Wow, the summer flew by and we had so much going on! Since I last posted about our little flock; we raised our chicks and still have some in the freezer (homegrown chicken is seriously the best chicken ever! I have never had a fryer chicken that was so juicy!). Our ducks were a little more tricky. We got them big enough to go outside and put them in their enclosure with a little pond and one night the board got taken out of the pond and three died because they couldn't get out of the water. Nope ducks can't live on the water forever! They actually drown.
So we replaced the three ducks with four more and still had two others, totaling 6 ducks! They have been so much fun! The enclosure got too small for them to just stay in all day, so we would put them away at night and let them out during the day to roam. We bought a swimming pool for them to play in and they were having so much fun! They were so much fun to just sit and watch.
The end of May, we received our laying chicks. They have been fun to raise as well. They looked like little caramel corns and were so cute. Now they are big and getting ready to lay eggs. We can't wait for the eggs!
In June, just after having gotten my garden in (32 tomato plants, 17+ peppers, 4 tomatillo plants, 8 okra, a bunch of onions, 72 strawberries, peas and beans), we had an awful hail storm. It hailed golf ball size hail for about 20 minutes. I was afraid our garden was done for. All of our boxes were just flooded. A few days later when we could go out and survey the damage, only a few tomatoes were lost, but most of the peppers were gone. I decided not to replace anything and just see what came of the garden. We were very blessed that most of the tomatoes did great and what peppers we had did great and everything else we planted did really well too!
Along with the hail storm came other damages though. We had some dings in our siding, ruined screens on the windows, but mostly the roof. We were needing to replaces one section of roof anyway because the boards were saggy. I feel that this was a blessing for us because they took care of all of that for us! We didn't have to worry about it. So we now have a new roof and no worries!
We did also have to replace our back deck. We have wanted to since moving in but figured it would be a few years, but then when we walked out on it about a month ago and felt like we were walking on a trampoline, only to find out the support boards were broken and rotted through, we decided to suck it up and do it this year, for safety reasons! We are excited for it though, it will be bigger and stronger than before and we will never have to replace it, hopefully!
So that pretty much catches us up to where we are now and I am starting freezer meals today, so that will be my next post! Have a great day!
