A follower on our Facebook page asked about introducing new chickens to an established flock; she is concerned that her new ones will get a beating from the older hens. It is possible, but here is what we did.
. We waited to introduce them until they were about 3 months old last year, and introduction came by way of everyone free ranging. The littles were kept in the front yard in what my husband calls the playpen - a wooden frame with chicken wire around it. The older hens could walk around and check them out.
After about a week or so of this every day, we let the littles out. Of course, they immediately tried to challenge for position in the flock (which is hilarious to watch, BTW - these tiny hens coming up to a big hen and puffing up at her) One hen took a dislike and did try to attack all the littles she could. We'd give her a thump on the head with our finger, move the little away from her, move her to different parts of the yard. The bigger they got, the less she tried to attack them. her reasons? She was omega chicken - lowest on the hierarchy of chickens - and was trying to move up her place. She never did - she stayed lowest even when the rest were full grown.
The leader of the flock would just look at the little challenging her, give them a quick peck on the head - just one - to teach them their place. Everyone else ignored them.
Now this is while the older hens were still in the garage coop, so we put the littles "playpen" coop in the garage as well and we'd let the older ones out first, then the younger ones.This way, they got used to the idea that they must share the space- this space being the garage. Note, this was ALL fully supervised, so that we could come to the rescue of the littler ones if need be.
Then about two weeks before the big coop was finished in November, we put them all in the garage coop together. By now, the littles were full adult size, so while there was some jostling for position, there were no real injuries- and any bleeding pecks were cleaned and tended asap. Having a brand new coop to go into also helped - clearly no other chicken had been there before, so it was neutral ground for all.
Now, the girls will run about together, but when they roost for the night, the older girls sleep together, they younger girls sleep together, and they do not mix for sleep time. I'm guessing it will be the same for this round when they get to the coop.
Our plans are - introduction under tight supervision, started this week - Brown Myrtle appears interested in them and may mother hen them, Bird Flu already pecked one and been chased off. Everyone else is fully uninterested. Next, playpen in the yard, then they go to garage coop and everyone ranges together during the day, then introduction to the big coop and run. This will be different than last year, since the older hens already have an established place in the coop. We will have to see how that goes.
The key is gradual introduction with supervision, taking away from the group any who decide to attack, and immediate tending of all wounds. These techniques work with introducing new adult birds as well - a period of being inside fencing but close to the others, then ranging together, then coop introduction.
However, when bringing in new birds, you must also keep them isolated from the main flock - completely, no contact, wash your hands between handling of each. Why? Because each flock has its own bacterial microculture that members of that flock are all used to, that does not make them ill - their immune systems can handle all things within that microculture of theirs. But new chickens have their own microculture, as well as being used to different food, environment, etc. Isolation and gradual introduction allows for any new disease the new members have to die off or be treated, and allows for acclimation to the environment of your yard. It helps keep the flock as a whole healthier.
We are also handling this set of babies more - they will be my batch that goes out for demonstrations and talks. They need to be used to people touching them all the time. Most of my flock tolerates touching; these need to welcome it.
Sunday, April 13, 2014
Sunday, March 30, 2014
If you Give a Moose a Muffin Day
Have you ever seen those stories - If You Give a Moose a Muffin, A Pig a Pancake, A Mouse a Cookie, etc? A series of "If's and "Thens".
Yesterday was like that - actually, it started Friday. If you go grocery shopping to use up all the coupons for free stuff and money off if you spend so much total, or on this thing (I got $95 of groceries for $34), you have to clean out the fridge.
So Saturday, I clean out the fridge.
If when cleaning out the fridge you find a partial onion that is actually growing, roots and all, you have to plant it to see what happens.
If you get out the pot and potting soil to plant the onion, you also need to get out more pots and huge bag of potting soil, because you really need to replant that aloe plant that has many babies in the same pot and is partially dying off.
If you get the aloe out of the pot on the kitchen floor, you're going to need to vacuum - cause dirt, everywhere!
If you vacuum, you have to vacuum several rooms at the same time.
If you repot the aloe, you need to move the bigger table over underneath the window to accommodate the new pots as well as the newly potted onion.
If you take the aloe that is not going to survive replanting out to the composter (too squishy to use for anything else), the chickens will come around you to see what you have, and you will help Husband get them back into their "fort".
If your house smells like fresh dirt, you stat planning other things you are going to plant and start looking at seeds.
