Press Release

So I think I alluded to this, and made the announcement on facebook and to some extent through email, but not yet through our blog: I've started a business! www.CraftsOnWhidbey.com "Workshops and crafting parties for adults, kids, or mixed age groups. Scheduled or on demand." Last night, we had a practice drop-spindle spinning class with Grandpa, Mom, and Tim all bravely agreed to learn to spin just for me. To all of our surprise, they enjoyed it! And they did well at it! Amazing! So with that hurdle passed, I'm ready for my first real class. Today I picked up my brochures and fliers from the printer and hung up nearly all 30 fliers around the island, as well as scoping good places for the brochures. Anyway, if you could frequent the site a bit, that would make the traffic go up and the Google search placement go up?

Additional somewhat related exciting news: today I got a loom! Tim has been working hard on an older couple's property fixing machines and doing yard work and today he came home with a beautiful four-harness floor loom, about 40" wide - for those of you who are "fiber-phobes", that's a really awesome, expensive loom! I now have a loom, a spinning wheel, a serger, and a really nice computerized sewing machine and thus can be a properly snootie and well-equipped fiber crafter, with a dedicated room increasingly set up for it.

On the chick front, we have a purple bird. One chick was picked on pretty badly a few days ago and has been stuck in a box ever since to have some quiet healing time. Today, Mom and I gated off the section of the hen house under the future nest boxes to make a deluxe chick hospital with proper visitation, heat, and enrichment. Additionally, I picked up some "Peck-no-more" from the farm supply store and painted the little bird with the purple goo. She didn't seem to appreciate it as much as you might hope, but hopefully it will give her a better chance to heal.

Have I mentioned we're now a two-dog family? Sanch, Brother Tim and Sister Krista's dog, is staying with us for the next couple weeks until they find out if he's going on the NOAA boat with them as the new mascot. The first day, the two terriers weren't too sure about living together but things are settling in to a good routine of two long walks on the beach a day and lots of practice with their obedience training.

Pitter patter of tiny feet

How can I think of anything else when they're so cute? You know you can click on the pictures and make them bigger and a slideshow, right? Anyways, I know you all are holding your breath waiting for more pictures of the chicks and care about little else, so without further ado...

We had been doing our best to enrich their environment in the boxes in our house...

...but the peeping persisted and late-night squabbles, until it was time to go to the big house!

Isn't is lovely out? Spring is marvelous! The whole property is in bloom and we've been walking the beaches every day. So lovely to be here!

So, Tilly diligently followed me as I brought two chicks at a time to their new digs.

With the help of a few worms, they were soon racing around the room like mad 

(as seen here - lead chicken has worm, 12 or so chasing after at top chick speeds).

You will note the excellent job Tim did building a barricade around the door for easy entry and viewing, and the excellent job my staple gun and I did on those chicken wire windows.

They look pretty happy to me! At 10 days old they are already roosting pretty well.

Other doings... mom stained the deck! And we had an excellent dinner of corn on the cob (which the chicks appreciated), local oysters, and yummy mushrooms and asparagus. Pretty much shopping (for all those wood shavings you see above and their super cool new food bowl to be altered as they get larger) and staring at the chicks took up most of the day. I think we are still tired from all that burning.

Burning burning burning!

I may have forgot to mention - last week I finished up my portfolio, teacher work sample, research papers, and everything else needed to finish my degree (good enough). I still haven't heard back from the director of the program, but hopefully I'm done! Since completing my degree (presumably), I'm now on to the next life phase: get a job. I looked around at what's available and decided there are only a few jobs available, and all teacher jobs start in August or September anyways which is long from now - so I made my own! It even has a website already: CraftsOnWhidbey.com. I've hired my first employee or two and have fliers and brochures ready to get printed and hang up around town. To summarize, my business plan is to teach arts and crafts workshops and lead nature walks for tourists and locals, and work on getting gigs leading party-type craft activities for family reunions, kids birthdays, etc. Our friends who I am hiring are also starting a landscaping business and invited Tim to help out; so between the four of us, we will make ends meet!

Now that you're all caught up on the news and business, I'll give you a little more about the fun stuff. Or farm stuff anyways. With mom here, we spent Tuesday at the Tulip Festival up in Anacortes and had time to stop in and see Aunt Noree and Bill and her 16-year-old little dog, Lucky. Today I finally got the chicken wire over the hen house windows! And I planted the first of my eight garden beds using the cardboard-then-dirt method and putting half a toilet paper tube around each seed to mark the plants to keep. When I came back from my morning chores, I smelled smoke! Mum had lit up the brush from the giant chipper pile that has been there since we arrived. Over the next few hours, we kept feeding branches into our burn pile until all that was left is about a foot thick, twenty-foot across circle of excellent composted mulch to fill with potato plants. We then moved the fire via wheelbarrow down to the lower yard to continue the burning and dispose of the limbs from the trees Dad thinned in September. After many more hours of continually stoking the fire, we have turned mountains of branches as tall as me into a one foot by four foot circle of ash.

Now we are all very tired and ready for movies or naps or books or researching my lessons for my upcoming classes.

