Hey there!

So, my friend Leia encouraged me to write a blog since my life got substantially more interesting in the last few weeks.  Normally, I think blogs are silly because no one ever keeps them up for very long or they are talking about something that I don't have much interest in.  But, that said, I am a vapid narcissist and I think whats going on at my house now-a-days is HORRIBLY interesting.  So you may read on if you'd like.  You're probably a member of my family or a friend, but at least here I can tell you all the SAME story and possibly free up some non-farm related conversation time when i see you in person!  =)

So for those who have been living under a rock: I've decided to become a farmer.  On a very small scale of course.  It all started about 2 months ago when i started researching chickens.  I found that they were very easy to keep, and that Tucson (where i live) has some pretty chicken-friendly ordinances.  It also helped that my house came with a pre-built chicken coop!   So about two weeks ago i went to our local feed store with Luis and the kids and picked up five week old chicks.

We had  two barred rocks (Esther and Ruth), two Easter Eggers (EE's, named Dorothy and Betsy) and one Ideal 236 (a Leghorn Hybrid named Tululah).  Maggie decided Tululah was her favorite right away.

After about a week i started to feel bad for Tululah and wanted to get her a friend who was just like her, since she was the odd chick out.  So i went back to the feed store, to get another Ideal 236 (Other white chicken).  Well due to forces completely beyond my control i ended up leaving with a white chick and... a Polish (Phyllis, but we usually call her Polish)!

So now i have Seven.  (FYI the second Ideal 236 that i picked up now appears to be another EE rather than and Ideal, so she'll probably start laying eggs much later than her other white sister, but on the plus side they will be blue/green eggs!)

With chickens come lots of extra... Ideas... =)

You see chickens have a lot of poop. So i had to come up with something to do with it all.  Enter the composter.  And now that we had a composter, i thought i will probably need a garden with which to use all of that compost!  So last weekend, my mom, Todd, Luis and I set up some raised bed gardens.  They are about 4'x15'  and there are two of them.  Right now they are sitting there with some preemergent weed killer and plastic over them so they can kill all those nasty weeds waiting to come up and kill my veggies before the even show up.  In a few weeks we'll be filling them with compost/dirt/manure whatever and in August we'll be planting.  For now, we just have herbs planted in window boxes, but they are doing pretty well for now.

We also switched to a laundry line rather than our dryer.

So this is a lot of background but honestly it has lead to a really cool change in our lives.  We are outside a lot more.  We have a lot of chores we can do together as a family, and we take a lot of pride in the stuff that comes out of them.

My goal is to be writing here to tell you all about the chickens and the farm so you can hear all of our cool progress, share our first egg with us, and maybe get to share some fun recipes and family moments! =)  In the meantime, that is our background.  I'll give you some more detailed accounts of these things as time goes on =)