Consolidated Kansas

[Ivywoods]

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Thank you so much! Chicks arrive next week! I can't wait to see it full of birds either!

Oh gosh, you are so funny about your house buying issues! I mean, I feel your pain, but yet love your humor. My DH and I built our house and our builder was amazing to work with. So easy. We bought the land a couple years prior to building. Owning your own home is really going to give you a sense of pride and any upgrades you do to it will only increase your value and equity. I think it will be hard to get everything fit down into 940 sq feet... but if you REALLY get down to brass tacks about what you really need, it should be easy enough to purge. Just think --have I used this in the last year, and do I really need it? I am a minimalist - no joke. I refuse to have knick knacks sitting around collecting dust, and I don't like a lot of furniture. I like clean open spaces. I file all of our important papers and the rest is shredded and thrown out. Clothing is paired down as best I can.. but I have to admit, I have a LOT of clothes. I really need to work on that. I get rid of the kids toys as soon as a piece breaks or we loose a puzzle piece.. etc. Just keep up on it and it won't overwhelm you. You really can live comfortably in a small space if you utilize your walls as storage and keep things off the floor. I love IKEA! We just bought tons of wall units this summer and now the house is so neat and orderly! And... BIG HUGE CONGRATULATIONS on your new farm! I'm sure you are going to just love it so much.

I think that'd great you are getting married too! So fun! I hope you have a great honeymoon in Colorado!

Danz, I swear we have lived parallel lives. I lived in a HUGE Victorian on the main street in Salina. I had it filled with beautiful antiques. I moved to a smaller, more modern home and two moves since then. I've been trying to scale down ever since the first move. I NEED some of Hawkeye's purging skills.

Hawkeye-Wow! The house looks great! My house is STUFFED!

 

[tntblake]

I have a question for you folks. 2 days ago I went to gather eggs and found an egg covered in what looked like dried egg yolk. There was no yolk in the nest or on other eggs. I checked all the birds vents and everything looked normal. Yesterdays eggs were normal. Today I went out to gather eggs and there was another 2 eggs covered in dried yolk (1 completely covered and one half covered) . I again checked their vents and the nest boxes looking for broken eggs or problems. I found nothing. So does maybe one hen have a broken egg inside or is someone eating an egg before I get out there? I am stumped. I would think that if it was an internal broken egg that I would see something on the vent or the bird would be acting ill and if it were an egg eater/broken egg that there would be some kind of evidence in the nest box or on a birds beak but there is nothing. What do you think is causing this?

 

[Ivywoods]

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You have an egg eater. Mine will do that if an egg gets broken. They will consume everything, but there may be traces on nearby eggs. You see the yolk, but any egg white that dries is nearly impossible to detect. They eat everything they can, and they LOVE egg shells and will not leave a single piece laying around. If they didn't bother the other eggs I would be willing to be that the egg consumed had been cracked or broken and that's why they ate it.

 

[chicken danz]

That happens quite often around here. Two things might help. More shavings or whatever you use for bedding in the nest boxes. And more calcium for the hens to harden their egg shells. I tried calcium first here then decided it was cause they kick all their nesting material out. I am sure I have a few egg eaters, but I throw my non-fertile eggs out that I tried to incubate and the chickens and ducks love them. I have never seen any of them purposely crack an egg but I'm sure it happens.
Hawkeye I LOVE the paint job on that one wall. The white lines on blue wall design. Certainly doesn't go with my antique style but I still love it. I am a bit weird along with my love of antiques. I have a purple wall in my kitchen and dining room (shared wall) and it is a deep dark purple. I love it. I love whites like your couch but it's not practical for me or my pets. I am a slob and white doesn't work for me anywhere. I have white kitchen cabinets and even have regrets about that, but I love the clean look. I am not a tidy person for sure.
Ivy I do think we have many similarities in our backgrounds and our lives. And we aren't many years apart in age either. I loved my Victorian home. If I ever could afford to build a new home it would be a very similar style. It was built in 1860 and a true Queen Anne Victorian. I actually still own it for the time being. I get monthly payments on contract for it. I expect to get the full balance remaining within the next year. Unfortunately I borrowed money against it to make improvements to this one. That was before the economy went to crap so I expected the value of the house to be at least 3 times higher. So I actually am loosing money on it. Signing the papers on my house was about the hardest things I've ever done. It was like letting an old friend go.
But other than the house itself, moving to the country was the best possible thing I could have ever done.

