Also, my new chicks are integrating to the main flock right now and we are preparing to move in just a few days so our chicken coop situation is in transition. I also figured the stress of the transition was possibly impacting the egg output from the hens.

Today there was quite a squawk fest out of the chicken coop and my girls anxiously ran out to collect the eggs. However, there were no eggs to be found. So we went about our garden and backyard chores. I opened the compost bin to get some fresh compost for one of the plants and I left it open for the chickens to scratch around in since were getting ready to move and we have no intention of taking cooking compost with us. I had the compost bin open earlier in the week for the same reason but husbands who work outside the homestead (he has just 3 work days left!) miss lots of strategic decision making and close the compost bin back up thinking they are being helpful.

Anyway, after a while we went back inside had some cold water ate breakfast and we heard the chickens squawking again. We went out to try to collect eggs and once again there were none to be found.

They always say if you’re missing eggs, go on an egg hunt.

All week we’ve been hunting around the yard in strange corners, under bushes and behind various things to see if we could find any hidden eggs, we found nothing. After the recent squawk fest we noticed the Rhode Island Red hanging out at the base of the open composter. Just out of curiosity I bent down and peeked my head in the composter…

I found two Rhode Island Reds and one of my Americauna hens sitting on what seems to be a pretty large clutch of eggs inside the composter, on top of the compost.

Now, assuming the eggs have been there for a while….

1. Are they cooked?

Compost bins are HOT, deathly hot. The hens laying in there were panting up a storm. I put a bowl of water in there for them because they didn’t seem interested in budging. The temperature read shows the air inside the compost bin at 85 degrees and the soil temperature is the same since it’s pretty dried out.

2. Are the hens broody and sensing they should be hatching these eggs?

Remember my 4 new roosters? They have been seen this week jumping then hens (as in sexing them up). Now I think their immediate success in mating is probably unlikely but on the off chance that they are successful and these hens are broody… should we let nature take its course and see if we get baby chicks?

Based upon the heat of the composter these eggs probably aren’t going to be edible, so if they are fertile I guess it’s less waste right? But we are moving in just a few days… Wont the move disrupt a broody hen’s hatching process, especially for a first time brooder?

What do you think?

The post Tales from the backyard flock: Are they cooked or do they have chicks in them? appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

The girls have been loading up on the perks of our current living arrangement. Time with friends, visiting their favorite places and soaking up all the joys of our current house. We have a bunch of tadpoles that we hatched from eggs in the sand table right now… they were caught from the pond out back and they are growing fast.

Everly has also been hoping to catch another turtle or two from the pond before we move. We initially caught, measured, observed, numbered and then released the turtles.She hopes to catch a turtle that we’d already numbered so she can see how much it’s grown before we have to leave.

Update: We managed to catch TWO turtles and a frog later today! One of the turtles are one of the ones we numbered. She’s very excited. Here is a video of the fish bowl where our habitat exists for observation in our school room (disregard all the kid noise):

Today the girls picked their first three strawberries from our garden and were elated, so much so that they wouldn’t eat them. They are saving them in the fridge. We also enjoyed some homegrown lettuce yesterday that they picked.

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My kids are experts on “packing their bags” with necessities and snacks for outings. Everly is such a pro at it that if you don’t oversee her she’ll pack up enough snacks to feed an army. This morning I packed a small handful of gluten free crackers and two oranges but Everly packed up her extra pancakes from breakfast along with a giant container of water with a puppy and her blankie… Adalyn packed up her blankies, a penguin.

The rain is pouring outside so the girls are given a kid-sized cow umbrella to share, I heft my diaper bag/ backpack on my back, I’ve got my Moby wrap tied around me, car keys in hand, I pick up Mr. Grayson, his blanket, I grab my water and an umbrella to protect me and Grayson and I shooo the girls out the door in front of me.

Of course two young girls sharing an umbrella in the pouring rain while hefting their bags move incredibly sloooooowwwwly. Grayson and I follow behind them prodding them along to the car…

Putting an infant in the car while wearing a backpack and holding an umbrella is quite a juggling act. I balanced the umbrella on the roof of the car so I’d have two hands to buckle Grayson’s carseat, of course the umbrella blew off the car and across our yard. Everly and Adalyn were still poking along with their bags and their shared umbrella but Everly noticed my unbrella and collected it.

Next I get Everly’s booster seat positioned next to Grayson’s carseat and buckled in properly. Everly puts herself in her booster seat and tightens her belt- win! Adalyn is buckled in her seat next and then we can drive off to the doctors appointment we have.

