Harvey Farm

It's official...one year in the making and we finally have our chickens!
















I could write a totally separate blog just about our chickens. If I had an extra 30 minutes every day, which is turns out I'm usually a couple hours short. So I will spare all the details and give a brief synopsis.

Taylor built an awesome coup. Because we're like that and tend to go over the top. He designed it, bought wood and built it. The boys and I stained it, at 1 pm in 95+ degree weather. It was lovely. And Taylor was finishing the roof and hardware cloth the day the hens came...he was up until 1 am out there working. He does a lot of projects in the dark...building the tramp, planting a pear tree, mowing the lawn.

4 hens came 2 weeks ago from our neighbors. The kids love them, named them very original names Chick (Matthias'), Feather (James'), Hannah (Hannah's), Molly (ours). I'm not kidding, Hannah named her chicken Hannah and we call her that.

Feather found a hole in the fence 2 days later, pecked into our only neighbors yard, got chased and mauled by a giant dog, rescued by me and Matthias. I gave her a shot. In the leg. Me, a shot. To a chicken. This is blogged in great detail in my journal. It was traumatizing and very dramatic.

Bought 3 baby chicks from our neighbors. The kids marched over $3 in each little hand and picked out their little ones. Which we are hoping all turn out to be hens. They are all very cute and pretty. These ones are named Riley (James'), Luke (Matthias'), and Cocoa (Hannah's). These are the boys best friends and Hannah picked that name out like a month ago and stuck with it. The kids LOVE the little chicks and will play with them for hours. Once I asked James if he wanted to read with me and he said "No, I want to play with the chicks." He then laid under the swing set for like 20 minutes with Cocoa (she's the favorite).

Matthias is the little chicken man and can catch and hold the chickens like you wouldn't believe. He has no timidness or fear of them and just loves to be with them, hens or chicks. He makes up all kinds of games and just follows them around. He had Cooca sitting on his shoulder the other day when I went out, little pirate Matt. He's hilarious.

Yesterday I got a little Welsummer chick. When we decided to get chickens I started looking and decided I had to have one of these, they are beautiful and lay really dark brown eggs. She is super cute and very needy. The other chickens haven't accepted her into the flock yet so she gets pecked at a lot. The 3 little chicks got a lot of pecking done to them last weekend, but are pretty much left alone now except by Feather who is the meanest (probably because of her injuries).

And that's the short story.