In endless song… so it’s said, or sung.  This past weekend the song rolling through my brain is “Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead” from “The Wizard of Oz” because I saw it twice at the Poway Center for the Performing Arts.  That’s right, I was playing hooky yet again! Good thing my niece is in plays a lot (she got to fly!)! Plus it was Mother’s Day weekend and Mom needed some lovin’, I think; so I was out Ramona/San Diego way. It was a great weekend: I was able to enjoy a great breakfast with Alex and Becky, attend one friend’s Graduation Party (Congratulations Emma! – she reads this blog, believe it or not), see the Wizard of Oz x 2, have dinner with my folks and longtime friends, visit John and Bernadette and give her a prayer pillow; so much went on over the weekend, and I put an extra 300 miles on my car. While I was out playing, Sue was on the farm working!

img_0819-e1494980371751.jpgShe had an extraordinary weekend too! Extraordinarily windy. One day we won’t be surprised by the wind, but it still has the ability to just blow us away! Ha, get it? Anyway, it didn’t start getting really bad until Saturday, so Sue was able to finish the 2nd chicken tractor. This one is made so that it can fit on to the back of her truck, in case we need to evacuate animals if there is a wild fire. We have to think about these things because, like Ramona, we are wildfire prone here in Cochise County. One of the goals for the old tent trailer, is to get it into trailer-ing shape, so that we can have a temporary home for the chickens if we need to evacuate. With the trailer, as well as the chicken tractor/truck bed cover, we can get all the animals out that we need to. Right now, those are our priorities in any given evac situation. Until it’s needed as an evacuation device, we can use it in the fields for the foragers to provide shelter from the wind and flying predators. The previous one was tossed about and shredded by the wind.  Since then, we’ve found that rocks on top of things help a great deal!

IMG_0821So our most recent purchase came the day before I left for Cali. Sue ordered a chest freezer, because the day is quickly coming when we will need to freeze birds. We have a smallish upright freezer, but – with four adults buying groceries – it was so incredibly full, it was ridiculous to think we’d be able to add more birds in there. Currently we have 12 Rangers that will be processed the third week of June. Four are spoken for, we believe, still – but if you’re in the mood for an organically fed and humanely raised chicken for your broiler, just let us know. We’re not sure yet, if we’ll be processing them all or keeping some to raise. They may not do well past their prime processing time. Supposedly, they make great foragers and ok egg layers – we haven’t really seen that yet. For one, they’ve IMG_0820only been introduced to the others (Delawares, Roman, and the Ducks) since Sunday morning, this being only day 3, and secondly – they’re still too young to tell. We’ll just see how it goes. Back to the freezer – when we first opened it and put a few of our things from the upright freezer into it, we thought we would have so much darn room! But here is a photo of it today, after only five days.  Yes, there is still quite a bit of room, it just sure filled up quickly!  Think we’ll use up the Blue Apron meals and the Omaha Steaks quickly here. 🙂 Anyone hungry?
We promise to keep you up to date on the fate of those Rangers, until then, as always~
Thanks for reading!

Today’s Weather:  Windy with patchy, puffy little clouds. When I left for work, it looked like it wanted to rain, but the wind just blew all those rain clouds apart. It’s was warm-ish, right now (5:39 pm) it’s 62° and supposed to get down to 42° tonight.

Egg Report: We’ve been taking away the Buffs’ eggs – they haven’t been staying on the nest consistently enough to hatch. So whatever is under them, we just take at the end of the day.  Today we had 11!