snow days!

Finally, after weeks and weeks and weeks of temperatures in the -30's (sometimes much colder when the wind blew) a nice, big, fat blizzard rolled in this weekend.  The storm brought a welcome foot of snow (nothing compared to what other places in Alaska have been getting) and some temps in the high 20's, which feel balmy, and lovely.

It's been weeks since Sadie has been able to play outside, so even though the wind was blowing, she was one happy little snow bunny! Especially helping her dad shovel snow and Chasing cash.

The chickens ventured out of their coop to strut around in the snow while Loren gave them a new bed of straw.  Even with the extra heat source in the chicken tractor, this winter has been really hard on them.   You can see in the picture that a couple of the hens frostbit the tops of their combs.  Last week I went to check on the chickens before bed and found that somehow Rex had managed to get his feet wet and they were like two blocks of ice.  He got a week of convalescence in the bathtub, and even though Loren kept book marking my Joy of Cooking to the "Coc au Vin" recipe he managed to make a surprising recovery.  Loren was super nice and soaked his feet in epsom salts and put bag balm on them regularly--all the while bitching that, "we should be eating this damn rooster!"  When the temp finally went up yesterday, he went back in the coop--much to everyone's relief.  A bathtub is no place for a rooster.  Frankly, I'm amazed that chickens can even survive in this climate--it is a true testimony to their hardiness.

I hope the kinder weather will hold for a while--I think we could all use a break from being housebound. It would be nice to get out and enjoy the lengthening days with some sledding or skiing, to be sure.

it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

 

Okay, the spooky ice fog rolling in this afternoon isn't really Christmassy, per se, but it is transforming the Bering Sea into yet another amazing martian landscape. And the weather has felt downright balmy and humid by Nome standards, and that is just fine by me.

AND we got a Christmas tree today! YAY!

Just in time for us to fly out tomorrow to the land of many, many trees. Again, YAY!

 Even though this isn't Sadie's first Christmas, it is her first Christmas tree, and she took her decorating duties very seriously, I assure you.

Look at that game face.  

Reason #2435 why kids are awesome:

They put all the magic back into the holidays.

Teenrooster: Ladies, say hello to "Sexy Rexy."

Something kind of funny about living in a small town is that on a given Sunday a person might show up on you porch, holding a rooster, and say, "Hey, heard you guys have some hens, and I thought you might like this rooster so you can have more chicks come spring."

And just like that, you have a rooster.  An awkward, cowardly, teenage rooster.  Or, according to Loren, a "mini T-Rex." 

I have decided to dub him "Sexy Rexy,"  in the hopes of boosting his self-esteem.  

This guy really needs some positive self-talk, because our hens are kicking the crap outta him.

Seriously.  Who knew they could be so mean.  I am beginning to really understand all these chicken analogies, like "hen-pecked."

Hen-pecked is NOT a good thing.

And Cash, realizing there is now a creature living here {even more cowardly than he is} has taken it upon himself to harass the poor young Rex even more.  Thankfully, the killer instinct in Boxers seems to have been bred out quite a few generations back.

So poor Rexy, he spends most of his days hiding out in the greenhouse. 

Since putting him with the hens in the coop at night was a total disaster, he roosts by himself on the roof of the shed. Only he cant quite flap up there by himself.  He needs a boost.

Something about this pathetic chicken evokes a bit of compassion in me, so yup... I will continue to toss him up on the shed until he gets big enough to do it himself.  

I can't wait till he grows a pair and stops letting the other chickens pick on him though, because some battles you just have to fight yourself.

the chicken tractor...or what you can do with $150 and a bunch of scrap wood.

A few good hens: 3 Barred Plymoth Rock, 1 Rhode Island Red, and one sassy little red number with white tail feathers:

I've been meaning to post about how this whole backyard chicken operation is going.   About two weeks ago my neighbor Lindsay procured us five free laying hens from a family who was moving and couldn't keep them anymore.  That whole event was kind of sad because they were the kids' pets (lots of tears when they dropped the chickens off, even more tears when Cash proceeded to chase them all, terrified and squawking, around the yard until I could round them up into our shed). We didn't really have a place to put them at first, so they lived in a ramshackle plywood lean-to, until we completed the Chick-Chalet.

 Now, this is not a masterpiece of finish carpentry, to be sure. The fact that we have only $150 into it (which I assure you, is very cheap by Nome standards), and that we came by most of the materials by scavenging, makes this a fairly cost-effective little operation, and also gives it that, ahem, rustic feel.  We decided to go with the mobile "chicken tractor" idea.  If you are interested in other chicken tractor designs, I highly recommend checking out this website--which is full of awesome information about running small scale poultry operations in limited spaces. Why a mobile chicken coop?  Well-- it is nice because your chicks always have some fresh grass to peck on, they clean up grubs and bugs from your yard, and if you move the coop every 1-2 days you never get that super-concentrated, nasty chicken stink going on.  Each time we move this coop we just rake up the dead grass and chicken droppings and in the compost it goes.  The "yard" grows back and then by the end of the chicken coop rotation you start over again.

 Some features of our chicken tractor: A drop down door in the front near the bottom to allow for easy chicken herding (courtesy of Cassius) and also feeding.

 

A state-of-the-art, triangular design with metal roof cap to keep the upstairs roosting and nesting areas dry. An open chicken wire bottom, so our hens can root and scratch in the fresh Bering Sea breeze.

 and on the other side, the top where the roosting and nesting areas are, features two big doors that open for easy cleaning and egg gathering.

 Here is one of our hens giving me the stink eye for disturbing her egg-laying.  As you were, chicken. 

So... there you have it.  My life-long dream of a small flock of backyard chickens checked off the bucket list.  And 4-5 fresh eggs a day... as Borat would say, "very nice!" And miss Sadie Mai, well, she loves the chickens.  If you even mention the word chicken in casual conversation she goes off with a series of "bok-bok'bok" sounds until a chicken-feeding field trip results.