Blooming

Last week we kicked the rest of our ducklings outside.

We have them in the same pen as the 6 guineas and the 2 chickens.

Depending on the weather, we sometimes let them out to wander the yard.

If it rains we keep all of our ducks locked in their runs.

They tend to make giant messes anyplace that has water...like by the downspouts.

Last fall we planted lots of tulip bulbs.

I think it was somewhere around 36 bulbs.

I love tulips as they remind me of my grandma.

We had to put up a short fence to keep the ducks from destroying my plants.

We fenced around the north flower bed and out by the road.

They don’t eat the plants but rip on the leaves and stomp the plant.

Quite destructive little critters!

I think most of them will recover and bloom.

The ones out by the road are just beautiful.

See the stomped plants in the front row?

Those rotten little varmints!

They're lucky they lay eggs Connor can eat!

Our fruit trees are blooming too!

The red bud tree is getting close!

I think it's finally safe to say that spring has finally sprung!

Quilt Quack 14

Nothing much going on last week...or this week for that matter.

School e-learning and working.

Eat, sleep, repeat.

This photo quacks me up because I thought I had all of my ducks in a row.

Turned out that one was hiding in the corner.

Silly duck.

The ducklings are growing like weeds.

They’re almost getting too big for our tank.

The three oldest ones had enough feathers to be evicted.

:)

That leaves five ducklings in the house.

They're all the same age.

Pekin ducks, the yellow ones, grow faster than other ducks.

The darker ones are our Welsh Harelequins.

They're so pretty!

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I quilt during my lunch break at work.

Here I managed to sew a hexagon wrong side up.

You'd think it would be easier to not make mistakes when hand sewing.

Apparently that's not the case.

Oops.

In my defense, I hold them like this to sew them together.

It's easy to flip one the wrong way.

All fixed.

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I’m trying to get into a quilting groove.

Sometimes it’s hard to sit down and quilt.

Dwayne and the boys are super good at making sure I get time.

I just don’t always use my spare time to quilt.

It took me about four months to hand quilt my last full-sized quilt.

I need to get down to business!

I found this cool Celtic border template.

It fits perfectly between the blocks on the top and bottom borders.

I will need to figure out how to make it work on the side borders as they are a little longer.

Yay! Two sections done.

There are four sections across the bottom

Basically, I've almost quilted half of the bottom border.

Duck Math

We’re quite possibly crazy. We really do enjoy our animals.

There’s such a thing called “duck math”. We’ve personally experienced this. Basically duck math is where you start with a few, intend to only get a couple more and end up with way more. The flock kind of grows exponentially. I just happens… ok, well maybe a lack of self-control might have something to do with it. Here’s the story of our latest duck math adventure.

We gave 4 hens away with the intent to only replace the 4 hens.

We ordered only 4 hens.
So far so good.

Then we went to the feed store to get supplies for the soon to arrive ducklings. I knew we were in trouble the second we walked in the door and heard the cheeping and peeping. We just looked at each other. We must resist, we must resist… then we looked at the duckling bin. Wouldn’t you know it that they had a breed we’ve been wanting to try? Well, we’re not exactly sure of the breed but we’ve narrowed it down.
They had 3.
We got all three.
We’re so weak. I say we because I’m not sure which of us is weaker.
We both say the other. We’re both enablers.

We left the store with feed, bedding, and 3 adorable little ducklings.

The day came for our duckling order to arrive at the post office.

There were 5 healthy little ducklings in the box.

Yes, five.

The hatchery sometimes adds an extra just in case.

Summary of our duck math:

Started with 14 (12 hens/2 drakes)

Gave away 4 hens, leaving 10 (8 hens/2 drakes)

Spontaneously bought 3 (suspect 2 hens/1 drake)

Shipment of 5 (5 hens)

New total: 18 ducks! (15 hens/3 drakes?)

We should know in a couple of weeks what gender the three we bought from the feed store are.

We're pretty sure we’ve already heard at least one quack. A quack means it’s a hen.

We do have plans of re-homing some of the surplus ducks.

I know y’all are dying to find out what breeds we ordered! We ordered Pekins and Welsh Harelequins. These breeds are calmer, unlike our Runners. We’ve had Pekins before and the boys really like them. The Welshs are a new breed to us. They’re known for their very calm demeanor. I’m really hoping to make pets out of them. The Runners are fun to watch but they are very skittish! We’re going to try to handle the Welsh’s and Pekins everyday so they get used to us. Only time will tell how they will do.

Isn't this face adorable?

Long Time No Post

It has been an embarrassingly long time since I made a post. I have now a new plan of attack for writing posts. During my lunch break I will write a post without pictures. I will then email them to myself as I have no internet access at work. After that I can insert photos and do some final tweaking. We’ll see how this goes. It’s a work in progress!

So the world has completely changed since I last made a post almost 6 weeks ago! We are now all in the midst of the pandemic with most of life on pause. As of this writing, the state of Indiana has ordered all “non-essential” things to cease for two weeks. While my employer is not essential, we do fall under the exempt category. So I’m still going to work every day. There are noticeable changes at the office/shop. All for keeping people as safe as possible while working.

What have we been up to these last several weeks?

Before the chaos began:

Connor started track practice. He’s getting braces.

Nolan finished the required hours for his driving permit. He asked a gal to the prom.

The boys just finished the 3^rd quarter of the school year.

Their grades were awesome!

We spontaneously bought 3 ducklings even though we ordered some.

(Shocking, I know.)

I finally finished the top for Nolan’s graduation quilt.

(I'll make a quilt post soon!)

 After the world went crazy:

The boys’ school is closed until May st.

No track.

Don’t know about prom, senior awards night, or graduation...

or even when or if school starts back up. They have had a few days of e-learning.

