It's been a busy week here at Mountain Meadow: chickens! gardening progress! pretty things to look at! Read along to see what we've been up to....
Silly kiddos! All photos are mine.
Chickens!
Awww!! What's just one more?
Pixie and I stopped at the feed store last week to get chicken feed, and this time I was tempted beyond resistance by the fact that they still have black Australorp chicks, only a week younger than the batch of leghorn and barred rock chicks I bought earlier this spring. I bought only one (so much willpower, haha) and as we drove home, I asked Pixie what she wanted to name it.
"Little Blackie," she said happily. (We are super creative people.)
I had an inspiration as we continued to drive. "You know," I said to her, "you have been such a good little chicken mama ever since we first got chickens. I really appreciate how good you've been all this time about helping me with the chickens every single day. How would you like it if Little Blackie was your very own chicken?"
"Ooooohhh! YES!!" Pixie exclaimed in breathless delight.
One day she'll say "My first pet was a chicken"
"How come I don't get a chicken all to myself?" pouted Little Man a few days later, after Pixie had authoritatively told him (yet again) that Blackie was HER chicken.
"Pixie has always helped me with the chicken chores, and takes good care of them. So I rewarded her with her own chicken."
"Well I'M going to be a good chicken daddy!"
"If you're good about helping me for a whole year like she did, then next spring I'll get you a chicken too."
I watched the wheels turn, and Little Man now has a newfound interest in actually helping care for chickens (instead of only the fun part of playing with them.) We shall see if it lasts. Meanwhile, Pixie is thrilled to have a sweet little chick to tote around and talk to. Elsa is getting quite the vacation from the usual attention!
The big chickens are banned from the newly planted garden, so they have migrated to the back of the barn (and the shade) for free ranging nowadays.
Oh, we finally named the other 6 chicks. The 2 barred rocks are Oreo and Cookie. I know, I know. The 4 Leghorns are all named Sassy solely because 
"Dude, seriously?"
Garden progress!
A real life garden pixie
In between the rain, we finished covering the garden (after fighting with the disappointingly flimsy biodegradable weed barrier for about 2/3 of the garden, the Husband had enough and we covered the rest with a gigantic piece of heavy duty black plastic) and got some things planted.
I don't know what it is about tomato plants. They just allure you into buying lots more of them than you intended. Last year and this year, we said "6-8 plants should be good" and then bought 20-something plants. If they all live, we'll be drowning in tomatoes!
First row of tomatoes in progress!
We also planted some peppers and yellow squash at the same time as the tomatoes, and the Husband braved the afternoon heat one day to get corn and green bean seeds in the ground. Yet another evening, the kids helped me plant nasturtium and calendula seeds. I still need to plant marigolds among the tomatoes, too, as well as herbs and cucumbers. I want to make pickles this year!
Covering up calendula seeds.
As I mentioned in a previous post, growing potatoes is the Husband's pet project. He was worried that all the rain would rot them, but no! They popped up and are growing wonderfully! He already added some more dirt on top of the original hills. Unfortunately, I ran some over...
Uh oh. He hasn't seen this yet. I'm never going to hear the end of it since he's (mistakenly, of course) convinced I'm an inferior driver.
It was getting ready to storm, the Husband was gone, and his truck full of mulch was in the garden area; so I moved it out (no easy feat since the gate opening is only a few inches wider than the truck) and into the barn. I was all pleased with myself for saving the mulch without scraping the truck on the fence, but discovered today that I apparently wasn't paying enough attention to how far I backed up in the process. Oops! Poor taters. Hopefully the squished ones recover.
My berries are growing!!! #homesteadphotography
What pretty color variations on this blackberry plant!
I'm so excited at the prospect of fresh berries in the future for snacking and baking and making jam; this berry patch is definitely my own pet project. Prices for fresh bramble berries at the store are outrageous! Plus, I adore raspberry (my favorite) and blackberry jam WITH the seeds AND SUGAR and sometimes that's hard to find. Seedless, sugar-free...that's a "nope" from me ;) My berries are the thing in the garden that I'm the most excited about.
Random pretty things!
One day I was carrying dirty straw from the chicken coop out behind the barn to dump in the sort-of-compost-pile I've got going back there, and discovered this:
Butterflies!
I don't know what exactly they were attracted to in the pile, but they let me get up close, and I enjoyed admiring them.
This reminds me of 
I got some lovely golden hour photos one evening. The hay is high and close to "the first cut". I love the time of evening when the sun begins dipping below the western hilltops, and that big shadow noticeably creeps across our hayfield and hill:
It doesn't get much more beautiful or country than this! I love where we live!
