The Tale of Katniss, Our Survivor Chick

 This is the tale of Katniss, our survivor chick.  Like the character in The Hunger Games, Katniss just keeps on going! She started off her young life as the dominant chick in our new batch of three spring babes.  She had a knack for posing for the camera, too.

 "Girl On Fire!"

 At age 2 weeks, Katniss got her foot caught in a perch in the middle of the night.  Who knows how long she dangled upside down by her small leg.  When we found her (on our way out the door for school) she was lifeless.  But once we held her for a while, she perked up!

 The vet told us she had nerve damage (she was lucky not to have any broken or misplaced bones) and would take time to heal. She needed to be quarantined for her own safety, since a chick who can't stand up is bound to be at the bottom of the pecking order.  Chicks are very social and need to see and hear each other, but at night, they also need to snuggle together. So we placed a fish tank inside the chicks' playpen and put a stuffed ducky in the tank to keep her company while she sleeps.

One of the sweetest things I have ever seen, though, was the next morning: Katniss was sleeping in the corner and her sister chicks were sleeping on the outside of the corner. (In the pictures above and below, Katniss hobbled out of the corner before I got the camera, but you can see her sisters waiting for her return.)  So, even though they couldn't all huddle in a cozy pile of downy feathers, they still managed to be together.  So sweet!

Katniss has made a fantastic recovery and is now out of the fish tank and back in the huddle with the other two chicks.  She is now using her foot again almost completely normally and we couldn't be happier for our Chick on Fire.

New Life

Spring means new life. And we have plenty of it around here!

Our butterfly house is full of Painted Ladies.  We plan to release them on Easter when the family is here to celebrate with us.  We've had unusually warm weather around here, so the butterflies should do well outside.

In the shot above, you can see the inside of the butterfly house, with two Painted Ladies clinging to the wall.  The red dye on the wall and floor of the house is leftover after their transformation from rather homely caterpillars to colorful butterflies.  We never before wondered where all that color comes from.  They make it themselves; how cool is that?

Another addition to our menagerie is a second Queen Bee.  Hers is the smaller hive.  The taller hive has two honey-supers on top.  We've been so unseasonably warm this year that we expect to harvest honey well before summer.

And finally, nothing says spring like NEW CHICKS!!!  Three Golden Buffs (aka Red Stars) joined us this week.  Their names are Katniss, Ginny, and Churchill.  You may or may not be able to tell what my children are each reading based on these names.

Happy Spring!

Fox-Proof Fence

This is the tale of our Fox-Proof fencing. And of how we learn as we go.

Before we dreamed of chickens, we had a small garden. It is long since gone (there is now a shed on the spot where our first vegetable garden once was), but it taught us two things about fencing: if the fence isn't tall, the deer bounce right over it; and if the fence isn't buried, the bunnies go right under it.

So, the next fence we made was buried several inches.

Then along came the chickens.  We built three large garden plots.  The chickens spend a year in each plot, and we rotate both crops and chickens so that there is a nice cycle of tilling, fertilizing, and bug munching.  When we first built the plots, we researched fencing and learned that a fox-proof fence should include a buried section that prevents a fox from digging under the fence.

We thought: chickens=chicken wire.

But only four years later, that chicken wire had rusted so badly, that there were gaps in the fencing that bunnies, foxes, and even chickens could manage.

This weekend I added a new, galvanized hardware cloth over top of the chicken wire. (It would have been too difficult to remove the chicken wire since it is half buried.)

Near the gate, I left gaps because transporting the coop through the gate door will require us to fold down the hardware cloth.

The most difficult stretch to manage was the side of the fence near the trees. In order to install the hardware cloth, a foot of earth needed to be moved, the 'cloth' needed to be rolled out and folded into an L shape, the floor was secured with landscape pins, and then the earth was added back on top of it, covered by a layer of mulch.  Finally, my boys and I used galvanized 18 gauge wire to tie the hardware cloth to the existing fence.

I did not use the camera during that long ordeal, so for the shot below I dug away a bit of earth to show how the hardware cloth folds out into the mulched area about 12 inches.

We know that foxes can climb, but we did not add the curved section at the top of each fence to prevent anything from climbing over.  We did have aviary netting secured over all our garden plots at one point, but a freaky October snow destroyed all of that and we haven't bothered replacing it.

I'm hoping foxes don't read this blog.

Bee, I'm Expecting You...

When the dining room table is covered in sweet smelling frames, you know it is that time of year...time to prepare for a new hive.

