What to do first

I feel so overwhelmed this time of year.  Winter is approaching and there is still SO much to be done.  Like I don't have enough on the list, I decided to build my own shed for raising rabbits and growing out young chickens.  I have a brooder house, which my husband and I built from a design I came up with.  It looks nice, but still needs trim on the outside, the porch needs finishing and the inside is not quite there yet.  I swore to myself and hubby that it would be done this summer.  Well, it isn't and here we are.

I have been brooding chicks in my "old" garage, then moving them to the pasture in portable pens all Spring and Summer, however, this time of year I can't do that.  I have been using the big pens I use for breeding for some of the late hatches, but now it is time to move everyone back in to their appropriate spaces and some are already full.  So, it is time to start selling more birds and only keeping what I need to get me set for the coming year.  The first step though, is catching them.  And that is a joy!  NOT!  Some are easy, like my Buckeyes.  I LOVE my Buckeyes.  They are the friendliest chickens ever.  I have Cochins too, peeps, and these have the Cochins beat hands down.  Do you know what I don't like about the Cochins?  When they come up to you and you have to walk, you end up stepping on their feet or on the feathers on their feet and they start squawking or they just stay in your way because they can't move!  I must say though, I do have one big Blue Cochin rooster who is just a sweetheart.  In fact, Daughter just loves him and holds him whenever she goes out to the chicken yard.  I don't have a hard time sending off most of my chickens, but he is one who has a permanent home here.  He is too tough to try eating, and I doubt anyone would want him for anything else considering  most chicken owners are overrun with roosters and cockerels by season's end.  I am especially so.

Back to the topic at hand... So, I now need to have some permanent grow-out pens.  Thus, the reason for the new shed I am constructing.

Middle wants money to buy guitar stuff and snowboarding gear and so forth.  Well, I have the perfect job for my 14-year old son, digging a trench.  You see, I have discovered that I need to have a wire barrier around my coops and buildings to keep rodents and other animals from digging their way under said buildings and coops.  I have to lay this wire 1 foot down and 2 feet out from the bottom of the building to achieve this goal.  Unfortunately, I do not own a "digger" that will mechanically do this for me, so I have to get a shovel and pick ax and start digging.  Well, that is where darling Middle comes in.  He did a good job of getting started, but I must admit, I am not sure where he is going to go from here.  The ground is so hard along the long side of where this is going, I don't know what we are going to use to dig in.  I did try the garden tiller, and it worked some, but much of it is just too darned hard!

Alright, so like this building isn't enough digging, we have probably 200-pounds or more of potatoes that still needs to be dug!  We are GREAT at growing things, but we really suck at using them up and storing them.  We have been talking for years that we need to put in a root cellar to store all these great veggies we grow, but we haven't gotten there yet.  It IS on our list of things to do.  Thanks to a killing frost this Spring, we don't have to worry about where to put all the apples.  Out of 7 trees that were FULL of blossoms (until they all froze) we got TWO apples this year.  We didn't even have plums on our American Plum trees that are basically weed trees and produce bushels of fruit normally.

One thing Hubby has gotten really good at growing is garlic.  Of course, he grows entirely too much for us to use, even though I put garlic in everything.  He planted, I think 1,100 cloves this weekend.  I think there is more to be planted too, but he had to go out of town for work all week.  Yes, for those of you who didn't know this, garlic is best planted in the fall.  It is then harvested in July, and one clove becomes one head of garlic.

Okay, I am out of time to ramble, but I shall return.  As the days are getting shorter, I can only do so much outdoor work and I need to fill my 'dark hours' with something ;)

CC

It Just Goes to Show

So, I was right, first of all.  This year has been just crazy B-U-S-Y!!!
Here a chick, there a chick, everywhere chicks, chicks, chicks!!!!  But it is a good thing, Martha.

I am hatching, or just finishing Hatch (Lucky Number) 13!  I haven't counted, but I am sure I am going to hit the 1 Grand mark soon.  My girls have been good to me.