Spring means work

Tim mowed all the grass again - some how after only a few days, it was over the ankles already!

The baby chickens ate about 50 worms - lots of fighting and frantic running about.

Tilly learned to come when I whistle - first try and she got it instantly, even while playing or eating barnacles.

Mom helped pull weeds - I hauled off 30 gallons of highly compacted weeds and found some lettuce hiding in the garden under all those horse tales

Grandpa got out the leaf blower - and lo and behold, the entire stairs to the beach were leaf-free again! (thanks mom)

I finished digging the garden! Mom said it looked hopeless and like it needed some serious work and possibly heavy machinery, so I'm not posting pictures until the paths are covered in wood-chips and the whole things planted... I think it's glory is a bit hard to make out to the untrained eye.

Last night, Mom and I sat down to write out my latest business plan - one that will hopefully be implemented this week, and while sitting at the table talking and working, we heard a strange noise. I couldn't understand why Tilly would possibly be making such weird noises when she should be passed out on my bed, and the chicks aren't all that loud or deep sounding, so I stepped out on the porch. We thought perhaps Tim was making strange noises out the downstairs door, but no - the noise was coming from up in the nearest tree. Hoo-hoo and squawking from at least two owls! After a while of listening, at least one flew off right over our heads. Such a lovely place to live!

Chicks and Searches

Oh last night! I think I'm still a little out of breath! Evidently the first day of Search and Rescue training, where I was the one to run and hide, was the easy part. Today we switched the game so I hold Tilly while Don, the leader of our group, wanders off with her sticks, cackling, and hides some place about a two-minute walk away. Then, I release Tilly and she takes off like a mad bullet, and I am supposed to keep up and arrive at Don at the same time as her?! Running flat out as fast as I could, she got out of sight of me and had to stop and look back. But, hopefully there won't be too much more of that before I get to walk through the woods and she gets to run back and forth between me and the "victim". This game not only completely wears me out, but also Tilly! Thank goodness! She was too tired when we got home to bother eating Tim's potato pieces and when I woke up this morning, she was laying between our feet on the bed - for the first time she's stopped insisting on personal space in the night.

After the pleasant surprise of waking up to a cuddly puppy, I checked on the chicks and had the unpleasant surprise of finding one chick who wasn't ready to wake up. I separated her from her brothers and sisters, carefully helped her out with some sugar water. My book suggests it could be an impacted crop from eating paper towel or whatever else, so I gave her a bit of olive oil to see if we could get things moving. Not a lot of luck. She's given us a start to our new pet cemetery.

Busy babes 

Little ones falling asleep at the bar. 

Big Chicken, Tim's little buddy, hunting and pecking on the internet.

Household size: 30 (and just a little jealousy)

The baby chickens are finally here! I was just about to give up and go get some ducklings to tide myself over, but the farm supply store was out and I got the chick call. This morning, the little ones arrived in a very stinky, loud box at the Greenbank post office. One chick didn't make it, and was not so fresh, but we have 26 alive and well and very busy. I guess Sandhills Preservation Center, who I ordered the chicks from, decided to send me a couple extra because they were short on Marans. 

Tim and I have spend most of the day sitting in that chair staring at our baby birds. So far, we have about four we can reliably identify. I missed out on getting a picture of Tim sitting over the chicken box with his ear protection on when the chicks first arrived. Until they all got a little food and water in their bellies and a nap under the lamp, there was an awful lot of high decibel chEEping going on. Now they are quiet enough to leave the door open without risking hearing damage.

I gave them a little time to get the hang of eating and drinking, then opened the door to the second half of their nursery. One side has food and water and brighter light while the other has water and roosts (for a little later) and a heat lamp a little closer and warmer. They've gotten the hang of jumping between boxes to go after what they want and find their friends. 

Cameras are pretty cool, aren't they little buddy? One of these guys got to go on a field trip to see Grandpa earlier today.

Looking through the little door between boxes. Happy chicks cozy together. Man there are a lot of them! I guess it's the same number I've had arrive a few other times in my life (is this batch 5? 1. Scritch, Scratch, Tricky, Nicky, Cuddles and Pecky; 2. Tacky, Penny, Xena, Gabby, Bluie and Buttercup; 3. Aretha, Diana, Billie, Tina, Mariah and Ella; 4. Toblerone, Cadbury, Dove, Ghirardelli, Hershey and Nestle), though normally 3/4 go to their new homes with someone else within a few days. This is the first time I've ever had "straight run" meaning half boys, so we're trying to remind ourselves that these adorable precious balls of fluff are going to be soup in just a couple months. After that it will only be about twice what I've normally had.

Tilly's a little jealous. She sat on my lap next to the chicks for a while but was sniffing so hard I was afraid she'd give those poor babies little heart attacks. Tim took her for a nice long outing at the dog park to try to compensate for her displacement as only cutie in the house. It also gave me an opportunity to get some more school work done. I'm still shooting for Sunday night at midnight as my self-imposed deadline to get this thing over with and move on!

Chick chick chickens!

I have a tracking number! The baby chickens are on their way here and should arrive by Wednesday at the latest!

