Ducklings and Chicks

 

We have several new members of our little farm this spring!

Last November, on my daughter's birthday, all of our chickens were eaten by something. We have seen fox, bobcat, and racoons in our woods and assume that there have been coyote, as well. We suspect the fox, as the job was thorough and stealthy. 

But that meant we needed to get a new flock! So this year, we ordered 11 chicks from Ideal Poultry. Last year was actually a disaster all around when it came to getting chickens. We had ordered 10 Black Sex Link hens from Tractor Supply company. The website and confirmation email said that the chicks would arrive at the post office and that I was to pick them up when they gave me a call. Instead, our chicks arrived on our doorstep with no call. It was February, and although Texas can be warm, the chicks had come from Minnesota, which is not. 5 arrived dead, 2 more died within 24 hours, and an 8th lasted for 2 days before expiring. We got our money back, but the loss of 8 chicks was a blow. 

The worst part was that my daughters were home with my husband when they discovered the chicks. I was at a home show with a friend. The girls were very excited that the chicks were here! But when they opened the box and found the carnage (they actually thought that all 8 were dead, but I helped them with the semi-living 3 when I arrived home an hour later), they wailed! Daddy had them video call me, but it was too loud at the show for me to hear them, and they were crying while talking, which makes them even more difficult to understand. 

This year, we had a much better time of it. I researched more than I did last year to find either a local producer or at least one that had good reviews. I went with Ideal because they had the breeds I wanted and are located in Texas. They overnight chicks to all Texas locations and that made me feel more confident ordering again. 

When I went to order the chicks, I noticed that they were having a duckling sale! I don't know why, but they were selling a random assortment of ducks for $2.12 each! Currently, ducklings are $6.49 to $7.99 each and that is before the Easter surcharge (apparently, people like to get ducklings for Easter, so they charge a dollar more per duck). I decided to order 5 ducklings! 

All ducks are sold straight line, which means they are not sexed before they are sent to you. This meant that we had no idea if we would have all males, all females, or a mix. The deal was also on random breeds- you could get any of the breeds that Ideal carries. So, when they first arrived, we didn't know what we had. 

The chicks were easier to tell. I ordered 11- 10 hens and a rooster. In hindsight, I probably should have waited to see if all the hens actually were hens before ordering a rooster. There is about a 90% success rate with Ideal, but that doesn't mean anything if you get all of the 10%. Luckily, it looks like we did get what we ordered. Just waiting for our rooster to start crowing to be sure. 

We ordered 2 Black Sex links (also known as Black Stars), 2 Brown Stars, 2 Blue Stars, 2 Rhode Island Whites, 2 Olive Eggers, and a Welsummer rooster. The Welsummer is a Dutch breed, so our kids asked what names were Dutch. I mentioned Holland and they liked it, to which I joked, "We'll call him Tom for short." They were confused until they saw it written down. 

About 3 days after the chicks arrived, though, Timid was sick. She curled up her feet and would not get up. We didn't know what to do, and when I Googled the problem, it said the possibilities were Marek's disease (which does not show up in chickens that young) and a riboflavin deficiency. Timid died the next morning and 2 more of our chicks were curling up their feet. So I ran to the store for some chick vitamins and within a couple of days the two were back to good health. 

The chickens are very easy to identify except for the Brown Stars and Olive Eggers- they look about the same. Even now, the three we have left (Timid was one of those two breeds) are mysteries. I guess we'll find out more as they begin to lay eggs. At different times we could say that 2 looked alike and the other two looked alike, but as each week passes, it is harder. I'm hoping that our early assessment that Stripes and Nibbles are Olive Eggers and Belle and Timid are/were Brown Stars is correct. I'll keep you updated.

It's only been 5 weeks and they are HUGE!!

But if you think chicks grow quickly, you should see the ducks!

You'll notice that Magellan is a bit small. When she was 2 1/2 weeks old, she was dropped on her head on the sidewalk. It was harrowing and my mama heart broke when I heard the cry of the child who dropped her. Luckily, the internet helped us to know how to nurse her. With head injuries, the brain can swell and cause wry neck. This is a huge problem because the duck can't sit up, stand up, or walk. She kept trying to get herself into a position that she could sit in, but her neck kept swaying and tipping her onto her side or back. It was horrible looking. The swelling takes a couple days to go down, during which time you have to carry the duck to food and water. Because she was so small, I did this about every hour during the day. We also separated her from her friends, which was sad as ducks are such social animals. I tried to hold her with her friends every day and I held her while we did school so she could have some society of humans. 

