Angry Chickens and an Angry Mama

Today I was about to lose my cool with the child (which I will not name) that is in charge of taking care of the chickens. It has been one too many times that we have gone to check on the girls and either there is no food, or the eggs are not being collected, the water is completely gone, or the muck bucket is over flowing under my sink. When I approach "this child" who has been doing this job since he (oops now that you know it is a "he", you can narrow it down to 2 of my kids) As I was saying, he has been doing this job for YEARS. And he somehow can "forget" that he needs to give them water?!?!?

So, instead of yelling, pleading, screaming, or pulling my hair out. I made a reminder card for him.

This way, he CAN'T forget, because it's right there on the laminated card! Brilliant, huh?!?! Well, we will see tomorrow when we use it. Also instead of checking off on his job chart that it is done with no accountability, he will have to report to me so I can give him his "chicken token". Each chicken token will be worth a certain amount of money and can be redeemed at some point, neither of which I have decided on yet. But, here are the chicken tokens as well. Feel free to copy and print your own, maybe we can all have happy chickens!

~marisa

Seed Starting With a Rain Gutter

Over the years we have shown you several methods for starting seeds. Jennifer built a great seed starting rack with lights to start her seeds. 

 

Cousin Allen did something similar using a prebuilt rack and fluorescent lights.

 

We planted ours in used plastic cups, yogurt cups, and peat pots and put them in the window.

This year we tried something different. We put all of our seeds in a rain gutter in our windows. It worked great and turned out to be an easy way to bottom water all of the plants at once. Check out the video below to see what it looks like.

What are some of the methods you have used to successfully start your seeds indoors?

~Michael~