So, I have to share one very funny story about a customer/group of customers.  I started getting e-mails from a young boy, though at the time this started I was not aware it was a boy, about getting a few chicks.  Impatient is his name.  LOL.  I wish MY OWN kids would get as excited about chickens as this boy and his friends are.  Apparently, they are starting a new business of raising chickens and selling eggs.  How exciting for them, right?  The oldest I believe is 16, and his brother is about 12, I would say, and their friends.  They e-mailed me several times and really, really wanted to come and check out my birds and what I had to sell.  Finally, the day came.  They asked for my address to find me, but then got lost, drove past and got lost again, calling me each time.  At first, I was annoyed.  Then they got here and it started making me laugh.  They had $X.00 and wanted to know how many chicks they could get.  It reminded me of the days when I would go to the general store with my mother and see how many pieces of candy I could get for a dime!  For starters, I would never have pegged these boys for the chicken loving type.  Finally, they went home with about 7 or 8 chicks of various colors and appearances.  They no more than got home and were sending me messages, they wanted to come back and get more.
For the next couple of days they kept sending me stuff, asking if I had one of these or one of those.  Then I had a chat with one on Facebook, and he just cracked me up.  I think I have become a fan of these young entrepreneurs.  They are funny and have gotten so excited about something that isn't something lame.  I don't consider it lame, as some more hip than I would, because they are kids and they are undertaking something that will lead them to learn a great deal about responsibility.  Whether they stick with it, or if they fail or succeed, they will learn something, I just know it.  They just couldn't wait for me, they went to someone else and got a bunch of Banties and they are on a roll.  I think I am going to enjoy watching them get going.  I hope they achieve whatever they are aiming for.  In the meantime, they are having a fun time with their little fluffballs.

This year has also shown us (Hubby and I) that parenting a teen sure is a job in itself.  Parents should be able to take a sebbatical from their regular jobs to take on the one they have with teens.  It is insane some days and we wonder if we are talking to a wall, because the very next day sometimes, we are having the same exact discussion about something that has happened the day before.  It is insanity at its best.  It truly is.  But we do understand that something happens to the teen brain that it goes into sort of a 'coast' mode.  No energy in, no energy out, just coasting.  And we consider ourselves lucky, because we know that he is a good kid.  OMG!  If I had a really messed up kid to begin with?  Just shoot me if that ever happens.  Like I said, we are lucky.  One thing we know, we MUST keep talking with them, no matter what.
Once in a while though, we really connect and have some good laughs.  Today was one of those days. I almost, literally, peed my pants.  I must concede here though that at this point in my life, that isn't terribly hard to do some days.  Too much coffee........Well, I know how to keggle and cross my legs.  it is not like the pregnancy days though where you sneeze and wet yourself to a point of embarrassment.

I remember when I was a kid, my one brother and two younger sisters were all sitting in the kitchen yucking it up.  We got my sister laughing SO hard, she did wet herself.  So, being the kind, thoughtful siblings we were, we kept making her laugh harder.  You know what happens then?  Yeah, Niagara Falls, all down her pants.  Hmmm.  Maybe that is why we don't talk anymore?  We were relentless though.  She was crying from laughing and then crying because she couldn't stop.  And there we were, poking the bear ;)

I don't see my kids having that much fun together often enough, but those golden moments when we all are together and no one is fighting.... Well, duh, they are golden!
We were watching old videos of the kids from about 8 years ago, last weekend.  There were somethings that were just priceless, like Daughter when she was 2 and I was singing her the nightly bedtime songs.  I sang the same ones each night and she was learning them bit by bit.  I would sing the verse and she would fill in the last word.  It was so precious, I wanted to cry.  I will have my slice of nostalgia with a side of more nostalgia, please.  Oh, how I miss those days!  Or Eldest playing air guitar to Jungle Book 2.  How about Middle explaining that the crying in the background was just 'technical difficulties with a 1-year old", and as he said it, he was holding the camera like someone would hold the sides of your head to make sure you were listening to the very important thing you had to say.
To listen to the way they sounded back then is HILARIOUS!  We could hardly believe who was speaking when we heard them.  It was all so fun back then.  It still is now, but life is no longer about Play-Doh and night night songs, it is about learning to drive and getting a first job, and deciding what classes to take to prepare for college.  It is recitals for dance that they are in every show because they are in classes that are advanced enough that it is there turn to be in with the big girls.  It has all gone so fast, and I wish I could turn it all back and go play with my little kids.  Oh, how I miss my three little darlings.  Now, they better hurry the hell up and get me some grandbabies so I can enjoy those precious moments.  Alas, I WILL wait for them to reach a point of being responsible, mature people who are ready for parenting.  Then I will wish for PAYBACK!!!

CC

It has been a while, hasn't it?

Yes, it has.  It is looking like 2012 will be a lot like 2011, very BUSY!  That is a good thing, I can't imagine life ever being boring and not having anything to do.  My kids, on the other hand.... if I had a dollar for every time I have heard "I'm bored." since just New Years, I would have my money for next Christmas in the bank.

I think at least half the country would agree, this has been the craziest winter ever!  You won't see me complaining though.  I have been able to get more stuff done that I would have had we had 2 feet of snow on the ground all season or if we had a month of below zero temps and wind chills.  This is GOOD crazy.