After 2 days, she was able to sit up! It took another 2 for her to be able to wobble to her food and water. The day after that we let her join her friends, who had grown a ton in a week, while her energy had all gone into healing. So, she is about a week behind them in growth. But we don't care because she is back to doing all the duck things and looks like she'll grow into a great duck! 

Now that the ducks are older, we can also begin to see their breeds better and sex them! We were super lucky! It looks like we have one drake and 4 hens, which is what we wanted! Cautious is all boy- he is larger than the others and has a raspy voice. He also looks out for his girls, which is why he is called Cautious. He and Lt. Duckinald Quacklay (formerly Wanderer) are Pekin ducks. The Lt. has a very female quack. They will be all white and large. Ambula is a female crested Khaki Campbell. Magellan still peeps because she is a week behind the others, but we're pretty sure she is female. She is a crested Black Swedish. And Sniffles is a female Black Swedish. We plan to breed from them eventually.

We hope to have tons of chicken and duck eggs by about July!

We have one other addition and one subtraction from our little farm. Out big goat, Oreo, was getting to be too destructive (he broke every fence we put him in) and too aggressive toward our little goat. So, he had to go. Luckily, some very brave friends of ours adopted him and even got him a girl to hopefully calm his raging hormones (I'm not sure that will work, but we'll see!). And a friend of a friend offered us their Nigerian Dwarf as a replacement. His name is Loki, but we usually call him Mini Goat (to keep with the theme). 

Both of these goats are the same breed (although, I will admit that I don't know their family tree). You can see how different they are, which may indicate that one or both have been cross breeds in their tree or else it could indicate that they were bred for different characteristics. 

Loki has not yet warmed up to us. He calls to us to feed and water him, and he is willing to be within a few inches of us. But if we try to pet him, he shies away. The General, on the other hand, is very friendly. We've had him since he was about 10 months old. Both goats are a bit over 2 years now. We may breed one or both of them in future, but right now they are just pampered pets. 

If you're wondering about stats for our ducks and chicks, you can see them on Ideal Poultry's website. 

Fall Revisited (AKA: Pumpkin Experiment #4)

 

I meant to do this post last November, but as I hadn't done any posts in a couple years, I decided to bring everyone up to speed first. This is the fourth installment of my pumpkin experiment. 

If you haven't followed my previous posts, you won't know what this is. Here's a sum-up. Every other year or so, I purchase several different breeds of pumpkin, bake them, puree them, and make muffins from them. Then I feed them to my friends and have them vote. I take copious notes along the way so that there is record of how the pumpkin smells, looks, tastes, and other details. I plan to keep on doing this until I can't find any more kinds of pumpkin to try. Then I'll do a semi-final and final round (or more, if we have more than 8 contenders) to find the best pumpkin for baking. 

I wanted to record some other things, like judging on the best pumpkin for soups or the best pumpkin for pies, but I haven't done that. I may add those to the final round. 

This year, I chose the pumpkins pictured above. They are: The Turk's Turban (the orange and green one that looks, well, like a turban), The Crystal Star (round white one in the middle), The Flat White Boer, and the Cushaw (technically not a pumpkin, see below).

The Turk's Turban

I've anted to work with this pumpkin for awhile, but hadn't gotten around to it. This year, it was on my short list, so when I went to Ellis Pottery to get one, I was saw to find they had only one left! It was a little later in the season than usual- the first week of November- but, still! So, I'm not sure it this one was the best version of the Turk's Turban out there. 

I roasted it whole. When I did open it up, I found that it had almost no seeds and very little pulp. 

The top of the turban also fell in a bit. 

The meat was not very watery. This pumpkin yielded only 4 cups of puree, but it was rather small. Normally, I take notes on the skin texture, how easy it is to peel, and how it smells. But it appears I dropped the ball that day because I'm missing all that info on my notes. 

I did, however, take a picture after I gutted it. It appears that the flesh does not come away from the skin easily.

Some more water came out when I pureed it- but it still wasn't runny like some pumpkins.

Crystal Star

This is a pretty popular pumpkin for decorating the front steps. It is very round, very white, and not too large or heavy. 

Even after baking, the seeds were very white. There wasn't a lot of flesh and this pumpkin yielded 6 cups of puree. It has a mild smell and the puree was a bit extra watery. I had to scoop the flesh from the skin, which had turned leathery in the oven. 

This was after I syphoned off some water. 

Flat White Boer

This pumpkin is another fun one for decorating, as it stacks. This pumpkin breed originated in South Africa. This pumpkin was HUGE- as you can see by the larger tray on which I baked it.

