Week 14- Chicks,more grass and no fire

Sunday Chris spent the day guiding at the pheasant club. Its the end of the season up there and was one of the last days this year to work. He was guiding for some people he knew and they let him take their birds. I was pretty excited. He came home with close to 30 pheasants

 He went to work breasting them out so we could clean and vacuum seal them

Taylor came over and was showing us a different way besides cutting open the breast and then cutting the meat. That way tends to get a lot of feathers all over the place. This way you stand on the wings and pull. It makes the breast meat come out so much cleaner.

 Of course Chris had to try. Just with a little tug ...

 this is how it comes out. Clean just like that!

 I vacuum sealed up all the breasts. I also blanched and sealed up 28 lbs worth of asparagus I got from Bountiful Baskets. Jana blanched and sealed up a bunch of it last year and said it held really well so Im excited to see how it cooks up in the winter! I love spending spring and summer sealing up veggies and eating them through the winter.

 We finally had a day with some sunshine after all the rain and snow we have had lately.

 My pink bowfishing arrows came in. I am SO excited to get to shoot them this spring!

 Kennedy and I went out for a date for some root beer floats at Calls. 

We parked in the drive inn and I let her come up front. We were enjoying our treat and talking when...she dropped the entire thing all over the front seat. There was no point in getting mad it was an accident so we wiped it up and headed home to shampoo the seats

 Kennedy had been sick this week. She was throwing up at school and my mom had to go get her. I had planned to go get chicks after work but I had to go home early and take care of her. I was bummed I didnt get any. Cals had a shipment coming in that afternoon and there were certain ones I wanted before they were gone. See I had been wanting chickens since we moved in to our place. I always had chickens, turkeys, quail, pheasants etc growing up. We raised them for eggs or to increase the population of wild birds or to eat.  Chris was pretty against it. He just didnt see the point. Then I started explaining some about being self reliant.. the price of groceries.. supply and demand.. you know things like that. He decided maybe we should give it a try and he surprised K by stopping and getting the chicks I wanted on his way home. 

 We got 2 Rhode Island Reds, 2 Barred Rocks and 6 buffs. Reds are my favorites by far. I love how they look. Buffs are great for eggs though. We got a few more than we wanted because they never all make it. We figured if we ended up with 8 we would be doing good.

 Look at these fuzzballs I love it!

 We set them up in a clear tote in the mud room. We had one buff the first night that didn't look too well. He wasnt running around like the others and he would just lay there. We were pretty sure he wouldn't make it til the morning and he didnt. We dont even know if they are he's or she's yet but it sounds good lol! So after night 1 we were down one chick but all the rest seem healthy and great so far. 

Kennedy is in love with them. She calls them her siblings. She checks on them constantly, reads them stories, makes sure they aren't bullying or fighting and reports who is picking on who. We have one barred rock that's kind of a bully so she keeps him in line. 

Chris has LOVED having the chicks too. Hes constantly checking on them, working with me on how we are going to do the chicken coop. He even looked at my Pinterest and the feeder ideas I had. He said wow this pinterest thing is kind of cool! They have some neat ideas! Ha yes honey they do :) Hes been working on a 3 year culling plan in his mind and deciding what other chickens he wants to get. It cracks me up!

 My mom bought these the other day and made cookies with them. I am in love. They are raspberry chocolate chips!!

 I saw a pinterest project I wanted to do for fun. Wednesday early morning.. like 2 am Kennedy had puked all over her room..and then was fine. And then threw up again... so we kept it low key and just hung out around the house. She stayed inside and watched movies cuddled up on the couch and I crafted in the garage. It started with this plain boring cooler

 and ended with this

Chris was doing some manly fixing up stuff on his truck so I took my job of handing him tools and supervising.

 I really am not sure how I ended up with such a girly girl but it happened! She was ready for her outing. Purse complete with money, chapstick and fingernail polish.

 We were rockin it in Grandpa Todds truck. We had to take one of the boats out to go get fixed for the upcoming fishing season

 Thursday Chris came home with a big load of sod. We saw on Facebook that West Haven was selling sod from a baseball field they tore up at a pretty good deal. We got about 1200 sq feet for $150 bucks! Thats 12 cents a square foot! Hopefully he will be able to get a little bit more this week so we can finish out what we need to. 

We filled in the one little bare spot we had out front.

Tank had to help too!

 Now our front lawn is nice and square

 Remember all that dirt in the back he had prepped leveling it out? Well it just happened to be ready for sod! We had about half of this done when Chris looked up and said "did you get some before pictures taken?" I gave him that look and he started laughing. He said of course you did. Who do I think Im talking to! He knows me well :) Hes learning to appreciate my picture taking.

 We filled in all around our tree and behind our garage clear to the fence. We also had a dead spot right off our back door that the old sod we got last year didnt quite take so we patched that in too. Todd and Jana stopped by and helped us finish up. Chris and I had done about half of it ourselves. It went so much faster with two other people! We did it in a quarter of the time.

 We pretty much just doubled our backyard. Only a little bit more to go and we will have all the grass we want for our landscaping.

See the end of that irrigation pipe.. thats about as far as we want to go. 

Friday was finally open burn season. We got our burn permit and I was SO excited to get to burn our pile in the backyard so we can get our garden in. It had been raining all week long. We were worried if it would be dry enough. He used a fusee to try and light it.

 Well it didnt light. You can see the only slight smoke we had was from the fusee and thats it.

 Well that can be fixed with a little extra fuel

 Kennedy and I designated ourselves the fire watchers. We had our lawn chairs and our drinks and were ready for some flames.

After two coffee cans full it still wouldn't light. We couldn't even get our old Christmas tree to burn it was just too wet. It would burn off the fuel we put on it and that was it. I was pretty bummed. At that time my parents came home with their new camper. We headed up to go check it out.

 Friday night we had our archery banquet for the year. We had a great turn out! The food was amazing!