We had so much fun with our first hive that we are expanding the bee yard this year.

I had a beautiful, breezy day in early March, so I painted the hive boxes outside.  The honey bees could smell the familiar scent of the frames on the wood and were very curious.  Luckily no bee was hurt by the paint, but the cat (also very curious) ended up with a white paw.

Self-Portraits

Inspired by a great activity from a great art teacher's site called Art Projects for Kids, the cousins made self-portraits this summer in the style of Chuck Close.

First we traced black-and-white print-outs of 'face shots' through carbon paper onto graph paper.  It isn't easy finding carbon paper anymore, but luckily for us, my parents had some leftover from the 1970s.

The next step was tedious, but creative.  The kids colored each square of the graph paper with a different design, having no two adjoining squares match.  The colors of the squares matched what the kids imagined would be the color of that part of the portrait (for examples, a variety of browns might compose the hair, a variety of pinks would make the lips).

Not only was this a fun activity for a rainy day of Camp Gramp, but the children tell me (now that winter is upon us) that some of them have learned about or seen Chuck Close's work since we did this activity; they can relate to it now that they've experienced it.

Marble Mazes

 

With some scrap wood, nails, and rubber bands, the cousins made marble mazes this summer at Camp Gramp.  Using an old idea from Family Fun, we first made grids on large squares of wood, and then hammered nails at the grid intersections.  I like any activity that gets kids hammering, since hammering is a great skill AND it is satisfyingly noisy!

Once the nails were in place, rubber bands could be placed in any configuration to create a maze. We tested the mazes with marbles to make sure the rubber bands weren't too high or too low.  Then we tried each other's mazes and had a great time!

 The joy of this creation is that the children can remove the bands to reconfigure their mazes again and again.  It will never get old!  Because we planned to keep our mazes flexible, we did not paint them as Family Fun did in their example.  Some of the children did decorate their mazes with markers, though.

Stop-Motion Films

Camp Gramp is a week each summer in which my children and their cousins stay at their grandparents' house, swimming and doing crafts each day, playing games and watching movies each night.  It is a magical time.

Each year I plan a series of crafts for the kids to do, but as they are collectively aging, the crafts need to become more sophisticated. 

This summer we broke the kids into small groups to make Stop-Motion Films.  We started off by reminding them that some films are made this way (Corpse Bride and many of the old Rankin Bass holiday specials, such as Santa Claus is Coming to Town, are good examples).  I showed them a short film I made of a toy moving across a table and explained that a series of photos can be pieced together on the computer to make it look as though an object is moving.

The kids had a great time shooting the films.  Editing the films on the computer, including adding sound effects, music, and voice, took several days.  The youngest group helped me edit their film, but the two older groups did most of their editing independently.  The results were brilliant!  We watched the films on our last day of Camp and put all the short films on DVDs for the families to keep.

Apple Cider Day

When a family has so many apples that every container is full, it is time for Apple Cider Day!

We spend the first half of the day picking apples.  My husband climbed the trees or used the tall ladder.  I used the smaller ladder and an antique extension pole apple-picker my father gave me. The boys ran apples from us to the containers inside the house, where we were keeping the picked apples away from the wasps.

We spent some time giving all of our equipment a good scrub with soapy water and then sanitized everything with a horrific sulfuric mixture my husband seems to love.  The scent grows on a person, I guess.

Below you'll see an antique press my father gave us.  Built to last!

You may be able to notice that only one of the sides is up.  The press is made of a center pole screw, wooden slatted sides that come off, and a metal base with a spout.  Once the apples are pressed, the sides are removed and the dried cake of pressed apples is removed.  Amazingly, the buckets and tubs full of apples all eventually fit into this press as the moisture is removed.  What remains gets thrown to the chickens.

Making apple cider is a great lesson in teamwork.  While my husband endured the tiring job of turning the crusher, the boys fed apples from a wheelbarrow into the top of the crusher. I refilled the wheelbarrow with apples from the tubs in the house. 

 Our garage was transformed into our workshop for the day and given a good hose-down afterwards. Things got very sticky!

Crushed apples --stems, seeds, and all-- drop into a clean bucket.

The crushed apples are then dumped into the press.  We put clean wooden boards on top of the apples and feed a metal turner onto the pole.  My older son (who we lovingly referred to as our 'work ox' all day) turned the press by hand until it was too difficult to move.  Then he put a long metal pole into the turner and pressed the apples even further.  (This was a great opportunity to discuss the concepts of 'simple machines' with the kids.)