There was a ton of meat on this (yes, I use flesh and meat interchangeably), it filled 4 huge bowls! The water was dripping from the pumpkin before I even scooped out the flesh. The seeds were large. Tasting the meat, it tested the most "pumpkin-like." The skin peeled off nicely and the center pulp removed very easily. It also pureed easily because of the extra water. 

And last, but not least...

The Cushaw

The Cushaw isn't actually a pumpkin. It is more closely related to the Butternut and Acorn Squash. In Tennessee, it is called the sweet potato squash. This species of squash is one of the oldest cultivated crops in the world! They have found evidence of it as far back as 7000 BC in mesoamerica. It is also rarely found outside the Americas even though many other squash breeds have been cultivated all over the world. 

One of the best things about the Cushaw is that it is hard to kill. This is why is has lasted as long as it has as a cultivated food source. It is resistant to the squash-stem borer or vine borer, a common pest that kills almost all other kinds of squash. The Cushaw grows great in humid climates, does not need a lot of irrigation, and is very heat tolerant. 

Like a butternut squash, the neck is mostly meat! The seeds were large and there wasn't too much pulp. The flesh was stringy, almost like spaghetti squash, yet it pureed up just fine. The flesh was pale white but turned yellowish when pureed. The puree also smelled a bit like matcha as it cooled- very grassy. 

Now for the judging!! I used my crochet group this year as the guinea pigs. I've used Alpha Omega (the fraternity my husband sponsors) and Legacy Academy students (the University-Model school my children attended) as tasters. 

I made my favorite pumpkin muffins and was as careful as possible to do everything the same for each one. Disclaimer: The Crystal Star (#3) was a little different. I forgot to melt the cream cheese and butter before creaming them with the sugar, and these were the only muffins made in the large pan instead of the smaller one. 

Number one was Turk's Turban. Two was the Boer. Three was Crystal Star. And four was the Cushaw. 

As you can see, almost everyone preferred the Cushaw! I did note that the Boer made the fluffiest batter. The Turban was the most dense and the Cushaw the lightest after baking. The Cushaw won in every category except "spicy." That was the Crystal Star. Usually, the milder the pumpkin taste, the spicier the muffin is because the spices come through better. 

I had the ladies taste them blind and then told them all about what they had voted on. Every one of them was keen to try to grown Cushaw in their gardens, so I kept some seeds back before roasting all the seeds together. 

Our fall was full of awesome fun! Check out the next post to see what else we did!

Greek Life

 

My husband is a sponsor of a Greek society at LeTourneau University. Alpha Omega is the oldest of the residential societies at Letu and had a rich history and tradition. 

Being the wife of a professor has its perks- including getting to be a mom figure to these awesome men of God! 

On their website it says: "Alpha Omega is a society founded in 1960 by students at LeTourneau University to be an organization dedicated to building Godly men of character and to enhance the college experience.

Its members dedicate themselves to applying God's word to their lives and to a set of three principles:

Unity, Loyalty, and Responsibility." I have seen this lived out by the membership, seen God grow and change these men (and those who have come before), and been so proud of who they are becoming. 

Helping a newly single mother move.

Helping to plant an orchard.

Prayer walking- blessing a new home.

Ancient Greeks passing candy out for Halloween.

Meeting freshmen at STOMP

This week begins the bid and initiation process for the semester. I can't wait to see who God brings into our brotherhood this year!

Quite a Legacy.

Dad

 

I lost my dad on December 9, 2022. 

This is my excuse for not writing after December 5, and as excuses go, it's a pretty good one. 

Like most children, I had a complicated relationship with my father, but this post isn't all encompassing. This is just a memorial to a man that I loved. 

My dad was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He also died there. He'd been to several other states during his life- I'm not sure how many- but he never lived anywhere else and, as far as I know, he has never been overseas. 

Like me, he was the eldest child in his family. He had one sister and one brother, 4 and 9 years younger than he, respectively. 

My dad went to public school. He attended junior college for a bit and Grand Rapids School of Bible and Music. 

He married my mom at age 20.

They were married for 53 years.

My dad and mom worked most of their lives. My dad owned his own business with a partner for most of my young life. Eventually, the partner retired and my father switched the business form a body shop to a wood finishing shop. He always did physical labor and always seemed so strong to me. 

I remember the last time he picked me up. I was 15 and had turned my ankle while roller skating. He came into the skating rink and lifted me up- all 150 lb of me (which I thought was HUGE) and carried me to the car. I was in awe.

That's me!

