Storm and Storage

First view

Expected path(s)

Hurricane Lee started pointing at us the week of Sept 11th. By the 14th we were certain that it was gonna come close enough that the chickens needed to be locked up and the random stuff in the yard needed to be tidied. I also made up a big dish of cottage pie/shepherds pie made with ground pork that we took to calling "piggy pie".

Chickens and their coop safe in the shed

A big casserole dish of "Piggy Pie"

The storm went by on the 16th and went right up the Bay of Fundy. This meant our island, and especially our side of our island, didn't get the full force of the storm... but we did get a bunch of it.

Sept.16 at noon
61km/h with 114 km/h gusts

Sept.16 at 4pm
60km/h with 107km/h gusts

The next morning

After the storm we took stock and really the only damage was the final 3 panels of the old greenhouse flying into the bushes(we've been meaning to take it down and re-purpose the struts but haven't yet because the re-purposing plan isn't clear yet), and a handful of roof shingles that came off. We're gonna have a roofer go up and patch things before winter but it probably won't even hit our $1k deductible so it could be a lot worse.

After the storm we went to the shore to see what got washed up on the beach. It turns out, THE BEACH got washed up! The whole left of that photo is someones dirt driveway(or at least it was) and the boulder wall was shifted and the pebble beach washed up over the boulder wall to cover a good portion of the road! Yeah, glad we didn't go near the water during the storm. That would have been insane!

The chickens are moulting(as is normal in the fall) and thankfully it's been a mild/easy moult where they only loose a few feathers at a time as the new ones grow in. I do get to see the lost feathers around the yard and in the coop but the biggest sign on the chickens themselves is poor Romeo's tail. He's lost all of his big fancy feathers and just has a normal hen looking tail.

A pic from April

A pic from September

This past week I've been trying to get a bunch of canning done. We got a bunch of carrots, apples, and some beets. I've processed all the apples and a few other things like baked beans and veggie broth and bone broth. I'll be getting to the beets and carrots soon but they were less urgent. (Hard to make Hugslut an English breakfast with no baked beans) ;-) I'm also making some apple scrap vinegar with the apple peels and cores, That should be ready in a couple months.

All sorted and rinsed off before being stored in the basement. The yellow bucket of apples were surprisingly "grocery store quality" and only the grey tub needed to be processed right away.

Corncob broth and baked beans cooling on the counter.

My apple peeling and coring setup. That bucket took all day
but I had plenty of videos watch while I worked..

We are safe and sound and still waiting for the interviewers to notice how awesome Hugslut is. So now that you're pretty much caught up, I'll leave you with this DuoLingo quote that hurt my feelings. :-)

Welcome Lily and Marsha.

They've been very slowly getting to know the main flock. After an entire 2 days in their crate moving closer to the main flock in the fenced in coop area, they spent about a week with the new girls fenced in and the main flock allowed to roam so they could see and talk to each other but the main flock couldn't do anything worse then yell at them. After everyone seemed to be calm about eachother's existence, they got to share the same fenced area and a pile of treats.

It's been a couple days now and although they sleep in the same coop now and don't fight, they don't hangout together either. The new girls tend to hang out at the coop while the main flock go on their noon nap under the deck, afternoon walk along the bushes, and evening scratch in the long grass. Hopefully they will eventually become all the same flock, but I'm okay with them being polite roommates for now.

Lily and Marsha were sold to me as "ready to lay" which means they're the right age to start laying any day now, but as with most biology, there is a margin of leeway. They're Amerucana Blues which means that even in a few months when they are their full size, they'll still be slimmer than the rest of the flock. They're going to lay blue shelled eggs and the first one will likely be so tiny that they're useless... but I'll try to remember to get a photo for you. :-)

I know it's been a while but with everything involved in integrating the new girls including changing crate liners two to three times a day, as well as a few escapes when the scrawny new girls decided to brave squeezing through the electric fence instead of waiting the 5 more minutes for me to come get them and bring the crate in for the night.... well I've just been tired.

I've also been getting back to learning french and programming as well as journalling regularly. I used to think that journalling was just for getting out big feelings, but I've gotta say, having a place  to plop all my random thoughts and plans and things I wanna do and books I wanna read and thoughts on a video I watched and all that stuff. I have been leaning into trusting my systems because honestly, there is NO way I am going to remember everything I want to remember, but I don't have to as long as I record it somewhere I can find it.  

Yesterday morning I opened the freezer to a sad sight. Four litres of duck broth that I had carefully made, skimmed, and filled to what I THOUGHT was a reasonable level to allow for expansion.... decided that they were going to smash open their jars despite the generous headroom available. All that effort, wasted. Ugh. This is part of the reason why I do canning. I just didn't have the spoons this week.

There's warnings coming now that Hurricane Lee will likely hit here on Friday or Saturday. but don't worry for us. We have food and water and a battery powered radio and a safe place to tuck the chickens indoors while the worst goes by. Stay safe and know we will too. :-)