 

[Hawkeye95]

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Thanks- my blue wall with white wavy lines is actually in imitation of a famous modern artist who does HUGE paintings that look almost exactly like my wall-- except he does them in black and white and red and white. Everyone cocks their head and gives me a blank look when I explain my inspiration for my wall. I know I am an odd duck.

I'm okay with it.

I am a fine artist and just naturally have that talent. I can draw or paint nearly anything. Anyway, I decided after HS that it wouldn't feed me or pay the bills so I got a degree in Graphic Design at WSU instead. That was my jumping board for becoming an electrical design drafter-- I only had to take a few more classes in electrical engineering and learn CAD.. OH, and I LOVE Victorian homes! They had a tour here in Wichita this summer of some homes that had been restored. Made me drool to see their old beauty and glory be brought back. The woodwork alone is amazing in these homes! My mom and I went together and we dreamed about what it would be like to have these big beasts of a home with 2 or 3 stories and a wrap around porch and room after room of amazing workmanship everywhere. I can see why it was so hard to leave it. My favorite had the attic turned into the 3rd story of the house-- they made it into a game room. Had a full bar, stage for performing (their kids were into drama) and then a huge playhouse in an alcove where the dormer was, and sofas arranged for entertaining. The kitchen was MASSIVE! It had a real honest to goodness mud room on the back that went into the kitchen. I took pictures of it. It was to die for.

Well, piano classes for my oldest didn't go so smoothly tonight. (this is his 2nd or 3rd year.. I forget) I think he got frustrated and he decided to shut down and tell the teacher that he didn't get it and refused to work on his lessons. I am not too happy about that. He's never done that before. I think my DH and I are going to have to have a 'sit down' with him tomorrow about his attitude. He wasn't very pleasant with the teacher and I was frustrated watching, but she has a strict NO talking rule from the parents during lessons. I was hard keeping my mouth shut when I wanted to tell him to sit up and quit acting like that. We had a talk in the car on the way home. I think it will be good to have a talk tomorrow when we've all cooled down.

Geez. On a much brighter note, I think our first 4-H meeting is October 3rd-- the first Monday of the month. I'm really excited about it!!

 

[Ivywoods]

Quote:
Thanks- my blue wall with white wavy lines is actually in imitation of a famous modern artist who does HUGE paintings that look almost exactly like my wall-- except he does them in black and white and red and white. Everyone cocks their head and gives me a blank look when I explain my inspiration for my wall. I know I am an odd duck.

I'm okay with it.

I am a fine artist and just naturally have that talent. I can draw or paint nearly anything. Anyway, I decided after HS that it wouldn't feed me or pay the bills so I got a degree in Graphic Design at WSU instead. That was my jumping board for becoming an electrical design drafter-- I only had to take a few more classes in electrical engineering and learn CAD.. OH, and I LOVE Victorian homes! They had a tour here in Wichita this summer of some homes that had been restored. Made me drool to see their old beauty and glory be brought back. The woodwork alone is amazing in these homes! My mom and I went together and we dreamed about what it would be like to have these big beasts of a home with 2 or 3 stories and a wrap around porch and room after room of amazing workmanship everywhere. I can see why it was so hard to leave it. My favorite had the attic turned into the 3rd story of the house-- they made it into a game room. Had a full bar, stage for performing (their kids were into drama) and then a huge playhouse in an alcove where the dormer was, and sofas arranged for entertaining. The kitchen was MASSIVE! It had a real honest to goodness mud room on the back that went into the kitchen. I took pictures of it. It was to die for.

Well, piano classes for my oldest didn't go so smoothly tonight. (this is his 2nd or 3rd year.. I forget) I think he got frustrated and he decided to shut down and tell the teacher that he didn't get it and refused to work on his lessons. I am not too happy about that. He's never done that before. I think my DH and I are going to have to have a 'sit down' with him tomorrow about his attitude. He wasn't very pleasant with the teacher and I was frustrated watching, but she has a strict NO talking rule from the parents during lessons. I was hard keeping my mouth shut when I wanted to tell him to sit up and quit acting like that. We had a talk in the car on the way home. I think it will be good to have a talk tomorrow when we've all cooled down.

Geez. On a much brighter note, I think our first 4-H meeting is October 3rd-- the first Monday of the month. I'm really excited about it!!

