The day it snowed feathers.

Hi readers, since I have a little extra time I will try to blog a little more and you can follow along with me as I do things on the little homestead. As a first responder, Andrew is still on duty. How I work at the library while we are closed to the public is being determined.

Anyway part of being prepared for an extended stay at home includes a trip to the feed store. I was running low on chicken feed anyway. 

The iron fighter is softener salt. I hear folks in the city sometimes have a water softener. It is essential out here with well water and especially where I live because of the iron. Sometimes when we are planting a tree or digging a hole for a post we run across veins of iron in the ground. If we didn't have the water softener, our white clothes and bathtub would eventually turn orange.

I tried to get so.e good pictures of he snowfall today. I don't think I have every seen snowflakes as big. The size of silver dollars didn't seem right and really the flakes reminded me of feathers. Especially the flake in the middle. Can you see it?

Later I went to take care of the chickens. I had never seen snow on the pen like this before. Not only did the thick flakes form a heavy blanket of snow, but then they settled like stalagmites.

The green tabs are zip ties for added protection for the chickens but that's a story for another day.

The snow is very heavy on the chicken wire ceiling of the pen. It will melt before it sags too much. Remember the chicken wire ceiling keeps predator birds like red tail hawks out.

Speaking of the chickens. They are doing fine and laying eggs. Today I gave them a treat of scratch grains.

Thia scratch mix has sunflower seeds, cracked corn, barely and millet. It is kind of like cheap candy for chickens. I can use it to lure them back into the pen if they are ranging. I can use it to put in a corner of their pen to distract them while I change out their water because they like to jump on their empty waterer while I'm changing it out and get it dirty.

Scratch can boost their metabolism a little when it gets cold...its high calorie but winter was so mild this year I have a lot leftover.

And sometimes it's just fun to feed them out of my hand. I'm going to upload a video let's see if it works...well here is a link.

hens getting a treat

Tutu is watching the snow. I will write more later. Take care of yourselves.