Category Archives: Chickens

Friday Catch-Up

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Things got alot crazy around here this week.  I knew that we would be fairly busy with Zach having baseball camp 3 days and Vacation Bible School 5 nights with a pool party for a sixth night.  What I did not count on was adding in the 659 pounds of meat that needed some attention.

I received a text on Tuesday morning that our meat was ready. I was very thankful that Matt had cleaned out and started the old chest freezer on Saturday. After a couple of phone calls I was able to arrange some help and began working on making meals with the meat.

This week I have been able to make and freeze, 14 packs of Salisbury steaks which did not include our dinner today, 2 pounds of Taco meat and 10 packs of taco meat, 10 packs of sloppy joes and 2 additional batches of spaghetti sauce and 2 batches of Salsa.  Here is the official meal total:  I am at least halfway to my goal of 100 meals in the freezer.
Official food preparation count: 45
Breakfast count : 15
Spaghetti Sauce: 20

The other big event of the week was our purchase and bringing home of 6 chickens. The chickens are approximately 2 weeks old and currently hanging out in the living room under a heat lap for the next week. As you realize I have not been able to get the chicken story and how we have prepared for chickens up yet but hopefully I will be able to get this accomplished in the next couple of weeks.

I have 19 days until I return to work.  I will be only working one job so hopefully this will make things a tad less hectic in the fall.

I am continuing to recover from my outpatient surgery. I did overdo things on Sunday and spent most of Monday resting and recovering.  I hope to return to normal activities by next Monday but we shall see as I am currenting struggling.

I was able to spend a good couple of hours working in the garden beds this week.  I have pulled up and replanted one of the beds with pumpkins.  We are continuing to get lots of good tomatoes, several squash, a zucchni and a couple of small cucumbers.  I am hopeful to increase the cucumbers and we also have apples and pears starting to ripen on the trees in the back yard.

Looking forward to a less busy and more normal start to August!

 

Monday Musing

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  • No menu plan for the week. We are all volunteering at Vacation Bible School this week. We are provided a meal each day so that makes life a little easier.
  • One of the you tube channels that I real enjoy is Three Rivers homestead.  She has a challenge starting in August called “Every bit counts.” The idea is that you find time each day to preserve one thing and that way it does not become overwhelming.  I know that once I start working again in August even this will become difficult, so I am going to start this week and end on August 19th. My plan is to share weekly and how I am doing with this challenge. Last week, I made and frozen 15 helping of spaghetti sauce. Today, I put packs of mini applesauce muffins in the freezer. I also made a huge batch of gravy that we ate for lunch. I was able to put 2 smaller containers in the freezer to use for breakfast bowls in the future.
  • On Saturday, we were able to complete the chicken coop and started with the fencing to finish the area.  We will hopefully get our new pet chickens this week. I am going to plan to share all about the chickens in blog post this week.
  • We also have obtained a large 250 galloon water barrel for both the chickens and for watering things in the greenhouse.  We did attach a gutter system to the barrel We need to first fill and empty to remove all the remaining chemicals that are in it. Slow progress but this will hopefully eliminate the need to use county water next year for the garden or chickens.
  • As I mentioned above, we all are involved in VBS this week which runs from 6 to 8:30 Sunday to Thursday. Zach is attending the local baseball camp from 8:30 to 11 Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Lily is working Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Yeap we are back to a busy schedule.
  • The garden is continuing to bounce back and we are getting a good supply of tomatoes and yellow squash currently.  I am hopefully to freeze enough spaghetti sauce for the year (24 containers) and make another batch of salsa before the tomatoes slow down to eating and saving as diced tomatoes.
  • I was able to locate enough frozen basil to use in the spaghetti sauce that I don’t think I am going to replant this year. I will likely plan to grow in the green stock planter next year and replenish our supply then.

Thursday Thoughts

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This is supposed to be our least busy week of the summer. The reason for this is simple.  I had outpatient surgery on Monday.  I wanted to give myself a full week to recover and this has turned out to be a positive thing.   I did not leave the house after returning on Monday until this morning.