See how it goes?
Yesterday was like that - actually, it started Friday. If you go grocery shopping to use up all the coupons for free stuff and money off if you spend so much total, or on this thing (I got $95 of groceries for $34), you have to clean out the fridge.
So Saturday, I clean out the fridge.
If when cleaning out the fridge you find a partial onion that is actually growing, roots and all, you have to plant it to see what happens.
If you get out the pot and potting soil to plant the onion, you also need to get out more pots and huge bag of potting soil, because you really need to replant that aloe plant that has many babies in the same pot and is partially dying off.
If you get the aloe out of the pot on the kitchen floor, you're going to need to vacuum - cause dirt, everywhere!
If you vacuum, you have to vacuum several rooms at the same time.
If you repot the aloe, you need to move the bigger table over underneath the window to accommodate the new pots as well as the newly potted onion.
If you take the aloe that is not going to survive replanting out to the composter (too squishy to use for anything else), the chickens will come around you to see what you have, and you will help Husband get them back into their "fort".
If your house smells like fresh dirt, you stat planning other things you are going to plant and start looking at seeds.
See how it goes?
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Snow, Sun, Snow, Sun - Welcome to Weather in March
This last week has been a round of sunny and warm, then snow, then sunny and warm and melt, then snow... repeat. This coming week seems like more of the same. Now toss in travel time, and you get my past week. But I'll tell the story mainly in pictures.
Work had me traveling through a bunch of mountain towns and staying overnight rather North of home. I went through some new towns for me - or at least relatively new; I've not been up that way since the summer of 1983 and a lot has changed. So I went through Empire, Berthoud Falls, Winter Park, Fraser, Tabernash and Granby.
While we were getting green sprouts here, North of here is still very snow covered.
This was Tuesday:
Went up in the very dark of the very early morning, so didn't see much until we were finished with work.
An old church in Granby
Just a wee bit of snow up there still.
House leaning on a house.
I clear only a small space in the chicken run - I know this is a spring snow.
Work had me traveling through a bunch of mountain towns and staying overnight rather North of home. I went through some new towns for me - or at least relatively new; I've not been up that way since the summer of 1983 and a lot has changed. So I went through Empire, Berthoud Falls, Winter Park, Fraser, Tabernash and Granby.
While we were getting green sprouts here, North of here is still very snow covered.
This was Tuesday:
Went up in the very dark of the very early morning, so didn't see much until we were finished with work.
An old church in Granby
A "lean to" somewhere between Fraser and Tabernash.
Coming into Winter Park. Doesn't it look so inviting?
I did stop and turn back for this unique cabin in Tabernash.
Since we had two jobs in the area, the boss allowed us to stay overnight rather than brave Berthoud Pass yet again in the early morning hours. Good thing too, since Winter Park got another 6 inches that night - and so did the pass! The 5 am alarm plow woke us up, and as we ate breakfast, the snow started falling again. Sigh.
But then Yay! Around 10 am, the sun came in through the windows of the school, and the rest of the day was sunny and even warm!
But then Yay! Around 10 am, the sun came in through the windows of the school, and the rest of the day was sunny and even warm!
Moosen!
Just a wee bit of snow up there still.
Leaving Winter Park.
I stopped at the top of Berthoud Pass to get some pictures - look at the snow blowing off the top.
Some unique buildings and some just good pictures from between Berthoud Falls and Empire.
House leaning on a house.
A still running private resort lodge near Empire.
And a sign of Spring - a running creek!
Peck House of Empire - in operation as a hotel and restaurant since it opened in the 1862.
And back home. Thursday is quiet; I have work but I also have a stomach bug. Lucky me.
And Friday, it snows.
And Friday, it snows.
And Snows
And snows. Literally all day.
But this is a spring snow - here's photos from 9 am:
But this is a spring snow - here's photos from 9 am:
Around noon, daughter goes out and builds a snowman.
Look behind the snowman - that's the road already.
At 3 pm:
The snowman isn't faring too well either:
3pm
9 am Sunday.
It's now evening, and thanks to a near 50 degree day, even more snow has melted, and poor snowman has lost his head.
Tuesday, we do it all again.
Happy Spring!
Saturday, February 8, 2014
The Hidden Costs of the "Family Cloth"
A fellow homesteading blogger posted a link to an article extolling the virtues of the "family cloth"- you can find it here.
