IMG_2135Ta da! Here is the the trailer at it’s barest. It is ready for its new purpose in life. Sue went to Home Depot yesterday and ordered the materials to create the Have Chickens, Will Travel Trailer. That’s not what we’re really calling it, it’s just what typed out on the page. She said the guy at Home Depot asked “Why do you want to put your chickens in a trailer anyway?” After she explained about Pasturing chickens, his response was, “Oh.” Well… you know, it’s all an adventure! The frame is really quite sturdy and has very little rust on in considering all the leaking that it had weathered. Sue’s looking at the best way to treat the frame to remove the rust and then repaint it. Told you this would be an ongoing, long term project.

I’m not really sure what else we’re going to talk about. We have some things planned, but nothing is really happening. The supplies for the trailer will be delivered on Friday sometime. Our neighbor, Tom, will be dropping off a couple loads of mulch – hopefully – sometime this week. At some point we’ll decorate the Christmas Tree… although that’s not really Wing and a Prayer stuff, technically.  I’ll probably take eggs to the Farmers Market on Saturday… if we end up with enough that would make it worth our while. We still have one little Banty Hen on the DL. We’re not sure she’s really going to recover enough to thrive. We moved the Banty Rooster Processing day forward a few weeks – just so we can make sure that the Roosters are truly Roosters; they are not all crowing yet, and sometimes the hens can have pretty good combs and wattles. We don’t want to accidentally process a hen.

IMG_2121I wanted to share with you this photo that Sue took a few days ago. The Moringa Tree that we overwintered in the kitchen window last year, and that was planted in the spring, seems to have really settled in. It’s about my height now, and as started to bloom. Eventually it will freeze down to nothing, and then grow even taller next year. This is the process that generally happens with those.  If the blooms last long enough to form seeds, maybe we’ll try to propagate some of those elsewhere on the property.  They just need to have regular water, and sometimes that’s hard to always get.  Maybe we could plant some near the goat pens… as long as they are far enough away that they don’t get eaten!  Who knows.  But I do like the little flowers… they are edible… we tried them. Tasted green.  I did write a bit about the Moringa Tree in some earlier post, but here’s a link that talks about the health aspects of Moringa leaves:  www.purehealingfoods.com. We were thinking that it’d be a good additive to the chicken feed – especially if we can grow a few on the property well. Since they die back in the winter, they will let the sun in to warm the coop, and then provide shade in the summer. It seems to be growing well where it is… maybe where we need to add another is on the other side of the coop near the doves. Again, we’ll see – that’ll be a bit down the road. We’ll share with you when we start planting out the other trees that we have as well.  Until then, as always~
Thanks for reading!

Today’s Weather: Cold. We’re really getting to feel wintery now. It was cloudy and a bit windy most of the day today. the high was 61°, but felt more like 56°.  Currently it is 60° and feels much colder due to the wind. Low is supposed to be 38° tonight. Sunset was around 5pm, tomorrow’s sunrise is 7:06 a.m.

IMG_2130Egg Report: Today is the best day we’ve had in a while. We ended up with 18 chicken eggs today, and 1 duck egg! We did have one egg that Sue rescued from being eaten – it was just pecked when she went late morning to check. I wanted to share this as our cool thing this week. My dad made this egg keeper, I call it the egg counter, for us to use a while back. It’s an easier way to keep track of the eggs by the week, especially now that we’re trying to pick them up several times a day.  From the angle of the photo, it’s difficult to see – but today – Tuesday has a double row of eggs, one atop the other. We used to just pile them all together in an egg basket, but this helps us keep track, just in case we forget to write it down. And it provides a visual as well. I still need to paint it, but we’re using it now anyway. Thanks, Dad!