Ahhhh Spring

What would Spring be without the annual order of chicks?

Chicks, man.

And so it is the time yet again - when I scan the Murray McMurray catalog for who will join our little backyard homestead family.

I am down to 6 laying hens, which is not enough for my taste (and my family's heavy egg consumption) so I've decided to add some color, productivity and general merriment to our band of miscreants by ordering 4 Americauna Hens.

Americauna Bird

Blue green eggs and their wonderful production rate is what sold me on this breed. I've previously done red stars, domiques, gold laced wyandottes, silver laced wyandottes (winner for temperament, hands down), and some alien brown bird that I thought was an Americauna but I'm now thinking it's just a mutt bird. She lays tolerably well, so she won't go into a pot....yet. But I wanted an actual blue green egg producer and since I'm down on birds I thought, why go with one when you can go with 4?

And then, because the smell of steaming feathers and the irritation of plucking is so far behind me that I've forgotten how much work it is, (and our supply of fresh chicken is dwindling sharply), I added 16 Cornish Game Hens to the lot for my meat production. I had such good luck with them last time that I'm gonna roll on it again. With the production of our rabbit meat set to pick up speed exponentially in the next month (butchering this Sunday and then again in 10 weeks the next batch) our meat supply is looking pretty healthy.

The birds won't be here until April 22nd but that's okay. I have a lot to do in terms of putting the garage to rights and figuring out where to put the little buggers (they can't mix - the cornish game hens will eat the poor egg layers, bless their hearts). I have some furniture to clean out, things to reorganize, peg board to hang....which brings us to Spring, part deux.

Spring Cleaning.

Does anyone else do this? I mean, really? Usually every year I throw open all the windows on some windy, temperate day and let the house breathe whilst I sort through clothes, furniture and books for things to sell, give away or pass down. If I didn't have a looming soap order today I would most likely be tackling this therapeutic gutting of all things material right this very minute, instead of waiting for sugar soap scrubs to set up. (Yeah. As awesome as they sound. I'll post the results and recipe on my other blog soon.)

The need doesn't seem so pressing since we've just moved into this place and I did a major gut before we moved, but I still want to air the place out. One thing about a house full of carpet. Not only is it supremely gross, but it hangs onto smell like no other flooring in the world. Blech.

Anyhow - Spring! Chicks! Peg board! Whoot!

Anyone else doing some cleaning and reorganizing? I call this a first world problem, but as long as we gotta deal with it, we might as well commiserate!