As he pressed, juice poured from the bottom into bowls.  We then strained the liquid into larger containers.  I filled several freezer containers with cider that we'll drink throughout the fall and winter. My husband started about ten gallons of the cider fermenting for wine and another five gallons for hard cider. 

Delicious, right from the press, the cider needs no sugar added...and as you can see below, some people just couldn't wait to try it. 

Mini Gardens

Who doesn't need more thyme? More 'thyme' for gardening, that is.

This summer at Camp Gramp, the kids made mini container gardens.  First, they each picked a container from Grandmom's potting shed.  She has such a terrific assortment of yard sale finds in there.

Next, they scoured Grandmom's house for tiny treasures with which to make a garden scened. 

Finally, the kids filled the containers with gravel, potting soil, and their treasures.  We planted thyme in the containers because thyme has tiny leaves to fit perfectly 'to scale' with their scenes.

Doctor Who Party

My children (and their cousins, friends, grandparents and parents) have recently become obsessed with Doctor Who.  (Er...it does make some of us a *little* ashamed about teasing my husband in the 1980s and 90s for being a fan.)  It was no surprise, then, that our latest birthday party had to have a Doctor Who theme.  What was a surprise was the short amount of time we had to plan the party.  My son originally wanted a zombie party, then changed it to a Lego party, and then about two weeks before the party, changed it to Doctor Who.

Big problem:

 In the U.S. it is just about impossible to get Doctor Who party supplies, toys, or anything related to the Doctor.  And with only two weeks, I didn't have time to order anything online.

Big solution: the Internet!

We found so much inspiration from other obsessed fans, that before long my boys were making sonic screwdrivers from Legos and more.  (The one below belongs to the Master.)

Here are some of our party supplies: 

I took an old metal cookie cutter of a duck and reshaped it to form a Dalek.  My youngest son decorated the cookies with M&Ms. 

We wrapped up the cooled cookies and put one in each goody bag.  I made the goody bags from plain blue bags on which I glued printed parts of the TARDIS.  I filled them with the cookies, some Nerds (how could I resist hinting that we're all a bunch of nerds?), and other candies.  My boys also made guests some fuse bead Daleks. (You must be aware of our fuse bead obsession by now.)

Our centerpiece was a cupcake and gingerbread scene of some Daleks surrounding the TARDIS.  Look out, Doctor!

The main activity of the party was the creation of a stop-motion Lego movie about the Doctor and Rose battling some Daleks. Here we see Rose falling as the Daleks attack the TARDIS.  Dramatic!

After the animation film session, the whole family gathered with some friends to light those Daleks afire and sing Happy Birthday to my newly-turned-eleven-years-old son, who was delighted with the party.



Daleks vs TARDIS

For our Doctor Who party, we made a cake display with a gingerbread TARDIS and some hostile Dalek cupcakes.  I was inspired by the breathtaking work online.  Ever try an online search for 'Dalek cakes'? Who knew so many people were making Dalek cakes?

To make the Dalek cupcakes, I modified Tofu Guru's decoration technique by making six extra-deep cupcakes (found an extra deep cupcake tin at Michael's Craft Store) with one shallow cupcake on top of each one.  I used two boxes of spice cake mix to make the six Daleks and an extra dozen cupcakes for the party.

To make the gingerbread TARDIS I fashioned four walls and a graduated series of squares for the roof.  I used a box mix for the gingerbread.  I really should have made my own gingerbread, but I was pressed for time.  The problem with using the box mix is that it often produces a softer gingerbread than does a recipe from scratch, I find.

Before baking the gingerbread, I pressed a clean Lego window to make the window shapes, and then used the opposite side of the Lego to press the square shapes on the TARDIS doors and walls.

I used a bottle of gin as a rough template and to help support the walls as the royal icing dried. The royal icing was made from meringue powder, which I always keep in the pantry.  (You never know when the urge will strike to make a gingerbread house.)

For the roof I stacked the squares and iced them, allowing the roof to dry completely before adding it to the TARDIS.

To give the TARDIS that lovely blue color I covered it liberally with blue sprinkles.  It wasn't easy sprinkling the walls, so I ended up using a spoon to blend those sprinkles into the wet icing.  I covered the top two smallest squares with yellow sprinkles before adding them.

Inside the TARDIS, I put a tall plastic cup to support the heavy roof.  No one will see the cup, and anyway, we all know that the TARDIS is bigger on the inside.