Free range chickens

We love having our chickens free-range.  We enjoy watching them flock about the yard and they do a good job of keeping bugs and weeds under control.  We have had these free-ranging for several months now and the only complaint I have is that they like to lay their eggs all about the yard!  The dogs have realized that they are yummy - so it is a race to beat them to the newest hiding spot and gather them.  I have started paying the kids 10 cents an egg.  It is frustrating to me because I want the chickens to serve their purpose but I don't like having to pen them up all the time.  We are experimenting now with capturing them all (27 of them now) and putting them in the houses at night and then letting them out after a few hours of daylight and hopefully they will get in the habit of laying their eggs before then.  We are going to try 11am and see what happens from there.  I don't really want to feed them all winter if they aren't going to produce at least enough for our family, so they better get the message or they will be in the freezer!  :-)

New to us fish tank!

We were able to get a very good deal on a 30-gallon tank setup from craigslist.  Will had been asking for one, and when Liz died, it became a little more urgent.  We had read books from the library and found a really neat one that showed creative / unusual ways to decorate your tank.  One of the ideas was a winter wonderland - which we decided to try to create first.  (Stay tuned in the spring for a playground!)  We found items at the dollar store and made a background with the blue snowflakes, tissue paper and glitter.  The white snowflakes are suspended on fishing line and dance around in the water so that it looks like it is snowing.  We plan on getting some more things to fill up all that space, but this was a fun start!  We will add a few starter fish on Tuesday and then if they do well we will add more to the tank.  We plan on barbs, gouramis, sharks, etc... nothing too aggressive but still some fun stuff.

"Liz" passes away

We were very sad this morning to find that "Liz" the lizard had passed away.  She was well loved and lived with us for 2 1/2 years.  Will was sad and buried her near the canna lilies.