Breaking up the garden

Today, I started breaking up one of the garden to start getting it ready for planting. Our oldest hen, Poppy, is very familiar with the whole garden digging procedure and was quick to join me and eat all the worms that I dug up. The dogs hung out in their dog pen and supervised (and humped each other of course LOL)

Daily Eggs

The ladies are all doing well and they all slept in the same coop last night. I think they are finally all friends :) It's interesting how different in size and colour the eggs are.

Herbal Remedy for Kidney Stones

I have a friend who suffers from kidney stones every few years. I have never had them, but from what I understand they are horribly painful. The last time my friend had them I did some online research about herbal remedies and found one that got rave reviews. He tried it and amazingly it worked fantastic. He still had to pass the stones, which of course wasn't fun, but at least he didn't end up in the hospital.

As I often do when I need to learn something, I wrote an article about it:

Read Herbal Remedy for Kidney Stones

Seedlings

My kitchen window seedlings are doing wonderfully well! The green peppers have finally poked their heads out of the soil and I have tons of tomatoes, beans, peas and corn. :)

Chickens

So the new hens have been here for about 50 hours now and the worst of the "fowl" language has stopped. The ladies are starting to get along. Today we let all the hens meet face to face. There was no fighting or even feather fluffing, just a bit of squawking and pecking. Red (the hen that is outside the cage in the photo), decided that she could go into the new ladies' cage, but they couldn't come out. We'll let them mingled supervised again tonight. Hopefully by the end of the weekend they will all be friends :)

Chicken Eggs

One of the new hens laid an egg this afternoon and boy, it was darn small in comparison to our normal eggs. I knew that egg size varied per breed, but had to Google to see if it was also affected by age. So, Google tells me that egg size varies per breed, age, diet and the overall health of the hen. Hopefully, when the new hens get settled in and a bit older they will produce bigger eggs. Our older ladies always produce large to extra large eggs. 

New Chickens

We added some new hens to our flock today. They are Golden Cross hens, about 6-7 months old, just started laying. New hens must be kept separated from the flock for a few days/week, to stop serious fighting.

We set up the dog pen for the new hens to stay in for a few days. Once everyone is comfortable, they will join the other ladies in the coop.

I wrote an article about adding new hens to a flock, if you are interested, you can read it here.

With adding two more hens to the flock, it should raise our egg production from 2-3 eggs daily to about 4 daily. (We had three hens, so now we have five)

Seedlings, Chickens, Cats and Sun

We finally got some sun today; it was awesome! The cats and chickens were out enjoying the sun :) The seedlings are doing great, the beans especially are growing like crazy. We are going to start preparing the gardens this week. :)

Bean seedlings

The Ladies (Poppy, Red and Baron) enjoying a banana

Ripley and Rollie hanging out enjoying the sunshine

Seedlings

So I wanted to get a pile of seedlings started for the garden and an upcoming fundraising event where we'll be selling seedlings, and there was no more room under the little grow light I have. So, I put some shelves in the kitchen window (It's a south window so gets great sun and is very large and deep) so I could start a pile more seedlings :) So far so good :)

Greetings!

Hi! Welcome to "Country Living" -(I know, not a very inventive blog name, but it really is what the blog is about). I'm Trish, I'm in my late 30s and live with my family in southern Ontario, Canada. I was born in London Ontario and have lived in numerous other cities in Ontario such as Toronto, Kitchener, Brampton, Mississauga, Niagara Falls and Sarnia. I was an exotic dancer for about 16 years and started working online a few years ago as a freelance writer and artists. Two years ago, I moved to the country. I had never lived in the country before, but I wanted to be more self sufficient and as a Pagan I wanted to develop an even deeper connection and understanding with the Mother Earth.

I love living in the country! It is an adventure in learning and growing. I am learning how to garden, preserve food, raise egg chickens, tap maple trees and make maple syrup, and so much more! Admittedly  I've messed up on a few things (OK, on a whole bunch of things!), but I'm learning and it's a lot of fun!

I really should of started this blog two years ago when I moved in here, but alas I didn't, so better late than never!