Thanksgiving Surprise And Grateful

Every morning I wake up is a good morning...I am greatful every day.  I have bad days, but I am grateful for every day I have on God’s green earth.  Even though we struggle at times out here, we love it in this peaceful place.  I have learned so much these past few years, not enough...but, I am willing and able to learn more.  I just hope my body holds out for me, it seems to take longer and longer to recover from injuries, but the nice thing is...I am not on a deadline and I have learned to pace myself a bit better over the years.

I am going to have a houseful this year for Thanksgiving,..and I am grateful for it.  The surprise is my son is coming to visit from California, I have not seen him in almost six years!  I can’t really afford to fly to California and I don’t think my body could handle being shoehorned into an airplane seat anymore and still be able to walk when I got there.  It is tough leaving home, for both of us...we both have a lot of animals to take care of and his wife is not coming with him, she will be taking care of them.  I was hoping she could, I would love them to move out here one of these days.  I will have both my sons here, my surrogate son, my stepdaughter most of the spouses and the young ones!  They won’t be here for a few days, but I look forward to seeing them all.

My surrogate son and his wife invited me to go with them running around Shreveport and then to Jefferson yesterday, one of my favorite things to do is shopping...lol, there is not too many places I actually go around here, but yesterday it was nice to get out and see places I had not seen.  We went to a place in Shreveport that had a variety of different things, it was kind of a home improvement store/furniture store/interesting stuff store...I would like to go back some day.  Jefferson is only about 20 miles from us and yesterday, I finally got to visit the little town I keep hearing about.  We had lunch at a neat little hamburger joint and then went and perused a few Antique stores...lol, I love doing stuff like that...I would have loved to forget about the animals needing to be fed and watered, but I was afraid that my husband might be upset with me if I didn’t make it in time to perform my task...he took care of them!  Something else to be thankful for!  My husband loves me, and I never go do anything but errands anymore,so he wasn’t to unhappy with me getting home later than expected...my surrogate son even came in with me and offered to help feed the critters, but my husband had already done it.

I loved a cabinet at the home improvement store, it reminded me of a barristers book case, kind of...it was very tall, probably 7 feet, it had a lot of shelves and glass doors on it.  It is crazy, but I loved the latch on it, it went all the way from the top to the bottom...and was kind of ornate iron.  I think it would make a nice linen cabinet.  There were several things in that store I really liked, some of the dining room tables were gorgeous, as were some of the rugs we looked at, some of the large mirrors...and they had barn doors and ship lap too!  Lots of good stuff and the prices were good too.  They had some patio furniture and kitchen and bathroom cabinetry, and faucets and sinks too.  I am sure I didn’t see it all...but I really enjoyed looking at what I did see.

I look forward to getting to see some of my grandchildren soon, and my kiddos...the worst part of moving out here is not being to see my family very often.  I will take what I can get though, and since I can’t really travel very far anymore without pain I am grateful they are willing to come visit me.

Duck, Duck Away...

The time has changed...Fall Back an hour, but my body clock will not adjust for awhile...so I am up very early.  I am not fond of the time change this time of year.  It gets dark too early.  It seems like there are far less hours in the day for me to jam pack everything I need to get done into what daylight hours I have...and it will get worse and worse.  But, I can only work outside until dark and I am able to get all my poultry put up before My husband gets home from work, so he doesn’t have to go out there.

Yesterday was rather busy.  It is suppose to get down in the thirties later this week...it may be our first freeze of the Fall.  The leaves have just started changing really, I wanted to get some good pictures this year.  Our place has changed so much since we bought it that I would like to document it a bit.  I have the majority of my fruit orchard in...although a few trees have died and I will replace them.  It is tough getting them established in the sandy loam unless they have a really good root structure.  If we have a drought year, I have to water every three days or they will die.  Two of my Elderberries didn’t make it, that I planted this year. I never could get the Native Cherry tree going well, but the roots pretty much broke off in the box they shipped it in.  I had one of my pear trees that we planted the first year break off about a foot above the ground.  One of my peach trees I planted two years ago died too.  I have a second year Golden Delicious apple tree that was attacked by Carpenter Ants and almost killed too, half of it appeared to die...I finally broke down and started using ant granules on it when the Organicide and Neem Oil didn’t kill them.  I cut a lot of that tree back, it has some new shoots and is starting to come back, the peach tree also had shoots come up and after they got about five feet tall, I picked one and cut the rest off, the Asian pear I did the same...but at the moment it has about six shoots, I will pick the straightest soon and cut the rest off.  I moved a couple of blueberry bushes to hopefully better locations...maybe they will start growing and produce better in the next year or two.  We shall see, I am hoping I get better at maintaining the trees and all of them produce soon.  I would like to sell the fruit eventually.

I worked out in the garden a little and on my front porch.  I had started a bunch of plants and didn’t get them all planted because I got a little carried away.  I had a bunch of starter pots with dirt and dead plants in them, so I broke up the dirt and put it in five gallon buckets for next springs plant starts.  I want to build a greenhouse, but have not done it yet.  I need to build some raised beds too.  The moles and voles wiped out my garlic plants last year, I didn’t get any...so, I will have to do raised beds with maybe wire bottoms so they can’t get to the bulbs.  I need them for strawberries and asparagus too...if I am ever going to have any.  Anyway, since battling poison ivy, I haven’t worked outside as much as usual, but I did get some flower bulbs planted.  I am hoping to make this place beautiful one of these days...I have a long way to go, but I will get there...eventually.

Yesterday, I had my neighbor stop by with a friend of his.  He wanted ducks, I have a lot of males...He wanted 15.  I should have captured them the night before, but a lot of people say they want critters and then don’t show up when I catch them...so I didn’t.  He showed up!  The younger males were easy to catch, but the ones out in the big yard...not so much.  My neighbor, the man wanting the ducks and I finally caught five more to add to the ones I had caught...he took ten home.   Which was good for me...I needed the money to help pay for getting my freezer repaired.  The repairman showed up to take a look at the freezer, not two minutes after my neighbor and his friend.  So, between running around the yard trying to catch ducks...when bribery didn’t work and the repair guy...I felt a little like a ping pong ball, running back and forth getting nets, talking to the repairman, trying to get the money together to pay the repairman, catching a duck or two, going and talking with the repairman again...he had to order a part.  He will be back today to install it.  He wanted all the money up front, I said I don’t like paying for something I haven’t received yet...he accepted the service call money and with the money from the sale of the ducks I will be able to pay him in cash today after the repair is made.  I guess I need to measure a few things too...right now, that freezer is out on the porch.  We had to take the broken freezer out of the house to make room for the new freezer.  I have to figure out where we will put the old freezer.  I have a room that is only 9’x9’ that I want to create a large walk-in pantry in...we may put it in there...but, I don’t know if it will fit through the door, if it won’t...then we may have to move my egg fridge and the beverage fridge into the room...and put the freezers side by side in the laundry room....if they will both fit.

I need to do a duck inventory too.  I probably have more male ducks that I could get rid of...my females will appreciate my getting rid of ten males.  Poor things get overwhelmed by their amorous behavior and many of my females have been injured from the males grabbing their heads.  The skin around their eyes especially.  The few females in my recovery area would have been hurt again come spring, if those male ducks had not gone away.  We had been talking about butchering some...that is why we need another freezer.  But, it is not something we really wanted to do.

Poison Ivy and Miserable

I have been grooming fruit trees.  Mowed the front section of the acreage we use and cleaned up the flowerbed in the middle of the driveway.  I knew it would probably happen, it has been a couple of years since I cleaned up the flowerbed, I got a bad case of poison ivy on my arms...I was very careful too!  I knew there was poison ivy in the flowerbed, I thought about just mowing everything in the flowerbed down.  I didn’t, but I had to cut down several trees that had gotten about five feet tall that were growing in it, lots of dewberry vines too...there wasn’t even much poison ivy in there.  I had big loppers, little loppers and a machete and would cut the longest parts and pull things out by the roots as much as possible...and lift them with the tools to put them in piles.  The flowerbed is pretty large, probably about 15 feet wide and 30 feet long.  It was planted with bulbs before we bought the house, but I think a lot had been removed.  The first couple of years jonquils, daffodils and bell flowers bloomed and that was pretty much it.  Last Spring, more flowers popped up...Irises that actually bloomed, Spider And Easter Lillie’s.  They were sparse, except a clump here and there.

I want pretty things to look at.  Here everything is green, there aren’t much in the way of contrasting colors popping out...unless it is the birds or goldenrod, this time of year.  We have Cardinals and Bluebirds in abundance, and humming birds, but since this part up around the house is a few acres, and there were not many trees, there was not many places for them to nest or perch really, up by the house.  I concentrated on planting fruit and nut trees the first five years.  I want to start planting perennials now.  We have wild flowers all around the perimeter, and I let them grow in spots around the house...but, because I did that...dewberries grew too.  I have to cut dewberries away from the house several times a year, otherwise they grow all over the front porch, and strangle out what flowers there were left.  I had planted flowers around the patio area in the back of the house...but my poultry pretty much dug them up and destroyed all of the grass too.  I was able to move some things to the front yard and tried to fill in large gaps that were empty of anything growing.  I even transplanted monkey grass from one half of the porch to the other...trying to balance out the greenery that was left.  I still have a long way to go in my beautification of the land around the house.  I have to mark areas so my husband doesn’t mow down, weedeat or spray things with weed killer.  I planted some Climatis vines that didn’t make it...and some wildflowers around a tree that are trying to come back...