Today, I had to take Lily to the orthodontist office in order to get a new top retainer made. This was an expensive process.  Hopefully, this will be the final time it needs to be completed. Lily lost her retainer while packing to come home from Oak Island last week.  When she received her retainers over two years ago, she was informed of the $35 fee to replace. She did pay this portion today but due to changes in technology it was $150 to replace the retainer today.

I also headed to the nail salon to get my manicure and pedicure today as well. I have been budgeting this for once every three weeks along with a dog grooming appointment every month.  I think this will definitely be items we keep in the budget.

The garden is starting to produce, and I am planning on an entire garden/food preservation update for tomorrow.

We purchased a small chest freezer that was delivered this week. This is actually going to be kept in our dining room and used as our convenient freezer. It has items such as chicken nuggets, waffles and pancakes. We have been able to move and arrange the other freezers so that we have one large chest freezer that is empty.  It is currently defrosting and will be cleaned and ready for our cow that is currently being processed.

Our awesome friends provided an awesome dinner last night which was greatly appreciated.

We have purchased the final 27 pavers needed to complete the chicken coop. The goal is to get the pavers placed and the top of the coop finished on Saturday so that we can possibly get chickens in the next week.

I am looking forward to not leaving the house again until Sunday to go to church!

Project Catch Up with Financial Implications.

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We are currently about halfway through the summer. I start back to work on August 17th with the kids all going back to school on August 29th.  We had a list of projects that we wanted to tackle this summer.  Some of the items on the list have been postpone due to financial implication and or time constraints.  We have been working hard on some of the projects, so this is a mid-summer update.

Kitchen Floor– This was our second project with the first being having the shower room floor replaced and repaired. The kitchen was last replaced in March of 2020. At that time, we chose a laminate floor that we had hoped would last 20 plus years.  This floor was not what it promised. The floor started to pull apart and pop up in different areas almost immediately.  It has gotten progressively worse to the point that we could not go barefooted in the kitchen due because it was snagging and tearing clothes and cutting feet.   We have decided to postpone having the shower room floor completed until next summer due to time and money. The kitchen floor did not give us the option. After some discussion regarding our options, we chose to remove the top layer of flooring and return to the previous floor.  The good news is that removal of the floor was fairly simple. We did need to do some minor repair work including screwing some of the floor in place to prevent gaps.  I am happy to report that we were able to complete this task last week. I have ordered a couple of rugs to cover the area that was previously a wall.  The total expense for the project is $120.

Chickens- After much debate and pleading on the kids parts, we have decided to get chickens as our next pet.  The ultimate goal is to have enough eggs that we stop buying but they will also be an additional pet. We knew up front that this would be a rather expensive project.  We are moving very close to getting the chickens which will likely be before the end of July.
Expenses so far:  Clearing of land- $1000
Purchase of chicken coop- $630
Wire for additional chicken run- $20 found next door!
Wood for additional chicken run and landscaping- $372
I will be adding to this and changing as we finish up but I am expecting around $2500

Bike Rake for Trailer- We actually broken even on this as we ended up selling both our luggage box and hitch rake for $100. The bike rake was $50 and we had to spend another $25 to update the wiring on the trailer.

My other goal for the summer is food preparation for the coming school year. This will be an ongoing project so stick around for the rest of the summer!

Weekend Wrap Up

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This weekend was supposed to be a slower than usual weekend however we still managed to get a lot accomplished.

