Chick Update!

3 days to go!!

Today I stop turning them in their incubator. This is so that they have a chance to orient themselves in their eggs so that they are in the correct position for hatching. If they are in the wrong position, they may not break out into the air sack, and drown. We don't want this, so we give them a couple of days to sort themselves out.

We also need to increase the humidity inside the incubator. The egg has an inner membrane which is very soft and flexible which the chick needs to break through. I am sure you have seen it at some point when cooking eggs, that membrane you can peel away. Have you seen it once the egg has been open for a couple of hours? This membrane goes really tough and hard to break. We increase the humidity to stop it going tough. A chick can take up to 24 hours to hatch from its egg, and if that membrane goes hard, then it can be fatal for the chick. So we need a little extra moisture in the air.

My incubator is a Brinsea mini eco.  Its a basic model, but it has been such a good incubator.  It holds a temperature really steady, I only ever have to adjust it during the setting up stage.

The water pot on the mini eco is divided into 2 halves. During the first phase of incubation (up until now) we filled half of the pot. This is so that the air sac in the egg could develop properly while still keeping the air humid and warm. Now we need to fill both sides to make the humidity rise for hatching.

Im upgrading the adult chickens living area at the moment (details to come in another post!), but as soon as i am done with that i will be setting up the brooder for when these little ones hatch. Not long now!

Drying Chillis

I bought these chillies last week from ALDI, as they were on offer.

We don't use chillies often, but I like them, so I thought for that price, i could dry some and have them on hand, which is what I am doing today.

My lot don't like spicy food, so I am removing the seeds to cool the heat down a bit, and i am laying them out on a baking tray.

I preheated the oven to 130 degrees, and the chillies went in quite low down in the oven. I left them for around 3 hours, checking on them sporadically, until they were completely dry.

(I think I might have left them a little too long! Ooops!)

I then just popped them in a sandwich bag, and into my spice drawer to use later.

Still on a making kick!

I'm on a crafting mission at the moment.

I had a new delivery of roving wool on tuesday, so i have been doing more spinning. I really love the colours on this corriedale wool.

These pictures make the colours look a little washed out, but believe me they are so jewel-like and beautiful. Keira wants some of this wool plaited into her hair for her Prom.

I have also been crocheting. I have finished Keiras blanket, and moved on to Imogens.

I'm using  different stitch this time. I am using Crochet Geeks abstract cat afghan crochet pattern.  It can be found here: http://www.crochetgeek.com/2009/04/abstract-crochet-cats.html

Im liking the way it is working up. Imogen chose her colours.

Also last week, i got the urge to make a friend a last minute birthday gift. I had bought her a colouring book and some new pencils, but i felt she needed something to put her new pencils in.

So I made this:

I had everything in my fabric box already, and i had thought for a while that the fabric was perfect for her, I just hadnt thought of a project for them both. Everything fell into place and she was so pleased with her gift. It made me smile.

Chick Update: They look like eggs.  But we are edging closer to the exciting days.

5 days to go! 

Day 13

8 days to go!

I checked in on the eggs this evening, and it looks like the one i wasnt sure about has definitely stopped growing. So we are down to 4 :(

I couldnt get good pics because at this stage the egg is almost completely dark as the chick is starting to take up the majority of the egg. There is a light spot toward the fat end of the egg, which is the air sac. At around day 20, the chick will break through its membrane with its beak and breath for the first time from the air in the air sac, which will stimulate hatching, so it important that this sac is developing well. If it is too small, it could be because the incubators humidity is too high.

We lost one. :(

With every animal rearing endeavour, there are good parts and bad parts.

When I candled the eggs last, ( i know, its an extra check to the ones i said i was going to do) it was pretty obvious that one of them definitely wasnt developing. The eggs shone the light through bright and clear, when by now, there should be a large dark patch and movement within the egg. I removed it from the incubator, because i didnt want to risk it going rotten and exploding (Yes, it is possible!) and contaminating all my other eggs. So egg number 5, to you we say goodbye :(

Another of the eggs looks like it is delayed, compared to the others, but as it had changed from the previous check, i left it in. Sometimes they can be a bit behind and still hatch ok.


So i reckon we are looking at 3 or 4 chicks, some will probably be boys, so i will need to hatch another clutch this year to keep my flock going.

Chilly Chillies!

Well, heatless at least.

I know, it is march (already!!), and i am a bit late getting my chillis started. I dont usually grow chillis, because the family are a bit averse to spicy hot food. I include myself in that, because athough i love the spicy flavours, i really dont like feeling like my mouth (and then my bottom!) is on fire. Call me weird.

I do love the flavour of a good chilli though. So i looked around, and i found these heatless varieties from www.southdevonchillifarm.co.uk

They even came with a handy set of instructions.

I planted them up as per their instructions, and popped them in my new heated propagator, which I bought from ALDI for £12.99  last week.  It will live on the windowledge of my conservatory, tucked behind my wall unit so that the kids dont mess with it.

So hopefully this summer we will have some nice sweet mild chillis and everyone can stop complaining that their tongue is stinging!!

You may have spotted my plant labels in the above picture. I dont buy plant labels. They always get lost or blown away or kids run off with them to do goodness knows what with (Why do they even want them?). The joys of a young imagnation.

plant labels. Yes. Thats where i was. I make mine out of empty milk bottles. The big 2 litre ones usually, because we go though a mammoth amount of milk.

I just cut them up until i have strips. Nothing fancy to it. It serves two purposes. I am too cheap to buy labels, and fewer milk bottles end up clogging up my recycle bin. Win / win!

I hope you are all having a lovely Wednesday!

Plot Lines

Plot lines.

So much happened during my blogging absence, that I’ll have to fill you in slowly. One of those momentous changes was my plot.

I went from this:

(Dec 2010)

To This!

(Aug 2012)

It’s a much bigger space to work with, which in some ways is good, and some ways it isn’t.

I like having the extra space to pan projects for, but it is much much harder keeping on top of such a big project, and because of this, my pot always looks pretty shabby, especially in the middle of growing season when everything is growing faster than I can deal with it.

Im hoping to show you all more here as time goes on. Maybe as the season gets started I’ll do a weekly plot pick, as some of my favourite bloggers like Soulemama.com and http://glallotments.blogspot.co.uk/  do regularly.

If nothing else, showing you all might get me to tidy the place up a bit!