They grew!

Our tomatoes finally grew actual tomatoes! One plant has only one tomato, but the rest have at least three or four. And a couple of them are growing abundantly. I hope that it doesn't turn too cold before we get a bunch of red tomatoes.

Birdie babies

Twenty-nine years ago in June, my cousin Rita and I had babies together. Well, almost together! I was due first, but Rita had Lowyn early, and he arrived on June 21, while I had to wait a whole day longer, a week past my due date, before Nancy made her appearance on June 22.  It was an unusual time for a small town like Raymond, because six babies were born within days of each other! We even made the newspaper:

There are Rita and I, side by side with our babies. We had fun in the hospital together--where they would let you stay for a week in your own private room with an en suite bathroom, bringing your meals and snacks, and providing a daily back rub. It was birthing heaven! Seriously! Rita and I could visit each other in our rooms, and let our babies have a look at each other. Such a lovely memory!

Lowyn was child #9 for Rita and David. (Jeff, Cara, Camilla, Cherilea, Jared, Landon, Emily, Kayleen came before.) She added a few more after, too. (Dallin, Janae, Shelyse and Joseph.)

And she is still breeding--only it is pheasant babies she is bringing into the world!

It all started twenty years ago, when Lowyn was nine. He wanted to do a Science Fair project raising baby pheasants, so they got a clutch of eggs from Alberta Fish and Game, and built the incubator and the heated box and a small chicken run and started hatching. It was intended to be a one-shot deal, just for the Science Fair.

BUT one of the eggs hatched out a white pheasant, while all the rest were the brown striped chicks they had been expecting. They called Alberta Fish and Game and the provincial Wildlife office and vets and others they could think of, and everyone said that was a mutant bird, and it would die.

But it didn't. It lived. So David, who is a biologist, said "Let's breed these pheasants ourselves and see what happens."

So, they kept on going. And going, and going...and as the years have gone by, the white strain is still apparent. In the early years, the white chicks were always among the last to hatch. But they seem to have been getting stronger over time.

Sometimes the chicks are a motley blend of white head, brown body, one white wing, etc. They can look very odd if they are not either pure white or pure brown. But none of the ones born this time were like that: they were either white or brown.

We were fortunate to time our visit exactly right, so the days and nights were full of checking to see if the chicks were ready to hatch. The incubator has a layer of water at the bottom, for humidity, so it is important to remove chicks so they don't accidentally drown themselves. Also, they roll around and mess up the other eggs, which is pretty discombobulating for the chicks inside them!

A picture dump follows, with captions to explain things as needed:

Rita opens the lid to look at the eggs. See the one that has been pecked? That chick is getting ready to "ring" the egg. That means, the chick will peck around and around until s/he can flip the lid and get out of the egg.

The baby got out of that egg!

It is hard work to get unstuck from the goo inside the egg. But we don't help it. We just watch, unless it seems that they are giving up. Let them do it, if they can.

So many white ones! The first night, Sunday night, Piper stayed up to help Rita, and they had white babies hatching one after another, four or five in a row! Rita said it was very unusual to have so many white babies so early in the process. They are usually the late birds.

Malachi sitting by the hot box the babies get moved to. He loved to see the babies!

Nurse Rita checking out the eggs. There were 77 out of an original 112 that looked like they had chicks inside them.

Chicks and more chicks!

Another view of the chicks.

See the ring around that egg? It will be hatching soon. (Rita moves the hatching eggs to the front, in order to more easily keep an eye on them.)

Rita showing Abra, Deklan and Malachi the incubator and its contents.

Another shot. A bit blurry. Sorry.

Come out, little chickie!

You can do it!

Rita puts the newly hatched chick in with the others.

Cute little babies!

When one box got too full of babies all walking all over each other, Rita got a new pen ready, and began to put the newer birds in it. See how wet and bedraggled the new one is compared to others than hatched sooner.

Almost the same picture! Spot the differences!

A close-up view of a pile of chicks.

There are so many! It ended up, by the time we left, that there were 58 chicks hatched and about 18 were white. About one third! That was awesome. There were still a few eggs to go, and about 6 or 7 that looked like the chicks died trying.  What will you do with those? "Feed them to the pheasants. They will eat anything." GROSS!!

The chicks graduate from the boxes inside the house to this pheasant run in the back yard.

 Years ago, the chickens stayed on the property until they met their death and ended up as dinner for the family. But a neighbor complained, and so they now move the older chickens to a different property. Because the males crow just like roosters, and there is a by-law against such behavior.  Rita has been trying to get Jeff, her oldest son (married and a father of nine children himself) to move these older birds before they start to crow. But she heard two crows one morning! Yikes!

The neighbor she thinks complained about her birds a few years ago came marching into her garden a couple of days ago, where Rita was working:

Rita's garden

Rita was thinking "Oh please be quiet, birdies!"

The lady said, "Do you raise ducks?" Rita said, "No, no ducks." The lady said "Well, I know that you used to raise pheasants, so I thought you might raise ducks."

"No..." said Rita, eyeing the pheasant run, where all the birds were AMAZINGLY all inside the coop, out of sight. And ALL were quiet!

