remember me?

Hi again.

We are starting back on the sunny side of life again.

Has been a mammoth little while - but we are settling into the swing of things.

We are the proud new carers of over a thousand hens. 400 ish of them have begun laying eggs and the younger 600 ish of them (fondly called the hoodlums) will start laying in about 6-8 weeks.

The first night, we had a temporary caravan set up for them to overnight in with perches. Their big ol' A frame houses didn't arrive till the next day by a building removal company. ....Anyway, after a HUGE day preparing for the chookies..... picture this:

6:30 p.m. - 3 kids strapped in the car with Charlie and Lola on the DVD.
Big kids: happy

Little man: not so happy - "where's my milky and my bed??? what do you people think you are doing????"

Husband: under the caravan (in mud and poos) scruffing chook by chook and passing said chooks to wife.

Wife: taking chooks one by one (keep in mind here there are FOUR HUNDRED of the precious little beasts) and popping them in the windows and door of the caravan. Shooshing them up to their perches.

Once the majority of them were safe from suffocating eachother under the caravan there was:
2 gaurdian dogs to feed and settle in their new place, water to be hooked up, another hundred or so chooks to relocate to the caravan from perching ON our vehicles (Nic ended back at the yard with four of them perched on his driveline) dinner to be served to children followed by bath and bed, mud to wash off of EVERYTHING. 

Husband left house the next morning at 2:40 a.m. to milk cows and drive north to pick up the hoodlums.

Full swing the following day unloading large A frames, unloading 600+ chooks, hooking up waters, feeders, unloading bulka bags of feed, ordering egg cartons by the pallet, creating a label, talking to council, collecting eggs off the ground (and inside of whatever they could find)........... etc. etc. 

Pause for a moment to appreciate our truly wonderful retired neighbors across the road that swiped my kiddos and looked after them all day, with Cliff back at the farm wonderfully lending a hand to us with everything.  I have been waiting for wonderful people like this. I don't feel so alone now!

Anyway - after all of that, we are settling into life as egg producers.

There is still a hell of a lot to get done before the little beauties are packaged away in their perfect little cartons with a label of our own on it.

Better hop to it.

I'm still technically on a break, but I've scored most of the day by myself as Nic makes yet another run to the Highlands to pick up the last of the things that we have bought with the 3 kidlets.  So I thought I'd check in with you.

Back to the grind, but I am going to be sure to take a few moments today to do something I want to do rather than have to do.

xx Amy

P.S. I will have an exciting litttle something to introduce you to next week!! Stay tuned.