Saturday Ramble

What a long day this has been!!! Not in a bad way, just a long day. I spent the day canning some chicken that I cooked down last night. I still have a bunch of broth that needs to be canned, but I'm going to start on that in the morning. I put some of the big chicken bones back into the broth to cook a little more. I would do it tonight, but by the time I get done doing the night time feedings and putting everybody to bed for the night, it would be really late before I got done. (ok, plus its Saturday night, and the new season of Doctor Who has arrived, and I cannot lie, I'm a Whovian through and through.)

I've finally decided what I'm going to design for you guys!!!! As soon as I finish my current crochet orders, I'm going to get started on it. (I can't tell you all...its a surprise...spoilers) (No, it's not Doctor Who related, but I had to say it because its Doctor Who season!!!) I will tell you all, I am a bit excited about it though.

yes, there was a feather in there that I somehow managed to miss!!! Of course I would happen to miss one, and take a picture of it before I noticed it in there...but its out now. It just goes to prove that its really fresh chicken.

more to can yet

Hey there, I'm taking a moment to step out of the kitchen. I've just spent a good deal of time scrubbing my pressure canner, and then my water bath canner. We don't have a water softener, and we have well water, so as you can imagine, things tend to build up a bit. As soon as they dry, and I do a good inspection of everything, I've got to get another 5 pounds of tomatoes canned, and then I have to start prepping some chicken to get cooked down and canned up. I'm hoping that I'll get some extra broth to get canned as well. There is nothing better than home canned broth.

Frank finished butchering the Americana roosters yesterday. There were 6 more to do, which gave us a total of 10 roosters out of 17 chicks hatched. I have to say, I am really happy that we have 7 hens. I was a bit nervous, because I thought we only had 4 or less!!! But once we got all of those boys butchered, we were able to see exactly what we have. We have some really beautiful pullets. We have decided to keep 4, and sell 3. The money we make off of the pullets sold will go back into the chickens.
    
 Our weather has been fantastic here!!! I cannot complain about it at all!!! It's been what I consider the perfect fall weather. It's been cloudy and over cast, but no rain...the air has been cool and crisp, and refreshing. It's a really nice change from walking outside and just feeling sticky and hot.

I have been looking at some fun new ideas for some crochet patterns to design for you all. Some nice, simple gifts, or things to have around the house. Keep your eyes peeled!!!! Add me to your reading list so you can keep up with my pictures, recipes and free patterns!!!!

2015 Summer Pictures Part 2

And more pictures!!!! I'm not sure where to start, so I'll just start!!! So, the tree with those big blueberry looking things, are Damsons. They are kind of like a small plumb, and make great jelly!!! (in fact I still have some in the freezer to turn into jelly) The thing is though, when cutting them up, and taking the seed out, you want to make sure to wear gloves, because they will turn the fingers black.
I went out with a group of friends to a new place here in town, called The Brew House. It was pretty good. Good food, great atmosphere, and pretty good beer. They brew their own for the most part.
We spent some extra time with my husbands family this summer, which is the older couple in there. I myself made the photo stream in here...can you pick me out??? (I'll bet you can)
I did a lot of canning this summer. It was almost never ending, but well worth it. We stayed really crazy with the garden.
We had bigger grasshoppers around here than we usually have, it was kind of neat to see them. They weren't really bothered by us one bit, and didn't seem to care how close we got to them.
I tried a new sauce that I found at Food Lion (Mathew it was delicious, keep it in stock). We used it to make a pulled pork rabbit thing. It was so good, there were no leftovers!!!!

2015 Summer Pictures, Part 1

Here are some of those long promised pictures!!! I know, I know, they aren't great, but I never claimed to be great at choosing my picture subjects!!! (and yes, I love taking pics of the dogs)
We've had some different visitors here to the farm, and they are all always well greeted. We did get off of the farm as you can see by the concert picture. We went to the fair with some friends (Aaron and Donna, Pictured below the concert). We saw a group called Hotel California, they are an Eagles cover band, and I will say they were pretty good, and I was quite surprised by just how many Eagles songs I know!!!
The weather here today is fantastic!!! In fact, the air has been off here in the house for the last 2 days, and I have some of the windows open here in the house. It's kind of nice being able to have the windows open after that sticky summer we have had.
I candled the eggs again in the incubator the other night, and had to take another 3 out. So, the count was, we started out with 33, and I took 6 out on day 7, because they were infertile. Then, I took 3 out that had blood rings, so I'm down to 24 eggs. I'm hoping I don't loose anymore.
I spent most of today canning pumpkin, let me tell you, that was a lot of work. I spent about 8 hours working on my pumpkin, and I still have 3 more pumpkins to do!!!! (noooo!!!!!)  Then when I was putting some stuff away while killing time waiting on the pressure cooker to do it's thing, I discovered I was down to 3 jars of soup!!!! So, I am now cooking some chicken to make some chicken soup to get canned. For me, 3 jars is dangerously low!!!
Alright, that's about it from here. I now have to start working on the other half of the pictures for you guys!!!

have not forgotten

Hey all, I promise, I have not forgotten you all!!! I've been a bad blogger lately, but only because this summer has been insane. I've been working on uploading some pictures to share with you all. Between the garden stuff, the chickens, the rabbits, the dogs, the vehicle breakdowns, and the family functions it's been quite the busy summer. I'm hoping for a slowdown though now that we are halfway through September already. (wow, where has this year gone already????) I'm planning on sitting down tonight and finishing up with my pictures so that I can share some of the farm pictures I've been taking.

Just a little bit of farm news, I'm on day 10 of egg incubation. I started out with 33, but on day 7 when I did my egg candle, I had to take out 6, but not because they died along the way, but because those 6 just weren't fertile. That means we need to look at what's going on with the roosters in that run. I don't think its that we have too many hens for our 3 Rhode Island Red roosters, I think it's more that we only have 1 rooster who is really working, and that would be Martin. Sinatra seems to have retired. Every time I see him he is either eating, or hanging out on the roost in the house napping. The other young, un named rooster that we have in the run doesn't seem to be doing anything at all. We are planning on doing a Rhode Island chick order here soon, and have decided that we are going to go ahead and order 2 rooster chicks when we make that order. This spring, we are going to have to do a huge butcher of our older hens. Right now, we are getting about 40 eggs a day, which is good because I have a lot of egg customers. In fact right now, we are planning on keeping all of the hens that hatch out. We are currently hatching out Tetra Tints.

We are still working with the Americana chicks that we hatched out. Although they aren't really chicks so much anymore. They are close to 4 months old. We've been butchering the males so that we can see what we have female wise. We thought that we only had 9 roosters, but I'm thinking it may be more as they are growing. That's the one thing I really don't like about that breed, they are so slow to mature that unless you are an expert at sexing them as newborns, you really don't know what you have until they are mature. As we are not experts, we just let them grow up and decide what they are.  As soon as we finish butchering everything male, we will get those hens sold off. We are going to need the space for the chicks that we are working on hatching out right now.

Well, I'd better stop rambling on for the moment. I need to get myself on the move.