OK - let's talk cost ratio. Which is more affordable? People are talking about how much it costs to buy TP. Now consider this - you need to figure out how many times a day people in your household go to the bathroom, multiply by number in your family. Even if you wash them every two days, you should have at least 4-5 days supply if these clothes on hand, because sometimes laundry doesn't happen when it should.
Now, material- author doesn't mention it. Are you going to buy pre made washcloths, the cheap kind, at Walmart - that's about $4 for a pack of 10. If you are buying your own material, you need to look for something absorbent - old sheets are NOT going to cut it. You could use old towels, maybe. But if you want terry cloth or diaper material - both actually rather expensive by the yard. Terry cloth is $10 a yard, diaper fabric is $7 to 10 a yard. Plus time to make them. Assuming you can- or the cost to pay someone else to make them for you. Most seamstresses I've ever met charge materials cost and $10- $20 an hour, including myself. Or they charge by project - to make say 120 clothes, I would say a fee of at least $60. Plus materials. And these will wear out with the repeated washings and need to be replaced much sooner than your average washcloth.
Now, we need to factor in the laundry cost. There is the cost of heating the water and running the machine. Not everyone does laundry every 2 days. Gas or electric, there is a cost. Unless you wash them by hand, and there still is going to be a cost for heating the water.
There is the cost for detergent, even if you make it at home.
I found this lovely chart that goes about how much it costs to a washing machine per year. It's awesome, because you can adjust it to your cost per kilowatt, if you dry, water temp going in, etc. and get an estimate. It also does top loader vs front loader. I have a top loader, and I calculated this: I set my actual rates for gas and electric, set it for 100% hot- assuming I was doing these clothes - and figured for a family of four that I would do at least 4 of these loads a week. That's a cost of $20 a month! And it's only that low because I don't pay for water - I have a well. The front loader was cheaper, but the cost of a new front loader machine is - dear gods, I found them from $600 to $1400! Here's the laundry link so you can play with it for yourself.
Then factor in those folk who do not have wash facilities at home. They can choose to wash them in a sink or tub, or they go to a Laundromat. Last time I went, the average cost for a standard sized washer was $2.50, drying was 75 cents. Of course, you can hang them up at home. Note, that is here, in a rural town. In the city, it could easily cost more. And some Laundromats do not like you washing diapers or bathroom related clothes in their facilities.
There is a potential plumbing cost. On a very rare occasion, a person with a small child who doesn't understand you don't need to use the entire roll will end up with a clogged toilet. But not often. Face it, someone is not going to pay attention one day, and boom that cloth goes in the toilet. And flush. And clog. Because fabric clogs the toilet EVERY TIME. Ask me how I know about this. So if you cannot plunge it out, the plumber needs to come out. That's a sizable fee. Even with home warranty insurance, that $75 a call. Without it, it's closer to $200 a call. More if you add weekend or evening rates, because that is invariably when it will happen.
Let's say by luck it goes through. On a broader scheme, it is costing the water processing plant even more to pull out the cloth that it was to add the chemical to make the toilet paper biodegrade faster than its usual 2-5 months.
If you have a septic tank, the cloth in there for years. It helps fill up the tank faster (again, that TP is breaking down pretty fast - septic tanks are a prime biodegrading environment) which leads to that septic tank needing to be pumped out much sooner than might usually be necessary. Average pump cost for Colorado? $310.
Now, a 24 pack of White Cloud costs me $8. You can buy more expensive, you can buy cheaper. I find that a good price range, decent quality and not too expensive, and not ripping my behind off like it was sandpaper or pine cones. This lasts me and mine - three of us home right now - about 4 months. Even if someone is ill, if you know what I mean.
Note, I didn't even touch on the possibility of needing a second wash depending on the level of dirt- much as cloth diapers need sometimes- nor on the potential bacterial breeding ground you're setting up right near your toothbrushes.
I'm not saying don't use the family cloth if that's how you think you should go about it. But please stop telling people it is a more cost effective way to go about it. Just on the basic add up, I'd be spending in initial costs - (I'm going the cheap end and buying Walmart wash clothes) $48 for the clothes. The reoccurring costs - $7 a year for detergent, the made myself or bought, that's a reasonable average. And the $20 a month, assuming the well is holding up and I can do it all at home.
So for me, that would be $295 a year. Toilet paper costs me $32 a year.
