I missed last night’s deadline due to the need to prepare for and then get some sleep prior to the Easter breakfast that the men in my church put on every year. This is a fundraiser to benefit the local Habitat for Humanity and provide scholarships to summer church camp.
This year like every other year I wonder how we will pull it off with the limited (and dwindling) group of volunteers. As everyone gets older it is more and more likely that some will be out of town visiting grandchildren or some other “flimsy” excuse. However today we had a good crew, with a few newer men involved, and we made a fair amount for the cause. It just never seemed to fill up the way it has in the past.
With that behind me, I think I will resign my office in this organization so I can pursue my interests in the farm here. I may not be the worst president they ever had, but my heart is not in it anymore. I need to move on if I am to take on charities and interests that they are not willing to support.
Enough of that cheerful stuff! This week I had Rusty in to the vet. to make sure that he was neutered. When she did an examination in the back of my truck she thought I might have missed a testicle. When she was able to cut into him all she found was belly fat and scar tissue. Still if he had been a cat or a dog all of this would have cost me $1,000 or more. For all of the hands on vet care Rusty got the bill was only about $180. I let him recover in the girls pen with his mama for the past week. I put him back in with the butt-heads this afternoon. Not having him in the girls pen sure makes milking easier!
I have gotten no real response to my offer of fertilized duck eggs for incubating, so I cleaned out the nest. Schmutzy was not consistently sitting on the eggs and they just kept piling up. I removed about 20 from the top of the nest and I tossed all of the oldest ones that had been pushed down into the mud/duck poop. I disinfected the 20 eggs , then candled them to make sure they have a defined yolk and had no development going on. I have one person interested in taking some eggs to incubate, and one couple that just wants duck eggs to eat. I will just be collecting them from now on and including them in the weekly tally.
My efforts to sprout grains for fodder are not working out. It may just be that feed grade oats won’t sprout well enough. I did order some SEED grade oats that are labeled organic and should be good for sprouting. I still cannot find feed grade wheat or barley locally and what I find online that is for sprouting is WAY too expensive. I will have to go to my local wheat farmer (my renter) and see if he will sell me wheat straight off the field. I hope he is not growing GMO crops, that would be a deal breaker for me.
My best customer for eggs has gone to a different supplier (his granddaughter) so my inventory should build back up. I should probably keep track of the number of eggs I use as well as what i collect and sell. up to this point I have been using the “check” eggs for myself and selling the rest, but the chickens seem to be laying better quality eggs as the weather improves.
I was able to get both the rototiller and the lawn mower started this week and managed to use both in preparing the new garden area. I also learned that my beehive cover does not withstand 60 mph wind gusts well. I need to bungee it down to the hive so it won’t blow away. Bees have been active, the dandelions and currants have started blooming as have some of the bulbs. The bees seem to favor the goats outside water trough for drinking. I need to find them an alternate watering solution.
So, on to the egg count for the week of 4/13/2014 thru 4/19/2014:
- Collected – Chickens 63, Ducks 20
- Sold – 0
- Filled – Chickens 5 cartons, Ducks 1.5 cartons
That is all for now.