Christmas morning and is probably the most content of anybody with what Santa brings.






I used Thorpe to try out the sport or action features of my new camera. I can scroll through these fast on my camera and watch it happen. I don't know how to do that on blogger, but maybe if you scroll down fast you can see it in action?

Group 1

That was fun, maybe I should try more frames per second? Second Try:

Ok got the timing wrong on this one. I'll try throwing the monkey this time

Hmmm no real action here either. It was late and Thorpe was just not into it. This last series continued with Thorpe picking up his monkey and laying down. I think he was done.

"Its late people. Just let me love my monkey in peace."

new camera

For Christmas I got a new camera! I read the instructions and tried out some of the settings. So the next couple of posts I might put some of my results.

Here is the food setting. Its a little person's left over cornbread. I think it turned out great! :)

Mom's beautiful amarylis and geraniums were blooming so I tried some close up flower shots.

This is a african violet of sometype that I picked up years ago from a Ricks horticulture sale

I was trying for a reflection shot but couldn't quite get the settings correct.

Nice

My middle name is Nice. This is to remind me of what I should be. Whats great is I'm surrounded by people much nicer then me and I hope one day I can live up to my name.


So my cute roommate gave me a valentines day present that I wanted to share.


I'm not sure if you can read it, but she gave me a puzzle of my homestead. She pointed out that there are orchards, mushrooms in the woods, horsies, aspargus by the stream, lots of flowers, a great place for fishing with salmon and trout, and there are ducks. On the side panel she wrote: "Not pictured are the extensive vegetable gardens, compost piles, greenhouse, barn, chicken coop, bird houses, vinyard, hot tub, wifi, sheds, hammock, bbq, smokehouse, summer oven, firepit, water features, pumpkin patch, cows, chickens, goats, sheep, and other misc critters."

It is so perfect! I guess I do talk about these things quite a bit and having it all written out like that just shows me how ridiculous I can be :) Oh well, one can dream. Thanks Kate, you are so great for putting up with me! This really made my day and gave me a good laugh. I love to do puzzles too.


Someone else Nice, is my friend Cathy. I've been going with Cathy to some high school bball games to scout/recruit. Well she is doing the recruiting, and I tag along. I go because A. its good for me to be out of the house, B. I like to spend time with Cathy, and C. its pretty funny. I always wondered why the little freshman had a hard time and in watching HS bball I realized its because its almost a different game! It reminds me of watching little kids play soccer where the goaly sits in the goal and all the other players mob the ball. Ok its not quite that bad, but the courts are a little smaller, the girls are typically smaller, and there are lots of jump balls, wierd fouls, and even funnier plays. Half the players can be on the ground at any given time :)







I also like going because I can ask Cathy questions about bball that I really don't understand. She is good at explaining but somethings still don't really make a lot of sense. Probably cause soccer is the sport I'm most familiar with and I feel those rules are pretty straight forward.

Thanks Cathy for being a great friend!

ps I had to sneak this photo as she is a pain about having her picture taken.

Happy Valentine's Day

I didn't remember to send anything to all you folks I love, so consider this your valentine!














I actually really like this holliday. Whats not to love? hee hee, get it Love?

Love is great! Chocolate is also great and easy to love.

Remember back to getting the valentines for classmates in elementary school? It was usually some cartoon caracters or something similar for school. Sometimes mom would splurge and we could even put a few of the heart candies in each small envelope. Always had to make sure not to send anything "mushy" to any of the boys! For special people (Mom, Dad, Grandma, best friend, etc) we would make elaborate lace and construction paper valentines. My mom could make the best hearts ever! She is super talented.



Mom would often make a heart shaped pizza, and sometimes heart shaped pancakes or muffins for breakfast(mom is pretty clever she put a marble on the side of each muffin tin). We would often decorate some sugar cookies and then eat them. Never was a really elaborate or stressful holliday (other then hoping my valentines weren't too lame or I'd accidently give the wrong valentine out).




Dad generally would get mom some chocolate (which she was generally generous with sharing) and a flowering plant the day after (half price you know) and there you have it.






Someone very sweet gave our house a heartattack and left some delicious sugar cookies which may or may not now all be eaten.












Didn't want them to get stale! In keeping with the family tradition of day after sales, I might get myself some more fun socks :)






ps to my sisters who were a bit jealous of my time with Bethanie, the spare room is open :)

Weekend with Bethanie

I'm just finishing up canning some applesauce that I started Friday. Canning isn't too hard, but I think it would be nice to have someone come behind me to clean it all up. My jars are from my Grandmother and I love picking out the "pretty" ones to can in first. One of the jars had an old label from '85 on it which was fun to see. I got 12 pints.



