Here’s a story of adoption on the Morgan Ranch. In this quick article, I’ll describe the steps I took to introduce 8 baby chicks to a broody hen.

My Buff Orpington’s have been the broodiest hens ever since I dispatched Mr. Rooster. I honestly can’t be for sure that it’s been the same hen… but it’s been the Buffs each time. There are periods where one of them ends up in the nesting box for weeks on end. Since I employ faux eggs, these broody hens end up sitting on warm, wooden eggs. Briefly, the use of faux eggs has worked just as intended. If you keep taking a hens eggs, they begin to think that something is getting them and ultimately deem it an unsafe place to lay eggs. Since the coop has only so many nesting boxes, you don’t want to have the hens thinking it’s unsafe to lay eggs in it. The hen’s think fake eggs are real and they will come in and lay fresh eggs among them. I end up taking the real eggs, and leaving the faux eggs in the boxes. This process works well.

Another Buff took over the nesting box with the most faux eggs. I chide “you’re sitting on fake eggs… they’re not going to hatch!” But, she ignores me… and keeps sitting. This was a week or two before I left town for vacation. When I got back, the hen was still in the box. I picked up 6 new chicks the weekend I returned and set up my brooder box. After a week or so, it occurred to me that the poor broody hen in the coop sure would like to have some baby chicks. So the light went on in my head and I thought, I need to introduce these chicks to a momma.

I don’t know why… but I ended up going down to the store and I grabbed three more baby chicks… of another breed. So, now I had 8 checks of three different breeds… and 5 of them were a week old already.

In the morning, when all the other hens were out of the coop, I closed the pop door and introduced the first chick under the broody hen. I just opened the nesting box lid and quickly and quietly dropped the chick in behind the hen. No voice and no noise. She took right to it. Several clucks of obvious delight… and I have to admit, I got a little teary-eyed too. She pulled it under her wing. Of note, this was one of the older one week old chicks. Well, I bought it from the store a week ago so maybe it was a little older. My thought was, I didn’t want to introduce a younger one, and then have to introduce older ones later. It seems to work right. A little later, I added another one, and managed to steal a faux egg out from under her too. Success again. I let them be for another hour or so. Then, decided I needed to get everyone out of the coop and into some private quarters before nightfall so the others could come back in to roost for the night. I set up a small area in my garage, and used a cardboard box on its side and stuffed it with shredded newspaper. I got a plastic tub with a lid and went out and grabbed the hen, chicks (and all faux eggs underneath). Sure, there was some fuss.. but better now than later I felt.

I put everyone into the box and they took right too it. Things were going too easy… I’m really having fun at this time. Once everyone was settled in and things were quiet again, I slipped another one into the box… I had things pretty dark… with the flaps hanging down in front. I was able to open the back flap, drop it in, and close it. She took it again… a little more commotion… and it took her a while to let it under her. I was able to look in from the front of the box and watch to make sure she didn’t peck or reject it. All good. From here, I decided I wouldn’t add any more until night. I woke up at 3am, and added two more (these were the youngest ones I bought the previous morning.) She took them right in with a few clucks and things were silent. I think Miss Broody-hen was in Shambala. I waited another hour and added in the last two… along with several cracked-used egg shells that I had prepared. After-all, 8 chicks out of no where with no egg shells could have been suspect and I thought… since I had them, why not? I’ve since read in a few places on the net… that it is best to do the introductions at night… with total silence. Simply pull a chick from the brooder very quietly, drop in with momma, and say nothing. Chickens can’t see well at night and during the quiet and darkness, this is the advised way. I have to agree and if I ever do it again, I’ll introduce all of them under the cover of darkness.

As of this morning, momma brought them out of the box to the food and water… and she’s keeping a protective eye on them all. That’s 8 of 8 chicks adopted by one broody hen. Stay tuned to see how everything turns out!

My first trials into maple sugaring started in 2014. So start there if you want to see the first version of the maple arch. Sugaring was something I always wanted to do since watching my dad do it as a boy. I made it happen last year by grabbing some spiles and buckets over the internet and got it going. I also scored an evaporator pan to boil the sap and built a cinder block arch to hold it.

It did great but eventually cracked from the heat and the changing of the season. Here I am, on year two starting over completely. The new arch was to be free-standing and portable. I also scraped out the area where it would sit. It was a lot of work, but I got by with a lot of help from friends, all of whom share in the rewards. It was a crazy year already and maple season falling at the end of January meant no time to rest.

