Nothing is simple for me. I can't just go out there and hurry though something to save my life. I have to multiply my work. Well, DH didn't come for the girls Friday as he said he would. He went party instead. Then he comes here today, after I had finished most of my chores and I am plucking 2 of my roosters. He must have stayed, visiting, for at least 2 hours. So now, its about to rain, I am filthy and Daddy needs groceries, all because I couldn't just feed and run.......no. I had to move tractors and decide that I had too many hens in a sloppy mess coop and picked out a hen that has a buff color to her, so decided to put her with the Orphingtons and I figured if I'd kill some of my roosters, I would take 3 hens out the coop to put in that tractor so less hens to scratch the mud, but only killed 2 and the remaining one looked very red, so decided to put 2 red hens with him.......well, someone is a happy camper, at least.....dancing all over the place. So 2 roosters in the fridge and a muddy coop minus 3 hens.
Oh well, its done....my Maran will be able to pay better attention to the blue hens that I want him to.....now for Daddy.
Those little voices that whisper in our ideas and put us on the right track......I guess they are our guardian angels. Well, mine gave me a little idea today right after I had finished feeding all the animals and soaking the corn I will be giving in 4 days.
I was just looking at all the mess and mush and wishing it would be a little dryer, so I could dig a bit for some of the projects I want to finish up and he says to me, while I'm looking at my mystery weed,"I bet those weeds will just slip out of that mush right now if you start pulling." So I did and they came right out. Then I pulled them all out on the north side of the barn, leading to the garden and decided afterwards to go into the asparagus bed and get it weeded. I must have been in there at least 45 minutes, but mostly the weeds didn't put up too much of a fight. I left everything I knew to be asparagus alone and pulled out mystery weeds, blackberry and some kind of flowering, trailing flower.
Well, I was most happy about that little idea. I got to scratch off 2 more things from that list on my fridge.
I know I will feel that in the morning though, but its behind me.
I didn't cry yesterday. It was my 30th wedding anniversary. I had planned on marking the occasion, with something I thought I needed to do, but upon thinking about it, I really didn't think going to Church and crying for an hour, to get something out of my system, had any guarantee of actually getting anything out of my system, so I decided to stay home and attack my to-do list. Then when I was 3/4's finished planting my May Haw trees, DH drove up to visit me. He kept getting text messages from someone who wanted to meet him, but he is honest with me and refused, saying it was his anniversary and he needed to spend time with his family. We are a weird family, and I acknowledge he is part of my family, but hardly my husband at present. Sometimes I cry, but sometimes I feel totally blessed and grateful.
So as I was planting the May Haws, he talked shop with me. He really does have a lot of SS knowledge. We went inside because hunger set in, but he refused to eat......but did pour himself a few drinks.....asked if that bottle of vodka was the only one I had, to which I lied and said it was. No way I was telling him I had two more bottles in the trunk of the car. Thats for me to make extracts and tinctures and for me to chill out.....not for him to cut loose. But except for his lack of filter, we had a decent few hours. He even dug in a cabinet and decided where a few things needed to go and he went in his parent's old trailer and found an item that has been missing forever.
He walked with me in the garden and asked me how I managed to get the weeds and grass under control and spoke of the sideways cedars and what my plans were for them, which I claimed I was going to cut them down, but not before I determine if I can mill the wood, somehow. He questioned about all the old beehives......his old beehives. I told him which ones were crazy and which ones were normal and he speculated that they might be starting to be Africanized.
He needed a little firewood, so I just selected a few small logs that are too thin to really need to be split and took them straight out of my yard and into an old feed sack for him to bring home. Anything to keep his AC from doing the job and increasing the bill.
I do feel bad for him, in one way, but in another, I want him to see all he left and know I'm tending to it. Its all over and he is now my brother and I'm cool with it, but sometimes I do wish I had mattered to him as much as he mattered to me. But I must have mattered a bit......he did refuse someone to hang out with me and the kids.
Well, that was yesterday and today is another day and the sun is shining and maybe I can get some stuff done
Good morning. I'm up first, as usual. Got my new thermal coffee pot yesterday and it should be just about done making my first pot of coffee. I warmed up the pot with hot water, before I brewed.
I hope I have a few more sunny days to work with, but I need to get into homeschooling. Sometimes when the public school kids show up and I realize they don't have school, I just do chores and let the girls play. When I plan on such, I like to limit chores to 2 hours.....real fast, then teach and do chores in the late afternoons.
