On the Urban Homestead...

...we have chickens!

Let me introduce you to:

L-R: Sally (Ameraucana), Emily (Rhode Island Red),
and Madeline (Buff Orpington)

The older kids each named one of them.  =)

The food and water dishes use mason jars!
Just my style!  =)

Having chickens is so exciting to me!  I have wanted to get some for a long time, and we are having lots of fun with them!  We got our chicks at about two weeks old, and they are absolutely adorable!  In just a week, they have grown a lot.  They really all do have their own personalities, which is so fun!  Sally is the bossy one, and also the most aloof, while Emily is really friendly and doesn't mind being held, unlike the other two.  They really like doing everything together.  If one of them starts eating food, the rest of them do, too.  Cleaning and refilling their water dish just takes a couple of minutes, but when I put it back, they all rush over and start drinking like they haven't had any water all day.  It's so cute!

So far the work has been very minimal.  The most time consuming job was cleaning out their water dish, which I was having to do quite a few times a day because they kept filling it up with pine shavings when they would scratch in the litter.  But then I got smart and raised the dish up a bit on a brick, and now it stays clean for most of the day.

The chickens love to sit on top of the jars.
Sometimes they fight over the spot!

We'll have to keep them inside for about five more weeks, during which time we need to build a coop and run outside.  Then, hopefully sometime this fall, we'll have eggs!  I can't wait!

He Did It!

Seth was gone for two weeks in March on his LAST school trip.  At the end, he graduated, so he now has his MFA in Creative Writing!  It's been a long AND fast 2 1/2 years, a lot of hard work, and I am a bit relieved that he's done.  But I am so proud of Seth for pursuing his dreams and for doing the hard work to make it happen.

This trip was the longest he's taken, since he did a bit of road-tripping with a couple of his school friends before the actual residency began, and it was a LONG two weeks.  We did get to join him for a day in the middle of it, which was fun, and we also joined him for graduation day.  Seth got to graduate with most of the really good friends he made in school, and I got to meet a couple of their wives, which was really fun!  It was so nice to talk to other wives of students!

We're not quite sure what's next on the agenda.  It is definitely a bit weird to think of Seth not being in school, especially when I think about the fact that's he's been in school since Ezra was born, and that's really all the kids know.  But it will be fun to see what the Lord opens up for us!