Kids. Thankfully, they do grow up, then there's the bittersweet part of life that they are now on their own. I miss mine so much when they are gone. I hope the kids like 4-H when they get involved. I liked it when I was a kid, and the county fair was one of the highlights of my year. The parental involvement can be key, so I hope you are able to be involved as well.

Danz-I have been reading up on the seramas. I'm kind of worried. They need warmer temperatures than most chickens. My plan was to have them in the barn, and I am in the process of building a place for them, but some days in the winter it gets SO cold. We have temps down to -18 sometimes. Then if the wind blows we are on a hill and the wind chill can be -50! I do plan to provide some kind of warmer for them, but I haven't got that planned out for sure yet. My worry is this. We have power outages now and then. We are on the oldest REC in Kansas, and we are the last people on our line. Consequently, if the power goes out sometimes we are the last folks to get power back. If that happened during one of our cold spells these poor little chickens would freeze. I don't even want to think about that! I am in the process of trying to think this through and plan so that if this would occur I wouldn't have frozen chickens. As long as they are in the barn my other chickens are okay, but I don't think the seramas would be. If I raise some I don't think it would be practical to bring them all in the house!

Anyone got any good suggestions for keeping them warm in the event of a power outage? I don't think it would work to build a fire in the barn!

 

[tazcat70]

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Are you SURE you have kids? Your home looks magazine perfect!

 

[rittert3]

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Are you SURE you have kids? Your home looks magazine perfect!

x2 lol no way it would look like that with my kids running around, but it looks very nice.

 

[Hawkeye95]

LOL! I promise you all, I do have kids.

They are a mess, too! But, the part that really helps is that their toys are not allowed upstairs in our main living area. We have a nice big entertainment room down there and it is often a DISASTER zone! The living room pretty much always looks like that, but like I said, there are finally places to put all the crap...er..stuff. The furniture is easy to clean, it just wipes up. I grew up with farming parents, my dad still has a couple hundred acres of his land, anyway- because of that, I grew up never wearing shoes in the house. That helps a LOT! Kind of a farming mentality, I think. But all the kids (and my DH and I) dump our shoes in a nice little shoe box in the kitchen when we come in.

Preschool morning! I love preschool mornings!! I get to drop the two little ones off and run errands or just BREATHE and have space. I am enjoying them being young, but I think I'll enjoy them a lot more when they are in school all day long.. hahahaha!!! Nah, my little 3 yr old is such a cutie and I actually love the age she is at right now. She wants to hold my hand and get lots of hugs. She's still very much a 'baby' compared to the boys, and perhaps she's milking it for all it's worth, too. Last night was funny, she came up and told me she was sick and then fake-coughed a couple of times so I would hold her. I had to giggle.

Ivy- I do want to become an active helper or volunteer for 4-H! I did it as a kid too, and it was so fun! I'm hoping they already have a poultry person --because if there is no one, I do want the kids to show them (for fun) and that would leave it all on me. I am not exactly a chicken expert. I would do great with textiles! I am great at sewing and knitting.. I love Photography and art.. there's so many things I wouldn't mind mentoring. It will be interesting to see what's going on.

 

[chicken danz]

Ivy, I think Seramas are much hardier than it is written. Mine were inside last year but they won't be this year. For all my birds I just put a heat lamp in their houses in the coldest of weather and they do just fine. I had several of my customers say last winter they just kept them in the barn with all their other chickens and they did fine. If this winter is colder than last winter we'll all be in trouble anyway. I think chickens are pretty self preserving in that they snuggle up to each other for warmth. I think as long as they can stay out of the bitter cold wind and snow and have access to food and water that isn't frozen solid all will be fine.
The Farmers almanac says this is going to be a warmer than usual winter. Call me doubtful. Normally if the summer is super hot the winter is super cold. I'm certainly preparing for a cold winter myself. I do hope they are right but I'll believe it when I see it.
I have to laugh at Hawkeye. Back when my girls (the oldest kids) were small I can honestly say I was as close to immaculate as I've ever been. I am as far from it now as possible. No one takes their shoes off at my house. I tired to train DH but it is something he has never learned. I guess now that the kids are grown, I have better things to do than clean. Besides I always get grouchy when I clean.
My sons are all minimalists and get rid of everything. Their homes are perfect. My daughters are a bit more like me.