Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Chicks, Chicks and More Chicks

This month has been full of chicks.  Seriously!  I suppose I had better start at the beginning.  We have two black Cornish hens.  At the beginning of this month we decided to get some more chickens.  We ordered day-old chicks (all hens) online from Cackle Hatcheries.  They came a couple days later.  We got seventeen:  4 white, 5 yellow, 4 black, and 4 that looked like chipmunks with stripes down their backs!  We made a brooder for them out of a cardboard box, and put them in the basement.  This was on Friday, April 5th.  When we went to the feedlot to buy chick food the man there told us about a farmer who had chicks for sale.  Mamma was interested because he had Arucanas, the kind of chicken that lays blue eggs.  We went to his farm on Monday, and got about ten or eleven more chicks.  These ones were about two weeks old.  He had only two or three Arucanas left, and we got those.  We also got three Rhode Island Reds and about three of a kind called Dominiques.  We also got another that we weren't quite sure what it was, and a Black Moran.  Morans are special because they lay a chocolate brown colored egg, and they have feathers on their legs.  Sadly, this one died the next morning.  We think it had brooder pneumonia.  The farmer also had some older chicks and we got three of those.  They were Speckled Sussex.  We didn't know the sex of the younger ones, but the Speckled Sussex were hens.  We drove home with our new chicks, and now we have about thirty chickens!!  Oh, my!  I don't know what to do!  Actually, it wasn't that hard.  We just put the younger chicks into the brooder with the ones we had ordered, and the three big ones in a small pen outside until we could build a bigger one.  Now we have a big pen, and all the chicks have moved outside.  Things go so fast, but slow at the same time!

Here are some pictures:
One got on top of the feeder!



We think this one is a rooster. Look at his comb! It is different from all the others.  At first people were calling him "Deborah." That doesn't exactly sound like a boy's name, does it?  Bekah and I changed his name to Sam Gamgee.


The Speckled Sussex



The one on the right in both of the pictures above this is Bob.  We think he is a rooster too.

Now we really have a farm!


Thank you so much for taking these pictures, Bekah!
You are a great photographer!

Friday, April 26, 2013

Need For a New Form of Government


Our Living Constitution                                                              4-26-13

By Jerry Aten

 

p. 15-17, 21

During the American Revolution, the farmers did pretty well.  All the soldiers needed food, and they could charge higher prices.  After the war was over, though, they started to do very poorly.  They were in debt, and prices were not so good for their products.  A man named Daniel Shays led a rebellion known as Shays’ Rebellion.  It was not remembered so much for the incident itself, but for the circumstances that caused it.

Before the war, the thirteen colonies had acted as thirteen different nations.  They joined together to fight against England.  During the war, a loose sort of government, known as the Articles of Confederation, was formed.  After the war, the colonies went back to acting as thirteen different nations.  The Articles of Confederation could not hold them together.  A special convention was arranged, and every state sent representatives except for Rhode Island.  Included were George Washington, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and several others.  They met together with the intention of changing the Articles of Confederation, but these were so hopeless that they decided to start afresh and create a whole new system of government.  This would be the Constitution.

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

The Declaration of Indepence


Our Living Constitution                                                            4-10-13

By Jerry Aten

 

p. iv-14

This is a really neat book!  It tells about the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.  It has the real words on one side of the page and then what they mean on the other side.  After that it has questions.  Today I read about the Declaration of Independence.  It has five main parts:  The Preamble, the Statement of Human Rights, the list of charges against King George and Parliament, the Statement of Separation, and the signatures.  It was very interesting and I enjoyed it.