A Big Day for the Chicks

We have a lot of work to do today on the farm. The baby velociraptors are moving from the brooder box to the coop. We have a separate room in the coop which allows everyone to see each other but the big chickens can’t get to the chicks. The separate room has its own door to the outside, and around the first of July, the husband will fence off part of the chicken yard so the babies can go out with the big chickens but continue to be protected from them. We’ve used this system for years and it works well. By the end of August or so, the chicks will be big enough to hold their own against the other chickens and everyone will get mixed together.

My “happy lights” are coming down off the porch, to be replaced with the wind chimes and hummingbird feeders.

I am taking down the insulated shades on all the windows and putting them away for the summer.

After the babies move out of the garage, I need to sweep the winter’s accumulation of dirt out of there.

I have to install the temperature sensors in the freezer at the rental house and in the greenhouse. They are a cheap insurance policy against freezer failure or propane heater failure.

The husband has textured the ceiling in the rental house and will put a coat of primer on it and the walls today in preparation for me painting in there next week.

Charlotte is going to be moved over to the greenhouse. It is nice and toasty in there and I’ve seen plenty of winged insects flying around. I have not yet devised a method for capturing and moving her—she is surprisingly quick when she needs to be—but she really needs to go live somewhere other than in my kitchen. She has been there since the end of August—that’s seven months of me hand-delivering flies and crickets to a barn spider—and it’s time for her to go back out into the wild.

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Sewing next week—and hopefully, there will be some—will be focused on finishing the second iteration of the Burnside Bibs and putting the collar on the Rosebud Quilted Coat. After that, I need to work on making some warm-weather tops and pants for myself.

I am going to start with this pants pattern:

It’s a dead simple pull-on pant that can be made in two lengths. I never used to like pull-on pants but the method I use to anchor my pants around my waist seems to matter less the older I get. I never tuck in my tops because I get that “sausage tied in the middle” look. I’ll run up a quick muslin of these in a shorts version to check the rise and lengthen it if necessary. I suspect this will morph into some kind of amalgamation with the Free Range Slacks.

I also really like this skirt pattern. The closure is an invisible zipper at the back:

I wear a lot of skirts (or skorts) in the summer. I want to be cool but I am not a fan of shorts.

I have way more ideas than I have hours in the day.