I scored one of those 250-gallon fuel tasks off Craigslist. The ad said, free, just come take it. I soon found out it was still installed and had about 70 gallons of fuel in it. So the first friend I recruited was Jimmy, who rolled to KY with me to unhook, empty and bring home.

Next, I had to cut out the holes and build a fire in it to burn out all the fuel oil. It was fun making fires in it over multiple days during the cold winter days.

Now the fun started… at least, it was fun at the beginning. I had made up plans of my own after looking over countless ideas and pictures on the internet. I chose the idea that best fit the evaporator pan that I had and made sure that there was maximum fire exposure to the bottom of the pan. My friend Darian was the one who did the welding and metal cutting. He helped me make quick work of things and helped realize the visualization I had on paper. Sparks flew and it really started to shape up. We created a back wall and a ramp that would direct the heat along the bottom side of the pan before going up the flu. It should be noted that another friend, Jeff, contributed some big materials. Particularly the much-needed angle iron that would go around the sides of the maple arch to hold the pan. This was some heavy stuff–surely costly if I had to buy it.

By now, I was ready to get this in place. But, I now needed to revise the area where the arch would site. For this, my late friend Glenn offered to help me out. Glenn and I spent an entire day working out the pad where the arch would sit. Just as a journal entry, Glenn died in an accident on May 28th, just 4 months after helping me with this. He dropped everything to come and help me and would do that a lot to help a friend. God bless him. That’s Glenn in one of the pictures below. We dug and poured footers and a pad for the arch to sit on. He recommended I set up a tent with some kerosene heaters around it to properly cure the cement over the night that was expected to be cold.

With the pad done, it was time to move the arch into place and line it with brink for the firebox. The pics below show how I initially laid it out. I used sand to pack in between the bricks.

The arch looked good out of the gate. I sat a fire grate inside on the brick to raise it up for good air flow. I was already bringing in sap and it was right on time for our first boil. For this, my friend Dave comes over. Dave taps trees too. Dave and I put our sap together and boil it all down at once. Dave also has a sawmill and so he has lot’s of wood to bring and burn. The arch takes plenty of wood too, so Dave plays a pretty critical role here. We got it going and all was going good at first. The fire was hot, and the sap made it to a boil fast. The ash built up fast and the fire couldn’t get air. As a result, it wasn’t burning hot enough. We found ourselves shoveling out ash and disturbing the coals basically cooling the evaporator pan too often, too much. Breaking the boil really slowed things down. We were improvising now. We knew we needed modifications, but we needed to finish this boil first. We cut holes in a pipe and shoved it into the coals to pump air in. It was pretty much a forge now. It helped but created a lot of ash… and of course, it was getting in the syrup. The arch needed some modifications, and fast… as more sap was coming in.

It was time to call Darian back up. I was already sketching out ideas on increasing airflow while we were waiting for the first batch of sap to finish. Thankfully Darian jumped to the occasion and we made modifications damn near the next day. We cut out the bottom of the front, below the door, and welded two large pieces of angle iron along the length of the inside. This was to hold a beefy grate that we made out or rebar. Basically, we created a way for the ash to fall through and be easily shoveled out as needed. See the pics below. The minor modification ended up being pretty significant.

The grate ended up lifting the fire higher up and closer to the bottom of the evaporator pan. This made it so we didn’t need as large of fire so it conserved wood even better now. We found the sweet spot. The ash dropped through the grate and we were able to pull it out the front as needed. The next boil of sap went right on through. The arch was finally doing what we had hoped for. I was running about 27 taps this year, and my friend Dave was running about 12. Here’s a few pics of the trees and taps… and in the backwoods, I used 6-gallon buckets with 1 or two taps going into them. They needed to be emptied once a day.

So there we are, another hard, but a successful year of sugarin’. I feel we’ll be ready for 2017 to really put some syrup away. This really was a project that brought together friends for a common cause. I lost my friend Glenn, and that was and still is hard. But, I’m grateful for the time we had together… and his involvement in this project was special to me as was the involvement of many other friends. When I came yellin’ they came helpin’… and for that, I’ll make sure they all have maple syrup every time it comes out of this arch.

It all started with my Webelos Cub Scout den. We were working on the “Showman” requirement and I wanted to do something that wasn’t “too girly” and would keep the boy’s interest. Puppets are suggested in the book, but the sock and bag puppets weren’t going to cut it for my group of boys.

I have a lot of wine corks, and so I thought this would be the base of the marionettes. I was able to supply all the materials for 6 boys with stuff I had laying around at home. We made a prototype in our Webelos den as a group… seeing what worked, and what didn’t. Here is the first.