Lovely Ladies

Jimmy building the coop.  Seth helped.  Kind of.

Secretly I love this song.  We are huge Les Miserables fans at our house, but I'm afraid my Jimmy usually skips this song when it comes up on the play list.   We don't need children asking what lovely ladies are quite yet do we?  But deep down inside I LOVE to sing this song.  It's a little scandalous, and sassy, and I just like being that way sometimes.   But I'm posting about some other lovely ladies today.  We have recently had 11 gals join our family.  I love their guts!

This is the day we brought the ladies home.  Happy kids, happy chicks!

A few weeks ago Jimmy decided he was going to build a chicken coop.  We were going to give it one more shot.  We've had chickens twice in the past, but it hasn't exactly worked out too well.  First they make a mess of gardens, and secondly Lucy and Gus find chickens to be enormously entertaining.  It all starts out quite innocently.  A bird in the mouth that is gently spit out, but eventually the bird squirms just enough to let the dogs know how fun it is to play with them.  And it never ends pretty.  I remember the first morning we had a rooster join our family.  We woke up to a beautiful Cock-A-Doodle-Doo.   I commented to James how nice this was going to be and the next thing we knew Lucy was eating breakfast.  No more roosters for us.  It's just too tempting for our canine family members.

So our new chicken coop is cute.  It's very functional as well, but dang cute.  It matches the barn.  Jimmy worked his guts out, and ended up with a coop fit for 11 lovely ladies.  Now getting our ladies was a treat too.  My brother Josh told us who to call, but didn't mention that the people we were buying from were polygamists.  In his defense the chicken people delivered Josh his chickens.  We went to their farm to get ours, and yep--------polygamist for sure.  Do you know how I could tell?  Well when you ask if 2 little boys are twins and the answer is, "Oh no.  This brother's birthday is in Sept. and the other brother's is Dec." you know you've met a polygamist.  They know how to round up the chickens though:)

I LOVE this picture.  You can see just how excited and proud Jimmy was of his new coop.  I love it!

So everyday now Seth runs off the bus and heads straight to the chicken coop.  We are getting between 7 and 9 eggs per day.  So I figured if we eat German Pancakes everyday we will be able to keep up with our lovely ladies.  Yum!  Who doesn't love German Pancakes?  I've included the labor intensive recipe.   We might just have it for dinner tonight!

German Pancakes

1 c. flour

1 c. milk

6 eggs

1/4 c. butter

In a 9x13 inch pan place the butter and put in a preheating oven.  Watch so that your butter doesn't burn, but is completely melted.  In a bowl combine the milk, flour and eggs, and mix until smooth.  Pour into the 9x13 inch pan and return to a 425'F oven for 20-25 minutes.  My kids fight over the puffy edges.  I serve with apple pie filling, or buttermilk syrup, or any other syrup or fruit of choice.  I thank my chicks daily!