This summer the weather has cooperated with our attempts at gardening. This photo is a couple of weeks old so imagine it a bit more fruitful now but we have truly enjoyed God's bounty. It's been a family affair to plow, plant and weed the garden and we get excited at the prospects of LOTS of canned salsa and pickles. So far we've only harvested lettuce, cucumbers, jalapenos and green beans but other things are just about ready. We even have a huge bounty of grapes waiting to ripen and we can almost taste the grape jelly (Lord willing).
We've also had other fruitfulness to be thankful for. One of our hens decided she wanted to be a momma and gave us hints for a few weeks about it before we caught on. Well, as we have no roosters, we had to get some fertilized eggs from a friend. After slipping 8 little bundles of liquid chicken under the hopeful hen and waiting the standard 21 days, God has given us 7 fluffy, baby chicks. It's so much fun to watch them together and so much easier than raising chicks under a heat lamp in our basement. Momma hen does all the work training and protecting her clutch.
As an added blessing, these little ones helped soften the blow as a stray dog found our flock and wrecked havoc with our hens. Weighing the amount of feathers scattered throughout the yard, we were stunned to have most of our hens survive the ordeal. Only two of our grown hens were killed and our matriarch (that we've had since the beginning of this adventure) is sporting a bare bottom. Poor Grandma Cluck has only 1 tail feather left and looks like someone stuck a paintbrush into her bottom like a pin cushion. "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the Name of the Lord." Job 1:21
*Note on 7/14/11
This morning we woke up to find that momma hen and 6 of her chicks were killed by a racoon. Somehow one lonely chick survived the massacre and it's now cheeping in our basement. The kids had to grieve again and we had to look for things to praise God for. Remembering Job and all that he lost, this seems small.
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2 comments:
Isn't it such a blessing?? Our garden is doing a lot better this year too--after the last couple years, I was thinking we just didn't know how to garden! :) Still love the hen and chicks.
I'm sorry to hear about the mother hen and chicks! Our kids would take that pretty hard, too. Hope the survivor is still doing well!
What fun, though, to see things growing, and look forward to the harvest!
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