Anyway, I have had the poison ivy rash for over a month now.  It was the worst case I ever had.  Normally I just get a spot or two around my wrists, just above my gloves.  I got it all over my arms, got some around my ankles, on my legs, my neck, chest and stomach too...even in my hair although just a light sprinkling everywhere but my arms.  I went to the doctor and got a shot, but even two weeks afterward...I am still itching.  Most of my wounds have healed now, some of the blisters were awful and I still have a few scabbed spots.  I still get intense itching too.  Usually at night, an extremely hot shower helps, but...I have bruised myself a few times scratching the itch.  I know that you shouldn’t scratch like that, but it feels almost like something is in my skin crawling around!  I will go scrub with jewelweed soap and hot water and it helps, or put Biofreeze on...but it has been driving me crazy.

We have had a lot of problems with things breaking down on us the past few years too, our latest issue was our freezer.  I freeze a lot.  I freeze my garden vegetables like broccoli and green beans, I chop and freeze bell peppers and onions too, and blueberries and peaches.  Our freezer went out last week...it was not good, we lost a lot of the fruit and vegetables and about a fifth of the meat...maybe more.  The fall and winter months are lean months for us.  My husbands shop doesn’t get as much business, so I try and make sure the freezer stays stocked up with meat enough to get us through to spring.  I probably should have thrown out more of the meat, a few things I have fixed lately tasted freezer burned and went to the dogs after I cooked it.  This winter may be a bit tough.  We had to purchase a new freezer.  We have a repairman coming today to see if the old one can be fixed.  It would be nice to have two freezers, we had talked about getting another freezer the past couple of years and going in halves on a cow or pig for meat, things just didn’t happen.  If we can fix the old freezer it will be great!

A Day of Rest...Nope!

One thing I can say about living in the country and having almost twenty acres, and a bunch of poultry...you really don’t get days off!  I may not do as much some days, or maybe not as hard of physical labor, but it seems I always have plenty to get done even on my “rest day”.  Today I started with laundry, let the dogs out, then gave the three food and water, made some pumpkin bread, cleaned up the kitchen then made breakfast.  While my husband went out and fed the poultry and let them out.
Put laundry in the dryer and started another load.  I did sit and drink a cup of coffee.  I am not complaining mind you, it was a slower day than most.  I also made Chicken Cordon Bleu from scratch...I wanted it ready to stick into the oven after the evening feeding and watering of the critters, we actually ate at 7:30 tonight!  Here lately it has been more like 8:30 or 9:00.

A few days ago I was out putting up roof rafters in what I call my breeding pens, I just did half so far, but I needed a place off of my porch to move juvenile chickens and there are so many, I needed more of a roofed area for them.  It took me several days, and I had to use a variety of roofing screws...lol, I usually have plenty of one size...not this time, I even had to drill pilot holes through some of the metal because I couldn’t get the screws to start and the drill would slip, the screw would go flying and I would say a curse word or two.  Apparently my turkey hen “Bronze Hen” was worried about me, she flew up and landed on the rafters while I was working.  I got lucky though, normally she tries to be very helpful and get screws out of the box for me (usually dumping the box).  She didn’t stay long, just checked on me and then flew back down, thank goodness!  I think more might have joined her if she had have stayed much longer.  Anyway, I got metal put up on the rafters, but the metal is recycled and 2 feet shorter than was advertised!  So ten feet instead of the twelve I really needed.  I made an offer on it that I was surprised was accepted, I got it for half the asking price and then they delivered it.  I have been lucky like that when buying used materials.  I don’t have a trailer and I don’t normally keep the truck but one day a week to run errands.  I have gotten cinderblocks and wood the same way.  I will admit, I had some issues with the rafters, the frame has shifted on the run and I had to add some blocks of wood to make the 8 foot lengths work, hey...it is just for chickens, it doesn’t have to be perfect!  At least that is what I keep telling myself.  Anyway, it is crooked.  Then my husband said it was too flat for water to run off, so I had to take the metal off and add a furring strip on the rafters closest to the coop part...otherwise water might have run into the coop when it rained.  It won’t now, but because of the extra wood, I had to slide the metal back about three inches when I reattached it, so...it is going to leak until I put some silicone caulk in all the holes!  The metal is not perfect by any means, it had screw holes in it already, and a bit of rust...and it isn’t exactly straight either.  Because it isn’t straight it didn’t exactly meet up with the wood the end of the rafters are attached to.  When I have more time, I might try and fix it.

I had put a big shade tarp over the pens and I needed to restring it across the run that still didn’t have a roof.  I had to switch the traps direction because I no longer had the wood frame to attach it to on one side.  I am doing this with roosters running around and a big Tom turkey in the pen, trying not to freak them out too much.  The tarp is way to big now so I had to drape it down the front of the pen about four feet...the corner Post is 10 feet tall on this side as the ground the pen sits on is flat we’re the coop sits but the run is angled so any time it rains the water runs down hill.  Here I am on this tall ladder, trying to get the bungee ball tie downs put back through the grommets and standing on a ladder that is unstable, sitting on a hill...chickens and turkeys trying to check everything out, sweat pouring down my face and my clothes soaking wet from sweating, stringing a shade tarp, tired...I get done, start going down the ladder take a step and end up missing the bottom rung or possibly two of the ladder.  I am not a spring chicken anymore, I didn’t want to fall and I was able to maintain my balance, but hurt my right knee, felt something pop, I still had one foot on the rung of the ladder too...I pulled every muscle I had in both legs practically doing the splits.  I never was good at the splits...and it isn’t something us 59 year olds normally do when we get older either.  Needless to say, I have been a bit sore ever since it happened.  Didn’t sleep well the first few days, although that could have been from the chafing I experienced on my legs from my jeans being wet from the sweat too.

After I moved something like 40 chickens off the porch, I had to clean up all the brooders.  I did my errands, grocery shopping, going and getting the proper screws, getting a feeder, picking up feed for the week...then got home and unloaded and put everything away.  For a normal person, that might not sound like much...but, I get a week or twos worth of groceries and this time 850 pounds of feed.  It takes me awhile, then I cleaned up the brooders the chickens were in.  They were nasty, I had skipped a cleaning day and when the flies are bad that is a very bad thing.  I took time to finish creating the artwork for a book cover, for a book my husband wrote...instead.  Yep, around here...sometimes one chore is sacrificed to get something else done.  He published the book on Amazon, we are hoping it sells well, the money will come in handy.  Anyway, after scrubbing everything down and spraying a ton of bug spray the fly situation is almost under control.  I still have cleaning to do on the porch, need to power wash the cages, poop trays and wash waterers and feed dishes.  Now that the critters are off the porch maybe I can get the house power washed too...time will tell.  I need to work in the garden, mow, trim some trees, do coop cleaning and power washing soon.  I want to get back to work on my bathroom remodel soon too.  Oh well, it is about 10:30 now..I need to go put up leftovers and throw laundry in the dryer before I get ready for bed.  It may be awhile before I write again.  Goodnight!

Getting Them Off The Porch!

It was a long hot summer, but fall has finally arrived!  It is nice to have daytime temperatures in the 70’s and 80’s again.  I hope to get out and get some major cleaning of the coops done this upcoming week.  I also need to put some rafters on the run of my breeding pens and roof it. I need to get the last of the babies off of the porch.  They are to big for the brooder now, but not really old enough to put with the adults.  I had far too many males hatch this year, I needed females...still need females.  I need to do a head count.  I want the young chickens off the porch...the flies get awful quickly because they dump their food a lot.  I am tired of cleaning up the poop trays too, they play with the waterers and water gets in the trays, mixes with the spilled food and poop, then you have a fly breeding nightmare.  I try getting the poop trays cleaned every few days, but it doesn’t always happen and then the maggots come, and then the flies.  Lots and lots of flies.

Cleaning the poop trays is one of the worst things I have to do, especially if the waterers leak or rain comes in heavy from the north and fills them up with water along with the feed and poop.   I have switched the young chickens on the porch to fermented feed now, so that helps a little...but if the dogs startle the chickens and they start flying and food sprays everywhere and babies are hitting me, biting me, and landing on my arms while I am trying to put the feed in their dishes, I can get splattered pretty badly.  I forget to check myself sometimes before my husband gets home, sometimes I have it on my eyebrows or glasses, or in my hair.  I wash my hands and arms when I get in the house, but that is usually at the kitchen sink.  What is really bad is when I am trying to remove a poop tray, with the wet poop and feed mixture in it and it is heavy and falls and splashes all over me...I have learned to keep my lips pressed tightly together...so nothing gets in my mouth, but I am battling flies at the same time.  Gross, huh?  I don’t know why I hate cleaning the liter boxes for the cats, when I can do the poop trays without gagging.  It may be that I have to do it so often and to so many coops it just doesn’t bother me that much any more....it is still one of the nastiest, most gross things I have ever done.  So yeah, I need to get the babies off of the porch!