As part of this, we'll address the living greener. Now not only are you using the water to flush the toilet, you are now also using extra water to wash these clothes several times a week. This is not greener. In a lot of areas, like California right now, water is scarce. When they are telling residents to take one shower a week and water nothing, even a small load on your washer takes as many gallons of water as your short shower.
Toilet paper biodegrades. That's just a fact. Put in a septic tank, it biodegrades faster than it would if you left it under a tree in the woods, and that rate is 2-5 months. A cloth left in a camping site or in the sewer system or in your septic tank can take a decade or more to degrade. And that cloth will happen - kids or an adult who makes a mistake - it will happen.
Pay attention to hidden costs, especially if you are on a tight budget. Sometimes what you think is living greener and more cost effectively is neither.
OK - let's talk cost ratio. Which is more affordable? People are talking about how much it costs to buy TP. Now consider this - you need to figure out how many times a day people in your household go to the bathroom, multiply by number in your family. Even if you wash them every two days, you should have at least 4-5 days supply if these clothes on hand, because sometimes laundry doesn't happen when it should.
Now, material- author doesn't mention it. Are you going to buy pre made washcloths, the cheap kind, at Walmart - that's about $4 for a pack of 10. If you are buying your own material, you need to look for something absorbent - old sheets are NOT going to cut it. You could use old towels, maybe. But if you want terry cloth or diaper material - both actually rather expensive by the yard. Terry cloth is $10 a yard, diaper fabric is $7 to 10 a yard. Plus time to make them. Assuming you can- or the cost to pay someone else to make them for you. Most seamstresses I've ever met charge materials cost and $10- $20 an hour, including myself. Or they charge by project - to make say 120 clothes, I would say a fee of at least $60. Plus materials. And these will wear out with the repeated washings and need to be replaced much sooner than your average washcloth.
Now, we need to factor in the laundry cost. There is the cost of heating the water and running the machine. Not everyone does laundry every 2 days. Gas or electric, there is a cost. Unless you wash them by hand, and there still is going to be a cost for heating the water.
There is the cost for detergent, even if you make it at home.
I found this lovely chart that goes about how much it costs to a washing machine per year. It's awesome, because you can adjust it to your cost per kilowatt, if you dry, water temp going in, etc. and get an estimate. It also does top loader vs front loader. I have a top loader, and I calculated this: I set my actual rates for gas and electric, set it for 100% hot- assuming I was doing these clothes - and figured for a family of four that I would do at least 4 of these loads a week. That's a cost of $20 a month! And it's only that low because I don't pay for water - I have a well. The front loader was cheaper, but the cost of a new front loader machine is - dear gods, I found them from $600 to $1400! Here's the laundry link so you can play with it for yourself.
Then factor in those folk who do not have wash facilities at home. They can choose to wash them in a sink or tub, or they go to a Laundromat. Last time I went, the average cost for a standard sized washer was $2.50, drying was 75 cents. Of course, you can hang them up at home. Note, that is here, in a rural town. In the city, it could easily cost more. And some Laundromats do not like you washing diapers or bathroom related clothes in their facilities.
There is a potential plumbing cost. On a very rare occasion, a person with a small child who doesn't understand you don't need to use the entire roll will end up with a clogged toilet. But not often. Face it, someone is not going to pay attention one day, and boom that cloth goes in the toilet. And flush. And clog. Because fabric clogs the toilet EVERY TIME. Ask me how I know about this. So if you cannot plunge it out, the plumber needs to come out. That's a sizable fee. Even with home warranty insurance, that $75 a call. Without it, it's closer to $200 a call. More if you add weekend or evening rates, because that is invariably when it will happen.
Let's say by luck it goes through. On a broader scheme, it is costing the water processing plant even more to pull out the cloth that it was to add the chemical to make the toilet paper biodegrade faster than its usual 2-5 months.
If you have a septic tank, the cloth in there for years. It helps fill up the tank faster (again, that TP is breaking down pretty fast - septic tanks are a prime biodegrading environment) which leads to that septic tank needing to be pumped out much sooner than might usually be necessary. Average pump cost for Colorado? $310.
Now, a 24 pack of White Cloud costs me $8. You can buy more expensive, you can buy cheaper. I find that a good price range, decent quality and not too expensive, and not ripping my behind off like it was sandpaper or pine cones. This lasts me and mine - three of us home right now - about 4 months. Even if someone is ill, if you know what I mean.
