Chicken Orthopedics, Vegetables, and a Reflection on Sewing

 1.) Birds

They're starting to look like chickens, though some of the brown ones have mullets. 

It'll be interesting to see if those smooth out as the birds get bigger or not. 

2.) Baby Cucumbers! 

I've gotten a few big enough to pick too. I've only got three or four plants, but they seem happy and prolific. 

I've also gotten a ton out of my tiny pinto bean patch. We got a quart bag full of green beans pods in about two days. 

Tomatoes aren't doing too badly either. 

These are the only red ones I've gotten so far, but the plants are weighed down with lots more. I'm trying not to get ahead of myself, but I'm hopeful we'll actually get a decent harvest this year. 

3.) Chicken Orthopedics

We noticed (I don't know how it took us nearly a month to notice it, but there you go) that one of our birds had a leg splayed so far out behind them that they couldn't use it. 

Baby chicks can sometimes have leg deformities where the legs are displaced from their hips and stick out too wide-- basically they're stuck perpetually doing a split. Our chicks are no longer babies, but evidently one has had this condition for awhile and we just didn't notice it. 

We put her in a homemade hobble made of cloth scraps and masking tape (later replaced with one made out of pipe cleaner) and isolated her in a cage inside the coop so we didn't have to climb all the way into the coop to catch her. 

We kept her there for a few days. The leg was improving a little, but she wasn't eating or growing anymore. I came to the conclusion that the cure was worse than the disease and let her back out into the general population. 

We'll see how things play out. That one might become soup rather than stick around as a laying hen. 

4.) Doggy Jailhouse Blues 

Well, I finally managed to get rid of that dog harassing our chickens.

It turned into a long, drawn out ordeal involving driving the dog to the pound, being told, "we don't really have room, take him back", driving said dog all the way back to our property, trying to call a lady who supposedly works with the county to find strays homes, not having her call back, surviving a family bout with the crud, and then putting the dog back into the van, driving to the pound again, and finally getting them to take him. 

After about three city employees tried to convince me to take him back again. 

Gah. It was emotionally tiring and complicated and just not fun. Still better than having to euthanize the dog myself, but I would not recommend it if it can be avoided. 

5.) Clothing 

Little Girl hit a growth spurt, and a bunch of her clothes suddenly got too small. 

We've been going into Goodwill sporadically for the past couple weeks trying to update her wardrobe as a result. We've been having moderate good luck with it, but there's still some gaps that need to be filled. I have some patterns my grandmother used to keep my aunt clothed in the 70s, and I've been tempted to try and use homemade stuff to stretch things out, but I can't decide if that would make Little Girl stand out too much, especially since she'll be school aged before she hits another big spurt. 

I don't know. I might whip out the sewing machine this summer and see what happens. 

The frequent trips to the thrift store have not been kind to my wallet either. I've already told y'all about the Texas themed cookie cutters; I've also splurged on a hat that looks like it could have been worn in the 1930s (but wasn't, because it had modern tags), and I regularly check for sheets that I can sew into clothes...even though I only start a sewing project occasionally. 

If I see some clothes for Little Girl, in part it'll be to knock back that stash a bit. 

And that's what's fit to print.