On a more exciting note...my husband wrote a book!  He finished it...I did the cover art for it and it is now on Amazon.  It is just an ebook that can be downloaded and read, but it is a start.  He has started another book...the bad part for me is trying to come up with a character without reading the book.  I guess I may have to read the next one prior to trying to create the cover art, and I may need to do the editing...but it has been so long since I have played any type game like World of Warcraft that I just don’t remember that much about it.  My head can only retain so much information for so long before I replace what I know with new more relevant information to my current projects and interests.  Since  we moved to the country, I don’t have time to play computer games, nor can I sit for long periods of time doing it.  With the degenerative disk disease and my feet swelling the way they do since my foot surgeries, it is just too painful for me.  I worked on the book cover all day Monday and have paid dearly for it all week, but I needed to get it done.  I had to use three different computer programs to do it, and I had to figure out each one!  I actually drew the characters, but scanned them into my computer, used Coreldraw to color them and put a bit of details and shading...they are cartoony, not realistic.  But, to save time, I used an actual photo and manipulated it with photoshop, oh and the characters too because I wanted to place the characters without a background or paper in the photo, then after using some of the style features to make it look like a watercolor...I put it into Illustrator to add the text and some shadowing.  It was far from perfect, but...like I said, it is a start.

I decided not to plant a fall garden, just some corn and a few squash...I need to get things cleaned up, hauled off, build a retaining wall, get some more drainage work done, prepare the coops for winter, probably build a duck house...just a small portion of things I need to do.  Anyway, I need to get busy...always lots to do here on the farm and we need to mow, weed eat and trim bushes before it rains.  That and feed the critters.

Company Coming!

We don’t have company very often, not really...and this time we had company three weeks in a row!  It is always good to see family, my youngest son Mitch usually comes out to the boonies with his family every 3 to 6 months and most of the time that is it...this year his wife’s mother Janet came to visit too.  It was for my granddaughters birthday...hard to believe how fast time has flown, the oldest just turned five and has now started kindergarten.  His youngest daughter is a hoot, she is a tiny little thing, both of them are smart, funny and I love them to pieces!  It always is wonderful hearing the sound of children’s laughter and the pitter patter of little feet through the house...and the squeals of glee.  I always wanted a little girl, I was unable to have more kids after I had twin boys (I had three boys)...but my granddaughters are pretty special to me.  My youngest granddaughter started walking at an early age, and she loves to dance...she is a tiny ball of pure energy and just remembering watching her wiggle and sway to the music brings a smile to my face even now.  I actually got to see them two months in a row!  First for Madeline's birthday and then for Eden’s.  Janet seemed to have a good time out here too, we chatted a lot and she liked it out here enough that she is thinking about moving to Texas.  Out in this part of Texas, a calm comes over you...my way to explain it...once you hit tall pines on the highway it is just serene, the smell of the pines and cedar hangs in the air and everything seems fresher and more alive, houses are few and further apart and the rolling hills, the ponds and cattle grazing makes you long for a simpler life.  We had birthday parties for both girls, although Eden is rather young and hers was mainly just gifts, and Janet could not be here for Edens birthday at this grandmas house.  Mitch, Megan, Maddie, Eden and Janet spent a few days, then Mark, Mindie and Solomon came for the party in July.  It was almost a repeat for August with the exception of Janet.

The weekend after Eddie’s party, we had Crew’s daughter Sara, her husband Mark and granddaughter Ellie come out and spend a couple of days.  We don’t get to see them often either.  Sara and Mark are always on the go...so it was nice to see them.  Grandpa made sure our “redneck” swimming pool was ready for the kiddos and went out with them to watch them.  It was pretty dang hot when they came out.  Ellie turned 3 this year, she is a loving little girl and even though we have not seen each other but a few times I got some good hugs and one on one time with her.  It would be nice to get to see everyone more often...I do miss some aspects of being away from the city, seeing family and having cookouts is one of them...and getting to see my grandkids grow up and change.

Then, believe it or not...my Mom drove out for a visit too!  My Mother is 79...she was a few days later than expected getting here, and it was almost dark when she arrived...so I went and fetched her to get her to our house.  There aren’t a lot of streetlights out here, not too many landmarks to go by and most of the street signs are just numbers, so I met her at the Walmart and we both got gas, stopped inside for a few minutes so she could have a bathroom break and then we took off for the house.  It took awhile, she has some nightblindness and was going slow enough to feel comfortable driving (35 mph most of the way).   We had a nice visit too, it had been almost four years since I have seen her!  We are pretty much tied down with all of our animals and not knowing a lot of people out here...no one to come feed, water and check on them daily or put them up for the night.  It seems like every time I am gone extra time even going to the grocery store or to town to spend the day shopping and running errands something happens.  Anyway, we had a great visit and I tried to talk her into selling her house, getting a tiny house or granny pod and putting it on our land and moving out here.  She is very independent and set in her ways...I doubt she will ever do it, but I think she would enjoy being out here.  She helped me in the garden, seemed to enjoy the animals and although we didn’t get out and about much I think it was a good visit.  She doesn’t really sleep that much though...I guess that may be why I don’t, if I don’t take my Melatonin and Aleve PM!   Mom gave me a bit of a scare too, when she left, we set up the GPS and we thought she would follow it...but, she didn’t.  She was hungry when she left...stopped to eat something and apparently the lady who had lived here in this house before us called us about two hours after Mom left, and said they found her sitting in a parking lot in Linden confused.   She wasn’t suppose to go that way!  Lol, anyway, she had stopped to eat and decided to go back a different direction.  I had told her that Interstate 20 wasn’t as bad through Dallas and she ended up going back that way!

The Fruits Of Our Labor

My...it has been awhile since I posted anything!  I have been so busy I have not had the opportunity to write.  I have done a number of things this year and it seems like time has sped up on me.  We had to take a break from bathroom remodeling to take care of the yard, the garden, the orchard, picking, canning and the critters.  I was not going to hatch anything this year until the bathroom remodeling was complete, but people kept asking so I relented and started hatching chicks...then ducks...then geese...and a few turkeys.  I took away a bunch of eggs from all my broody hens and have the last of them in a brooder in the house now....soon to go to the back porch brooder.

I am not sure what is going on, but I have had an extremely high rate of males hatch!  I need females. I sold all but maybe two that I hatched last year, so I have been trying to hatch enough to have twenty new hens by winter...laying.  Several of my oldest chickens died this year when the temperatures reached 106 and the heat index was 111.  Five year old broody hens sitting on eggs, and temperatures like that do not mix very well.  Even a few of my five year old roosters have died too.  I lost a bunch of babies to the heat, did some reading and found out chicks are 75% water...if they stay over a hundred degrees for very long, they cannot get enough water to stay hydrated.  I was trying not to keep brooder lights on in the house, so I had moved them to the back porch brooders to take advantage of the heat instead...it was a mistake I will not repeat.  I had fans going and the porch was cooler than the yard, but apparently they just can’t regulate heat at all and were too young to handle it, or it was too much heat for too long of a period.  I have moved three batches of young to growout coops in the yard, the first two batches...there may be two females in the bunch.  The third batch, I think maybe eight?  I am growing the males out and we may try butchering some this year, I will probably keep a few so I have some young roosters, I believe I still have three left from last years hatches...but most of my roosters are two years old or older.  I hatched ducks hoping to get females too, I purchased some Saxony eggs and they were damaged in shipping...only two hatched, both males!  I put something like 30 of my duck eggs in the incubator and only five hatched, then two from broody hens and I have four more in the incubator due to hatch in about five more days.  We have too many males still, so we may try some duck soon too.  I have four African geese that my geese brooded up to a certain point...when I found a dead baby goose in the coop, I took their eggs away and finished hatching them in the house.  They are fully feathered and adult sized now probably close to five months old.  I have four turkey babies and a guinea too, young but not full grown yet either.

Anyway, the burden of hatching and brooding the variety of poultry is time consuming.  The cleaning of brooders, feeding and watering multiple times a day takes a big chunk out of my day.  Tohat and they make a mess out of my back porch.  I have two swimming pool brooders with ducks in them, a large 30”x8’ brooder that has three trays I have to clean and three waterers, and usually two or three feeders...then two 2’x4’ brooders with pine shavings, with multiple waterers a feeders, then usually two brooders in the house.  I had three incubators running and keeping those going with the broodies eggs and candling them constantly and rotating ones out to a hatching incubator too, making sure temperatures and humidity is adequate so alarms aren’t going off constantly and bad eggs are pulled out as soon as possible (so they don’t explode).  I want to make a large incubator and hatch larger quantities at one time so I don’t hatch as long and they are grown before temperatures get too hot in the summer.  I have some of the parts, I just need the time to do it!

Enough about poultry!  Lol, it is a good part of my days...but, not the only thing I do.  This year I actually had a decent harvest of plums, apples and peaches from trees I planted!   I got plum jam made and a plum liquor.  I made apple pie filling with most of the apples, but shredded some and made coleslaw with apples in it and just picked a few more for eating.  I had three trees produce this year, not a ton of apples, but not bad for a first harvest from 3 to five year old trees.  I just finished harvesting peaches too, I need to figure out how to peel them quickly and work on them today.  I lost a peach tree and half an apple tree this year.  Ants have been awful and many of my trees have some kind of big red ants crawling along over them, I need to spray the trees and try to get rid of them...I think some may be Carpenter Ants and they are destroying one apple tree...burrowing into the wood.  I sprayed some Organicide on them but may have to do a stronger spray after I finish harvesting the apples.  I had a great crop of blueberries this year.  I need to move a few of my bushes though...again.  There is something going on with certain areas of the land and the trees and bushes I planted in spots are doing terrible, I need to transplant them before they die.  One of the Almond trees I planted is doing really well...it has doubled in size since I planted it...the other has not grown at all...it may need to be moved too.  I am learning about taking care of fruit and nut trees, trying to keep them alive out here is a bit of a challenge.  I only had 3 pears develop this year, the tree that they developed on had fire blight last year, so I am lucky it is still alive.  I did plant more pear trees in the spring, they are just not very big.  I may be waiting five years for a crop from them...but the varieties are suppose to be mosre resistant to blight and other diseases.  I planted more peach, necterine, elderberry and a pomegranate too.

