So Long, Skipper

Well, our family has just gotten a little smaller. After years of talking about it and months of stressing out about it, we have found a new, much more fitting forever home for Skipper.

We had a feeling this would be the result when Eddy was born. To be honest, we were dreading his reaction to her because normally when he hears a baby cry, squeal, laugh, or make any other noise for that matter, he responds with a pretty ear-piercing scream of his own. But, to our surprise and relief, he seemed to understand that our baby was taken care of and he didn't need to let us know about it.

So we thought maybe we would be able to keep him. Unfortunately, though he is much more pleasant about Eddy than we anticipated, he still has his needs that we don't have the time or energy to attend to.

Caring for Skipper is like caring for a toddler. He needs a lot of our time and attention and will scream if he doesn't get what he wants. What makes it hard is the fact that he hates me. If we would accept any affection, or food from me without attacking me, it might be a different story. But he only wants it from Shawn and Shawn just isn't home enough for it to be fair for Skipper.

We also think Skipper is lonely. He sits by himself for most of the day and screams when he sees our neighbors out the window.

He's a sad little dude, and we needed to do something about it.

The we were informed about Pacific Parrot Placement.

PPP is a local 501(C)(3) that helps people rehome their parrots. Once I heard about them, I filled out their Placement Registration Form and was contacted by them within 5 days with the message that they had a potential match for Skipper. The email included a little information about the possible candidate. It sounded pretty good so I filled out the Release Agreement form which officially switched ownership of Skipper to PPP (they actually retain ownership of him forever, so they have the right to take him back if they feel the new owner is not a good fit.) This agreement can be rescinded by us at any point in the process if we decided to keep him afterall. Once the papers were in from both parties with a donation from us ($50, which we were happy to pay to an organization that does this amazing work,) we got the contact information from Skipper's new daddy.

Then it was up to us to contact him. I emailed him with more info about Skipper and asked for more info about him. Though we were pretty eager to get Skipper out of here, we also felt an obligation to make sure that this new home was right for him. I asked him a few questions, one of them was whether he has any kids of his own or whether any kids may come around once in a while. To be honest, finding a home with kids would have been ideal, but this new home sounds like a winner.

We dropped him off at his new house on Sunday and were super happy with his new digs. He has a nice long hallway to practice his flying and his new Amazon friend named June is already enamored with him. (He also has two African Greys to hang out with.) He will also get periodic weekend visits from two children. His new owner is very experienced with parrots, and sounds like he devotes a lot of his time to caring for his "children." He also seems really chill about the way he cares for them, and just wants his "kids" to be happy. He was talking about how he shares his fries and pizza with the birds, and allows them the freedom to just be birds. We hung out in the house for a while and we drove away feeling happy. Though it's weird to not have him around anymore, we're super happy that he finally has a home that is best suited for his species (second to the wild, or course.)

To conclude, let's reminisce.

Though super annoying more often than not, he provided us as well as all our guests with a ton of entertainment over the years. From his somewhat limited vocabulary, to his extensive sound effects, and ear-peircing screams, he was always making noise. Despite this, and maybe because of this, Skipper's intelligence was always fascinating to me. He just knew things, and you could tell he was thinking and calculating and manipulating. Cool and aggravating at the same time.

He brought many laughs and lots of joy to scores of kids. I took him in to work on at least five different occasions over the years and he made a show out of the whole thing each time. Since he was always happy to see new people he'd never met, he would also put on a show for all of our guests, oftentimes being the life of many a party. The video above is of him putting on one of his shows. He thought he was a pretty good singer. He wasn't. But it was sure funny.

Since we dropped him off, I've been getting occasional picture messages from his new daddy. Here he is with his girlfriend, June. (Though he seems to be more interested in whatever he's eating than in his new friend.)

Skipper's on the left, June on the right :)

Cider Results

Hey friends, this is a post a long time coming.  I apologize for the major delay in letting you all know how our cider turned out.

After the first step of brewing that I showed you all in our first post, we did a quick transfer of the whole lot into a bucket so that we could clean out the yeast that had settled on the bottom.  Once cleaned out, we transferred it back into the glass carboy and let it brew again for another week.  We could have bottled it at this point, but we hoped that this quick cleaning out of the yeast and the settled solids would lead to a clearer final product.

After 3 total weeks of brewing and bubbling in the carboy, it was bottling time.  We saved a lot of old bottles and growlers but still needed a dozen 22 oz bottles.  At the same time we also bought some priming sugar and caps.  (Dan had the capper.)  The priming sugar is a small packet of corn sugar that is perfectly measured for 5 gallons of cider.  This adds just the right amount of sugar for the yeast to feast on in the bottles to create the perfect amount of fizzy carbonation.  Putting in too much sugar would create too much pressure in the bottles which may cause them to explode.  (No one needs exploding glass bottles.)