Once we arrive at the doctors office the rain is falling even harder and of course not a single parking spot is to be found. We circle the lot several times before I finally create my own parking space in the very back of the lot and begin the ordeal of unloading the kiddos from the car. Towards the tail end of the unloading process a shuttle arrives offering to give us a ride so we can stay dry. I’ve got my head in the car trying to unload Grayson while wearing the backpack and trying to hang on to the umbrella.

I tell the girls to climb on the shuttle and that we’ll catch a ride to stay dry, Everly eagerly jumps in the shuttle leaving Adalyn in the pouring rain, without an umbrella. Adalyn wont climb in the shuttle, she screams in the faces of strangers even when we reassure her.

I’ve got Grayson from the car seat and I begin to exit the car when my umbrella blows across the parking lot. Adalyn is still crying.

The poor shuttle driver is surely regretting driving over and offering us a ride by now but he doesn’t show it. Instead he climbs out of the shuttle and tries to lift Adalyn up the shuttle steps, she screams even louder and he backs away. Then he runs after my umbrella and brings it to me.

Now I’m out of the car with Grayson and his blanket in one arm and my backpack on my back. I lift screaming Adalyn with my other arm and cram her in the shuttle door in front of me and I remove the backpack and shove it in the shuttle along with my now collapsed umbrella. Now I can get myself in the shuttle and try to close the door. Three kids, three bags, on blanket and two umbrellas – check.

We are driven across the parking lot and are now at the entrance to our doctors office, we begin to unload ourselves and all our crap but Everly is frantic. She says her blankie was on the seat of the shuttle and that she hasn’t grabbed it yet. Three kids, three bags, two umbrellas- check… but one blankie is supposedly missing.

I look in the seats of the shuttle, on the floor and there is no blankie that is visible. “Everly, are you sure it isn’t in your bag” I ask. She insists it’s still in the shuttle, I walk back over to check again and another perons has boarded the shuttle. I walk around the shuttle in the pouring rain with Grayson in my arms, still not blankie that I can see. 

The shuttle driver begins to pull away but seems torn because now Everly is getting teary eyed and is begging me to stop the shuttle driver from leaving, he pulls forward… Everly has almost lost it. Then the shuttle stops and the driver and climbs out and opens a side door, sure enough blankie falls out.

Everly is relieved, we thank the patient shuttle driver and head for the doctors office. Remarkably we make it inside and up the elevator incident free. As soon as we pass the restrooms both girls declare a sudden very urgent need to pee.  Funny how this happens every since time we see a bathroom.

The girls are given permission to go pee on their own while I check Grayson in for his appointment, I’m sure we are terribly late after the rain/ shuttle ordeal outside. The girls return rather quickly after their solo peeing adventure and we are ushered back to an exam room.

On the way to the exam room Everly’s bag explodes behind me and all the snacks scatter up and down the hall. A nurse practitioner says she’ll help Everly with the mess and Everly takes that as an “oh I’ll clean it up for you” offer and just leaves her bag and snack explosion in the hall, joining us in the exam room. *facepalm*

Luckily, we make it through the doctors appointment incident free, we trek back out through the still pouring rain on foot, get everyone in the car, three kids, three bags, two umbrellas- check and we are headed home.

It’s so nice to be home, put my PJs on and stay home for several days straight. Like I was saying, I’m normally pretty good at solo parenting outings but once in a while I still find myself leading the crazy train, possibly making childless folks everywhere really, really glad they aren’t in my shoes.

Three kids under five years old, it’s intense but with the right sense of humor it can also be so much fun.

 Now lets all have NAPTIME!

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Does she work or is the blog her full time gig?  How does anyone will an actual job have time to do all of those things? All I do is cloth diaper and I feel like it takes 9 million hours a month (it doesn’t. It just feels that way). I can’t imagine doing all of those other things, too.

My “full time gig” is my family and the homestead and did you know you can actually sustain yourself and your family if you do it right? For those inquiring minds, before we had kids, we both did work conventional jobs… we also lived in an area with a much higher cost of living and a shorter growing season.

When we moved to Indiana and I got pregnant working was less of a priority (and a necessity) so I fully committed to making the sustainable life of my dreams more of a reality and we learned many things along the way. Now I am a working stay at home mom. Specifically, I am a virtual assistant to several clients across the country as well as a freelance website developer. I just don’t feel the need to flaunt my status as a working stay at home mom (since that isn’t the focus of the blog) you know?

