My children woke up this morning to peeping of a baby chick in their ear. It was so cute to see the excitement on their faces!
They are so gentle with each of them.

It motivated them to get out of bed right away, get ready, and come down sooner than normal!
You would have thought it was Christmas morning!

Now Saturday's projects for the next two or three weeks... build a nice coop, so when they are old enough to go outdoors, they will have a nice home to live in.
The kids are more excited than my sweetheart on building this!

I told him he can atleast finish last week's project first... insulating and sheetrocking my potting shed.

I can tape and mud it while he is @ work and paint it too.
Then after the chicks are in their new home, then he can hang the new cabinets and install the countertops.

It'll be nice to move my now makeshift potting shed off the back patio!

Everyone have a fantstic day, I am off to play Mother Hen!

Our chicks are leaving Welp Hatchery this next Monday. Even though our address is Beryl, the mail comes into New Castle and they're very good about calling when they get "live critters".

Got another 3000 worms due in tomorrow and you can bet we'll get a phone call.

Shari in Beryl, UT

Shari, it sounds like your ranch is really getting going! It is fun to hear what you are doing out there!

I am SOOO curious.... How in the world did you ever find, much less pick Beryl? Most people, even here in UT have NO idea where in the world any town from Enterprise Valley is.
Would love to hear the story! :-)
LOL... When I tell people I am from Enterprise, they think it is Morgan County... (a mystery town somewhere north of Park City).
When I explain 40 miles N. of St. George and 40 miles W. of Cedar City, they look at me with a blank stare or say... "Oh... by Zion Ntl Park"... wrong way! LOL
We went to a state competition once and they announced us coming from the 4 corners! in SE UT....I was tempted to buy them a map! LOL

Our story is one of those "hard to believe it really happened" ones.

Cindy, her Mom, and Bev had decided they were tired of "island life" a couple of years ago. Bev was dealing with breast cancer and had to retire from the Put-In-Bay, Oh Police Dept. Cindy had chosen to leave the force, and was really tired of island life, having lived there over 20 years.

I'm from Oregon and met Cindy online. She had purchased an e-book I wrote and was having a tough time getting the download... We went around enough times that she finally reported me to PayPal. We managed to make direct contact and over the last 4 years, have become very good friends.

They had their home on the market for two years before it suddenly sold. In the mean time, they had made a couple of trips to Utah, looking for property and a house. Bev has cousins in Hurrican and that was the biggest reason. Well, that and much better weather.

I was living in the same town where I'd gone to college. After closing my own business, I just couldn't gain traction in any other endeavor... Sometimes you just know when it's time for a change of scenery.

Long story short, they bought this place sight unseen. The cousins found it... and all the paperwork was completed "post haste". That was July 2005. I joined them this last December, about a year ahead of schedule.

Would we do it again... probably. This is an incredible adventure that we're all thoroughly enjoying.

Our "peeps" arrived today. Thirty-five assorted little chicks, Black Astrolorp, Buff Orpington, Barred Rock, White Rock, Golden Laced Wyandotte and Silver Laced Wyandotte. That will give us both meat and eggs.

Shortly I'll have pics up on the blog... keep checking back.

We got a mix of chicks too, and now they have most of their wing feathers I'm able to recognize some of them. lol Some are barred rock, white rock, cinnamon queen or red star . . . Not sure about all of them, but we'll see what they turn out to be.

Ducks: I have 1 khaki campbell, 1 Cayuga, and 2 that are probably either Fawn runner or white peking. and my Geese, 2 that are either White Emden or White Chinese and 2 that are either Tolouse or African. The water birds are lot more messy, but they've been a lot of fun and they'll keep my weeds and bugs down a lot. We've moved everyone out to the 'coop' already--it's really a shed with a window, we haven't added nests or roosts or the chicken door yet, but it's early days yet. The water birds go out to the enclosure that will be the lean to-when we finish the dang thing, but only during the day. It's still a bit cool at night for them to be out, and while our setup is safe enough from daytime preditors, it wouldn't hold up against Racoons.

Now we're trying to figure out how we're going to get t-posts into the ground when it is filled with rocks. So far we've had no luck getting it more than a few inches down and a post hole digger isn't intended to dig up rocks more than 10 inches across. *sigh*
lol
Heather J

We got a mix of chicks too, and now they have most of their wing feathers I'm able to recognize some of them. lol Some are barred rock, white rock, cinnamon queen or red star . . . Not sure about all of them, but we'll see what they turn out to be.

Ducks: I have 1 khaki campbell, 1 Cayuga, and 2 that are probably either Fawn runner or white peking. and my Geese, 2 that are either White Emden or White Chinese and 2 that are either Tolouse or African. The water birds are lot more messy, but they've been a lot of fun and they'll keep my weeds and bugs down a lot. We've moved everyone out to the 'coop' already--it's really a shed with a window, we haven't added nests or roosts or the chicken door yet, but it's early days yet. The water birds go out to the enclosure that will be the lean to-when we finish the dang thing, but only during the day. It's still a bit cool at night for them to be out, and while our setup is safe enough from daytime preditors, it wouldn't hold up against Racoons.

Now we're trying to figure out how we're going to get t-posts into the ground when it is filled with rocks. So far we've had no luck getting it more than a few inches down and a post hole digger isn't intended to dig up rocks more than 10 inches across. *sigh*
lol
Heather J