4 May 1957 “Growing Chickens, Budding Fruit Trees, Stone Walls, and No-Rise Bread”

I haven’t shared any chicken news with any of you lately. If you recall, back in January I ordered a dozen fertile French Copper Maran eggs. You can see what a lovely chocolate brown they are. I put a few in my incubator and a few under my broody hen. What I learned is I should have put them ALL under the hen. The three I gave here all hatched, while only one in the incubator did so. Obviously Nature over Machine won out this time.
As I have also mentioned my dogs LOVE chicks. Here you can see my little Chi, Monty, happily snuggling with the little grey chick. She is one of my own chickens fertile eggs. A purebred Blue Orpington from my rooster. The sad tale with Monty’s love affair with the chicks, is once they become full sized hens, they no longer love him, often chase him and he runs squealing away. Yes, my chickens can beat up my dogs, what can one say? READ MORE

  Here they are today. The grey one is the little chick you see above. The other two are the Marans. They are now three months old,  or twelve weeks. By six months if they are hens they shall lay (let’s hope) or “if they Crow, into the Pot they go”. They are lovely birds, though not as tame as my other hens that were raised by me rather than mother hen.
Here you can see they are almost as large as my full size hens. Buttons in on the left. She is the friendliest and cheekiest of my hens. I have lately built an additional enclosure around their closed in pen. This allows them to free range outside of that pen but to keep off my terrace where they make a mess. However, Buttons is an escape artist and yesterday I was in the garden and Hubby got home and said, “come here you have to see this”. There Buttons was, happy as a pig in mud, walking about the kitchen looking for crumbs. I had left the door open, as it is so nice so the dogs could go in and out.
She happily comes to me when I call, however, so I scooped her up and back she went. I can’t ever express how much joy chickens are.
   Here is my darling broody hen, Ruth. She was named by my MIL. I gave her two of my hens last year and this one, dubbed Ruth, became broody. I was excited and so swapped her out for another of my hens. She is a wonderful little mother and a week ago she went broody again. So, I collected up a dozen of my chickens eggs and she is now sitting on them happily. She is a Blue Splash Orpington. This means she carries the Blue gene (Really pretty slate grey) and when she pairs with our Blue Splash rooster almost all of her chicks will be true Blue, as evidenced by the little chick with Monty in the above picture.
The more I have fun with our little mini 1/4 acre farm the more I want an actual farm. One never knows, with this economic climate, you may find me picking up and moving again. Trading my little cottage by the sea for an old farmhouse with acres and barns.
Many things are blooming around here. My dwarf Gala Apple tree is littered with beautiful hot pink buds.Here is the espaliered apple tree which has 4 varieties grafted onto one root stock. I believe these are the fuji apple blooms.
  I am rather excited, as my goo0seberry plants purchased from our local farm last year are full of blooms. You can see the lovely little green fruit beginning to form.
 I love bleeding hearts and I have both the traditional red as well as white variety. This plant here is quite large and its blooms are so romantic. Rather Victorian, really. I think it would make a great water color study in a Ladies Garden Journal. As well, would these Muscari, blooming like bad all about the lawn. They reseed themselves and only bloom for a short period in early Spring, so I let them have free reign of the garden.
On our staycation a few weeks ago, hubby and I were happily and busily building and repairing stone walls around here. I love a stone wall and was rather proud of our results.
Now, to round this post out, I thought I would share the Easiest bread recipe ever. I use this rather a lot. It doesn’t have the same lightness as a kneaded and risen dough, but it also is not as dense as a dessert bread. I believe I got the recipe online some where. I can’t recall but it couldn’t be easier.
In this loaf I replaced the honey with maple syrup. I have also replaced it with molasses as well. You just need to provide the sugar for the east to eat.
EASY NO RISE BREAD
3 c. flour (whole wheat, rye, soy, any kind)
1/2 tsp. salt
1 pkg. dry yeast
2 tsp. baking soda
2 c. buttermilk
1/4 c. honey
2 tbsp. oil
Preheat oven to 325 degrees and grease 1 loaf pan. Sift dry ingredients into a bowl. In a separate bowl combine liquid ingredients. Put liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix for about 100 strokes. Pour batter into loaf pan and bake 1 hour. Test with knife to make sure center of bread is baked. Remove and let cool about 45 minutes (if you can wait that long). Great to make with children.
On the website front, I have added, as you know by now, daily news at the bottom of this page. Well, today I have added a button that takes you to a page to make comments on the news. If you want to share  your thoughts or what have you on the daily events. They will be preserved on the page and can be added to indefinitely, as each day the daily news becomes an archive page accessed by the News Archive button. So, comment away if you so desire! I just like the idea of building community.
Happy Homemaking.