As you can see in the video, all of this process involves a lot of sterilization of the utensils and a siphoning tube to transfer the cider from carboys to buckets to bottles.

We tasted the first bottle about 10 days after we bottled it and was surprised at how much of a kick it had.  It was definitely on the drier side.  We had been so used to sweeter ciders that are mass produced today that we didn't realize what real cider tasted like.  It smelled really good and definitely held true to it's estimated 8.5-9% alcohol because we felt the buzz pretty quick.  Shawn did some research and we found that back in the day of Thomas Jefferson, when clean water was harder to find than cider, people would drink cider instead of water.

Since then, we've been drinking it really slowly, taking a bottle or two to parties and enjoying a bottle between us every now and then.  What we've noticed is that as it ages, the kick is replaced by a softer apple flavor.  We thought it was good at first, but it just keeps getting better.  We're thinking about saving a bottle or two for 6 months to a year to see how it ages.

All in all, this was a project that was not only really fun but really rewarding.  It feels so good to know that we're getting drunk off of our own hard work.

In case you were wondering, the total cost breaks down to:
$60-Rental of cider press
$20-A dozen 22 oz bottles and caps (Which we can reuse for next time.)
$20-Yeast and sugars

Total: $100 (We think.  We can't remember for sure.  This is also thanks to our friend Dan who had all the equipment.)

For Christmas, I bought Shawn a bottle of dry cider at a fancy beer store in Wallingford which was $14.  We tasted it, and though it was really good, we decided ours was better.  (We're not biased or anything. :))  If we calculate the amount of cider we made based on the price of the store-bought kind, we came to over $325 dollars worth of cider.  Yeah baby!

Final thought: We want to do it again.

Oh, and here is the YouTube link to the video.  http://youtu.be/Qpz8AcZi8YU

Makin' Hard Apple Cider!

Here it is folks!  I took our footage we got from this weekend's cider making extravaganza and made an easy-to-watch video.  The weather was perfect, everybody had a great time, it was just a perfect fall day.  Enjoy!

 

The words are a little too small to read when viewed small, but blogger made the quality too crappy to view full screen.  I've uploaded it onto YouTube so you can watch it here.

To see part 2, click here.

Leaps and bounds

When we got Abby, Frannie and Mabel last summer we were told they were around 3 to 4 weeks old.  Looking at our babies now, and comparing their size, that looks to be about right.  But looks is pretty much where the similarities end.

It's crazy how advanced our little ones are compared to their aunties when we got them last summer.  Almost since day 1, Pearl and Elsa have been using their feet to scratch around in their wood shavings.  They've been dust bathing since week 2 and flapping their wings and escaping their box at the first chance they get.  We've have to upgrade to taller and taller boxes twice now and still, they find a way out.  (We've given up at this point.)

Abby, Frannie and Mabel took several days to try to fly out of their box and they were at least 5 weeks old before they realized what to use their feet for.  Dust bathing came way later once they were outside chickens and it took Frannie several weeks to teach the other two how it was done.  I don't know if this difference is because the older ladies were stuck in a crappy place stuffed into a small bin with dozens of their sisters but the difference is huge.  And I can't take any credit for it because I know I didn't teach these new babies how to do any of this stuff.  Instincts are strong.  I just hope this means that these ladies are healthier and we won't have to deal with illness and sudden death like we did with the first ones.

Here's a video of their most recent new trick.  Elsa is a WAY better flier that Pearl (her wings are considerably longer) and she can maneuver herself pretty good.

They pretty much spend most of their day hanging out on the side of their box, pooping out the side into the bathtub or into their food and water.  Awesome.  Just because they're babies doesn't make their poop any less gross to clean up.

They're quickly losing their fluff.

This weekend we took advantage of the weather and gave another try at outside time.  This time, the babies only freaked out for about 2 minutes until they realized that being outside is the bomb.  Within 10 minutes of being out, several rollie pollies, a grub, a slug, and a whole bunch of dandelion heads had bit the dust and were resting (un)comfortably in their crops.  They were so happy.  (The babies were, that is.)

Fun velociraptor action shot.

The heat lamp is going to be turned off in a couple days since they're getting enough feather coverage to keep warm and their coop is now officially under construction.  (Pictures of that to come soon.)  I think they may be able to go out sooner than their aunties did so now it's pretty much crunch time.

The 411.

I should do picture only posts more often, yesterday's was so easy...  But alas, even though a picture can say a thousand words, I can say ten thousand!!!  Whatever.  Here's the deal:

They're babies.  I mean, really babies.  Today they're 3 days old.  That means a little over 36 hours ago, they were still in their eggs.  This also means that they are about the size of eggs too... tiny.  So tiny that they both fit snugly into your hand and weigh absolutely nothing. 

SO FLUFFY!!!