For the last 10 plus years of his life, my dad was paralyzed from the waist down. He was hit by a car at Christmas time in 2007 and woke up one morning a few days later unable to walk. He had had back surgery a few years before and bone spurs were growing in toward his spinal cord. They were only discovered because the accident forced them up against the cord and pinched it, causing paralysis. He was in the hospital for months- through the Friday before Mother's Day- and with physical therapy, left the hospital with a walker. But despite attempts to remove the spurs, eventually they pinched off his spinal cord and he lost his lower half. 

My dad was always an extrovert, was very kind to strangers, was generous to a fault, and was usually upbeat. Most people who ever met him got to hear him laugh and almost all remember him fondly. 

We had a memorial service for my dad the week between Christmas and New Year's. It was small (just family and almost-family) and was held in my mother's living room. My husband said a few words, which you can watch here. 

If you knew my dad, I'd love to hear things you remember: stories or impressions, things he would say or whatever you can think of. 

I already miss him. But he loved Jesus, so I'll get to see him again... eventually.

We Moved!

I haven’t looked back over my posts to see how much I’ve talked about this here, but if you know me at all, you know that we have been trying to get out of Texas ever since we moved here. Well, God has other plans for us, and it looks like we’re staying put for awhile.

One of the first things my husband said to me after the shutdown began in 2020, was that he feared for the private colleges around the United States. College tuition has been rising remarkably over the years, and that is what most education news stories and articles are about these days. But part of the problem in secondary education is the ever lowering enrollment. This is happening for a number of reasons. One is the high cost. One is the fact that the current and upcoming generations of college aged students is much smaller than any past generation. 

With a much lower, and expected future lowering, of enrollment, many small colleges are finding it impossible to make ends meet. They rely more and more on endowment, which is always a huge factor in private colleges financial wellness. I know of no private college who relies solely on tuition for operating costs. 

Because of this financial stress, some colleges are shutting down. Almost all are relying much more heavily on adjunct professors than in the past. These two issues combined mean that the number of jobs for a PhD physicist in private academia are shrinking rapidly. 

My husband could leave academia… but this is absolutely a place where he thrives. He has a gift for teaching, a love for teaching, and a love for student well being that cannot be fulfilled in any industry outside academia. And we absolutely love the small, Christian college life. The caliber of student is excellent, we can be open about our beliefs and help students as they navigate through a post-Christian world, and we enjoy the devotion to God that the entire institution has!

This is not true of all private colleges, but LeTourneau fits all of these qualities well. We’ve always said that we love LeTourneau. We just wish we could pick it up and move it above the Mason-Dixon line. 

The reasons we have wanted to leave Texas are not because we hate Texans! I want to make sure you understand that. The things we struggle with in Texas are: weather (we ARE northerners), bugs (there are so many things that can bite/sting you here it is ridiculous), and allergies (they are literally debilitating to my husband for most of the year). Granted, it is also frustrating to have moved to a place where politics is so slanted and cultural Christianity lives to loudly that it is hard to find deep understanding of theology (less so on a college campus), but that is not what makes it hard to live in Texas. 

Despite our desire to leave, my husband has gotten very few interviews from the myriad of applications he has put out over the years. Every job he applies for will have 100+ applicants. He looks pretty good on paper, and he interviews well. But with the reliance on adjuncts and the need to keep costs low, many places are going toward just-out-of-college PhDs or MSs who can be paid less. 

Because of these factors and my husband’s foresight as to what will likely happen post-pandemic in academia, he said that we should probably start looking for a more permanent home right here in East Texas. I began looking that day…

And found our dream home!! 

Calm down. We didn’t get it. It was slightly out of our price range, needed a new roof and windows, and would not have fitted our lifestyle quite as well as the one we actually purchased. But, MAN! Was it gorgeous!

This is the house we did buy:

And it has be practically perfect for us! 

Molly told me that she did not want to move unless we got a pool. Check. 

Edward wanted woods. Check.

I wanted a patio, garage, and library. Check. Check. Check. 

We also wanted to be able to have goats and chickens. Double Check. 

Edward and Milli wanted a long driveway for playing in. Check. 

And on and on. This house has spaces for entertaining, a room we rent out to help with costs, a game room, space for sewing, a pantry, and so much more. It has an outbuilding for goats (although, we need to improve the fencing out there before we use it), plenty of space for gardening and an orchard, room for outdoor play, and woods for adventuring and a club house! It is also within biking distance of LeTourneau’s airport location, so Edward can continue to be a bike commuter most days by cycling the first mile and taking the shuttle between campuses. 

It took us nearly a year to find this place. We looked at tons of homes and even put money down on one. But this place was meant for us! We plan to stay here until Edward retires. Granted, the whole point of this article is really that God has plans that may not be ours- but they are GOOD!

