Blog Update!
For those of you not following me on Facebook, as of the Summer of 2019 I've moved to Central WA, to a tiny mountain town of less than 1,000 people.

I will be covering my exploits here in the Cascades, as I try to further reduce my impact on the environment. With the same attitude, just at a higher altitude!

Monday, May 16, 2011

Midget eggs and other things

This last week has been a hodgepodge of odd things around the house. Yesterday, Roxy, our Plymouth Barred Rock chicken laid an itty bitty egg. It was as if a robin had snuck into the coop and laid a tiny brown egg. I would have taken a picture of it, but Emma (in her excitement) broke it on the way in the house.

Saturday, I planted some seed projects Emma did at school a month or so ago. I'd been keeping the plants under grow lights in the basement and finally planted them outside. Because of spring break, I ended up adopting several student's projects (they left them there over break) and so I had three couplings to plant.

They are really a mystery because:

1. first graders don't exactly report accurately and
2. their teacher didn't remember what they were planting (it was a parent who led the project)

They look to be a combo of sweet peas, corn and beans. Not sure if they are pole or bush, but I guess I'll find out soon enough. I suspect they are pole since I bet they had some sort of three sisters thing going on. Minus the squash.

Otherwise, the weather here has been supremely crappy. I put my tomato plants out on Friday for a few hours to start a long, slow hardening off, only to find them completely sagging over and flaccid. Even after bringing them back inside they hadn't perked up much so I staked them up and put them back under the grow lights. I'll try again in a few more weeks.

Saturday night, we had our second neighborhood get-together that we hosted at our house. About five families showed up so it was a small affair, but nice because we got to talk with those neighbors a lot more than if it was a larger crowd. Next month we are having a homemade pizza party and July will be a root beer float party with homemade ice cream. I'm hoping to also interject some other meet-ups depending on people's interests.

My brother-in-law arrived to stay with us for a few months while he works locally doing some contract work. It's nice sharing the house with family - we have all this extra space and I'm glad we can help out as much as we can. Plus, we all love having him here.

That about wraps it up around here!

6 comments:

Kate said...

We get those midget eggs every once in a great while; maybe one a year or less. The ones I've seen have no yolk in them, and the whites sometimes have blood spots in them.

Greenpa said...

Last year we got one midget egg that had a completely FLAT end to it. Now that was weird! If you took one of those plastic easter eggs that comes apart, it was like just the top half. Don't know how she did it. Never happened again.

Robj98168 said...

The oooh ahhh bird is called that because she lays square eggs. Just thought I would share.

Willow said...

What's making your weather crappy? I'm puzzled why your tomatoes would wilt if it were cloudy or rainy out, so was it sunny and warm?
If so, I'd keep putting them out, but for much shorter time frames, maybe 20 minutes for the first couple of days and gradually scaling up after that. If it's cloudy, then they should be able to adjust to outside temps and light intensity well. Either way, you should be able to have them outside everyday, for less time if it's sunny, more if it's cloudy. Of course, if they've been indoors their whole seedlinghoods, without a fan on them, they will need some time to build stronger stems in the (light) outside breezes. Do you brush them with your hand daily to make them move? That stimulates the formation of stronger, thickening fibers in the stems.

Sue Sullivan said...

Oy, and I'm not Willow. That's my daughter. She's going to be delighted (not) that I'm posting on the internet in her name!

Crunchy Chicken said...

Greenpa - That is weird. I wonder if when she laid it the shell wasn't fully hardened?

Willow - Our weather was crappy because of cold and rain. When I put them out I think it was a lot colder than I was anticipating. I don't use a fan nor do I brush them so they are, apparently, a little limpers.