I love Christmas, but this year is a lean year...business has been lacking at the shop and I don't even make enough from the sale of eggs to feed my chickens...but I have faith that everything will be O.K. Christmas is for kids anyway, I loved having my grand daughter at my house over the weekend...she was fascinated with the decorations on the tree and all the different colors of the lights. I gave her a Cabbage Patch doll, she seemed to love it. I have some Duck Dynasty Knomes that she played with at Thanksgiving and am going to try and make her a soft body version, but because of our kids schedules we celebrated Christmas early with them and I have not made it yet. I look forward to more grandchildren, we will be blessed with another in June.
I have all these thoughts of things I wanted to do to prepare for Christmas, I wanted to make some pine cone wreaths and use some for crafts like decorations for the tree, I want to use pine boughs and holly for decorations too...but it will just be me and my husband on Christmas this year and with all the chores I have I may skip even attempting anything like that until I have more time. I have a hard time getting everyday chores done without adding to them right now. I am just thankful that we got to have some family here for a few days. I did get the Christmas tree up and decorated before they came and that was a feat in itself.
I made candles, goats milk soap, laundry soap and cookies and put them in gift baskets with coffee, homemade vanilla, hot sauce and jelly for the kids. I normally do more, but it is what it is and I hope they enjoy the fruits of my labor. The jellies were from the Plum trees and Dewberries we have growing wild here. I hope my son will bring my grand daughter out more in the future, she loves the ducks, geese and chickens...maybe some day she will enjoy learning to fish in our pond and maybe camping out on our land some day.
I hate talking about death, but we had something kill a couple of young chickens and a young duck this past week. Only one body was totally missing, the heads were missing off of the duck and the rooster. I had an open duck house that had been hastily put together when it was going to get down in the 20's...I totally revamped it, beefed it up clad it with metal and put a polycarbonate window...and put a lockable door on it. All of the chickens are locked up at night now as are the ducks and geese. I purchased a live trap and we set it up in the duck pen the first night, but it is just outside the perimeter fence now. We have caught nothing, so it probably isn't a raccoon or possum like some thought. I was leaning toward a large owl...we saw no tracks. The duck was almost adult size, the hen that is completely missing probably only weighed about 3 pounds...just a small pile of her feathers was left behind. The rooster that was killed, well there was a large pile of feathers in one spot, but his headless body was found in a tarp covered chicken tractor. I started letting my dogs outside the backyard fence again, I figure that their scent will keep most animals away. I have ordered a trail camera so if it comes back, we will be able to figure out what it is. I also built what is known as a pop door for the large coop, we had been using a piece of the metal siding and large magnets...but the roosters learned to pull the metal off.
I have been working with the roosters, trying to get everyone integrated and right now I have a bunch of roosters in the coop we call "the Condo", we let all of the big coop chickens out this morning and they can feel safe from getting pecked on by the big roosters. There is about a 4 month difference in their ages for the bulk of the chickens in the big coop. I do have babies in the big coop too, and 4 more will be added tonight, then I will only have 5 chicks left in the brooder...I will wait a bit longer to add them to the big coop, they need to be about 3 months old I think, I will get them out when they get too big to walk under the roost in the brooder like the other ones.
I think most people have visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads this time of year...me I am chicken obsessed, I have visions of colored eggs, hatching new chicks, breeding the ones I have, building the breeding pens...and the first time processing roosters.
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