Our Busy Life

 I recently wrote about our pre-COVID life and our post-COVID return to life. Now I’ll talk about the craziness that is our current routine. 

During COVID, our life slowed down a lot. Our work life didn’t change that much, as the girls and I were still doing school at home. We would try to get to park day on Thursdays, and we hung out with the Metzgers, who were our pod. Edward was home more, but he still taught and prepped, and graded. He spent lots of time upstairs, so we didn’t see him much more. He did get some more house work done, and he got yard work done. 

In fall of 2020, Edward went back to campus, but we didn’t return to other activities until after vaccinations in spring of 2021. That spring was pretty crazy as we moved (see previous post) and I had books at both the CHEC and TACHE book sales that May. Collecting books and pricing them when your house is full of boxes and you’re still schooling your children is a hard thing to do! I had prepped several boxes before the move, but they all ended up in our living room on the day of the move. Still, I’d call both sales a success. The money went toward teacher back-pay for Legacy.

After that chaotic spring, we had our summer trips. But this post is mostly about our life getting to its new normal. In the fall of 2021, we began to add back into our lives the things we’d lost during the pandemic, and we picked up a few more activities along the way. My kids were a little older, and there were more options for extra curricular fun. 

The first thing we did was reinstate live music lessons for the girls. Molly had been doing them sporadically over the year. Her violin teacher is wonderful and a good friend of mine. Her life was also in flux, so we returned to the studio only to have it shut down in October. Milli has begun taking piano there, as well. Miss Lily was Molly’s teacher for one month shy of 5 years and it was hard to leave her. But she needed a season of rest from teaching other children (she homeschools her brood), so she recommended the Roberts Violin Studio in Kilgore. We began Molly there in November of 2021 and Milli with piano in January of 2022. 

This is actually an older picture from 2019, but I couldn't find a newer one of the two of them.

As much as we love and miss Miss Lily, having a different teaching style has been good for Molly’s development as a player. She spent 2 months with Miss Samantha and then changed to Mrs. Roberts in January. Both women taught very differently than Miss Lily and Molly has stretched to change (which is not her forte). Both my girls played for a much larger audience for their recital in the spring. My husband even accompanied Molly on piano!

This was the rehearsal- Molly dressed up on the day.

Aside from instruments, my daughters also joined the Greater Longview Area Children’s Chorus in September of 2021. This choir was a new group set up by several music teachers in the area (they also formed the Longview Chamber Singers, which we saw perform earlier that year). This choir is specifically geared toward music training- there is a lot of theory and voice training involved, not just fun singing together. I watched the children improve over the course of the year. 

My kids are right in the center.

When the choir started up again this fall, they worked out a few more kinks, and I am even more impressed! I’ve been volunteering more and have gotten to sit in on both the choirs (there are two levels for those with different music experience). I’m proud to have my children in this choir and love seeing them grown in another musical area!

I’m also back in the Civic Chorus! The chorus got back together spring of 2021, but I waited until I was fully vaccinated to join back up. Plus, I was moving that spring. Fall of 2021, we sat 6 feet apart and could wear masks if we chose. We lost almost all of the Civic members, so our director, Jim Taylor, combined us with the LeTourneau Singers. We’d sung concerts with them before, so it was not a hard change. Our meeting time changed from Monday nights to options of either Tuesday or Thursday or both nights. I chose both and have loved it! My relationship with students has branched out to many I would not have met otherwise. I’m in the Civic Chorus again this year and still loving it! 

This was chapel- I'm the second on the right in the front row

Molly also joined the junior orchestra this year! The first day was pretty hard for her. She was nervous, had so sight read at speed, which she has never really done well, and was with all bigger kids than herself. She went home crying hard over the whole thing. But the next week was better. And this past week, she even said that she felt like she had some of the best technique of all the members. She is stretching and growing in confidence and that is exactly what we wanted to see! (Although, you can't see it because I have yet to get any pictures of her in orchestra- wait until her concert in December, then I'll have some for sure).

Milli will be performing in her first play next month! She has been begging me to let her do Artsview Children’s Theatre for a couple of years, but it hasn’t fit in our schedule. I got her in for the December show, which begins practice  right after her choir concert and Thanksgiving. 

Other activities that we’ve started back up: Crochet Club (I’ll do a separate post on this), MEK (board game and anime club at LeTu that died in 2019 but has been revived), Alpha Omega (fraternity that my husband sponsors), having students over for Sunday dinner, and AWANA (this is new for us last year, but Ed did it as a kid, so I counted it as returning). 

Yup- our lives went from zero to 100 pretty darn fast. Welcome back to the land of living!