Groovy Kid Stuff

Hazel got some clay for her birthday before we went to MI and she and the boys have spent most of the last week playing with it. This picture shows the first creation, the colors are all mixed up and muddy now but they are still really into it.

I got this amazing stash from someone on freecycle - she said she used to work at a fabric store and spent most of her paycheck there. Now she has more fabric than she’ll ever use and is cutting back. It might not look like that much in the picture , but there are 300+ 1/4 yard pieces of fabric there! Today she posted again and Scott went over and picked up a box of ribbon that should last me the rest of my life.

The 25th was our 14 year wedding anniversary so we went to goodwill where we found this great couch and then to Lowe’s to buy chicken wire. (I think that those are the traditional 14th anniversary gifts right? Used furniture and poultry supplies? LOL!) Anyway, this couch is so comfortable and well proportioned and it didn’t smell. . . but seriously, it is my ideal couch other than the colors. So at some point I’m going to attempt to re-upholster it. I’ve dissected a couch before, so I feel like I have some idea of what is involved, but I don’t think this particular couch is a first-timer’s project. So for practice I’m re-covering the old couch, which was really a loveseat , which is now on the boys’ room. I’m about 1/2 done with that, pictures will be posted when I’m all done, so far it is going well.

The boys were so excited about having the old couch in their room. Ray said, “Now if we just had hatchets and a TV in our room we’d have everything we ever wanted!” (Scott read them Hatchet by Gary Paulsen recently and they’ve been obsessed with having one ever since. Yes, they will be getting hatchets at some point, but no they won’t be getting a TV in their room.)

This is what the chicken wire was for. Every summer I read a book that convinces me that our chickens need to be in movable coops and not in their big hoophouse - the hoophouse is fine, but ideally they’d be scratching on grass and digging up bugs.( Two years ago the book was The Omnivore’s Dilemna, last year it was Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, this year it was You Can Farm.) Every summer I come up with a plan for a movable coop and it is usually better than the year before, but then a couple chickens get killed and we move them back into the hoophouse. Ideal is one thing, alive is another. We have persistent and smart predators around here, along with very uneven ground, so a movable coop has to be flexible enough to be secured to the ground.

This one is made of two layers of wire - concrete reinforcing wire for structure and chicken wire for security. A third type of wire was used on the sides but next time I’m going to stick with the first two. 7 of our 22 chickens are testing this model for us, I really think they’ll be safe because I spent 4 days wrestling with wires to make it impenetrable.

And I spent some time reviewing Scott’s life insurance policy. Just kidding - there were a bunch of branches from this 100 year old pecan tree that were touching our roof so Scott did some pruning.