Catch the Moment: Week 16

A picture a day, for one year.

Prepare for a week of mostly chicken pictures :)

We've lived in our current town for almost 3 years, and I'm amazed at how connected this community is. I grew up in a small-ish town for 16 years and never felt this involved. Maybe it's because I'm a parent and it matters now. Anywho, our local YMCA hosted an open house / community day and we got to tour the facility and there were literally dozens of local businesses and activities for the kids. Ruby surprised me when she picked up a crayon and grabbed a piece of paper and started coloring along with the toddlers.

Finding the balance between finishing and taking a break from projects is something that my husband and I have been working on for as long as we've been married. We've made the commitment that every Sunday morning we go on a family hike that's not too far from home. This is my favorite part of the loop.

 The Pierogie Flock almost doubled in a single day! I picked up 2 7 week old Cinnamon Queen chicks and 2 yearling Easter Eggers. This little lass is Sugar Cube, the more docile and sweet of the Cinnamon Queen pair.

 Easter Eggers will lay blue or green eggs. I was happy to find that mine lay blueish eggs! There's no difference from any other colored egg; it's just the shell that's different. What the hen eats, how she lives and her quality of life depict the quality of her eggs.

 I'm not a professional thrifter by any means, but some times I luck out. Once or twice a month we hit our local Goodwill and on this day I happened to stop in on furniture discount day. The manager wanted these pieces out, so I struck up a bargain with her and got all of this for $22. !!!!

 Miss Penny was so enamored by the little chicks. She sat next to them, talked to them, convinced them that she was not mean and wouldn't eat them. They were skittish, but we're working on getting them accustomed to being pet and held.

Our older girls (and by older, I mean that they're 2 years old) are so sweet with her. They've learned that she's gentle, safe and brings treats often.

Catch the moment archives

These aren't on Instagram, but most others are!

The Pierogie Chickens vol 1

I think it's high time I introduced The Pierogie Chickens to you! We've had them for about 9 months and the learning curve was surprisingly easy - seriously, the internet will tell you everything. We got these ladies as a complete flock as year olds and about a month before Ruby was born. I've let Penny name each one of the girls and over the course of 9 months we've got 4 out of 5 named.

Baby
The easiest to spot and the first to be named. I guess Penny thought she was a baby because she's the only yellow one, and thus the name has stuck. She's the Queen of the Roost, but unfortunately goes broody every few weeks. A broody chicken doesn't do me any good around here; I don't keep a rooster so she fruitlessly tries to hatch eggs that just aren't going to hatch. It's heartbreaking and silly all at the same time. She's a Buff Orpington.

Bazinga
Yep, my daughter made a BBT reference. And I totally didn't encourage it. We taught her the word about a few months ago, but she rarely says it. One afternoon while playing with the chickens she decided that one of our black hens is now to be called Bazinga. It took almost 5 months to find the difference from her sister, but I found that this girl has a larger, floppy comb. She is a Black Sex-link, which means the female chicks are born black and the male chicks have a white dot on their heads.

Puffy
The other Black Sex-link. Her comb is straight up and she seems to be a little smaller than Bazinga.

Brown Fluffy
She's the smaller of our two Rhode Island Reds and has 4 points on her comb. Unfortunately both of these characteristics are really hard to see at a glance, they usually move too quickly for me to count the individual points on the combs..

??
Well, last week I thought I had finally figured out a difference between our two RIR besides the "count the comb points" / "which one is smaller" game. This one had a black feather in her tail, which made it really easy to figure her out. So I called her "Black Tip," like a black tip reef shark. And then it rained and I realized that perhaps it was just a dirty feather or she lost it. So I'm back to square one. So perhaps a new name will come to me soon.

Related: 3 reasons why keeping backyard chickens is good for my toddler