Because we found a source that would ship us a fewer number of baby chicks (perusing all the animals at the county fair probably contributed to this decision as well), we now have three soon-to-be-hatched Rhode Island Red babies that will wing their way to us next week.

As it turns out, we put this order in almost 3 years to the day from when we bought our first round of chooks, and brought them home from the local post office.

I’m sure we’ll have much more to say about these little girls when they arrive, as new babies on the farm are a fun thing.

In the interim, though, there’s certainly some preparatory work to be done. We’ve got to muck out/Lysol the coop and dunk the dirty butt bitches that live there into some mite medicine.

Oh, that bears some explanation.

As it stands, we only have one chicken who’s laying eggs. The other three two have just been freeloading pets for quite some time. So, because we’re only getting one egg per day, I haven’t eaten an omelette from our farm in more than 4 months.
We think this is due to a minor but mighty mite malady that’s causing them some egg production issues. It’s a common thing with chickens (they typically contract them from wild bird droppings), but it does require medicine to treat.
I mean, that’s our best guess as to why they’re not laying anyway… I guess we’ll find out if that was the issue once we treat them and their coop and see what happens.

Now that Daphne is back in school our days have opened up a bit more. So we can take on things like cleaning the chicken coop (and the chickens themselves), tending/salvaging what we can from the garden, and generally getting back to taking care of our homestead. This instead of one long day after another of trying to keep her content and, barring that, simply keep her from stomping throughout the house and shrieking all day.

Speaking of which, today is a teacher in-service day, so Daphne is already off for the weekend. We don’t have any concrete plans as of yet, but I’m sure that will change once I get a moment to pivot and focus on familial time rather than grinding away at work projects.

I mean, we obviously have a Tractor Supply run in our future for baby chick food and, because I’m not sure where exactly our chick waterer and feeder is, we might have to pick those up as well.

Yeah, not exactly exciting times for a 9-year-old.

Maybe we’ll try to go down to the waterfront in Burlington? Or to the local orchard? Or maybe a corn maze? I wonder what temperature the lakes are? We could always do an afternoon swim if they’re not too cold…

Maybe we go for a walk around the Christmas trees and figure it out, kid. Whaddya say?

See you Tuesday.

j.s.