The lady talked to Rita and left, and did not notice the pheasant run or the birds inside. PHEW!!!

Well, we had such fun staying there, and Abra's children loved watching the eggs hatch, and watching the chicks scramble all over each other. Abra even got to hold a chick, which is a total no-no for most people. Lucky her!

Abra holds a chick

PS I forgot to mention that one morning, in the midst of all this egg-hatching, we had pheasant eggs for breakfast. (Everyone but Abra, who doesn't like eggs at the best of times, and while hatching eggs is not the best of times to also be eating them...) And they were very tasty.

Let me just add a few pictures from the last day we were there. The chicks were a bit fluffier by then:

A Pile of Brownies

The Whitey just won't hold still!

Two whiteys standing on the feeding tray Rita fashioned from an egg carton.

Aren't they cute? Or at least fluffy?

I think this is three of each.

Rita, the Mother of Invention and 13 other children with Rose, Malachi, Bruce, David and Joseph (called Zephyr)

The same people, with me instead of Bruce.

 

Border crossing

Suppose you went to Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park in Alberta. You are about ten miles from the Coutts border crossing when you make that decision. You travel 44 km (about 30 miles) to get there. And it is fun and picturesque what with the hoodoos and the petroglyphs and all. And you say to yourself, "Hmmm....40 miles to Coutts (backtracking) or 20 miles to the Aden border crossing. Which one should I take?"

Did you think the answer was Aden, because it is closer? So did I...but that was the wrong answer! Because gravel, narrow, ruts, washboardy, winding, lack of signs. And then when you get to that last unmarked gravel road intersection in the middle of nowhere and have to guess where to go, that is when you decide to turn around. Except...will you be able to find your way back. Remember, unmarked roads. So instead, you stop at a farmhouse, and the nice lady tells you that you are only about 5 miles away. (Well, actually, she tells your husband because scary farm dogs, so no way will you get out of the car to ask!)

So you follow her directions, and you get to the Aden border crossing, which consists of two, and only two, buildings. One prefab on the Canadian side and an actual building on the US side.


And the two US agents are like, "What is this? A car? We have to WORK?" So, even though there are no vehicles in sight in either direction, you wait and wait (while they are putting away the snacks and turning off the video games, maybe) and finally they motion you forward and say...

"What are you doing here?" (say that with appropriate intonation of consternation, please.)

And you say, "Well, that is a very good question..." And you tell them what I have already told YOU. And then they, and you, all laugh at just how silly you really were to end up at this border crossing. And then they look at your passports, and all is well. And they ask the usual questions (what did you buy, any fruit, firearms, liquor or tobacco--they forgot to ask about kinder eggs, but Rosie and Malachi were busily consuming those while we bumped along over the prairie.)

And then the border agent says, "Have a nice day...you have forty more miles on gravel on the other side..."

And then you bump your way along through Montana, adding a couple of cattle gates to the gravel and ruts...but on wider, straighter roads. Still a shortage of signs, but thanks to my husband recognizing Oilmont Highway, we eventually got on I-15!

So back to the original question...when two roads diverge in the yellow prairie, do not take the one less traveled. Take the one that everyone else takes, and that will make all the difference. However, taking the road less traveled makes for a more sticky memory, because there is a story to tell!

Redesign

Back when I was young and sewed a lot, I had occasion to redesign dresses.  One of my favorite redesigns was a dress that I had and loved but that for whatever reason I stopped wearing and redesigned it into a dress for Kelli. I don't have a picture of what the dress looked like when I wore it, but I do have a picture of Kelli wearing it:

This picture was taken in October 1983. I actually remade the dress for Kelli's birthday. She loved it, just as I had. It was nice fabric! You can't see the cute style of it very well in the picture, though.)

Now, I have been without a sewing machine for a good fifteen or sixteen years. I have gotten very, very good at hand sewing to do minor fixes.  But I have not taken on big sewing projects because...no sewing machine!

But...lately I have gone a bit berserk buying maxi dresses because they are in style, and long dresses are the only dresses I will wear. So I have been wearing the same clothes over and over for a long time, and am just excited to buy more finally!  Well, most the maxi dresses are sleeveless, and so I wear them with a T-shirt. (H & M are the best!). So I bought this one:

But see those two layers of flounce? Dislike.  Plus, the straps were not fixed--you had to tie them, which for me meant slippage. And it was just a bit too long and I didn't like the fit much. If it was up high enough to feel like the fit was right on my waist and hips, then the top was cutting into my armpits.  I wore it twice with a light blue t-shirt, and I just felt uncomfortable in it. So...redesign time!

I unpicked the flounces (2 in front and 1 in back) and cut out a new bodice and back and sleeves. Then I walked over to the uber-talented Nancy Braithewaite's house to ask if I could come to her house and sew. Nancy sews all the time.  She is working on quilts for her grandchildren who most recently graduated from high school.  She fixed me up, chose the correct needle and thread for my fabric, and here is the result. I like it SOOOOO much better!

Here it is...first time I actually wore the dress, while at my sister Colleen's house on August 3rd:

 

Which do you like the best? I prefer the redesign!