Aside from that, I have been getting serious about finishing my degree and am now quite close - close enough I could probably call it quits and pass but am doing a little more this week to have a quality final portfolio, or at least a little higher quality and a little less blatantly minimalist.

Tim's still figuring out job plans for the next 5 week until fishing. Hopefully I can start applying for real jobs very soon!

Found!

Yesterday, I had Master Gardener's Class in the morning, and got home just in time to see Brother Tim and Husband Tim shoot of the potato gun while Tilly chewed on a skin. After Brother Tim headed off for the ferry again after a little visit, I got busy digging two more raised beds while Tim did a second pass over the property with the lawn mower (it is looking excellent!) and Dad, via phone, came up with the best plan yet for turning all the piles of branches on our property into wood chips.

Today! Today Tim headed off to help a friend of a friend with a mower, and Tilly and I headed to the Trillium forest! After hours of sad puppy having to stay in the car watching other dogs play while I accompanied some experienced search teams, it was finally Tilly's turn! With all the other dogs put away, she was free to meet all the humans, then do her own baby search problems. For the first day, it is my job to be the bait and the reward. It is my day to be super exciting with a stick and then run off while someone restrains her until I am nearly out of sight and have dove into the bushes (hopefully not nettles), then Tilly is released to come racing after, pausing near me to sniff and look and listen, then the big party when we are reunited! Sticks and squealing and all kinds of loving enthusiasm. Then we do it again, with me racing over a freshly logged swath waving my arms madly and shouting all the way down the hill. After three increasingly long runaways, we got to walk back to the cars with our entourage and sticks and get some water and cheese and go home until next week. Friday is going to be some dusk work and hopefully my last day of being the runner before I get to upgrade to handler and follow Tilly as she chaises after some other poor exhausted folk.

Now... about that school work. I think I'm done with my last paper! Thanks Joe for helping me stay motivated. Still a portfolio to go with a goal of May 7th.

Return of the lawn tractor!

So, we're not going to dwell on how clean my kitchen floor now is or why you should always make sure the soap you are using is intended for dishwashers... But I am very glad to have dish washing detergent again and be able to clean my kitchen properly! Especially as Brother Tim is planning to visit tomorrow. Today we had our final day of long driving to deliver the box of boat supplies we've spent the last three days collecting from Bellingham to Seattle. After five hours of driving an amazingly full car, we came home to a package on our doorstep with the final missing piece for our "lawn tractor" and now have a working mower again! Which meant a nice sunset drive around the yard about 15 times. Tim mows, Tilly and I walk behind looking for weird objects and sticks in the next four feet of grass, and Grandpa supervises from his balcony view.

How does Tilly keep getting cuter?

And with freshly trimmed nails, she's now fully groomed and ready to impress her new Search and Rescue friends. Hopefully without any affectionate teething on their hands or clothes or faces... 

The one good that came from breaking my nice smarty-pants phone then losing my first $10 Walmart phone... was finding this awesome  antler while searching for the dropped phone! Isn't it excellent?! Tilly thinks so. And as the internet reminded me, she eats deer poop whenever she can so surely there is no more harm chewing on a great freshly shed antler. Plus it hooks so nicely on the cushions to aid in chewing.  So many surfaces to chew on.

I know all of you readers (parents, friends, family) only check the blog to stock up on more of Tilly's cuteness and no one really wants to hear about how many horsetails I pulled from the garden and how many are still there or what excellent plans I have of projects to get done when Mom comes in another week. Aside from watching videos of dogs taking good care of chicks with Tilly and hoping it will inspire her to be kind and gentle when our new edible family members arrive, I am working my last day with The Children on Thursday in hopes of better focusing on finishing my Masters in Teaching. Please call me or text me and nag a little so I get this done! By call and nag, I mean distract me and help me procrastinate, so perhaps texting or emailing or facebooking me to "get back to work! finish your degree!" and "what are you doing on Facebook when there is work to be done!?" is more effective.

Rescued

Well, yesterday I went to my first Search and Rescue K9 unit meeting! Tilly stayed home so I could focus on watching the drills and meeting the group. So far they are a fun and friendly group with a good balance of experienced dogs and handlers, as well as other fresh puppies. Next Sunday, Tilly will be joining me in the Trillium forest for her first official practice problems. I am so excited! For me, Search and Rescue was one of the saddest options to leave behind by moving and I know Tilly could use the work. We are delighted to begin training. Also this coming weekend, I will be resuming my Master Gardeners training. Speaking of gardening, I went out this morning to look through my horsetail plot and found some little lettuces mixed in there! And my garlic seems to be holding its own quite well. I still see that plot being replaced with asparagus in the near future, but for now I am waiting and seeing what comes up.

Scoping out the Trillium forest for next Sunday

Tim has been spending time with Tilly and did further landscaping on the beach. Oh right! And we sheared our first fiber animal! Our little ball of black and brown is a little less black now with her new summer do.  Now I have a garbage bag full of fur to see if I can spin!

I took  the low-pressure, kiss-covered job for the first hour
then abandoned Tim to keep at her for a couple more. 

...Yes, that's a mohawk, and yes, she's keeping it!
I like her frosted black baby tips and it matches her giant fluffy tail.