Because I planted my garden late again this year, I decided to get some shade cloth to cover a good section of it as an experiment.  It has worked better than expected, the cucumbers and peppers have been fantastic, no bitterness and bumper crops.  The tomatoes did not do as well, but they are not burned up either and part of the fact that the harvest has not been great may be because of the amount of fire ants in the garden.  Everyone out here has been having major issues with fire ants this year.  I have to figure out how to beat them!  I have been bitten so many times while trying to harvest veggies that I have been walking around with pustules on my hands and ankles most of the summer.  They ate the blooms off of many of my plants, so no blooms...no veggies.  It wasn’t until I mixed up some Borax, powdered sugar and water together and put dishes of it out that I started actually getting things like green beans and tomatoes at all.  I put out ant stakes too recently and am going to try cornmeal and refill the plastic lids with more of the mixture.  Ants ate most of my first corn crop too, I just recently planted more corn seed...hopefully it will have time to produce and I will be able to get rid of the ants before it produces ears of corn.  It is so disappointing to have beautiful healthy looking corn plants only to discover ants inside most of the ears of corn!

I have been getting anywhere from 20 to 40 cucumbers every other day off of my three cucumber plants, I finally grew dill this year and made some lacto-fermented dill pickles that are edible!  Lol, the chickens have also enjoyed a lot of cucumbers, because if I don’t get out there to harvest them they get huge and yellow...and not suitable for human consumptio.  I have gotten a bumper crop of hot and sweet peppers too...which reminds me, I need to get the smoker going today and smoke some Habanero peppers, I need to pickle and can some jalapeño peppers too, and probably some Serrano and ghost peppers.  I made some hot sauce a day or two ago and need to add cilantro and get it canned also.  I also need to pull up watermelon vines and plant more things for the fall garden!  So as you can see, I am a very busy women.

I also have a husband to take care of, he hasn’t been feeling well and finally went to the doctor.  He was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, so I am going to have to learn a whole new way of cooking.  He loves his meat and potatoes, rice and gravy...I must figure out a way to make healthy food that he will eat taste good enough that he won’t miss his potatoes so much.  I went to the store searching for low carbohydrate foods...it is a good thing he likes the green beans I grow so much...and broccoli.  I just need to find the best flavored varieties and go from there.  He loves his pasta too, I am going to try spaghetti squash as a substitute...hopefully it will be good, because I will be eating the same as he does, I just happen to like more of a variety of vegetables.  I found information on the diabetic exchanges and we shall see how this goes.  He loves his deserts too...I am going to have to adjust my thinking too, he even told me not to make his favorite arrow cake for his birthday!  We got some information from his daughter who is an RN and teaches about diabetes and we will adjust and adapt and hopefully everything will be alright, he is already feeling better.  It will just take time.

Not Done Yet...

You would think since it is May that I would have my whole garden planted, I don’t!  I have had issues with my tiller this year and had to get new tires, ok...so I kept getting flats, decided to try new inner tubes and when my husband went to try and put the new ones in the rims bent so badly that it became necessary.  Finally got the tires in and replaced after it taking awhile to find the right ones with the proper rims and they sent two of the exact same tire...one tillers there is a pattern to the tire that helps pull the tiller through the dirt, if you put both tires on with the stems facing out like normal...the tread pattern is backwards on one.  I had a heck of a time trying to till with the tires like that.  I read up a bit and was thinking about sending one back for a replacement and found that the wheel’s axel hub actually had the pin hole on both sides, so I flipped one tire around with the stem on the inside...not ideal, but the wheels come off easily and I needed to till my garden!  Anyway, I got the garden filled totally twice, got a few things planted, then it rained so much I was unable to walk in the garden without sinking up to my ankles.  I had to wait for it to dry out again.  I tilled a little a week later, got a bit more planted...then the same thing happened...more rain, more waiting.  The thing is, here...the grass and weeds grow quickly when it rains, and you really have to remove all of the roots when you till in this sandy soil...or a week later you are back at square one starting all over again.

So, I tilled a bit...then planted the part I tilled...then more rain.  I finally had a good solid week with no rain...so I started tilling one more time.  My garden plot is about 25 or so feet wide by about 75 feet long...so it takes me awhile.  It was hot, I retilled the areas I planted, between the rows and got about 3/4 complete tilling the whole thing when I decided to take a break and get some water.  This tiller is only able to do a strip about 18 inches wide so it pretty much works me to death, it doesn’t have a reverse and it is difficult to turn too.  After my water break, I went to start it up and it would not start and I noticed a wet spot on the ground underneath the tiller.  On closer examination it was dripping fluids, gasoline actually....from a little silver doohickey close to the choke.  Yep, I had to figure out what it was...called upon my Facebook friends...engine gurus.  It is actually a carburetor...yep, now my carburetor is steadily dripping gas.  I got a container and put it underneath it to catch the gas coming out...I would not call it a stream, but an extremely fast drip.  So...when you don’t know anything about fixing engines...you read.  I found the on-line manual for the tiller, I have no clue what I did with the original one...it is a 2013 model...a lot can happen in five years.  Anyway, I look through it and find a parts list after my engine experts told me what the silver thing was...it was the carburetor bowl and contains the float valve.  Do you know what it said in the manual?  It said refer to the engine manual!  Ok, so now I must find the engine manual, but first I need to find out the type and model number.  Do you know how many small engines there are?  Ok so I find something on line that suggests where to look for the model number on the engine...look for a silver plate or a number imprinted on some part on the engine itself.  I couldn’t find a metal tag, no numbers imprinted either...all I saw was that it was a Briggs and Stratton 800 series.  Not exactly what I needed but a start.  I had no idea how many different Briggs and Stratton model numbers there were in the 800 series until I went to their on line parts site.  There are a lot of them!

I looked some more on the tiller trying to see if I missed something, I cleaned off several spots on the tiller looking for some sign of something that actually said Model Number.  I found none.  I got down on my hands and knees and looked, I propped the tiller up and looked all over the engine.  I tilted it over on its side trying to get a better look at stickers on the plastic housing.  All I found was a manufactured year and emission compliance lingo...but there was a number on part of it.  I got the Serial Number and did some searches to no avail.  But, I wrote down all the numbers I saw on the tiller...trying to figure out what part number I needed to order.  I am still not positive I got the right carburetor...I probably won’t know for sure until it gets here, supposedly on Monday.  Why do these things have to be so difficult?  Is it because I know nothing about engines?  Or do the manufacturers just try and drive you crazy enough to frustrate you badly enough to just throw the old one away and buy new?  Sorry, I don’t have the money to buy a whole new tiller!  So, I found a number...I am not sure what it was exactly, but it got me to another number...that got me to carburetor rebuild kits.  Then, after seeing all the little springs and washers and valves and floats...on the rebuild kits, I wondered how much was a whole carburetor all ready put together? I watched a couple of YouTube videos and one guy said the whole thing was fairly inexpensive and only took about fifteen minutes to put on.  I searched for a whole carburetor.  I found, and purchased a new carburetor, all the gaskets, new fuel lines and filters for just under $21!  I am hoping it works, it looked the same...and with new fuel lines and filters and all...my tiller should be as good as new soon.  I did do some reading up on maintenance practices for it...yeah, I just put gas in it and go...I generally leave maintenance up to my husband...although I did put some SeaFoam in it (gas additive) when I filled it with gas at the beginning of this season.  I purchased Stabil to put in the tank for when we put up these implements for winter, but I had no idea before that you are suppose to remove the spark plug and dump oil in the hole.  Guess I need to find that information in the manual again and make myself a checklist.

Lol...yes, I am still learning...you are never to old to learn something new!

Getting It Done

We may be slow, but little by little we are getting this place fixed up.  Spent the day yesterday mowing, pulling weeds and watering while my husband did some tree and brush trimming.  This time of year everything grows fast and we need to do a whole lot more in the way of cleaning and trimming brush.  I have been concentrating on getting things planted to produce food, my orchard is almost set...I had a peach tree die, so I will probably replace it...maybe when they go on clearance?  Still have a lot of planting to do in the garden too.  Maybe I can get that done in the next couple of days.  I have been doctoring roosters for the past two months, but I am about ready to send them back out to the yard.  I really need to power wash my house and the back porch needs to be cleaned off badly.  But, we are working on remodeling the master bath too.  