Note, I didn't even touch on the possibility of needing a second wash depending on the level of dirt- much as cloth diapers need sometimes- nor on the potential bacterial breeding ground you're setting up right near your toothbrushes.
I'm not saying don't use the family cloth if that's how you think you should go about it. But please stop telling people it is a more cost effective way to go about it. Just on the basic add up, I'd be spending in initial costs - (I'm going the cheap end and buying Walmart wash clothes) $48 for the clothes. The reoccurring costs - $7 a year for detergent, the made myself or bought, that's a reasonable average. And the $20 a month, assuming the well is holding up and I can do it all at home.
So for me, that would be $295 a year. Toilet paper costs me $32 a year.
As part of this, we'll address the living greener. Now not only are you using the water to flush the toilet, you are now also using extra water to wash these clothes several times a week. This is not greener. In a lot of areas, like California right now, water is scarce. When they are telling residents to take one shower a week and water nothing, even a small load on your washer takes as many gallons of water as your short shower.
Toilet paper biodegrades. That's just a fact. Put in a septic tank, it biodegrades faster than it would if you left it under a tree in the woods, and that rate is 2-5 months. A cloth left in a camping site or in the sewer system or in your septic tank can take a decade or more to degrade. And that cloth will happen - kids or an adult who makes a mistake - it will happen.
Pay attention to hidden costs, especially if you are on a tight budget. Sometimes what you think is living greener and more cost effectively is neither.
Monday, January 13, 2014
Household Experiment: Making Beans in a Crockpot
Not too long ago, someone suggested doing beans in a crockpot. Now dried beans and I have been having a battle for years; I can soak them and soak them and a lot of times they stay hard. Even after I start cooking them. I even have a special Victorian era bean pot especially for soaking beans! So I have used canned beans more often than not, because I don't want to keep on messing with the stupid beans that never cook.
So in my cupboard, for several years now, have sat two bags of mixed beans, called 16 bean soup mix. The bag says there are at least 16 of these varieties listed on the back of the bag:
Pinto beans
Black eyed peas
Barley
Navy beans
Large Lima bean
Small White bean
Red Kidney beans
Baby Lima beans
Great Northern beans
Speckled Lima beans
Green Baby Lima Beans (the others are white, green is what we commonly see and eat)
Black Turtle bean
Whole Green Pea
Yellow Split Pea
Pink bean
Cranberry bean
Small Red beans
Green Split Pea
Lentil
What I could tell, with my not full knowledge of beans, was that this bag has lentils, green and yellow split peas, all the Lima beans, the small Red beans, Navy beans, Pinto beans, Black Eyed Peas, Kidney beans, whole peas and some others I couldn't identify.
To start, I rinsed the beans in a colander, then tossed them into the crock pot with eight cups of water. One pound of beans, eight cups of water. I then set the crockpot to a 10 hour cook, and walked away.
About hours 5, I went to look. This is what it looked like - hey, things are starting to cook! The lentils and peas have all disintegrated into soup. The package came with a ham flavor packet, so I tossed it in, as well as some chopped onions. An hour later, it tasted blah, so I tossed in some cubed cooked roast beef.
I let it cook the 10 hours, then let it cool and stuck the crock in the fridge. Next morning, I put it back on, but this time set it for the 4 hour fast cook, and added some beef soup base. At hour three, it was good soup!
I took about 2/3rd of it, along with some fresh baked bread to the neighbors as thanks for plowing out our driveway last storm.
Daughter says it tastes like veggie beef soup, but with beans.
So, this experiment? A success. Next try? Red kidney beans - see if they cook up to chili quality or if the chickens get a treat again.
So in my cupboard, for several years now, have sat two bags of mixed beans, called 16 bean soup mix. The bag says there are at least 16 of these varieties listed on the back of the bag:
Pinto beans
Black eyed peas
Barley
Navy beans
Large Lima bean
Small White bean
Red Kidney beans
Baby Lima beans
Great Northern beans
Speckled Lima beans
Green Baby Lima Beans (the others are white, green is what we commonly see and eat)
Black Turtle bean
Whole Green Pea
Yellow Split Pea
Pink bean
Cranberry bean
Small Red beans
Green Split Pea
Lentil
What I could tell, with my not full knowledge of beans, was that this bag has lentils, green and yellow split peas, all the Lima beans, the small Red beans, Navy beans, Pinto beans, Black Eyed Peas, Kidney beans, whole peas and some others I couldn't identify.
