Chickens are all together in an mostly finished coop, completely with little chicken chute tunnel to get through the fence into the run! We have a bulb on a timer so we’re getting 5-7 eggs a day (from 11 hens) and Ryan’s doing finishing touches like hanging the water/food, getting the deep layer of shavings in for winter, etc. Today he put the heater in to keep them toasty.
Chubby stopped eating for a few days, so we took him to the vet. They were pretty sure he had eaten something like thread or yarn and recommended a few days of lubrication therapy (smearing Vaseline behind his teeth), but it didn’t work to dislodge the blockage. He went in for successful surgery Friday and stayed there over the weekend – we’ll pick him up tomorrow. They found thread, ribbon and other assorted non-food bits in him. He’s been chewing on weird stuff (Crocs and the spongey floor tiles I have by my workbench) for months – I don’t know if he’s been trying to fix the problem or his stupidity of chewing on everything finally caught up with him.
The vet asked about Lucy while we were there. (Lucy had been really skinny in the spring, but is fine now.) I happened to mention her leaking problem, which it turns out is a common (12%) issue in spayed females. Lucy is now on estrogen pills (1 per day for 5 days, then weekly for maintenance) and so far it appears to be working! Yay!
The washing machine is broken. The spring that we thought would fix it, didn’t – well, not completely. Now we are trying to figure out if we should buy another part and try to fix it, or have someone who may know what they’re doing come out and see what’s going on. The dryer still works, so we have just been taking 2-3 loads to the Babbitt Laundromat when we’re going there anyway, then we dry them at home.
Delia’s started ice skating lessons again. She’s in Basic 2 now, and it didn’t take long for her to get her skates under her. She’s getting more confidence about reading, loves thinking about numbers and space. In the past few days she’s made a few books “for Henry to learn,” decorated some bookmarks, and has been into Rainbow Fairy series books and the website. She’s the “firemaster” when we have fires, which means she helps get them started, keeps them going, and sticks long wooden skewers in, chars them, writes her name on the logs in the fireplace, and holds them by Henry for him to blow out.
Henry’s dancing, jumping, and as Delia says “always into something.”  He loves Bob the Builder and Oswald. He is saying lots of words but is even better at communicating by pointing, pushing and pulling. He’s very patient and nods yes or no until we know what he wants.
The back windshield wiper on the car broke several months ago, and we had it in to a dealership but they haven’t ordered the part yet and now apparently it’s trying to to come back to life even when the car is off and it keeps draining the battery. I’m heading to Ely tomorrow and I’m probably not going to turn the car off the entire time I’m there, just in case it won’t start again. It’ll be just like the time on a roadtrip when my starter was broken and I drove from St Charles Louisiana to Tampa without turning the bus off.
We keep getting dustings of snow, but haven’t had enough to start riding the snow machines. The pond is freezing up nicely, I think we’ll be able to skate on it soon. Last year we did on Thanksgiving so maybe we’ll do that again this year.