I think I should have people come visit more often, it was amazing how much I got done in anticipation of Bethanie coming :) I won't list the stuff that needed to be done because its somewhat embaressing that those things were put off. Anyways, its amazing what positive motivation can do. I even had time to hang out with Cathy before Bethanie arrived.




Anyways, back to the fun part of the weekend. With Bethanie's arrival being later, we didn't do anything but talk that night (ummm ok so thats what we did most of the weekend :) Saturday we talked over hot apple cider and then made some breakfast together (I really do like steel cut oats I need to make them for myself even if its more fun to make things for company). Then our exciting eventures began. Bethanie had said the one thing she wanted to do was go to Costco, so we did. We got 5 bags of those uncooked tortillas for her to take back home. Got some other tasty stuff too. Went back home to unload and eat some lunch (pita wraps with costco chicken). I opened a jar of dilly beans and Bethanie is the first person besides me to think they are pretty much awesome (I sent her home with a jar so I hope she wasn't just pretending to like them).


After lunch we went to see the Carl Bloch exhibit at the BYU museum. We checked out the other exhibits there too, but as Bethanie said, we should've seen the others first as many of the other artists displayed weren't quite up to that caliber. Then again, I don't know much about art. We also wanted to see Mitch's thingy at one of the other buildings but it was closed (had weird Saturday hours).

We just made it in time to watch Cathy's "pink" game, and they won! WhooHoo! Then we watched some of the men's before going to get some grub (we did score some Jamba Juice which I think Bethanie had been craving, between the games). After driving around looking for a place that was open, and being indecisive (who me?), I dragged her along to my favorite Pizza place (P7/12)and we tried some very fancy food. It was all very tasty and we felt very cosmopolitan with truffle pizza, farro and root vegetables (with a maple vinigret), and Bethanie got an "herbal soda" that was brewed with burdock, dandylion, and anise.














It was rather late at this point (for Bethanie) but she stayed up even longer while I worked on the lesson for Sunbeams. She helped color and cut out some activities during the meeting which was very nice of her considering she was for once not having to watch any children. Bethanie came with me to primary and it was sure fun to have her there. I'm happy to report she knew the right answers :)

I repeated last week's Sunday meal since it was tasty and I still had ingrediants to use up. We had squash mac and cheese, sweet spicy port, homemade applesauce and spinach.

After our late lunch it was so beautiful that we went for a walk. Can't wait till spring!









I was sad to see her go, but now that she lives so close I'm sure it will happen again. I'll need to go see her for a weekend that she has a concert. Bethanie said the drive wasn't too bad and Jim was a bit jealous that we watched basketball.

Thanks Bethanie for a great weekend!

Projects

Ever heard of aquaponics? Its something that I think may be fun to try. Not anytime soon as chickens is the current project ....


Anyways its really cool. Its a cross between hydroponics and aquaculture where you raise fish, the water feeds the plants and the plants clean the water that goes back to the fish. In a good system you also have worms that you can feed to the fish! There are lots of DIY info out there (lots are really ugly and I wonder why they don't spiff them up a bit?). I would like to raise trout in the winter and Tilapia for the summer- except that Tilapia is illegal in Utah. So maybe catfish in the summer... except that catfish keep wriggling even after you knock em on the head.... icky!

Hope that as soon as the snow is melted off my incomplete chicken coop project, I can get it done in time for spring Laying. I'm looking forward to getting some new gals in my yard! Of course I've got other projects on my mind too. Really I should be working on my small hoop house to get some salad greens going too. Maybe once I've completed the chicken project I can get some ducks!

This is the khaki cambell ducks. They produce 320-350 eggs a year and as they are ducks, they are hardier then chickens and won't eat as many garden plants. They are quieter then chickens and I think very cute. I think watching them splash around in a pool to keep cool would be way cool.

Not many people raise this kind so I'd have to get ducklings which would be way fun too! Do you think I could get FMLA for that?

Bethanie is coming for a weekend getaway. I love having her closer then Wisconsin! I'm very excited! We'll probably mostly hang out at home, but maybe I can come up with some exciting Utah things for us to do :) taking suggestions

Note: I know its been forever since I posted. I was on a roll before, but then my friend experienced a horrible tragedy and my silly posts seemed so pointless. I know it doesn't make sense, but I've never claimed to be very reasonable.... Anyways, once I got out of the habbit and then it had been so long.... well it just got overwhelming. BUT, I do want to get back into it, so we'll see what happens from here on out.