Updates:
The chickens are in terrific health, although the rooster had to be quarantined. He's just more aggressive than I care to put up with and the hens certainly don't seem to like his harrassment. Even though I'm a city girl, I do understand some of his behavior is normal for a healthy male bird, but too much is just too much. He's in isolation while we sort out if we're going to keep him. The hens in the meantime are laying machines. We have 26 of them and we get a minimum of 23 eggs every day. The most our family consumes in a week is about 2 dozen, so obviously we have excess! We've made a habit of taking our eggs to a local farmer's market every week and we've had no trouble finding happy customers. We're going to share a few of our busy layers with another family. That will give us room for new chickens with more variety in the breeds. On order are Auracanas, Barred and White Rock, Black Austrolorp, Buff Minorca and Silver Laced Wyandotte. The chicks should arrive later next week and we look forward to the joy of the tiny, fuzzy peepers. We're planning our brooder as I blog, but hopefully with the benefit of our one time experience and warmer weather, they'll thrive just fine with little trouble.
Buttermilk biscuits: Still a work in progress. Since I've lapsed from preparing a hot breakfast except for one or two days a week, my ambitions for that home cooked mastery have not yet been achieved. I'll not give up, though.
Vegetable garden: That one's a dismal status indeed. The wonderful rain with which we were blessed made everything so pretty and green most of the summer. We didn't have a good handle on weed management, however, so the only thing growing well in our garden were a few onions and the weeds. We're working to annihilate them now and hope to plant a fall garden. The trick is to annihilate the weeds without introduce elements into the soil that we don't want to consume! Any tips out there? Our son came up with the idea to burn the weeds off and we're tempted to do so. Then, we could till the remnants back into the soil and begin again with a more proactive weed prevention/management approach.
Of late, the focus in our family has been preparing for another school year. We have had to adjust a bit to Tennessee requirements, but we're on our way now. The public schools started last week and we have made some preparations. We have curriculum in place, have enrolled our older son in an online class and have supplies stashed away. I completed an overhaul that we must do at least once a year to purge out items that either are no longer needed (or never were). We sometimes resell those items, but more often donate to another family. Our philosophy is that we were blessed with it through at least one student and more often, two. We've gotten lots of good of most of our choices and love to pass them along.
Thanks for reading the blog. The next entry will include some photos of our more filled out hens and rooster.
