Thankful Thursday

I am calling this thankful Thursday on my blog. I have several things to be thankful for today. I am thankful for a wonderful family, a beautiful place to live, having my needs met and today I am thankful for the safe arrival of my turkey poults! They came via the USPS and all arrived alive and healthy! What are you thankful for today? My new header picture is of our apple tree near the deck. Aren't those pretty apple blossoms?

These are some photos of our new turkey poults. They were just hatched on the 28th. Two days ago. There are 15 of them. They are Narragansett turkeys. Here is a description of the breed and a picture of what they will look like as adults.

"This beautiful bird descends from a cross between the Eastern Wild Turkey and domestic turkeys brought to this country by European colonists. It is named for the Narragansett Bay of Rhode Island. They are a rare, multicolored, medium-sized breed with hens weighing up to 17 lbs. And toms up to 30 lbs. Their body plumage is primarily black with bands of steel gray. The tail is dull black, regularly penciled with parallel lines of tan, edged with steel gray. They are known for being calmer than most and are good mothers."

A nice Narragansett tom Photo courtesy of Phil Sponenberg of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy

This is what the tom will look like when grown. I borrowed this picture from http://www.feathersite.com/. If you are interested in learning more about poultry I think this is an excellent place to read up on the subject.

Here are more adult Narragansett turkeys. I found this photo on Performance Poultry's website. Here is their website: http://www.performancepoultry.com/index.php They are in Canada and have lots of interesting things to read about also.

This is a photo of the new poultry barn. It is nearly completed. The one side will house the turkeys, the other the Dark Cornish chickens. Each will have their own separate yard to roam around in outdoors.

The neighbors were burning a brush pile on the other side of the fence. Looks like our barn is on fire. Heaven forbid! Do you like the long narrow windows? Ed is getting so creative in his barn building skills. More windows will be going in and also in the other barn. Soon we will be painting the barns a lovely red with white trim. Do you know why barns were painted red in the old days? Because the darker color attracts the heat in the winter, thus keeping the barns a bit warmer for the livestock. There now you have learned something new today. : )

Here is a side note---about red barns. When my husband read about why barns are painted red he laughed and thought I made it up! So here are a few links to information on the web as to why barns are mostly red. The first one being where I had learned about the color absorbing heat.

http://www.grit.com/Community/Why-Are-Barns-Red.aspx

http://www.farmersalmanac.com/blog/2008/09/16/farmers-almanac-trivia-why-are-many-barns-red/

http://amos.indiana.edu/library/scripts/redbarns.html

More new things for our farm this month include our own citrus orchard. Yep! We bought 5 dwarf citrus trees. We have a Meyer lemon, a Bears seedless lime, a Navel orange, a Satsuma orange and a white grapefruit. These we will keep outdoors during the summer months and then move into the new greenhouse Ed will be building for the winter. We are so excited to have citrus now. Here are some photos of the new trees.

We got a great deal on some half barrels for transplanting them in. I had seen them for sale at our local Bi Mart store for $23.99 the last time I was in Coos Bay. Then we got the sale paper and I saw they were marked down to $19.99! So Ed stopped there and bought us 5 of them for our trees. He is going to put casters on them so we can roll them in and out of the greenhouse with ease. Smart guy he is!

I had time to make a couple of quilt blocks for a drawing my online quilting group was having. Here is a picture of mine. They are all the same pattern and we were to use red and blue with a white background in a patriotic theme.

We are getting close to the hatching day for our first batch of Muscovy ducklings. They should be hatching in about 4-5 days. We still have the one Buff Orpington chicken setting on duck eggs and White Rose the duck setting. Then about a week to 10 days later our little gray duck started sitting on a bunch of eggs. The girls have named her Lavender. Here is White Rose (who isn't so white right now)

Below is a picture of Buff and then of Lavender on her nest.

Isn't she about the prettiest hen you have seen in a long time? I think so.

One last photo for today is of our other three ducks. The big dark one is the drake and the other two are the hens that aren't setting right now. Okay two last photos.

That is all for today. Tune in tomorrow to see what I will be posting on Frugal Friday!