It has been hatching season for me for the last month already.  I doubt I would have had enough not-frozen eggs to put in for hatching if we had a typical Minnesota winter.  I have already hatched over 100 chicks and there are more a cookin'.  This is exciting and fun.  I find it hard to understand how my kids have become the way they have about the baby chicks.  Call me crazy, but I still get excited to see them cracking and popping out of those eggs.  Daughter, who is not quite 10 yet, still likes to go out and hold them, but she doesn't oooo, and ahhhh like she used to, not even over the Silkies.  The good thing though, she and Middle still want to show them in the Summer.  In fact, they still want to show ducks too, which means getting a whole new batch this year.

Ah, that is another good thing about the winter being mild and minimal amount of snow,  the ducks.  I sort of stuck myself with 6 Jumbo Pekins and a Welsh Harlequin drake over the winter.  You see, my processor said he doesn't do ducks until after it gets really cold.  Well, things were busy around here and I kept putting it off until it got to be early December.  I then called him up and he said he was closed for the Winter.  Then I called around, and everyone else was close to ducks for the Winter.  So, then, I was going to do them myself.  I told Middle and Hubby they had to help me since they were the ones who wanted to ducks to eat.  Middle said, "NO WAY! I'm not killing the ducks."  Once I explained I would do the killing (not my favorite thing either, sheesh), he said he would help pluck.  As it turned out, whenever there was a day warm enough to do it, kids were in school and Hubby was out of town.  So, guess what?  I STILL have 6 Jumbo Pekins and a Welsh out here.  The good news?  Well, I am getting Pekin eggs now and I KNOW they are fertile (poor girly ducks, 2 of them and 4 drakes).  I am really hoping that the duck who laid double, conjoined yolks all Fall has her system settled down so she lays normal eggs.  I plan to hatch a few and then start looking for someone to process the whole 7 of them.

Life is always a bowlful of cherries with a couple of teenagers in the house.  Eldest gives me a daily dose of crap like most teenagers do.  It is a good thing I color my hair often because I don't want to see how much more gray hair I have gotten in the last 6-months.  Poor Hubby though, he is getting it like crazy.

Eldest turns 16 in May, and guess what he is wanting to get?  You betcha!  A car.  Of course, when I tell him how I was 18 before I had my own car and I had to buy my own car, he won't hear it.  "Things have changed, Mom!"  Oh, yes, they have changed so much that parents are supposed to just go out and plunk down $10,000 for a car so you can go hang out with your friends whenever you want?  I don't think so.  The nice thing is, he does work.  The not-so-great part of that is that he only gets about 5-8 hours a week.  I can't suggest any jobs though because they aren't cool enough or they don't pay enough or just about any other excuse just because I suggest them.  He was such a wonderful, perfectly wonderful young boy, I had really hoped we would skip this part of being a kid.  I was wrong.  And the extra fun thing, Middle is 13 1/2.  You know what that means?  Here comes pain in the ass number 2.  Middle says he won't act like Eldest, but I know not to get my hopes up.  They do have different personalities, so maybe there is a chance, but I am not putting any stock in it.  The big dread though, Daughter becoming a teenager.  Holy crap, are we going to have our hands full then!

Even though we have had a very mild, very snowless Winter so far, we are getting snow tonight.  I am just hoping like crazy the school isn't closed or delayed in any way tomorrow, the kids had off Friday and today, and the whole "I'm bored." thing is really going to make me snap if they are here one more day.  On top of it all, Hubby was gone to a meeting all weekend.  Isn't that special?

Middle will be happy with the snow.  I swear he has been doing the snow dance (like the rain dance but different).  He has only been snowboarding 3 or 4 times this year, and he wants to be on the slopes SO SO SO bad.  We thought about Hubby taking him to the Rockies to get some good boarding in, but we are afraid it will poison him.  By that I mean that he will never be happy boarding here in Minnesota again if he goes out and finds out what a real mountain slope is all about.  I know it spoiled me from ever wanting to ski anywhere but the Rockies.  The whole idea was for Hubby to take Middle out there, and me take the other two and go to Florida!  We lived there for 5 1/2 years when we were in our Navy days, and I would never want to live there again, but it sure is nice to visit.  Plus, I want them to have a chance to do the theme park stuff at least once before they are off to college.  

Well, time to retire is upon me.  

Til next time....

CC

He's Back!!!

Old Man Winter seems to have been on a hiatus, but today he is back with vengence.  Was it Sunday or Monday it was 50-degrees, and now the temp is 13 with a wind chill of -5.  Like I really want to go out there?  Not really.  But, I have birds that rely on me for food and water and I must go and take care of them.  I have a feeling the ducks are inside today too.  They are so silly, they stay out all the time, but the last time the temps dipped like this, they actually went inside for the first time, voluntarily.

