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The Peat Moss Experiment

Sunday, June 20th, 2010

This weekend I cleaned out all three of our bird buildings. We’ve also moved the ducks and geese to summer/spring “housing” over the past few weeks too. But I digress. I cleaned out the bird buildings and was left with the question of what to use as the bedding material. In the past we have used straw and wood chip. And I think once or twice grass hay. Our remaining straw from last years baling has picked up too much moisture to be used as bedding. And I’m not all that fond of wood chips. So I decided to try peat moss in our buildings for an experiment.

In one shed I put it in the nest boxes and on the floor. After 24 hours I can say in the nest boxes is probably not going to happen again. The peat sticks to the eggs and makes cleaning them more time consuming.

On the floors the chicken seem to really like it. And I’ve caught several dusting themselves. I also have noted a more earthy smell versus wood (wood chips) or grassy (straw) smells. I personally think the earthy smell is nice but I’ll be curious to see how long it lasts as the chickens leave their droppings. LOL

Back in Session

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

It has not escaped my attention that I am more than thrilled to be returning to our school routine. In fact I’m certain that I am more excited than the boys. Though that giant box of art supplies that arrived last week helped to excite them a bit.

For me the return to our routine means a few things are happening this week:
1. the wii is off till the weekend (our wii days)
2. the tv is off more often (we do watch some during the week)

I gave the boys their first real summer vacation this year. We called an end to school for the year and I let them loose. No restrictions on entertainment options. I think they enjoyed it for awhile but it wasn’t too long before the squabbling started. Thankfully we also had plenty of time to be outdoors in those first few weeks. And we had a number of activities on the calendar too.

But last week it rained. And rained. Add to that the fact we had only a handful of activities to attend, left us stuck inside and mostly home. It was an “on” week for the boys. The TV was ON and the Wii was ON. By the end of Thursday, I was done with the TV and the Wii. I declared Friday morning that school was back in session come Monday.

In my head I was chanting “no more tv! no more wii!” but I refrained from dancing round the kitchen. But tonight was an excellent example of why I like our restrictions on wii and TV. Last week we would have had two boys parked on the couch unless we were outside. This week I had them in the kitchen helping me tidy up which morphed into Jr. reading aloud while Lil’B and I shelled pistachios for a cooking project. It was such a nice hum of activity versus the squabbles of last week.

The happy hum pleased my heart.

I was going to post but

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

we had a birthday (mine!)
we celebrated Mother’s day in our fashion.
we took a quick trip! That added something to our farm.
we had another birthday (LilB!)
we had a celebration for him with some favorite “family”.
we were called away by the garden, by the geese and by the sunshine.

and just when I was about to update Jr came down with a bit of ick. Feverish ick.

so I’m going to post and catch up my lonely old blog soon.

In the meantime hope you are all enjoying a bit of good weather wherever you are!