  1.  Decided on our next house project.   We installed a new kitchen floor in March 2020.  The floor has begun to split and we have lots of pieces that no longer fit and it is becoming a hazard.  We have been talking for several months about replacing the floor.  We are not certain which direction that we want to go.  Matt and I talked and decided for the short run (less than a year) we will simply remove the new floor and return to the wood planks underneath. The current plan is to re-adjust the plank and attempt to nail in place. This is definitely not a permanent fix but solves the problem and will at least give us a presentable floor. We are going to undertake this project next weekend.
  2. Ordered the wood to finish the chicken coop and for the fence along the back edge of the yard.
  3. We have been watering the garden using county water for over a week now. It takes around 20 gallons a day to water so I am very hopeful that we will get some rain in the next 24 hours.
  4. Placed a down payment on our cow order. We should receive the cow some time the first couple weeks of August. Now we are focused on trying to decide what meat cuts we want.  I am also working on emptying one of our freezers. My goal is to get this accomplished by the end of July. However, it is fairly difficult when at the same time we are beginning to get in our summer produce.  Check and balance is all I can hope for.
  5. We ended up going to Costco on Friday night to use our reward check, I was very proud that we only ended up spending $26 out of pocket.  But that was short lived as we also went to Sam’s today.  We spend $260 of which over $200 was on food. I did stock up on Slim Jim’s (3 boxes) Hot Pockets (which the kids have been asking for) Biscuits and Pop tarts for breakfast in addition to some treats.
  6. We managed to only eat out one time this weekend. Matt has been practicing cooking on his new Blackstone.  He cooked two meals yesterday in addition to breakfast this morning!

Let’s get this week started on a good note!

Five Things Friday!

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  • The weather is awful!  It is hot and dry. We have not had any rain in almost a week. The last rain was really less than a quarter of an inch over two days. Our rain barrels are empty.  We are continuing to water the garden by hand.  I am hopeful that we will get some rain over the next couple of days.
  • We have been harvesting and drying parsley, dill and a tiny bit of basil. We have harvested squash and zucchini.  I did start a second round of both of these plants so that we can get much more for a longer period of time.  I have started basil in three locations with little to no success. Let’s hope that the third time is the charm. My plan is to remove the dill now that it has flowered and start some basil in it’s place.   I also have started a second round of cucumbers in hopes to extend the harvest for a couple of months.   We do have one watermelon growing and several cucumbers that are very close to being ready.  I have ordered more green bean seeds and plan to replant those as well. This hot weather has made things more difficult to grow but I am hoping that a couple of steady showers will help improve everything!
  • The first full week of Summer break has flown by!  Zach is at Baseball camp this week after Kendall enjoyed a week at church camp last week.  Yesterday we spent the day at the pool with Braxton!
  • We have ordered the rest of the supplies to finish the chicken coop area.  I will be posting lots of pictures in the next week or so when it is all finished.
  • Matt purchased a Blackstone grill to use both at home and in the camper for his Father’s Day gift.  He really enjoyed using the one at Haley’s wedding a couple of weeks ago so I hope this one gets lots of use.

5 Things Friday

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  1. The schedule- Months ago when I started to plan for my summer break, my thought process was that I would schedule as many medical appointments as I could this week and get them out of the way.  This would free up several weeks of time instead of needing to go out once a week to a different appointment. I did not take in account how tired I would be after the wedding festivities.  I had schedule 1 or more appointments for each day.  Adding in some services such as land clearing and septic pumping that I needed to get done and car sharing that occurred made this week crazy busy! I am hopeful that next week and the following weeks, I will be glad for more time but at this point, I am exhausted and really need a break.
  2. Menu planning-  Did not happen this week at all. I have managed to get food on the table every day and no one starved.   I may start some planning next week but if not we still have a ton of convivence foods!  My logic is that we are cleaning out the freezers and making room so why not!
  3. Gardening-  For the first time in years, we had to water with our hose this week.  I have expanded the garden but we managed to empty out both 55 gallon drums of rain water. It has been very hot and very dry but it was dishearting to hook up the hose.   We did get a storm last night so that will eliminate the need to use the hose at least for the next couple of days.  I am praying for a nice soaking rain over the next week so that things will even out!  I have moved several plants to different areas just to give myself some more space and hopefully get a better harvest.
  4. Chicken- Matt agreed to allow the kids to get some chickens as pets. We had an area behind our house cleared this week in order to make room for the said chickens.  I am expecting a delivery of the first part of the coup this afternoon.  I want to make this a pretty and useful area as well so I have been spending lots of time thinking and planning the landscape around the chicken coop.
  5. Weather- It is extremely and usually hot.  In fact, this has added to my exhaustion this week. I need to get out and get any yard work done prior to 9 am or after 8pm in order to even survive!  I am so looking forward to sitting by the pool this weekend!