Mother Earth News Garden Planner

I am in the midst of planning my 2014 vegetable garden. Today I found an awesome program on Mother Earth News - a garden planner!

You can check out my garden plans Here ; for the next month

I loved the the garden planner helped with spacing! I have a problem with that

The pic below came from the garden planner. It's off my garden to be!

Nicer Weather

I'm sorry I haven't blogged for awhile! I've been super busy working on art :)

This winter has been crazy cold and we've hit some record low temperatures. All my fur and feather babies are doing alright, but they are all a little under exercised and stir crazy.

Today, the weather warmed up enough for everyone to get outside for awhile. The hens had a nice time running around getting into trouble

Hens can get frostbite, especially hens with crops, so care needs to be taken that they are not left outside too long in really cold weather. I have found if it is colder than -10 out that I'm best to leave them locked in the garage all day. I always feel mean making them stay inside, but safety first.

Spring will be here soon and my ladies will get to go back to free ranging all day :)

Tiny Egg

Four (out of the 7 laid) eggs from the laying box today ... what's with the tiny tiny egg on the end? It's ridiculous! I have no idea who laid it. The one beside the tiny egg came from Baron, the green/grey one came from either Laverne or Shirley (Orpington's lay green/grey eggs) and the big one on the end, that's Poppy's of course. You'd almost think some strange bird came in to the garage and laid an egg in the laying box. It's way too small, too dark and speckled! How strange!

In chicken circles, they are called "fart eggs" "fairy eggs" or "Witch eggs".  

They often have no yolk or can be entirely yolk. 

They are sometimes caused by a disturbance in laying patterns, shortage of water or simply 

because hens are weird 

I haven't cracked the egg yet, so not sure what's inside. I'll let you know!

Happy Holidays!

Hi!

Sorry i haven't blogged in a while. I've been crazy busy with online work and all the Holiday chaos.

I hope everyone had a fantastic holidays!

With winter here, things have calmed down around my house; no garden to harvest or food to preserve. I've been enjoying having a little more free time for my online work and crafts. For Yule, I made earrings for all my female guests, which was fun.

I'm not a big fan of winter, but I do appreciate the extra free time it gives me. it's nice to be able to do some painting and other crafts. I'm hoping to get a painting or two done this winter.

I hope everyone is staying warm and has fun plans for New Years Eve! Hugs!

Holistic Healing

I always try herbal remedies before using over the counter or prescription medications. I find one of the best ways for me to learn about all the different herbal remedies is to write about them, so I started doing a Holistic healing series on Bubblews.

So far, I've done:

Couch grass

Agrimony

Horse-chestnut

Calamus

Yarrow

Black catechu

(Just hit on the word, to be taken to the article)

Christmas Shopping!

Have you started your Christmas Shopping yet?

Please check out my PugWiggles Zazzle store for fun unique gifts!

PugWiggles Zazzle Store

Foster Kittens

Last week, I volunteered to take four four week old kittens. The poor little sweethearts's mother was killed by coyotes. When they got here they were still bottle feeding and not in the best shape. Over the last five days, I've been working on weaning them off the bottle and getting them eating from a plate.

Three of the kittens are doing fantastic, but unfortunately one is not. He is smaller and weaker than the others, and won't eat the kitten food. He'll only drink milk from the bottle. I pray the little guy is going to be ok.

The kittens will be off to new homes in 3-4 weeks.