A Productive Weekend

Saturday I showed the rabbit cages I still had for sale to a very nice gentleman and his wife. They bought them all, which was great. They raise Holstein cattle, and the wife was very informative when I told her how nervous I am getting about Shay, my Dexter heifer, who is due right about now. In fact, today is *supposed* to be her last due date.

I spent the rest of the afternoon weeding and raking part of the east bed in the hoophouse. I only have another eight foot to go on that bed (PTL) then I can get the salad greens and beets planted. I plan on making that my task for today.

Sunday I went to Amanda's where we butchered 16 chickens and 2 ducks. The chickens still were not as "full-figured" as we had hoped they would be, leading us to believe that they are NOT the Cornish Cross they were sold as... We started in on Amanda's Rouens, but they are not ready yet. The two we did will barely make a meal for two each. It was a tiring day and my joints are protesting, but looking at the packages in the refrigerator makes it worth while.

We were supposed to be butchering pigs yesterday, but the weather was too hot for it - over 90F - so we decided to put those off till the end of October, when it will (we hope) be cooler.

The little red hen that could

You may recall that a while ago I mentioned that one of the hens was sitting on some eggs. Well, she hatched seven out of twelve eggs, so she definitely did better than I did. She did lose one, but she is being a wonderful mamma and taking good care of her babies. What is the most surprising is that she is a "red broiler", not some uber-broody breed one usually thinks of when envisioning a hen and chicks.

The pigs are doing a job on the summer garden to be. We will be butchering two of them on Sunday. They are a goodly size - probably close to 250 pounds for the barrow and not far from that for the gilt. I am sure looking forward to bacon.

I have started to shovel up the compost that was under the bunny porch and put it in the hoop house beds. I also have some good goat compost in the south barn and the small shed in the north field so I will be utilising that, too. I need to get the salad greens in there while we are still having warm days. Hopefully tomorrow will see that bed done. Then there will just be the bed with onions, garlic and shallots to plant. I think I am finally starting to believe that I will have some crops this year.

Mama Mia! Such a weekend.

Friday morning I found that *something* had got into the coop where the young turkey poults were and killed every last one of them. I am so mad I could spit blood. I put a live trap in there, but of course I have caught nothing.

Friday evening I picked up my two grand daughters. On Saturday the kitchen sink was STILL not fixed, so they spent several hours under the house with their Grumps trying to find out why. To no avail. We are going to have to cut a chunk of pipe out and replace it, as the only piece the clog could be in doesn't have a clean-out on it. We spent Saturday afternoon in the hoop house planting brussels sprouts and broccoli plants and starting on raking the beds level.

In the evening we went to see the musical Mama Mia! at the Tulsa PAC. I had scored GREAT seats - front row mezzanine - so great view of everything. It was a wonderful performance. A couple of less than perfect spots but overall a contagiously joyous event. The girls enjoyed themselves tremendously. We ended the evening at Fridays - where there was $5 off the Jack Daniels meals, so it was a "Jack Daniels kind of night". Mmmm... yummy.

Sunday we were up bright and... well, bright anyway. I was supposed to take a livestock guardian dog to a friend, but she knew something was going on and refused to be caught. I swear she was laughing at my antics. I worked at it for a couple of hours, but then had to leave because I was going to take the girls home and help butcher the remaining meat chickens. Fate was in one of her moods, because one of the van tires had a blow out on the way. Fortunately there was no traffic at that time, so we did no worse than skid across a couple of lanes before I got us onto the shoulder. We were, however, an hours drive away from Mr Wonderful Mechanic (aka my son in law Jim) so we had to sit and wait till he got there. Now - I am not helpless, I can change a tire. But the lug nuts were on too tight for me to get off. Jim managed them easily, then we went off the the shop where he found me a new tire and put that on for me - thanks, Jim! So the chickens got a reprieve for now.

More progress.

The pigs have pretty well finished tilling the hoop house so we moved them to a temporary pen while Ken finishes the fencing for the pasture and gardens. It is an awfully small area but they will have to manage there for another two or three days.

I got my dog food ground up. It seemed to take forever. Next month I will be a lot more organized. It is nice to see all those nice, neat baggies in the freezer, though. Over a month's worth by my figuring.

I found some broccoli starts at Lowe's this morning so maybe I will be lucky and get some before it freezes. I couldn't find any Brussels Sprouts so I am going to start a few seeds indoors in the hopes of getting a gentle enough fall for them to grow. They will be in the hoop house, so will get a little extra warmth from being covered.

My kitchen drain is clogged up. I bought some cleaner, but it has had zero effect. So now I have "something" in the drain and caustic de-clogger as well. How great is that? I knew I should have just taken it apart but I figured that the caustic stuff would be easier. HAH.

Progress. Sort of.

Well, the turkey poults are outdoors. They seem happy to have more room to move around in. I was worried they would be too cold, but they were trilling happily this morning.

The hatchlings are in the larger box. They are not as happy. I have no idea why. One would think they would appreciate a larger area, but they are huddling and looking apprehensive. Presumably they will get over it. I sure hope so because they are slated to go outdoors into a coop within the next week or so.

The pigs are really happy. They have almost completed the task of rooter tilling the hoop house. I am hanging onto the hope of actually getting something planted for a fall harvest in there. With the weather as it is, that is rather a vain hope, but I have little to lose, I guess. I do know that I can get spinach, lettuces and other salad greens to grow. I doubt there will be enough warmth left this season for much else.

