I am Waaaay behind.  My excuse is that we've been really busy, but that apparently doesn't cut it!  We're getting a lot of grief from friends about it.

Lots to catch up on, and I'll try to do it in the next day or so.

Best Regards,

G.
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Been a busy week.  The weather is turning so we spent last weekend harvesting the last of the herb garden.  We should have a post on that soon.

The Chicks are growing like crazy!

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The little buggers can eat.  A lot more than I expected.  So I got a new feeder for them.  It holds 22lbs of feed and should mean I don't have to fill it 2 or more times a day.  

It's also a hanging feeder to try to keep them from dumping the feed all over the ground.

When I brought it out to The Manor, the chicks ran to a far corner and huddled together.  I assembled the feeder, filled it and hung it.  I left the old dishes out while they got used to it, figuring that anything with food ...<< MORE >>

TThe Chicks are about a week old now, and doing quite well.



The temps outside have...<< MORE >>

I was always one of those kids who wondered if the light really went off when you closed the fridge.  Of course I was also the kind who'd take the fridge apart to see if it did and if so how....

So I got curious - I've been spending time with the new chicks and getting to know how they behave, but I wondered if they behaved any different when I wasn't there.

So I installed a camera I had laying around to see what they did when no one was around.

Guess what they do?
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We had a turkey for dinner a couple nights ago.  As the cook that night, I have to say, it was really tasty.  After carving it up and having a great meal, we were left (as you always are) with the main carcass of the turkey. 

For as long as I remember, cleaning up includes taking the carcass and dumping it in the stew pot to boil down for broth and to get the last of the meat.  So we dutifully put it in the pot, added water and set it to simmer overnight.

The next day as I was straining ...<< MORE >>

I've read a lot about coop design and construction, but I've never built one.  So after quite a bit of research, and taking into consideration the colder climate we're in, I got started.  Here is how we did it.  Comments, suggestions, and criticisms are welcome!

Because of the cold and the site the coop was going to be on...<< MORE >>

This post is out of order because I haven't had the time to talk about building the coop, why we're doing chickens, or how it fits in to our plan, but it's just too exciting not to share.

I got a call from the post office yesterday morning about 6am that the chicks had been delivered.  I rushed over and picked them up:  26 day-old chicks!

We got them home and introduced them to the brooder that we'd set up and very soon they were running around eating and drinking. 

We are rather excited.

More later.

Best Regards,

G.

        

Welcome to the New Blog.

A couple of things, first:

I guess I'm old enough that the idea of a blog - telling the world what you think - seemed a bit presumptuous.  Really, why would anyone outside of our immediate circle care what we think or write?  But here we are with a blog....

It remains to be seen whether anyone reads and comments on this, but the reason we got over the idea of it being presumptuous was that we really, really want feedback and ideas.  We are trying something very new to us, and while we have a philosophy, concept or approach - whatever you want to call it - the details are going to take a bit of work and time to get to. 

We'll share with you our ideas, our projects, our plans, the books we're reading, the successes, failures.  We're hoping you'll share your ideas, experiences, expertise, and opinions.  With any luck we'll help each other.

Second:

Our apologies for the ads at the top, but free hosting comes with a price.  As we get going we may opt to upgrade and eliminate it, but for now, please bear with us.

Third:

There will be two of us writing entries and we can't separate the author line yet.  Again, something that we might address in the future.  In the meantime, we'll try to remember to put our initial at the bottom of a post to tell them apart.


Thanks again for visiting.  Hopefully we'll have much more up soon.

Best Regards,

G.


[Edit] We've been able to get rid of the ads at the top of the site, allow different authors, and add categories.  Makes it much easier.

G.