This weekend the temp is supposed to be back to 40, so I think that is when I will be running the electric in the big chicken out.  That way the birds should have water all day long without freezing, and I won't have to break ice every day.  I need to water twice on days like today to make sure they are getting plenty.

I got two pens of bantams up and separated.  They seem pretty happy, or at least my little Frizzles are.  They have been in a large rabbit cage for some time now and though I had a pad in there that gave them solid floor in part of it, they are happy to have an all solid floor and shavings to scratch in.  I still have 5 bantam pens to finish in there, then the construction in that building will be done.  I did say  IN because I still need to get out and get gates on the outdoor runs, and wire over the top for those breeds that love to fly out.

Well, I need to run to the mill for more feed.  It is time to face the awful weather.

CC

2011

Another year is gone by.  I can sum that one up in one word: BUSY!!!!!

There was so much to get done this last year, and we did most of it.  Some of it got forgotten and some is still on our list of Things To Do, but we accomplished much.

Hubby spent a lot of time away from home and it looks like 2012 will be no different.  The company downsizing and losing some employees has made his job more secure, but sometimes I wish he could find a new line of work.  I miss him.

My two boys have both grown so much and have gone way passed me already.

Eldest has been a challenge, but we are still proud of all he is (except those moments when he makes us want to rip his head off).  15-year olds, Oi!

Middle is becoming and awesome guitar player!  He hasn't had a lesson yet, but he has heart and soul that he is pouring into those strings and it is paying off.  We actually ENJOY listening to him play now!

Daughter has her days, but she is the cutest little girl in the world to me and makes me so proud of who she is and what she is becoming.  I wish she was still little enough for me to gobble her belly.  Okay, I still do when she is being stubborn and I want to get her to talk to me, or at least smile.

Well, the chicken house is not done yet, but thanks to the long fall and warm winter so far, I have gotten much done that I might not have if we had normal temps.
 I just finished pens 7 and 8 done tonight and birds moved into them.  They are happier and less crowded.  I will be able to start collecting eggs to hatch soon, that is if they will get laying and quit poking around about it.  I have yet to put lights in to get them going again, but slowly I am getting eggs again.  They needed a break, but now it is time to start cranking them out.
I got 2 portable coops up off the ground where I don't have to worry about mice and rats getting in them.  Face it, if you have as many chickens and ducks and turkeys as I have, there are bound to be rodents coming around.
I counted the other day, and I have roughly 125 chickens right now.  That breaks down to 13 Standard Breeds/Varieties, and 8 Bantams Breeds/Varieties.  I have some crossbreeds too that are not part of that count, those are just the ones I am breeding pure.
I still have 6 Pekin ducks and 1 Welsh Harlequin.  I was hoping to get rid of the WH drake with his two 'brothers', but someone just wanted 2.  So, I may be stuck with this guy until I can find someone to take him or until I can get him butchered.  The Pekins are well passed the point of when I wanted to get them butchered.  I was so busy this fall that by the time I got around to calling to have them processed, my guy closed up for winter already.  I called around, but with no luck.  So, if I want them butchered, I am going to have to do it myself.  I told Hubby and Middle that since they are the ones wanting to eat duck, they need to help me get them processed.  Hubby said, "Oh."  Middle said, "NO WAY!! I am not killing the ducks!"  Well, I told him that it didn't mean HE had to do the killing, but he could help with the plucking and gutting.  He didn't like that either but conceded to help.  Now, to get it all ready and do it before the weather really turns cold here.
I also have to blood test all of my chickens and I don't want to do that when it is below freezing and have everything freeze on me.

We have been SO SO SO lucky with the weather though!!!

Middle is still bummed about not having snow to go snowboarding, but at least he isn't carrying on about it every day all day long like he was.

I have gotten orders started for chicks and eggs.  I am excited about the prospects of what this year will be with my hatchery starting out.  I need to get in and finish the inside of the brooder house before I start putting eggs in to incubate.  I will need to raise about 130 birds for myself, maybe more so I can pick some better (hopefully) breeders for next year.  Maybe I will do more than that, we will see how things go.  I know spring time is going to mean more fencing and digging a pond and getting a proper shelter for ducks up so I can keep some over winter without a huge hassle.

Of course, spring is going to mean gardening too.   This year, if we can get all the preparations done, we are hoping to replace our old ailing farmhouse too.  So, 2012 is going to be another busy one.  But if all we do is sit around, that isn't living.

May all of you have a wonderful New Year!
Til next time....


CC