Saturday, March 29, 2008

Everyday I learn something new


Since I started blogging the times that I post are always off by hours and I finally figured out that I could change the setting over to Eastern time... hello.

On Wednesday we finally received our chicks, all 2oo of them as you can see in the videos. We have only lost 2, 1 was DOA (dead on arrival...sorry can't help but use my ER terminology) and one passed today. That is not too bad considering they were in the mail for 2 days. Usually they are only in the mail one day but someone messed up and they were shipped to a post-office up north. With the birds we received a handout and it said "do not feed fruit to layers, since it can cause them to stop laying and it may take six weeks for them to start again." That was news to me! In the summer we often throw out scraps of fruits and veggies to the birds. I guess I will be a little more selective because I want these chicks to lay at their potential this summer.

I had to put the picture in of our first cucumber, it is about 3 inches long, yeah we can grow veggies inside! John had a GREAT idea, he said instead of putting up a greenhouse we should just add on a sun room to the side of the house. We will get more use of it rather than a detached building and it will be easier to heat. I am afraid for financial reasons it will have to wait but it is a good plan for the future. We need to do a lot of work on the sheds & barn and we need a tractor and I must have a pool this summer, priorities.

2 days until April and we are still freezing. :(

Ok I am off to finish reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. Great book, must read for anyone who is interested in becoming self-sufficient and/or eating locally. Lots of great recipes I look forward to using! The author talks about drying vegetables, something I never thought of before and we all have dehydrators. Her husband talks a lot about making homemade breads with his bread maker which is another dusted over item most of us have stashed somewheres. My goal for tomorrow is to dig it out of the barn (still packed from our move 1+yrs ago) and see what kind of mess I can make. Check out their web site http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Huh? I didn't know that either. It's good to learn all things new though. Hope it starts to warm up so you can play in your pool;) Have a good week.