To start, I rinsed the beans in a colander, then tossed them into the crock pot with eight cups of water. One pound of beans, eight cups of water. I then set the crockpot to a 10 hour cook, and walked away.
About hours 5, I went to look. This is what it looked like - hey, things are starting to cook! The lentils and peas have all disintegrated into soup. The package came with a ham flavor packet, so I tossed it in, as well as some chopped onions. An hour later, it tasted blah, so I tossed in some cubed cooked roast beef.
I let it cook the 10 hours, then let it cool and stuck the crock in the fridge. Next morning, I put it back on, but this time set it for the 4 hour fast cook, and added some beef soup base. At hour three, it was good soup!
I took about 2/3rd of it, along with some fresh baked bread to the neighbors as thanks for plowing out our driveway last storm.
Daughter says it tastes like veggie beef soup, but with beans.
 |
| Hey, nice lens fog! |
So, this experiment? A success. Next try? Red kidney beans - see if they cook up to chili quality or if the chickens get a treat again.
 |
| 16 bean beef soup, white chicken chili made on the stove, and a loaf of garlic bread fresh from the breadmaker - those lumps are chunks of garlic! |
Life Over the Past Year - a Review of 2013 and a Start to 2014
Here we are, two weeks into the new year, and I never wrapped up last year. I had planned to do this on New Year's Eve, but sleep took over. And then other things happened, so I'm finally getting around to this.
It was a busy year; sometimes a hard year. A lot of stuff made it onto the Facebook page instead of here; I'll be trying to do better about that this year.It snowed. and snowed, and got warm, and snowed. Pretty typical for the mountains. Pretty typical for the state!
I took several pictures of ghost towns and ruins on my trips. Karl's Dairy, local finds, random buildings from driving about for work, Husband and I took a road trip one day after an appointment, going the back way into Central City, and then finding a town I still can't identify from the maps. A couple more work trips brought these - near Greeley, a ghost town near Jefferson, a number of places going through South Park, including Kline Ranch. I also covered the opening of a new local state park, Staunton State Park for my Examiner column.
 |
| Hawk on a pole near home |
 |
| Eagles on a nest near Kremmling |
 |
| The giant adirondack chair a local church built- you can see a regular sized one at the base. |
My car got fixed, thanks to help from my dad, and when we went to take it to the shop, we found out that our local squirrel had used it as a storage device. Amazing how much easier it is to carry my work equipment in the van, rather than trying to stuff it all into a Mustang. It also made it so that my husband had access to a car during the day, just in case he needed it. Also made it so that he could make his weekly doctor appointments.
This was the year for cooking and canning. I shared a few recipes, and processed a TON of tomatoes! I thought I was ordering 30 pounds of tomatoes, and I ended up with 75 pounds! This was in addition to the tomatoes I had already gotten and frozen, about another 50 pounds all told. I made pickled sweet pepper jelly, watermelon and dandelion jelly , pizza sauce, apple butter and apple pie filling, tomato sauce and spaghetti sauce, pumpkin and pumpkin butter. These were great come gift giving season; that, eggs and baked goods were gifts to several people this year.
 |
| tomato sauce - round one |
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| spaghetti sauce, tomato sauce, dried tomatoes -round two |
 |
| Dandelion jelly, watermelon jelly, pizza sauce |
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| apple butter |
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| apple pie filling - some n small jars for lunches! |
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| Tomato sauce and pizza sauce - round three |
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| 75 pounds of Roma tomatoes |
Mini Egg Roll Bake
Cabbage Rolls
Making Butter
Chicken Soup
Lemon Cookies
Easy Bread
How to roast a Turkey
Even though my income was lower in 2013 than it was in 2012, we did better with it. I tried to stock up on a lot of foods and necessities - dog food, toilet paper, dish soap, etc. A half price sale on chicken feed really helped for a while there. All in all, we've done fairly well, but there are still improvements to be made to my system.
One of the biggest helps was our daughter, who lives with us, got a promotion to assistant manager of the bakery at the grocery where she works. Her increased salary has been a big help, as she was able to help cover bills for December than I was not able to do.
Other big family news, our son, a Lance Corporal in the Marines, got married mid summer. They live far away in North Carolina, but came to visit in August. They are settling well into married life. My father took a trip back east to visit family, and ended up traveling quite a bit this summer, just because he could.