Today we actually got the shower pan poured.  Ok, maybe poured is not the correct terminology.  I guess it was more like shoveling large blobs of the mortar in the form and smashing it into place...then trying to smooth it out.  That sounds more like it.  My husband mixed it and shoveled it in, and I moved it and tamped it down and smoothed it.  We haven’t ever done it before so hopefully we did a good job.  We have done a lot more than just that, but that is what we did today.  It is just a small piece of the bathroom remodel that has been happening since October maybe?  Yeah, things kind of expanded...problems found and fixed and we are finally getting things closed up.  My bathroom was so cold, hopefully once everything is complete, I won’t freeze to death taking a shower anymore.  We removed the non-working jetted tub and redid all the plumbing in the wall.  We will be actually attaching the toilet to the floor after I tile.  I got metal legs to make an Industrial looking vanity, and we are going to use a piece of Walnut butcher block left over from the kitchen remodel on top.  We are installing a vessel sink and new fixtures and such too.  When I have time and we finish it up I will post pictures.  We are upgrading the floor from vinyl to tile too.  I have never tiled a shower surround, but there is a first time for everything.  They just put some kind of fake wallboard up to begin with and it was falling apart too.  Nothing like living with that nasty bathroom for five years, but it is changing...but because of other issues, the other two are getting something of a facelift too.  We just want to get ours finished before we start working on them.  Plumbing issues are getting fixed, so all are getting new ceramic flooring, some new fixtures and paint after the walls are repaired.

Yep, a lot of it we are attempting to learn and do on our own.  We didn’t count on having to do three bathrooms at once.  But, it is what it is.  I just need to get ours done before the garden starts producing and canning season is in full force.  Just not enough time in the day sometimes.  I am thankful my husband will eat a sandwich or hotdogs or a premade frozen pizza, because gourmet cooking will not be happening for awhile.  

In the mean time, I have to finish my drainage project too.  I have only done one French drain that is about 20 feet long and dug trenches for more.  But, because I didn’t get the pipes in the trenches...I will have to redig them a bit, then a drainage pipe I was going to attach them to collapsed...so I need to dig it out and replace it too...I need materials.  I also found a bunch of cinderblocks and paving stones on a sale site and need to build a retaining wall and fix some coop foundations too.  So, if I don’t write again for awhile...it. Is because I have so many projects to do.  We are not rich...so we tackle everything ourselves.  A lot of the time I am working by myself and this old body of mine ain’t what she use to be.

On a wonderful note...my grapevines that I transplanted are growing.  I was afraid I might have killed them.  We used cattle panels this time for them to climb on, I think they will last a long time.  You can’t cut through cattle panels with a weed eater string like you can with 2”x4” welded wire fencing.  Three of the rose bushes I planted have bloomed too.  So I got to do a little to pretty up the place some...they smell good too!  I have peaches, pears, apples, plums and blueberries growing...and have harvested some strawberries already.  I need to stake some of the fruit trees I planted, but my little orchard is doing good and starting to produce.  Even the wild plums I transplanted three years ago have lots of plums on them now.

I am happy, I feel like our hard work is starting to pay off.  We still have a long way to go and I am still behind on a lot of chores, but...tomorrow is another day.

Have You Ever?

I am just wondering how many people actually realize how valuable farmers are?  There is a reason they get up before the sunrises and work until it is too dark to see at night.  Taking care of animals, planting crops, nurturing them and getting them to grow takes A LOT of work!  It is not a nine to five job, it is around the clock, no days off, 365 days and nights of the year job...even for a small scale farm.  It is amazing that so many people do farm and can feed all those who do not.  Do you know exactly where your food comes from?  No, I am not talking about your corner market, not the shelves and refrigerated sections of the grocery store, not even the Farmers Market that you like to get those great tasting fresh fruits and vegetables from...think about it.  Have you ever thanked a farmer?  Have you thanked a rancher?  How about it?  I never did.  They are precious people, the salt of the earth, hard working people who love what they do...you can pretty much bet they are loosing money or barely scraping by unless they are huge and can actually sell mass quantities of whatever they grow or raise to large Co-ops or Brokers who sell to markets and canners and meatpackers or whatever they do prior to getting them to your favorite store. So, I just want to take a moment, to thank every farmer, rancher, cowboy, picker, driver...did I leave anyone out?  Thank you! Thank you! Thank You, ten million times Thank you for all of your hard work and dedication to feeding and clothing the people of this great and wondrous plant we call home.

I slept good last night and yesterday was an easy day for me, I mowed, pulled weeds and watered...and took care of my animals...I got my first official sunburn of the year too.  It just amazes me how much I love seeing things grow, feeling the texture of the soil, seeing fruit developing on my trees, thinking about what am I going to plant next and where?  I have chicks happily chirping in the next room, a rooster is crowing on my back porch and I have fresh picked strawberries from my plants sitting on my kitchen counter waiting to be eaten with French toast made from the fresh eggs from my chickens or ducks.  Today will be a busy day too, it is looking like it is going to be another beautiful day outside.  No I haven’t written much, but I must get busy...always a lot to do on the farm and I just want to thank my husband too, for going on this journey to find our happy place and working so hard and trying to make it our perfect place to be!

Here it is, April...

I did get seeds started, and an initial tilling done in my garden to mix in the composted chicken poop...but flat tires that would not stay aired up caused problems.  I got new inner tubes, but little did we know...they really don’t seem to make the rims for tillers sturdy enough to put new tubes in...now they are bent.  It took me a few days of searching, but...I finally have new wheels and tires on the way!  Maybe I will get my garden planted soon...most of the seeds are sprouted and ready to go and I bought some plants like broccoli, tomato, a variety of peppers.  It is kind of good that I haven’t planted yet, we got down in the 30’s...they called for a possible freeze, but I think the warm days prior kept it from happening here.  We had pretty bad storms too, and of corse tornados close.  None of my plants got damaged, I had them on a covered porch and hung a tarp to block the wind.

I have been playing catch up still too.  I planted more trees and have attempted to get them mulched, but I will need more mulch.  I only got about half done, with 20 bags of mulch.  I tried to get areas done that dry quicker, and the new plants.  I need to do my blueberries though...weeds grow so fast that some of them my disappear if I am not diligent about mowing.  I get behind some and skip a week and if it rains much, the weeds and grass grow really tall...really fast.  I get big projects done at the expense of cleaning things, I still haven’t power washed my house and it is looking pretty bad.  I wasn’t going to start up the incubators until I got caught up, but I have people calling wanting chicks, so I did...and another incubator stopped working!  I am down to one that works well, and one that I really may have to detail clean and disinfect majorly, the first batch of eggs...all but three failed.  It gets warmer on one side than the other too.  I really need to make a cabinet incubator...soon.

I have been battling allergy issues too, a double ear infection that seems not to want to go away completely.  What is weird is although I can hear again and I think the infection has gone away, my ears continue to itch.  Not just my inner ear, but even my ear lobes and the outer ear too.  I am wondering if maybe the drops they prescribed are causing it?  I am trying Sweet Oil and a homeopathic ear drop and allergy drops called Texas Trees and Grasses.  If I remember to take them three times a day, the itching is not too bad...if I don’t, it itches like crazy.  I have cleaned my ears, walked around with Sweet Oil and cotton balls in my ears, used various essential oils.  I just hope after everything finishes releasing so much pollen that it will stop.

I have chicks hatching now, and tons to get done before it gets real hot out so, it may be awhile before another update.  Hopefully I will get the majority of my projects done before canning season begins, time will tell.

Early Birds Catch The Worms, I Suppose

Ahhh, the rain came starting at about 1:15 am...it has been raining hard for two hours so far and I cannot sleep, it is now 3:15 am.  I laid there for at least an hour, most the time I only give myself thirty minutes to go back to sleep, but 1:15 am is awful early to be getting up and starting your day.  

We knew the rain was coming, after five years living in East Texas you get to know when the rainy season starts and try and plan around it.  You have to keep an eye on the weather because sometimes, we will get 8 inches of rain in one day.  I bought a new rain gauge this year...the old one was emptied so many times that the painted numbers and hash marks had disappeared.  I tried sticking vinyl tape over it so we could still use it, but taking the tube that fills with rain out so often peeled that away too.  

I am behind on all my chores, never did get the dormant oil sprayed on my fruit trees and I noticed some are already about to leaf out, Chickasaw Plums are partially blooming too, and daffodils have started blooming.  I look forward to spring, but this year I am really not ready for it yet.  I have not started my vegetable seeds yet, nor have I tilled my garden.  It is only February 21st isn’t it?  Still winter, yet it was almost 80 yesterday when I was out digging trenches around in my poultry yard.  I was attempting to keep areas from flooding, trying to divert the water to the lower part of the yard and to the creek.  When I work that hard, it seems I usually can’t sleep very well, such is the case tonight.

I mail ordered trees to plant this year, instead of getting them from the big box stores or the feed store.  I added and planted, almond, cherry, nectarine, elderberry, two more fig, two more blueberry, and two different varieties of pear (suppose to be blight resistant)...to replace the one that died and the one that broke off at about a foot above the ground.  They are all pretty small, except the blueberry plants and figs are an OK size.  One of my figs died year before last and I didn’t replace it until now.  I pretty much just have a bunch of sticks sticking up out of the ground, some don’t have any branches...it will be awhile before I get any fruit or nuts off of them, except maybe the blueberry plants.  I moved my grapevines too, only one has ever put on grapes, I hope they do better where I moved them.  I also changed over to cattle panels to support them, the fencing I had used got a bit chewed up by the weed eater.  I really need to mulch around everything, I have been saving brown paper feed bags to lay down around the plants before I put mulch down.  I may have to go rake up leaves and twigs from the forest floor to use as mulch.

