We’ve had a pretty busy few days. Well, except for Sunday which is our Sabbath; the day we reserve for all things churchy and for taking it easy to refresh our bodies as well as our souls. We had a jammed packed Saturday and a very busy Monday. Are you ready for the news? Then I’ll tack on some insect photos at the end. I’ll try to keep it coherent.
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aturday was another processing day. As we’ve covered this a few times before, I won’t bore you with too many details. We did better this time, plus we weren’t on a time constraint, trying to get finished so I could deliver eggs. We processed 14 birds in 4 hours. Then took another 3 hours to complete the detailed cleaning and vacuum packing… plus the final clean up of ice chests, knives, bowls, buckets, etc. It’s always a long day, but I think it went quite well, overall. The average weight of the chickens this time was 4.05 lbs. We have all of them sold! Amazing! Here’s the pile in the deep freezer, just getting all frozen prior to delivery. We’ll be doing that this week. Hard to tell exactly what you’re looking at, if you don’t already know. Hopefully we’ll have some more happy customers! This seems like such a short paragraph to talk about an incredibly long day, but nothing really exciting happened this time. We remembered to change the things that we talked about last month and they did help us quite a bit. We have our checklist and we just go through it, to get through it. Not much else to be said. The newest thing was that our friend Ginny – from the Farmer’s Market (ginnyseleclectickitchen) asked if we’d sell her the heads, necks, and feet. Not to use in her baked goods!!! Just want to make sure everyone knows that! But for her to use for her dogs. So – yes. We’ll sell that if she wants it. I have for her 14, 14, & 28 – respectively. Hope they like them! That evening, because our one big white “free fancy” chicken – whom Sue has dubbed “Olaf” – was all alone after his friends went to market, we moved the banty youngsters in with him. They seem to be enjoying their larger roaming area, but they all haven’t quite made friends yet. At least Olaf isn’t alone now and we’re hoping they get to be a bit chummier. Time will tell.
Orchard
Sunday- aside from me delivering eggs to Tom the baker in the afternoon- the only other think we did was to take a few minutes to drive up the hill to the Our Lady of the Sierras Shrine and take some photos looking down on the property. We want to do this yearly. This year we were a month late, but – hey – better late than never. We especially wanted to take some “before” photos of the orchard area. Not all the trees have been planted, but you can make out some of the tree wells. They show up as dark circles in the field. You can kind of make out the tubes we’re using the protect the trees until they are well and truly established and can withstand the winds. I’m leaving this photo in large format so you can see, more easily, what I’m talking about. It all looks so small, but the trees are actually a good 30′ apart. Things get a bit fore-shortened when I use the telephoto lens on my DSLR. I did take a series of photos all along the property, so I’ll stitch them together in Photoshop – maybe tomorrow – and share that whole panorama with you sometime this week. It’ll be fun, in a couple of years, to see the progression!
Monday – we were able to get two more trees in the ground today. That means that we have only 1 more chestnut to plant, then the two pomegranates, and the one mulberry tree. In the orchard anyway. We have about 15 more trees, for wind break, and numerous shrubs to get into the ground as well. One tree at a time, one day at a time. I try not to get overwhelmed. Sue did a lot more mowing as well today. Our neighbor George came over to help with his tractor. He finally heard the odd noise that Sue has been talking to him about. He said that it might be a hydraulic pump (?), so he’s going to help her take it in to the shop, where she originally purchased it – to see if they can figure out the issue and fix it back up for her. It might be out of commission for 3 weeks! DANG. She and George did get quite a bit of the fields mowed today though – they sure look good! Then, this evening, we moved the Banty mama with the two chicks (which are roosters, FYI) into the green house recently vacated by the youngsters. There we go using our CRP designation again this weekend. We think the mama will be quite happy to be able to stretch her wings a bit, to show the littles how to search for bugs, and how to take a dust bath, etc. When they are ready to be on their own, we’ll put her back with the other adult Banties. We may need to locate a Rooster Rescue Center if we can’t figure out what to do with all the boys.
Guess that’s really all the news, right now. Wednesday we might have more to add. Bob goes back to the vet that morning, so we’ll hear how he’s doing with his recovery. You know we’ll share it all with you that night. Until then, as always~
Thanks for reading!
Today’s Weather: It was already in the low 70’s at 6am today. I think it was 78° when I left for work at 10! The weather app says our high was 94°, but I bet we were a bit warmer than that. However, it was raining when I came home, lightly, then it turned into a downpour for a few minutes, and kept sprinkling all through the evening closures. I don’t think we got enough to measure, but it did water the gabion gardens and cool things off a bit. Currently, at 8:17 p.m., it is 80°. We’re looking at an overnight low of 63°. We may have Thunder showers Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday… we’ll see if that prediction holds. Would be nice to get some more rain before the winds come. Today, our sunrise was at 6:05 and sunset was at 6:21.
Egg Report: Saturday – zero goose, zero duck, 22 chicken. Sunday – zero goose, zero duck, 28 chicken. Monday – zero goose, zero duck, 26 chicken.
Here are the fun insect shots for you:
Wing and a Prayer 