DS wants to change hitches and found a friend who has need to also change to his hitch, so they swapping, because the man wants to work the same time as his mom.....nice, but he can't afford it and DS called me to say he might be off 2 weeks instead of one. I called my BFF to tell her if she needs a delivery guy within the next 2 weeks to let DS know, but he had already done so, so we just chatted and I told her if worse comes to worse, he can just help me knock my list to pieces.
My GC came over 3 days ago because she was convinced she has parasites in her GI track, so she wanted some of my colon cleanser and she walked around my garden with me, while I was beginning to plant the May Haws and she suggested to me that I needed to start a Facebook group, especially to talk about all I had going on and what green medicines I am making and selling, so I did and I invited my farming and all natural friends into the group and asked them to invite their friends, etc.....Well, last night while I was eating jello shots, I was messing with the computer and suddenly I'm added to a new Facebook group, started by my neighbor and I"m the only member, except him and its called Garden of Eden. Then he messages me and the plan in to have a group specifically for heirloom vegetables and fruits and he needed a few more minutes to finish up everything else on the group, but wanted my opinion. I told him to go for it and we can mention it and have discussions on my group also. He added another member and I will go visit the group and see if we have a handful yet. He might like SS, now that I think about it. But he asked me if I'd mind advertising some of my herbals on his group, because he wants to promote heirlooms, natural remedies and such.
I called the nursing home I applied at last week, but they hadn't done anything with my application yet and told me they had state in the building. I guess thats a good enough excuse for me. I just would like to make a couple of thousand dollars before DD19 gets married.
Well, DD8 is up and I'm sure coffee is done. Have a great day!!! Check in later.
I called Friday at the old nsg home I worked at in the 90's, but the DON was already gone and is supposed to call me tomorrow. But I did touch base with the one I left in April and they can use a few nurses. If I don't get welcomed with open arms by tomorrow at the old place, I'm just gong to go back to my former place of employment.
But about my SS life....well, I have been killing things here and there, to get rid of unwanted males and I was down to only 3 unwanted roosters and sold them all yesterday to some repeat customers, who asked me about when I will have babies, so I best save up eggs.
We are eating leftover old rooster spaghetti right now and it seems it is better than when I cooked it.
So, whoever isn't ferminting their grain, needs to start. It took me 4 days to get my system going good, because I needed to soak corn in 4 different buckets and the first bucket I already knew the corn would have soaked up some of the water, but wouldn't be fermented, then the same thing the following day, but by now, all the corn I am feeding have been soaking 4 days and I put them in a line, to keep them in order. I have a drunk farm now and they all happy and the eggs are picking up in production and the animals are eating less and less feed. The liquid in the buckets actually smell of alcohol when I'm straining off the grain and I retain the water to get the next batch started good.
So today I wrapped Up an area which DH had set up with cattle panels to vine things up on, with plastic netting and tied things up, to keep the 5 broilers I have left in, just so they can do me a quick clean up. They went nuts!! I don't know exactly what weight they gained, but they won't fit in a quart size bag like their brothers and sisters did. I figure I can let them clean that area up and kill them when they done, unless I wrap out the fig tree and let them clean up under there as well, in about a week. The garden is a mess, between all the rain and the chickens I have in all those tractors eating everything bare to the ground.
I put all the eggs I could, except left 2 in the fridge to bring to a friend that was giving away a trampoline frame, due to the mat being damaged, so I pulled the farm apart in her yard and took it away, giving her the eggs and some of my herbal cigs and now I plan on using it to make a moveable coop for my muscovy ducks. DS seems to think he can figure a way to put one of our gates on the frame. I think that will be an added savings to be able to have the scovies with a regular supply of grass and to not have the coop so dirty and always have clean water for my girls. Of course when I got back home and checked the eggs I was really happy to see that I picked up more eggs than I have in weeks. I have been bringing in only 3 or 4 a day and today I brought in 13, and that is not even checking some of my messier stalls.
I have 2 empty tractors right now and I think they both want 4 sex link hens tomorrow.......yeah.
I guess all of you are way ahead of me and have started y'all tomatoes, peppers and egg plants.....well, I need to deal with that. I think I will just start them in my 18 egg spot egg cartons. I'd almost be tempted to start them right out in the garden now, but I think its probably too cold.