Yesterday I tried to go out back and chip some ice off the sidewalk. We have these French back doors that we will need access to when we are moving all our large furniture out of this place. Unfortunately, the inches of slick ice covering the sidewalk and the feet of snow blocking our access to the parking area will prevent us from moving our stuff so we need to get that taken care of ASAP.

I also dug out my un-planted flower bulbs and got those babies in the soil yesterday. I am a bulb addict and I had a number of daffodils that I hadn’t planted yet and I would really love to enjoy their beauty this spring so I got them in the soil and let the chilling/ rooting process begin. I also spent $50 of a fresh batch of bulbs from Van Bourgondien and I am so excited to receive them!

In other news, our car battery is fine so that means we do need to replace the alternator on the car now. We are planning on doing it together this weekend ( I can build computers so why can’t I fix a car?) and I’ll let you know how successful that is, maybe I’ll have photos!

Oh, last thing is that we seem to have another white baby zebra finch. Our first batch of babies matured and went off to good homes and now mommy and daddy finch are nursing round 2 of babies! We started with 5 eggs, one was tossed by the parents and several days later another egg vanished. We suspect mommy and daddy ate it or tossed it so that left us with 3 eggs.

The three eggs hatched and were doing okay but yesterday I found one baby dead in the nest. I removed the dead baby and got to see the feathers on the remaining two babies. One is cream/ brownish and the other is gray/ white. Now the color mutation in these zebra finches is supposed to be very rare so I am surprised that it appears we have hatched another rare zebra finch.

So how is your Valentines Day going? Since it is valentines day you should share the love by heading over to vote on our chicken cooking videos. Give us 5 stars to help us win!

• http://www.wherestheflamegrill.com/video/watch/61
• http://www.wherestheflamegrill.com/video/watch/89 

I gathered from reading my favorite blogs that many people are experiencing storms, power outages and all kinds of craziness.. How is the weather and day for you?

The post A white valentines day.?.? appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

We did removed the grown babies from the cage mom and dad are in. We did this because all the reading material said that when mom and dad began laying again the older/ grown babies would be in danger and that they might be considered “in the way”…

So despite the very traumatic situation we separated them. Babies are in one cage and mom, dad and the 5 new eggs are in another cage.

Oh, and my 3 grown babies are doing well and all have new homes & owners that will take them pretty soon here. We still have the gray/ white finch that is a bit different from all the rest. I guess we hatched a unique one!

So once the grown babies start to get their defining feathers we will send them off to their new homes and then we will focus on the new hatchlings that are on the way, we will need to find homes for these too.. It would be nice if we could sell the to a pet store!

The post Oh, boy… We have 5 NEW finch eggs! appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

However, their is still one egg in the nest that looks as though it has developed and we are expecting it to hatch this week. You can see darkness through the egg shell! I visually check the nest each day to see the progress of the finches. Yesterday I peeked into the nest and saw that more eggs had been laid! Today she laid another egg so now we are back to 3 eggs in the nest! One should hatch this week and the other two have from 2-3 weeks before they will hatch.

I am also working on another clients website this week, I am building a simple e commerce site for her. I am moving my own blog to a separate domain this week. Oh, we are expected to get our first snow for this winter (flagstaff, az 2007) over the thanksgiving holiday.. It’s been a warm and dry winter so far. We were expected to get snow earlier in the month but it only sprinkled instead. This time we have a 10% chance over 3 days, please let it snow!

Think snow for us okay? Nathan even went out and chopped some firewood this morning with his free fire wood permit, We are so ready for snow! So, what has everyone else been up to? Are you ready for thanksgiving? Nathan and I are having differing opinions about what the best thanksgiving dessert is… What will you be having for dessert on thanksgiving?

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