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| newlyweds |
And of course, we got baby chickens. More than I had originally planned on. Oh well. I wrote lots of stories about Chickens. And the biggest deal - the finished chicken coop. We did lose another couple of chickens this year; White Myrtle, our mighty mouse hunter, decided to stray from the flock and got taken my a coyote. That coyote was rather brave; he came back the next day and attempted to get one of my other hens. Most of them fled on his approach, but one . Bad luck for him - I happened to be standing by the garage when he ran up on them, and I chased after him, screaming, with a broom in hand. That made him stop for a few seconds, long enough for our Magellan to get the idea and run for the garage. I kept chasing him as well, and have not seen him back in the yard. We did, however, hear then howl for the first time in months last week - the pack is back in town. But now, the hens are safe within their sturdy fortress!
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| White Myrtle and her catch, with assistance after she dropped it |
The other chicken we lost - Nip - was to a sour crop. My daughter ended up giving her the most care, researching what to do and everything, but on the fourth day of care, just when we thought she was rallying, she passed away in the night. Nip was buried out back - never eat a chicken that dies of illness, just a note to you.
But in other chicken news - that skylight on the roof of their coop has proven a boon! When most chickens slow down their laying for the year during the winter months because of a lack of light, they did not. We average about 7-8 eggs a day out of 15 hens. That's pretty good!
After a very windy spell in early October, husband got out the sawsall and topped all the dead trees in the dog run. They were all topped at about 10 feet tall, just because. And around Thanksgiving, we went out and cut all that wood up as well as a few downed Aspen we dragged over - it gave us about 3/4 of a cord of firewood.
They have gotten a vacation from it, however - we had a very bad cold snap in the beginning of December; single digits during the day, minus temps at night. The girls moved back into the garage coop for about a week. taking very short jaunts out into the dog run, just like last winter. Of course, to go with this was a power outage. I stayed up all night, stoking the wood stove in the main part of the house, keeping all cupboards with pipes in them open, and running a propane heater in the basement and garage in order to keep the chickens warm enough. Luckily, it was an easy fix for the electric company and power was back on by 5:30 am.
Some of the hardships of the year were covered well; I had a bout of illness, rendering me unable to talk for about four days. I could still do everything else just fine. Luckily, my work has a lot of people with illnesses and disabilities, and they were able to accommodate me by switching my schedule a little bit so that I could still work without talking. I also managed to injure my elbow; it was a progressive thing, and the healing has also been progressive. Sometimes, I still overdo it and it aches for the day. But I should be able to go back to work just fine once the season starts here again in a week or so.
However, the cold snap in December brought on another hardship. Our oldest dog, Pip, after being treated for another bladder infection due to her diabetes two weeks earlier, pretty well stopped eating. At first, she would only eat things that we considered serious treats - cheese, steak, chicken - and she was drinking well. The vet said let her eat what she would in hopes it was just a reaction to the antibiotics she'd been on. But by the end of the second day, she could not walk herself up and down the stairs to go to the bathroom anymore, she was barely moving herself around the kitchen and livingroom. On the third day, she even started refusing steak and cheese. So a hard choice was made, and the vet helped to to sleep for the last time. Pip was 14 years old, a rescue dog that had been abused before she came to us in 2002. She learned what it was like to be loved and well cared for, and eventually became the boss of the house. In 2010, she was diagnosed with diabetes and started treatment for it; the diabetes made cataracts grow over her eyes, but that did not stop her from being the boss of everyone and everything, including and especially the chickens and the other dogs in the house. She is very missed by all of us.
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| Pip on duty, enjoying the October sun |
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| Pip, ignoring the chickens who are ignoring her. |
We plan to rent a chainsaw and go around the property and take down a lot more of the dead trees. It's good fire mitigation and will give us another round of firewood for the next winter.
Of course, upgrades to the coop - it needs a few things, and the heavy winds this month have showed us that we need to do something to shore up the fences and gates. We did not get to it last year, but we plan to use some more of that salvaged wood to create a floor under the gate area on both sides of the fence, to help with snow removal and to be able to put some movable stops in for the gates.
We need to replace the deck flooring, and do some general property clean up. I'm going to continue on my mission of getting rid of the extraneous stuff we never use, including a lot of the crafting supplies in the basement. Live simpler.
I do have a new writing position as Sustainable Living writer for Examiner; I plan to write more on both my titles this year.
Otherwise? Make this year an even better one than the last.
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