It’s crazy how obsessed most people are about what your “actual job” is… why do so many people feel they need those actual jobs anyway?!

Because they are slaves to the economy and the retail driven society we live in.

If you feel you have to work each day just to make your life a possibility and that without work you couldn’t live the way you want to you are a slave. We are choosing to gradually move away from this “slavery” in our home.

We eventually discovered that while all the shiny stuff and the consumer driven mentality is exciting, it’s really just unnecessary and it is trapping us in a life we don’t enjoy living. If we do nothing but shop like good consumers of course we would need to work more! There would be zero time to stay home with my kids, to make my crunchy lifestyle feasible and to sustain my family with the homestead… Plus, working outside the home for someone else isn’t what we deem the most important work we could be doing in our lives.

What if you could just care for your family, your animals and your home and that actually fed and sustained the family? What if you were in control of how much your finances ruled your way of living? It’s possible and lots of people are still living this way… you just have to look closely to find them (hint: it wont be at the mall!). I know dozens of people that make a home-cooked meal, from scratch most every night for their families, who raise chickens and garden to feed their family, who make their own cleaning products, cloth diaper and even homeschool. It really isn’t that crazy or unheard of right?! Didn’t someone just say…

Sweetheart, you are on a bandwagon, that doesn’t make you “less conventional”. 

Bandwagon (or not) aside, it’s really not that hard to get back to a more simple way of living. It requires lots of lifestyle adjustments and it takes time to really get comfortable doing it all though. So it’s not for everyone and not everyone will be able to make it work but it is what we have going on here.

We aren’t where we’d like to be by any means but we have managed to accomplish lots to get us closer and it’s freed up time for me to provide more of the life I want my family to have.

And if all this intrigues you, be sure to subscribe to the blog because many very BIG changes are on the horizon that I’ll share here on the blog just as soon as we can make the news public!

The post How does anyone with an actual job have time to do all of these crunchy things?! appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

And no, I’m not pregnant again! What I mean is my baby boy is six weeks old and it has been six weeks of hibernation for me, both in real life and here online. Heck even my next door neighbor feels like she hasn’t seen me in ages (and she hasn’t!). Of course the arctic weather has only encouraged my hermit behavior.

My husband was blogging the other day and linking back here to my blog regarding the birth of our son and our wedding and he mentioned that he felt better after visiting my blog. He hadn’t blogged in like four weeks, I’ve been offline for about six now so I’ve been the bigger slacker apparently!

Things are going well, I know the lack of posting leaves many to wonder though

Taking the month of December to really focus on my little (not so little anymore) family was really the right thing to do for me.

2013 was truly a year of letting go for me, in many ways. Much was no longer in harmony with my core desires and intentions and it was just time to let those things fall away. Many weights have been lifted in a sense making room for the new possibilities…

We are settling in nicely as a family of five. My three kiddos under the age of 5 do keep me busy but things are feeling more and more comfortable each day. Grayson is a great baby! Thankfully, my efforts to heal my gut and to keep away from trigger foods (GLUTEN is the biggie) has been for something… Grayson’s digestive situation and his comfort is not a repeat of Adalyn’s babyhood. We learned, made changes and they seem to be for the better – still.

Everly is blossoming so much right now. She’s loving being able to help mom with her siblings and she’s also taking to all sorts of food prep tasks here at home. She’s also learning to read, spell and write words, by her own motivation. We just realized she’s going to be old enough to begin kindergarden this year!

The girls are adjusting well to being big sisters and we haven’t had too many jealous older sibling issues although my mommy guilt is in full swing. I *want* to be able to give each kiddo all my time and focus and I’ve been finding myself more and more thinly stretched, it breaks my heart sometimes. I guess I’m getting an education in the Your-Parents-Do-The-Best-They-Can reality that I never quite understood as a kid.

Nathan and I are really examining our goals and intentions for our future. We agree that it is time we made the changes needed to secure the future we want. No more excuses or ties to less important things holding us back. We are lucky, we have a clear vision of where we want to be, but getting there hasn’t been straightforward or easy by any means. And as the years pass and our lives change, things gradually shift and become clearer. It seems to me we are at a crossroads (or rather a busted bridge) where a giant leap of faith is required to continue moving forward. Possibly even a shift in our ways of thinking about how we’ll make do financially as we move forward.

I am personally ready to take another giant risk to secure what we desire, so there may be some interesting happenings in 2014 to share with you as we press on and strive to live off the land more. 

What are you striving for in 2014? Much of the same or something else entirely?

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