As for my bathroom renovation, it is paused for the moment.  I am trying not to hatch any chicks or anything else until it is completed.  But I really needed to get some chores caught up on, and get my garden chores started along with the seeds.  I also need to finish my drainage project around the house.  I have some more materials, and I dug the trenches, but I have a collapsed drain pipe, so that will have to be dug up and replaced or my French drains will be worthless.  With all this rain, I am sure I will have to dig the trenches out again too.  As always, I stay pretty busy.

Been Awhile...Last Post for 2017!

Yes, I am bad about writing in my blog...I was talked into starting it, remember? I stay busy and the past several months have been busier than normal.  I did have a good garden this past Spring and Summer, canned and froze a lot of vegetables.  But on top of that I fought my property appraisal, which took some time to prepare for and some running around.   I also refinanced our house, which also took a lot of time, finding a lender, having to go to the tax office more, having to get a new appraisal, but having to split my property back the way it was before.  It Texas, most lenders will not lend you money on your house if you have an agricultural exemption on the property...so I changed it.  The house and one acre is homesteaded now, and the rest of the property is agricultural.  I have to pay taxes separately on the 18.58 acres now, but we own that part outright now.  It also required to have a new survey done, which also meant more time and money.  Lenders are different when you try and do a cash out refinance in Texas, many turn you down flat.  We wanted some extra cash to make some repairs and get a new HVAC system installed.  I did not get enough money!

The past several weeks, OK, maybe getting close to two months...my house has been a construction zone.  All we wanted to do was to remodel the Master Bath and take out the huge jetted tub and put a shower in it's place, well and new flooring, a new light, sink and vanity.  Get the toilets seated properly and move the old vanity in the Master Bath to the Office Bath.  But, because of discoveries it has lead to having to have plumbing redone completely in all three bathrooms!  I still have no walls in the Master Bath, but I did get insulation put in the outer wall, because...well it has gotten rather cold.  It is suppose to get down in the teens tonight too...and stay below freezing the next couple of days.  It will be pretty cold all week.  I am afraid that if I didn't get the insulation put into the outer wall, how cold would it be in my bathroom...and attached bedroom?   A good friend is helping me out n this project, my Surrogate Son Mark.  He knows how to do most of this stuff, thank god.  There have been setbacks though, and now Holidays...and I watch his son while he works.  I have been wanting to paint and lay flooring, but I am trying to wait, trying to be patient (which is hard for me) until the plumbing part is complete.  I don't wan to have to redo anything, I can't afford to first off...I should have asked for more money on the refinance, but I really didn't know how bad things would be in the walls.  You would have thought, as much HGTV as I have watched, I would have known to double it!  Something happened and my kitchen floor is messed up too, I have to put down flooring in at least one more bathroom, a toilet got broken and with the new one being attached to the floor now...you can tell how terribly unlevel the floor is, in the office bathroom.  The floor needs to be leveled out before flooring can be laid...but it is the only fully functioning bathroom at the moment.  The Master Bath only has the toilet and the guest Bath is functioning only as a powder room with just the sink and toilet.  The Master and Guest bathtub/shower plumbing is hooked together and it was all leaking inside the wall...good thing is, there was a big hole in he slab that the water dripped into.

We have discovered that the slab is probably hydrolic cement, but not very thick in spots.  After Mark gets the plumbing soldered up we will have to fill in the holes and still have to set the shower pan and plumb the drain for it.  I didn't know you had to cement them in...lol, I am learning about what it takes though.  Oh and the foot thick walls have insulation with a plastic over them on the outer wall, and then the walls we have opened do have something like R-13 in addition to that.  The metal beams inside the walls seem to transfer the cold though, and there is a great big one that runs up and down through the shower wall, and another smaller one horizontally running against that beam.  Gonna have to insulate around them better, maybe with foam board or something.  I don't like taking a shower in the winter in there at least not when it is below freezing outside.  I put R-30 insulation in the outside shower wall and Mark put the old R-13 in the wall between the rooms, but it has been getting down in the low sixties in there even with that, but, I haven't covered the beams yet either.  There is also no cement board up yet and no vapor barrier either.  Not yet...I need to build my shower niche before I do that and maybe spray foam that.  This has turned into a do it yourself project, I am thankful for Mark and his plumbing expertise.  I called several people for bids on the project, two did not show up and Mark graciously offered his help.  I will watch his son when he is ready to get the ball rolling on his home remodel, maybe help when I can too.  Oh, I forgot to mention he and his family moved out in this area too!  They are only about 12 miles away now.  Now, if I could only get my son's and their families out here, that would be great!

I must go out and feed my poultry and let them out now.  That is just a fraction of what has been happening around here!  Lol, and I still have my chicken chores, laundry, shopping and regular home maintenance too...on top of it all!

Wacky Weather and Winds

Texas is known for "Big" things...sometimes our weather is one of those things.  A common saying is "Go big or go home!"...well this last week a lot of people have no home to go to.  East Texas was hit by tornados, lots of tornados.  We were fortunate not to have any bad damage here, the day before they hit, we had high winds that caused about an 8-1/2 hour power outage...I lost some eggs that were developing in my incubators, but that is about it.  I put some of the Hot Hands body warmers in with the eggs and in with the chicks that were in the brooders...all but one chick made it, I had hatching going on and it just got too cold.  I took the rest out that did hatch, as they hatched and put them in the brooders with the older chicks for additional warmth.  I even carried the one that died around in my shirt for awhile trying to warm it up before putting it in with the other chicks.

I think the last count on tornados was 9.  One of them traveled for over fifty miles on the ground and I believe it was rated at an F-4.  Lots of buildings and homes were destroyed and people died.  The storms came within 11 miles or so of us, but we mainly had high winds and heavy rain.  I had a hen that didn't make it into a coop that died during the night, my husband found her in the mud hunkered down the next morning.  Please say a little prayer for all those affected by the tornados, and if you can help in any way, one of the hardest hit areas was Canton, Texas.  They are still trying to determine how many tornados spawned and based on damage, what categories they were.  It is time like these that I wish we had a tornado shelter.  I am sure all those in the paths of the tornados are probably thinking the same thing.

We were under a lot of weather warnings yesterday, high wind, thunderstorms, tornados to the north and south of us, there was hail and tornadic conditions 50 miles from us...I kept a watch on the weather yesterday, the thunder was awful and scaring the animals...but there isn't anything I can do about that.  When the rains hit us it was extremely heavy, but fairly brief.  It sounded like I had a stampede going over my roof...but by the evening it was over and the skies started to clear.  We are suppose to have a bit of a reprieve, until next week.  With the storms came a cold front and it dropped our temperatures down to about 50 last night.  It is cloudy here this morning and windy again today, and rather cool outside.  It is suppose to be decent weather the next several days, so I have some work to get done outside.

I got rid of 42 roosters in the last week and a half, but I need to get rid of more...I just need to try and get the ones I want to get rid of penned and call the man who took most the others, to come get more. He is trying to sell them and said he would split the money with me.  I need the money, but I need the roosters gone more than anything else.  I always thought it was cruel for hatcheries to kill the male chicks after they sexed them...but, I am starting to think differently now that half of my grown chickens are males!  They can be mean, they can gang up on a hen and hurt or kill her, the hens try and stay up high and away from them and don't eat as much as they should...so they have to go.  I have been hurt several times by roosters, when I tried to get them off of a hen...there may be six or seven on one hen...the more I can get rid of the better.  I only need so many for breeding purposes.  I have also been spurred and had a hole in my arm at least a quarter of an inch deep because of one rooster.

On a bright note, I did get some fencing put up for tomato plant supports and got most of the plants that survived the greenhouse roll-over planted.  I started some more seeds a few days ago, but they haven't sprouted yet.  I have a ton of work to do, but wanted to update my blog at least once this month.  We decided to try and make a batch of Dewberry wine this year instead of jelly...but I need to go pick more berries.  I think some of my blueberries may be ripe too...and I also have lot of strawberry roots to plant!  Lol, I think I have sixty to plant...so I need to get busy!

Crazy Days!

I can always tell when Spring is in full swing by the number of broody hens I have...it has been crazy around here lately!  My biggest chicken coop has broody hens in every nest box, some two or three in a nest box and sometimes a turkey in one with them...the corner under the nest boxes has at least two broody turkeys, but I find three in there a lot lately.  I have a goose that will go in the corner and add an egg to the pile too.  I have another broody turkey on my back porch, she was injured in what may have been a mating accident.  I go outside and find a hen sitting on eggs in a dog house used by my ducks...and another hen sitting on eggs in the chicken tractor.  I am not sure exactly how many broody hens I have...but I have 23 nest boxes in the big coop, and several of them contain more than one hen.  I will estimate close to thirty.

After finding a chick that was pretty much pecked to death, I went in and took a five gallon bucket and collected all of the eggs from the top nest boxes on one set of ten.  I candled them and stuck the viable eggs in incubators...I had a couple hatch during the night.  I woke up to new peeping in two incubators.  I moved five week old chicks to my back porch brooder day before yesterday so I would have more space in the house brooders.  I will have to do the same thing with the baby geese and turkeys today I think, they are outgrowing the brooder totes I have them in very quickly...except for the runt goose.  I have to clean the house brooders a few times a day too.  The babies get to a certain point that they poop a lot more and just make a terrible mess.  I may have to try sand as a bedding material soon, or make more wire bottomed brooders.  Baby ducks and geese are super messy...they play in their water so much, and the mix of water, food and poop gets all ovr the place.