I got most of the round pen broke down today. I have a few more zip ties to cut then I can move it to behind the house, where it can temporarily house the hens till I can get a more permanent structure up. It will be nice to be able to find eggs instead of the usual hunt.

Ken is getting on with the top triangle. He has all the 4x4s set now, and has started on the fencing. He still has the shed to build in there, that will house the resident animals. The corner 4x4s are up for it but that is it.

I was supposed to start clearing out one of the garden sheds this afternoon. When I looked inside there was a HUGE wasp nest. My wasp/hornet spray was almost empty. Guess what I didn't do? There is no way on God's Green Earth that I am going within 100 yards of that shed with those wasps in there. Apart from the fact that I am allergic to wasp stings - I am plain old cowardly about being stung.

The fencing in the north field is now officially a joke. I went out there this morning to find EVERYONE except the cow (thankful for small mercies) outside the fence. The goats consider fencing a personal challenge, and they were certainly up to this one. I swear I am going to wire that fence so hot they will fry just looking at it...

Well, tomorrow is another day - they say. I sometimes wish it were not, as new days bring new challenges. Tomorrow I have to grind somewhere in the region of 250# of dog food. I would have done it today, but it had not yet defrosted. I didn't complain...

I feel lazy

Really lazy. There are so many things I need to do and I am sat here trying to not think about them all. I have to get the turkey poults outdoors into a coop, because they have outgrown the box they are in. I need to clean that box out and put in the chickens I hatched as they are rapidly outgrowing the box THEY are in. I need to move the semi-grown heirloom meat chickens (Freedom Rangers) into a larger round pen because they have outgrown the coop... I have to fix the round pen because something (I suspect a goat) leaned on it and cracked the supports. I need to go pick up some gamebird feed for the ducks and turkeys... and here it is almost 9 pm and I did pretty well none of the above, other than getting the bird feed.

So tomorrow is going to be a really busy day because not only will I have to play catch-up, I also have to meet the raw dog food guy to pick up my meat order then grind at least some of it up into 5# packages. Sigh. I sure hope tomorrow is better than today...

Labor Day

I went out to Amanda's yesterday and we processed a few of the white chickens that have been hanging out there a whiles. They are supposed to be Cornish Cross, but they have never developed much meat on them. The ones we did were "OK" but nowhere near as meaty as they should have been. They are now resting in the refrigerator till Friday, then they will go into the freezer

We did some research on pasture improvement and found out that pasture seeds are very expensive! LOL. We are going to have to suck it up, though, as even expensive pasture seed is not as expensive as bagged feed.

When I got home Ken had plotted out the north triangle area for the fences and the critter shelter. He has dug the holes for the 4x4 posts and now is waiting for me to go get the concrete to set them in. I am beginning to feel hopeful that I will have some sort of garden this fall/winter and a pretty good one next year. I am currently researching companion planting, and planning the beds to incorporate the most supportive rotations.

Dear Pig, are you willing?

Yesterday was the Great Pig Move. Ken and I had made a rectangle around the hoop house with T-posts and cattle panels. My daughter, Amanda, and her husband Jim came over in the afternoon and the game was on.

If you read old accounts, pig herding used to be a common task for the young lads of the village. They would go house to house, collecting pigs as they went, and herd them into the local forest where they would hunt for acorns and stuff (pigs, not lads)... so for three modern, intelligent adults it should be a piece of cake, right?

Wrong. They started out just fine. Came out of the south field, started following me and the feed bucket, everything was hunky-dory. For all of about 10 yards. Then they figured that the grass was more interesting than the sweet feed, and wandered off each in their own direction. We chased, we herded, we shouted, sweet talked, encouraged, disparaged, and pleaded. To little avail.

Eventually Jim managed to get one pig's snout into the feed bucket. That is apparently the magic solution. He kept walking, Pig kept following getting a tiny lick of sweet feed now and then and finally he was in his new home. Repeat x 2 with the two gilts and we were done with that particular chore.

I have to say that they are enjoying their new home. They have already rooter-tilled half of one of the beds. These are raised beds, and they have rooted out some of the soil, so I may have to rethink the whole raised bed thing, but so far the concept of Gardening With Pigs seems to be on track.

Rollin', Rollin', Rollin' down the river...

I hate thunderstorms. I am not afraid of them, but they scare the animals. The major storm we had on Tuesday night and Wednesday scared everyone badly, it was so loud for so long. I went out to feed and water last evening and - no ducks. I could hear them quacking, but they were not in their designated pen.

My grand-daughter found a small hole in the pen, through which they must have escaped, I looked over the rail and there, down about 20 feet in the creek, was my duck flock. They are all happy to have a nice large swimming pool but I am very UNhappy as I have NO idea of how I am going to recapture them. If they go downstream they will end up in the Kerr-McLellan canal system.

Counting Chickens after Hatch

Well - the grand total is nine still alive and healthy. That does not sound great, but of the twenty or twenty one I put in the incubator I had to throw two out before hatch because they cracked, one pipped and didn't hatch, two drowned in the waterer and then 6 others died of "unknown causes". Considering that the eggs that went in were not freshly gathered and some were from hidden nests, I think I did pretty well. They all have feathered legs, so that tells me that they are all either Standard Cochins or Cochin crosses. No telling which, as they all range together.