BFF's

However, they grow fast.  We've had them almost 24 hours now, and already, their little wing feathers are starting to open up and they're flapping them around.  They were only eating wood chips yesterday, but have finally realized that they also have food as an option.

They're pretty adorable.  I can't stop playing with them.  When we went to get them yesterday, they were in different cages so didn't know each other at first.  Even though they're super babies, you could tell they were trying to size each other up on the ride home and decide who was going to be the boss.  I can't tell who won, but they're buddies now.

So this is Pearl.  She's a Delaware.  When she's grown up, she'll look like this.  Pretty, huh?  She was the only one in her cage that had this black spot on her head, so obviously, I had to pick her.  She's definitely the loud one.  Her chirps are ear-piercing and it doesn't take much to get her going.

And this, once again, is Elsa.  She's a partridge rock.  She gets to look like this.  She's the same breed as Abby, but a different color.  We decided to go with her because Abby is awesome, and we wouldn't mind having another one of her around.  I think she's just the prettiest.  Her chirp is definitely quieter, and she doesn't scream her little head off over every little thing.

They've taken over our bathroom, but luckily we have two in this house.  Shawn and I are still planning on doing lots of showering at the gym for the next 8 weeks or so.  The only problem with getting them this tiny is that they need to stay inside the house for about 12 weeks, and at least 3 weeks of that under a heat lamp.  We got our first babies when they were 4 weeks old so we were able to avoid that part.  Oh well.  The reputable place we got them from would have sold out of them had we not gotten them yesterday and we would've had to go back to the other place which we didn't want to do.

And here's a video of what they do in their free time:  Which is all the time.

Cake and Chickens

Ah, my two favorite things.  Both happened today.  So what to start with... cake or chickens?

Lets do chickens.  The day started rather normally, except for one thing.  I apparently forgot to open the little door that connects the coop with the run.  I think I forgot because the chickens usually bust right past me out the bigger door in the morning since they're eager and ready to get their grazing on, so they were already out in the yard.  I opened the run up so they can get into their food and water but just forgot to open the other one.  This afternoon, I went out to clean some poop and refill their food dishes when I noticed there were no eggs.  As I was feeling puzzled by this, I saw that the little door was closed.  As soon as I opened it up, Frannie came running in like she was prairie doggin' an egg.  Pretty funny.

So I left her in peace and went about refilling food troughs.  I opened the "barn" door (we call the shed that houses all the chicken supplies like food, scratch, and straw "the barn") which resulted in Abby and Mabel running in.  For some reason, they LOVE the barn and scratching around for any dropped corn kernels and such.  But this time, Abby hopped up onto the straw bale and sat like she needed to lay an egg.  Feeling bad about being a bad chicken mommy and thinking her egg may also be turtle-heading, I just let her sit.  I came back about 3 minutes later, and there already was an egg under her!  I quickly got my camera so I could report to daddy about the crazy thing that Abby did today.  Luckily, I also got footage of her after-laying-triumph-calls.  I think all chickens do this, squawking like they're really proud of their accomplishments or something.  The video is a little long, but I wanted to include Mabel trying to burrow into the nest as far as she can go... crazy girl.

Soon after this video, Mabel left the nest without laying so I grabbed the egg.  And it was ice cold.  What???  How could that be?  Didn't Abster just lay it?  She must have laid it last time we cleaned the coop... but how could she have creeped by and done that without us noticing?  But then why was she calling like she had just laid?  It's still a mystery.  I opened the egg and it was totally fine, so it hasn't been sitting there that long.  It's a good thing it's been coooold out to keep it chilled.

This leads me to where the egg went: the cake.

It was Shawn's Ma's birthday yesterday, so today I made dinner and a birthday cake for her.  I decided to make a simple yellow cake and top it with some good stuff.  What kinds of good stuff?  You know, the usual, fresh fruit, whipped cream, and to make it extra special, lemon curd.  I grew up eating lemon curd, but I've come to realize that lemon curd is not a staple in many people's diets.  We always ate it on bagels, on top of the cream cheese.  Never done it?  Do it, it's the best way to eat toasted bagels.

Home-made eggs make for a very yellow lemon curd.

Lemon curd is really simple to make.  Take a microwave-safe bowl and mix together a cup of sugar, the juice from 2 lemons, two eggs, 4tbs melted butter, and the zest from those two lemons.  Mix it all up and microwave, stirring every minute to 45 seconds until it thickens.  You can also do it on a double-boiler, but microwaving it is way easier.  Put it in a nice jar, and there you go.  It'll stay good in the 'fridge for about 2 weeks.

The cake I made is a cream cake (you use whipping cream instead of milk) and I found it here.  I whipped up the remaining whipped cream from the recipe and sliced up some strawberries.  I feel a little guilty about buying fresh fruit when it is totally out of season, but sometimes I just want it.  Put it all together, and it looks like this:

Yummy.