Enough about babies.  I have been trying to get my garden planted too!  I was doing so good...had all my seeds sprouting in my popup greenhouse...had tilled and was about ready to plant my veggies...then we had a pretty severe storm and it tossed everything with some pretty heavy wind gusts.  Some survived though.  I have maybe 8 broccoli plants, maybe 12 green bean plants, about the same on Romaine lettuce.  I lost a tray and a half of corn and not sure what is left on a few...but need to get them in the ground too.  Pumpkins, watermelon, cantaloupe and maybe squash...it is hard to tell on some of the vining plants...I will have to direct sow some seeds.  I have sunflowers too...and a few herb plants survived.  I have tomato plants too...lost a bunch, but still have a bunch.  I just don't know what type they are.  I will plant them anyway, and start some more just in case.  I may have a fall garden started and do several plantings this year if I can fit them in my schedule.

Anyway, with the mild winter we had the berries are ripening early...so I need to pick them today...well, every few days.  I need to check my blueberries too!  The wild plums will be ripening soon too.  This time of year is always super crazy for me.  Just lots and lots to get done and keep an eye on.  I just thought I would let you know, in case I don't write again for awhile.  I just woke up early today...and it rained last night so today may be too messy to accomplish much outside.  But, I have to try and finish building the supports for my tomatoes and get them planted...I am glad I started them in bigger pots this year, maybe next year I need to go ever larger?  This is our rainy season...it is hard for me to walk in squishy mud and do much of anything.  After having foot surgery on both feet several years ago, I have to be careful...and rest a lot doing much work on soft ground.  I do try and wear my heavy boots to till and use the shovel...but it still makes my feet hurt doing it.  I don't sleep very well when my feet feel like they are on fire either...so I try to keep from doing too much, most of the time.  Ok...I am not good...I press through to get the job done and pay for it later.  But, that is what us Capricorns do...we don't like to admit defeat!  So yeah, it is a bit crazy right now.

Hard Work Makes For Rich Rewards, Not Always!

It may take me awhile, but I get things done eventually.  I have been incubating and hatching chicks, ducks, turkeys and geese...but, not very many.  Well not as many as you might expect with a poultry farm.  Right now I just have three turkey poults, four goslings and about 9 chicks.  I sold a few goslings and ten chicks, but I have more chicks starting to hatch.  One of my incubators broke, it wouldn't heat up, my husband replaced the element...it still will not heat up.  I bought another incubator, but ended up sending it back...the turner was missing parts and it didn't reset like it was suppose to.  I have not purchased another one.  I really just need to make a cabinet incubator.  A man I sell eggs to, that hatches them, is hatching some turkeys and ducks for me.  They should be hatching by next week, if I remember right.  I gave him 47 duck eggs and 43 turkey eggs to hatch and offered a female turkey in return of the newly hatched turkeys, and to grow another one up for him for the ducks.  We shall see what happens.

I still need to create the dividers on my breeding pens, I am trying not to hatch many, if any mixed breed chicks.  I have a handful of Salmon Favorelles in my back porch brooder and set some of their eggs and I have some Jubilee Orpington's also separated out to start hatching their eggs too, my Dominiques have always been separated...those are the majority of chicks I have at the moment.  

I have been rather busy as usual.  I have two garden areas this year!  My garden in front of the house, I have been adding composted chicken manure into it, crushed eggshells and need to sprinkle some Epsom salts...but I have tilled it multiple times and planted some of my plant starts...at least the ones that survived my green house blowing over.  About that...we had some pretty bad storms a few weeks a go...tornados within 12 miles or so of us, we experienced some very strong wind gusts.  Well, this greenhouse is basically like a tent made out of a kind of milky white translucent reinforced plastic.  The wind picked it up and rolled it over, it broke one of the stakes off and the ropes broke or came loose on the others.  I had a shelf full of plants I had started from seeds, some of them from seeds I saved from my last years harvest...I guess I did them right, most of them...including the corn, sprouted.  They were tossed around and mixed up, some destroyed...well a lot destroyed.  But, I salvaged what I could and got a lot of the non-vining plants in the ground yesterday.  I will have to start some more from seed.  It was rather disappointing, but I planted more than I really needed anyway...but, I was hoping to sell some of the plants.  Not going to happen now, I could sell tomato plants, but I don't know which ones are which.

I was doing so good this year...the past few years I didn't get anything planted until late May or early June.  I am ahead of the game this year at least.  I may have some tomatoes by the time the Farmers Market starts, I will have to restart some cucumbers...I can't tell at this point what the vining plants are...except the watermelons.  Not sure if what I have left is pumpkins, squash, cantaloupe or cucumbers...but, I have more seeds...so, I will plant more and stick these plants in the area my neighbor tilled for me.  I still need to build my potato towers, so far I have only been able to produce a few tiny potatoes...most have died or rotted because of too much rain.  It is a learning process for me...that is for sure!

Spring is Springing...

Have you ever been attacked by a rooster or turkey?  It is not fun.  When, what I will call Spring fever hits, they can get a bit frisky and rowdy.  You have to be on guard sometimes, well, a lot of the time around here...I have a lot of males.  When the weather warms up, it is mating season.  No, they didn't try and mate me...but I did have a rooster try and attack me when I went into his pen to feed the batch in there.  Pompadour is a gold laced Polish, he usually does a little stutter step and runs at me... But I got in a hurry, and was not watching him closely and if he did it prior to flying at me, I didn't see it.  The pen he is in is about 8'x8' and I know he was in the corner across from me when I went in there, he flew across the pen and spurred me in the arm while I was dumping feed in to the feed pan.  He made good contact with me too, I will estimate the spur went into my arm at least 1/4 of an inch if not 1/2 inch.  Puncture wounds hurt, his Spurs were sharp and pointy.  I had a hole in my arm and blood was running down and dripping off of my fingers within seconds.  The hole was probably about 1/4 inch across too...and I could see down in my arm a little ways.  I tried to finish feeding but, thought maybe I should go wash up and bandage it, before I did anything else...I was getting drips of blood all over everything and I had on a blue jean long sleeve shirt.  Rooster Spurs can be needle sharp, I have picked up a rooster before and a spur went through the webbing next to my thumb.  I usually cut and blunt the Spurs of any rooster over a year old when I doctor on them now.  A Dremel tool goes through the spur fairly quickly with a cutoff wheel attached.  I used a diamond cut off wheel on him the next day, my husband caught him and put him in a cage on the porch for me.  I smoothed them off and did his beak too.  He is an older rooster and I have cut his Spurs before, but never the beak, I smoothed it up so if he bit me maybe it wouldn't break the skin.

Then there are the turkeys, I have 11 males.  They are all sparing with each other...or were.  One by one they have been separated into different pens.  Two of them I caught trying to mate chicken hens.  I still have a Blue Splash Marans hen in a cage on my back porch from one incident.  She is finally putting weight on her leg and walking around again.  My Tom turkeys are pretty heavy weight, around 35 pounds I think for the biggest ones, I have 12 turkey hens but I guess a few of the turkeys just jump at the opportunity to try and mate just about anything they can.  Even the n the pens they strut and fight through the fencing.  I have been bitten when I got to close to a pen and not paid attention.  I am glad I had on my blue jean jacket, one got me on the outside of my inner elbow through the fence when I was locking up the pen next to him.  I still have a knot under my skin and a bruise a week later, he scraped me and I have a bit of a scab too, but at least I didn't drip blood on that wound.  Yeah, I am a bit of a mess...scratches and scars on my hands and arms most of the time now.  I get them healed and it starts all over again.

I have a few hens starting to get broody too, I am going to have to remember to wear gloves when gathering eggs now too.  I separated a bunch of roosters into the back section of the chicken yard because they were literally attacking my hens, five or six on one hen!  I would reach down to help the hen and a couple of the boys didn't like that I grabbed a rooster off of the hen and bit me on the back of my hand...yep, need to remember to put on gloves and wear a long sleeve blue jean jacket for a bit of protection.  It hurts when they grab a mouthful of skin and pinch you...it swells up and makes a weird almost triangle looking bruise with a V-shaped mark or cut/scrape.

Enough about all that.  There are other more pleasant signs of Spring, I have plum, peach, apple and pear trees blooming and leafing out.  It smells wonderful.  We have gotten up in the 80's a few times and it has been in the sixties pretty regularly this "winter".  I am not sure we are done with freezing temperatures yet though...my pecan trees have done nothing yet...people around here say when the pecan starts to leaf out, then there will be no more frost and you can plant your garden.  My husband got my pop up greenhouse out of storage for me last weekend, or was it the weekend before?  We had a heck of a time getting it set up, kind of a comedy of errors...it is in my front fenced area at the side of the house and anchored down.  Anyway, I put my lime tree, my pineapple plants and a jalapeño pepper plant in it, then some plastic shelving and finally got some seeds started this week.  I also got garlic and onions planted in my garden...after hauling a ton of spent bedding and chicken manure out there and tilling it in...it looks pretty good.  I have a bit more work to do to get it ready to plant.  I sprinkled crushed eggshells out there and tilled them in too.  I am going to put some Epsom salt out and hopefully my garden will do very well this year too...even better than last year hopefully.  I need to check on my plants and water them today, see if anything is sprouting yet.  It was cloudy and rainy the past two days so I didn't open it up.  We have still been getting down in the thirties here and there at night, so I must remember to close it up before dark.  I also need to plant some more seeds in starter pots.  I want to build raised beds for asparagus, strawberry and herb gardens too. Alas...there are only so many hours in the day.

