The Adventures of Amy, Ben, and Ari

17 May 2010

Marguerite

marguerite has decided that she wants to be a mother (this is not good because she has stopped laying delicious egg and all she wants to do it sit on eggs). we have moved her into one of our rabbit hutches with wooden eggs and a big comfy nest. she comes out once a day to eat, drink, and go to the bathroom. she does those activities frantically so she can get back to her eggs! we got this great idea that maybe she would want to be the mother of the chicks! we put two of the chicks in the rabbit hutch with her, they immediately went under her wings so i went and got two more. after an hour ben and i checked on her and we saw four little heads peaking out from under her wings (it was the cutest thing ever!). since she could handle four we stupidly decided to give her the other four. we put them in then after a few minutes she got up screaming and ran out of the hutch (i think she was a bit overwhelmed). we brought the chicks back in the house and a few hours later we introduced two chicks again and a hour after that two more. two hours later we found four chicks huddled in the corner of the rabbit hutch. whenever they moved marguerite snapped at them. now we have all eight chicks back in our laundry room and a hen who is trying to hatch a wooden egg...

the wooden egg in the nest we made for her (this was done to prevent her from sitting on every egg the other girls laid)

Marguerite the broody hen...

the peeps!

Ruth Bader Ginsberg

Matilda

02 April 2010

Baby Goat

at the farm where we milk goats, maestro, one of the goats had a baby boy on wednesday. i think he is the cutest baby goat i have ever seen. i want to keep him but ben says no!

maestro making sure i am taking good care of her baby.

22 March 2010

Troutmere La Honda

Brief Summary of Troutmere Farm (where we live):

We gave some eggs to the neighbors. (That’s good!!!)

The neighbors live on compound of shacks and junk owned by a man notorious for dosing monkeys with acid in his back yard. (That’s weird…)

A few days later, the neighbors gave us fruit salad!! (That’s good!!!)

The fruit was drenched in cool whip and mixed with colored marshmallows. (That’s weird…)

The chickens just ate the fruit salad, and they will use that caloric energy to produce more eggs!!! (That’s good!!! And weird!!!)

Another week in the woods… 1500 fish were delivered on Tuesday. They look a little surprised as they all rushed out through a 18-inch pipe, but we think they’re getting settled.

view from the bottom of the driveway

our log house

side yard - where the chickens and bun lives

looking down the driveway at the garage

girls playing in my compost pile!

trout pond in the background

28 February 2010

Elkus Ranch

Elkus Ranch Half Moon Bay

Amanda, Angie, Natasha, Veronica, Kayleigh

food for the pigs

laughing goat!

The spitting lama...

29 November 2009

"Lucky Campers"

Barlow Flat Camp

We had an eventful backpacking trip with the dog this weekend. We got a late start and stopped at a camp three miles from Sykes hot springs and then... the wind started. Ferocious gusts were shaking a forest weakened by fire. From inside the tent in the dark beneath a grove of towering redwoods, we'd hear and feel the wind, then hear branches cracking, then hear and feel redwood trimmings raining on the tent, and sometimes hear a tree crashing to the ground in the distance. Early in the evening a very loud nearby crack got Amy up and shouting my name. I woke up to hear and feel a ground-shaking thud. We rushed out of the tent and saw that a tree about 80 feet high, maybe three feet in diameter, had come down in the adjacent campsite, less than 10 feet from where our neighbors were sitting around the campfire, and not far from either their tent or the tent one more campsite over. Eventually we got back in the tent and listened to more gusts and cracks and branches falling. We decided to then move the tent. The wind finally died down but we still didn't sleep much. In the morning we skipped Sykes and hiked out over fresh downfall blocking the trail, including a couple of massive redwoods. Not an ideal trip, but definitely one to remember!!