Oh yeah, I went to Goodwill today.  As usual, there were some serious finds.  I'm itching to get started on my garden, so I found a watering can and some planting pots and trays for the greenhouse we'll be getting soon.

Cake, chickens, Goodwill.  It's the little things that really make my day.

Hilarious.

Abby is an in-your-face kind of gal.

I may have mentioned this before, but my chickies are hilarious.  Before I got them, I knew that I would love them, mainly because I love all creatures, no matter how large, small, fluffy, slimy, feathered, stinky, cute, cuddly, mean, spiky, useful, not useful... you get the picture.  (This list, however, has one exception.  Ants.  I hate them.  They were in my house two summers ago, and they are NOT my friends.)  Anyway, I tend to get very emotionally attached to all living creatures, and I knew that my chickens would be no exception. 

HOWEVER.  I had no idea how much I would enjoy them.  They are the funniest little creatures ever!  Everyday, they do something that is so funny I laugh out loud.  Take, for instance, what they did yesterday.  I went out to their coop to check on them before going to school and to give them some whey oatmeal.  I walked into the coop to find Abby and Mabel both trying to squeeze into the nesting box. Now, they have two boxes, but have only ever use one.  I wish I had a picture.  Take my word, they looked pretty silly.  Anyway, they were both trying to squeeze into this one box, which already had an egg in it.  And what were they doing?  Fighting over the egg.  Abby would scoot it over under her, just to have Mabel steal it back.  Abby would look down, notice that she wasn't sitting in the egg anymore, and move it back.  This went back and forth for several minutes until both decided that oatmeal was way cooler than a stupid egg.  Upon closer inspection, it was Mabel's egg so she had rights to it. 

Watching them eat oatmeal and cream of wheat is pretty hilarious too.  I usually "accidentally" make too much oatmeal and cream of wheat just so I can give it to them and watch them eat it.  I also usually add raisins (a snack favorite) and maybe some crushed up egg shells to make sure they're getting enough calcium.  They've learned (quite early on) that generally we have treats for them, so when they're roaming about the yard and see one of us with something in hand, they drop whatever they're doing and dash over to us.  Watching chickens run is hilarious too, by the way.  Here's a video of today's oatmeal feeding:

What's even funnier about them eating oatmeal and cream of wheat is the fact that they get it all over their faces.  When they look at each other, they see food on their sister's faces and start pecking at each other.  When all three hens get into it trying to eat the food off of each other's faces, all chaos ensues.  What's the word of the day?  Hilarious.

Egg update: Two days ago, we hit 100 eggs!  The egg count board is looking quite impressive huh? 

Whey update: I'm down to 1 cup!  Yessss.  I have onion olive bread rising at the moment, which, of course, was made with whey.  I'm pretty tired of figuring out what to do with it.  BUT, no more whey means I get to make more cheese!  This is exciting.  But then I'll have more whey to deal with.  Sigh...

Wish Granted!

I had one of the most exciting days of my life yesterday.  Well, maybe not ever, but definitely up there.  I got to see both Abby and Frannie lay an egg!!!  These were egg #'s 8 and 9.  It was so fun, even though I ended up sitting out in the cold waiting for about 45 minutes.  It was totally worth the numb fingers and toes.  I took video of it, and decided to have fun with the editing.  Enjoy!

If the quality is not so good, blame blogger you can watch it here on YouTube instead.

It's EGG time!

Way to go ABBY!

Yes indeedy.  Abby has provided!  Shawn and I went out to check on the ladies, since it's pretty darn cold out there, and to let them out to have their first snow time.  Shawn said he saw Abby earlier in the day sitting in her nesting box so out of curiosity, I went to check it out.  I really didn't think there would be anything but lo and behold!  Isn't it a beautiful sight?  And look at the perfect little bowl she made out of her straw!  Oh, we are so proud of her!  

Perfect, just perfect.

I was thinking that the first one was gonna be small and funny-looking but it's perfect.  It's not even that small... well, it kind of is, compared to the store-bought ones in our 'fridge, but it doesn't matter.  I feel like my wish has come true.  We made sure to change their food to layer feed, (thank goodness we bought some yesterday,) and I cleaned out the nesting box of any and all poo. 

Chickie prints!

I even got a snow day from school.  At first it was an accident because the bus drove right by me without stopping so I missed my first class, but my evening class was canceled too, so it just turned into a snow day.  I'm house sitting my parents house while they are in New Zealand for 3 weeks, (lucky ducks) so we took their/our dog out to Hamlin park for a nice winter wonderland hike.  I even did some homework in between.  What a great day compared to the crappy one I felt like I was having yesterday.  I think I've got my motivation back so, you're goin' down homework!  I might even give myself some crafty time.  AND thanksgiving is approaching. I'm thankful for my chickies, my kitties, my Shawn... and this video of the chickies having their first snow time.