I can hear that it has been raining, that tell, tell sound when a car drives by...the sun is just starting to come up and I can see light through the curtains.  I guess I better get busy.  My hens are laying like gangbusters and I have eggs all ovr my kitchen that need to be washed.  Oh, and I did get eggs set in three incubators, but one of them is not working...it will not heat up, I got a new heating element for it and still nothing (my husband was kind enough to install it for me)...so I guess I had better get to work on my cabinet incubator soon.  I have been researching parts for one...I may have to learn some wiring and more about heater coils, PID controllers, fans and hygrometers...and maybe making an egg turner too.  I still have not made my top bar hive either and saw an article that bees are starting to swarm in this area...dang it!  Yes, I am a busy woman...stay that way too.

Winter, Where Art Thou?

This year, so far at least...it has been a mild winter.  We have had numerous days that were in the mid sixties to mid Seventies, quite a few weeks it was cloudy and rainy so kind of nasty out in that regard but fairly nice temperature wise.  After being sick for a month I have been rather busy playing catch up...I have a lot more to catch up on though.

I did finally get the outer portion of the walls on the chicken run done on my breeding pens I started over the summer.  I put quite a few roosters in it, but still need to get dividers done and separate four breeds in it to get some pure breed chicks one of these days.  I need to start on another set too.  I finally did a head count on my female chickens, if I counted decently I currently have about 175 hens.  I am going to guess about 80 roosters, but that is just an estimate.  I culled three roosters the past few weeks, they were mixed breed roosters that had been beat up pretty bad and with injuries I didn't want to take the time to doctor them again.  Yes, I said again...I healed them up and put them back out and they got ganged up on, smashed into the mud and the one I did yesterday could barely stand up, it was his second stint on the porch...he was given the opportunity, but even though he was treated for worms and I could not see anything wrong with him, he was very thin.  After another month on the porch, he kept loosing weight, his comb yesterday was practically white along with his waddles.  He had zero meat on his bones!  It is hard to tell on chickens unless you pick them up...all the feathers give the illusion of weight.  The rooster that was in with him gained weight and looked good...so I put him and three other out in a pen with a turkey that keeps getting picked on back in the yard.

My porch chickens are generally checked on several times a day (doctored on, if needed) for usually a month or more, some just need a break because of a small injury, or things like an eye infection or a mouth canker, sometimes because they feel too light weight to me...so, I feed them well and get their strength up.  I have six females and one male out there now.  One Marans hen was stepped on by a big male turkey and was holding her leg up, another was being over mated and ganged up on by roosters...not bald on her back...but gonna be there soon if I didn't help her, my little hen Crooked toe had been over mated but her feathers are all back now, she was mostly put into a brooder as company to a Salmon Favorelle hen who is blind in one eye, she gets picked on too...runs around in circles and others peck her on the head to try and make her stop.  Two other Salmon Favorelles are now in with her...enjoying a break from the boys.  I need to make a small coop for them and fence an area, just for them.

I have been trying to clean pens the past few days, which basically is a maintenance thing.  Scraping poop out, turning dirt and evening it up, washing water dishes and refilling them.  It is an ongoing thing, but when I was sick I got behind on it.  So basically a lot more poop than normal, I can only do a few pens a day with all the other chores.  I need to muck out my largest coop, the duck house and breeding pens today and spread fresh straw and pine shavings.  It doesn't take long for the duck house to get nasty with 30 ducks sleeping in it at night...if I have time I need to get the chicken tractor cleaned out too...I may do it first.  I need to change out the pine shavings in nest boxes too...I don't like dirty eggs and when it rains feet get muddy around here.  I bought some nest box pads and those may need cleaning too...my experiment using rubber door mats was unsuccessful...I cut them in two and lined the bottom of the nest box with them...none of my hens would go into the nest boxes.  I put pine shavings on top...still only a few will use them.  I may order some more of the washable nest box pads...at least they can't kick those out!

I have been baking a lot of cookies and pies lately, I never should have started!  Lol...it doesn't take long for them to disappear...and my jeans have gotten tight.  I need to start getting outside an working more, out of site, out of mind?  It is either that or my husband needs to take them all to work with him.  I made several Custard Pies, two Lemon Chess Pies and dozens and dozens of Oatmeal, pecan/or walnut and raisin cookies and bars.  Who doesn't like cookies for breakfast?  Hey, at least they had some good stuff in them!

I have also been working on improving my soil in my front garden, gotta do something with all that chicken poop and spent bedding.  Hopefully my garden will be really good this year.  I need to start seeds soon too.  I got a bit larger pots to start plants in this year, the small seed starter pots don't really allow for much growth and when we get a lot of rain or a late snow, I can't put the plants in the ground when they are ready.  I still need to make a greenhouse too.  I have a popup greenhouse in storage...I am not sure I can get it out by myself, but I may try.

Well, that is all I have for now.  I have at least one goose laying now and got my first turkey egg yesterday...I may try and clean up incubators and set eggs soon too.  But, I need to get my chickens off the porch and clean it well before I do too.  I have people calling me already wanting chicks, ducks and geese.

Today Is My Birthday

It would be nice to sleep late on my birthday, but it didn't happen.  I figured since I got up so early I may as well write a little.  My mind clicked on this morning and I was laying there thinking of all of the things I need to do...or want to accomplish in the next week or so.  We are due to have some pretty bad storms in a few hours, but since it is pitch black outside, I don't want to attempt chores outside yet.

Our owl is back, and they like to hunt early...usually, and I have already lost one rooster to the owl, or a feral cat that has been hanging around in the yard.  I could go outside and put feed out, but since it is going to rain, I prefer to put the feeders in the coops so the food doesn't get watered down...they won't eat it then and if I open the doors they will come pouring outside.  I will have to wait until the sun rises...be patient and just have some coffee I guess.  I have already had one mug of coffee, about to go get a second one...I will probably need it today.  Today I will more than likely get wet, about the time I go outside we are supposed to have an 80% chance of rain and it increases to 100% by 9:00am. It will be a rain coat and rubber boots kind of day.  I am glad I got straw spread yesterday and a few of the smaller coops mucked out.  I did not have my garden cart to haul the muck away though...so I made a couple of piles and need to get it into a muck bucket and hauled off.  Not exactly a glamorous or fun thing to do on your birthday...but neither is falling into the muck which gets rather slick when it rains.

This past year was kind of tough, my husbands business has dropped off some which is not a good sign.  I sold some turkeys, ducks, chickens and geese this year...but not near enough to make up the difference.  I need to get my breeding pens finished and get rid of a ton of excess roosters...OK, maybe 50 roosters or so, they are eating machines and they gang up on my hens and the egg production is way down to his time of year anyway.  They need to go.  I have one coop with 13, one coop with 21 and three pens with about 22, but need to select a few to keep.  Then I need to pen up some others that I want to keep to thin the numbers down...who am I kidding, I probably need to get rid of 100 roosters or more!  At least it was just a mixed breed rooster that got eaten last week, my Double Laced Blue Barnvelder just disappeared...but he may have jumped the fence and got picked off by something, I just didn't find any of his feathers.

Since it is raining today, we may take down the Christmas tree...I usually leave it up until the day after my birthday, but since my husband is home today...maybe we can get it done quicker together and haul the decorations out to the shed between storms or later today.  My husband doesn't normally take anything but Christmas Day off, or New Year's Day, but after several days with no customers he decided since everyone else was closed downtown, he would close too.  When it rains, he rarely has any customers either.  Here lately we have actually been talking about moving to a different area, a town with a bigger population.  I imagine if we do, I will be selling off my flocks...or leave them for who ever we sell the house to.  We are going to give it another year, but if business keeps dropping...it will be tough going with so many mouths to feed.  But, spring will be easier to reduce my flocks numbers too...people just don't normally want non-laying hens over the winter.  I started looking at housing prices and what is available more in central Texas around Tyler and Temple, but if he is going to continue with his computer shop we need someplace that has a bigger customer base and high speed internet...not satellite.  Since the town he has his shop only has a population of about 5,500 we probably need at least a city of 20,000 or so.  I still want to live in an area that has land though, I would love at least five acres so I can have some chickens.  I guess we shall see what happens, maybe with a different president things will get better.  If not, I will continue to search small towns and see what might work for both of us.  I don't have to have chickens, but if I don't...I want a nice workshop/studio space.

Anyway...I hope you are as happy about living another year as I am!  I am thankful for every day I have on this earth.  I use to take life for granted...things change when you get cancer and live through it.  Flowers smell sweeter, the grass looks greener, rainbows look brighter...you enjoy the sound of the rain on the roof more.  So, today on my 58th year of life...I want to wish each and every one of you reading this a Happy Birthday!  It may not actually be the day of your birth, but I hope you discover the joy of being alive one more year too, because each day we live is full of promise, yet each day is not promised...so make the most of every day you wake up to see!