Chicken Day!

Proudly showing them off

Absolutely mesmerized by them

The simple homemade brooder

Well...farm life takes on a new chapter. Our chicken chapter has begun with the arrival of our little octuplet chicks. We ended up with 2 little buff colored ones and 6 little black ones. The children were ecstatic. Supposed to have picked them up Monday afternoon I postponed since we had just gotten back from FW and that trip that was filled with activities. I didn't think we'd ever hear the end of it though. The squeals of delight that rang through the air as Garrett took his 1st glimpse of them were enough to make it all worthwhile. We all went to pick them up and they chirped to us the entire way home from their little box that sat at the back of the van. The children got their temporary living quarters set up with lots of help from Daddy and one by one they were deposited in their new home until they can graduate up to the big pastures and the permanent coop.

Help from Daddy

And one by one they were held and picked up and "loved" on again and again and again. I supervised and watched and marveled at this job in life....what it is to teach children gentleness and to watch it become a part of their life. Little boys so rough and rowdy and boisterous are taught to gently cradle a tiny living thing so easily crushed by most anything at this point. The excitement and thrill and discovery of tiny new life and how to treat it is unsurpassed when given the opportunity to see it through the eyes of children.

Little girls that cannot exactly have a kitten at this point due to certain large dogs with cat issues have taken to nurturing and babying tiny little chicks.

Attentive caregivers

Happy Happy kids...at this point little chicks were still contained in their small travel box, thus the reason for the gleeful congregation around it on the table.

So it is that we will hopefully have farm fresh eggs beginning in Jan sometime. Come September we plan on ordering the other 25 from the hatchery since we only ended up with 8 this time around and still have no clue as to how many are male and female. Since we have the option of ordering females and males the plan is to order 24 egg laying chickens with 1 or 2 roosters present. That's a LOT of eggs. We figured it was a good small entrepreneurial business experience for Grayson. Brad and I discussed it and we feel that it is something he can handle and take great pride in. He has the total upkeep of them and in return the profits from egg sales are his, as we continue to teach him responsibility concerning both jobs and money......with larger sums of money........as he learns to tithe 10%, the freedom to spend 10%, save the remaining 80% and then give out of that whatever he feels God has placed on his heart for whatever need becomes known at the time.

I love doing this. I am so entirely blessed that we have been given the ability to let them experience this side of life....just the daily little simple pleasures of a growing seed transformed into a 4 ft climbing, bean producing vine, holding baby chicks, reaping the reward of loyalty by caring for Fletch and his devotion to them, loving on baby goats and learning how to care for them and everything this life out here has offered so far. We are blessed indeed.