The BMV is closed so Nolan can’t get his license.

Dwayne is still working but only going in for a few days and working from home the others.

I have ordered the things I needed to finish Nolan’s quilt backing.

I think I ordered them just in time as some of the online quilt shops are starting to close their warehouses!

It’s hard to plan for the future when the future is so uncertain. So many questions. Do we change our already planned St. Louis trip? What about school and graduation? What about the graduation open house? How do we help Nolan sign up for fall classes when this year is so messed up? Why did people go nuts and buy all the toilet paper!?

We’re  not worried. The boys are fine and they’re not worried either. (I think the years of homeshooling has helped them adjust to the school being closed.)

Certain things we do know:

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.

Isaiah 40:8

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

Hebrews 13:8

On Christ the solid rock we stand!

Changes and Additions

I'm trying to do a better job of keeping up with posts.

This is a quick update.

Our six Khaki Campbells are growing like weeds and we plan to move them outside soon.

So far only one of them is definitely quacking. Which means it's a hen.

We're hoping more start quacking as we don't want too many drakes.

As if we don't have enough animals as it is, we got six guineas.

We've been talking about it for a while.

We don't know that much about guineas.

We got French Pearl guineas. The babies are called keets.

We do know two things: 1. They are excellent alarms. 2. They are tick eating machines.

Should be quite an adventure.

Our mature duck hens have kicked it in high gear in the egg laying department.

We're getting about 10 eggs a day.

So thankful for our duck egg customers!

I recently ended my employment with the school.

The kitchen ladies had a farewell lunch for me.

It was sweet of them.

Monday I start my new full-time job.

I'll be in the drafting department of a large structural steel manufacturer.

I haven't been in the drafting field in 14 years!

Our blog posts may be sporadic until we get into a new routine with the new job.

The main reason for lack of posts is because I'm trying really hard to finish a quilt by the end of May.

It's hard to hand quilt when you're gone all day. I use all my spare time quilting.

So that's a quick update in our neck of the woods.

Quilt Quack 10

It's time for the Quilt Quack Chronicles.

I'm going to update on the current quilt projects and the ducklings.

I know you can hardly wait!

So much has happened in our little duck world I'm not sure where to start.

Our adult Khaki Campbell hen with the broken wing healed enough to go back with the flock.
She seems to be doing great.

We put our younger KC ducks outside as they had almost all of their feathers.
A few days later the hen ended up with some leg issues.
We brought her back inside and doctored her as best as we knew how.
Sadly, we had to cull her because she was getting worse.
So now we have one adult KC hen and one 8 week old KC drake.
This gives us the option of hatching some KCs next year.

That left us with four ducklings in the house.
Have I mentioned that they grow fast?
Have I mentioned that Pekins grow faster?

They were 4 weeks old in this picture.
The Pekin is quite a bit larger than the Runners.
It's hard to believe they all hatched on the same day!

Same ducklings at 5 1/2 weeks old.

Like I said, they grow fast!

Around four weeks of age the hens usually start quacking.
Drakes don't quack, they mumble.
We ended up with two of each.
We decided to take the two drakes outside. Our plan is to re-home them.
Too many drakes to hens can be a problem.
The hens will stay inside for a little while longer hoping
to prevent whatever it was that happened to the KC hen.
The hens quack a lot and they're LOUD! Can't hear the radio or TV loud.
I'm not sure how much longer we'll keep them inside...


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I have three (OK four) quilt projects I am actively working on.

One of the projects is a secret one so I won't share too much.
I am in the process of adding photos of my fabric to my quilting software.
This will enable me to design it with the fabrics I have.
It helps me to visualize it.
It also estimates how much I need of each fabric.


Next up is my forever project. The hexagon table runner that I've decided to name Confetti.

For a while I had a falling out with this quilt.

It can get monotonous doing the same thing over and over without fast results.

However, I finally finished sewing the last of the individual rows.

Woo hoo! Progress!

Now all I have to do is add rows.

This seems to have sparked some motivation to work on it more.

That and I managed to hurt my lower back again.

Not much to do (or should do) but sit and quilt.

So this is the state of the confetti table runner.
Not including the current row, I have nine more to go!


The Village quilt is the third official project.
I know I keep saying it but I love this one.

 I have 80 houses so far.
The top three houses in this photo have doors from a door swap I participated in.
It's like each house has its own personality.
I can't wait to have this one done.
It's going to be so cool and crazy!

My pieces for this week's 8 houses all ready for sewing.
If my back cooperates I might do this today.


The other project I'm working on is a "leader and ender" project.
You can read about it here.
I forget to update it because it's done as I sew other things.

I'm making these wonky log cabin blocks.

No measuring or squaring up until it reaches a certain size.

Then I square it to the size I want and put it in a box.

I have ten finished blocks so far.

I've got fourteen I'm currently sewing.

Eventually I'll have enough for a quilt.

It's kind like making two quilts at once.

Outside

We have moved our two oldest ducklings outside.

They are almost completely feathered out.

All prepared for the great outdoors.

Good thing because it got really cold their first night.

They have gotten along pretty well with the flock...
I should say the flock hasn't bullied them too much.

We do enjoy having them inside but the duck yuck as they get older is quite potent!

Not to mention that one of them was quacking.

So that leaves us with these four ducklings.

They are 3 weeks old now.

Although they are the same age, the Pekin is quite a bit larger than the others.

Pekins grow quicker because they are a meat bird.

They don't hold still very well for pictures.

They are rapidly approaching the ugly duckling stage.

Two of them seem to be noisier than the others.

We're pretty sure they might be hens.

We're really hoping the other two start making more noise too.

Only time will tell.