Happy Holidays!


 

So the last you heard was:

  • Hugslut was downsized 
  • blood work revealed my thyroid hadn't been doing it's job 
  • the "tween" roosters were just starting to crow
  • the boy goats got neutered/castrated/wethered
  • our battery banks were being installed.

UPDATES!:

  • Hugslut's been job hunting and although she's had a few interviews, there's no solid offers yet.
  • I'm taking my new meds and my daily 3 hour afternoon naps have been drastically reduced to 1-2 hours every 2-3 days.
  • The battery banks work well and we didn't even notice the first time a storm outage came through
  • Marsha's chicks are full grown now. (more details below)
  • The goats have grown a lot (more details below) 
  • The full pig worth of pork we put a deposit on became ready (details below)
  • Garden Haul was decent considering the neglect (details below)

The battery system installation went smoothly. The power was only off for their work for about a day and even though we knew the fridges would loose some food, the freezer maintained temp well enough (20F/-5C) that nothing went bad. The first time we used the battery bank, we didn't even notice. The next morning folks were talking about how the power had gone out for a few hours and then was back on and then went out again for another hour... but ours didn't even blip hard enough to mess up the settings on the heat pump or cause the UPS on the computer desk to beep. There was another time we were awake and I saw the lights flicker but the TV didn't falter and when I checked the monitoring app it said we were running on battery, and then within 15 min we were back on mains and charging the battery. I must say that the quality of life difference is just amazing.

The greenhouse and garden were surprisingly productive given the fact they were mostly ignored this year, AND there was a drought that I didn't even notice until the wildfire warnings..

The new roosters started harassing the hens because there were NOT enough hens to go around (6 males to 10 females) One day I literally picked one rooster off a hen and lobbed him out of the barn to get him away from her so I could check on her (she was fine, just a few plucked feathers). A healthier ratio is 5-10 hens per rooster so I kept the one rooster that had shown he wouldn't chase the ladies and would instead try to dance and feed them to gain their favour. The one I had lobbed out of the barn had been physically fine but I seem to have hurt his pride because he had refused to come back in at night. That means that when I moved the spare roosters to their own mini coop that night, he was nowhere to be found. I did hear him crow from the forest for a few more days but I think he just left for greener pastures (and probably got caught by a dog or cat within a week or two).

Two of the spares became Christmas dinner. I made Coq Au Vin for the first time and we really enjoyed it with a side dish of our own roasted potatoes tossed with our own freshly cut sage and green onions. The third/last spare had made a break for it on butchering day, but came back the same day for food and shelter. He is NOT happy with me anymore (making danger alert noises when I come to fill his food and water). He can still see and talk to the other chickens through the bars of the run so he's not completely by himself, but he is still locked away so the hens don't get harassed before he gets butchered too.

The new rooster we're keeping as Romeo's apprentice was called "prince" and "junior" a few times and then we settled on "Freddy Prince Junior". He's a pretty boy, and after Romeo gave him a smack upside the head for chasing one of the hens he's been......... eager but polite. ;-) I swear some of the hens give him a peck after the third or fifth "no-thanks" just so he tries someone else for a while. I think he's learning well and will make a great lead rooster when his time comes.

The new hens have also grown into adulthood and, although we lost Sultana to a physical defect, Queenie and Regina are healthy and laying cute little light tan eggs daily.

The pork was an expense we forgot was coming because we had actually put the deposit down last year. That said, we now have a freezer FULL of pork. We're very "meat rich" which made me extra glad for the battery backup system. It would suck so bad to loose all that meat.

Didn't weigh but, package count!It was PACKED. This is Dec. 31st

Thanks to the glut of meat I felt safe experimenting with making bacon for the first time. It's definitely different to what I'm used to but it is SO tasty. I mean, fat, salt, and sugar... What's not to love? I also pre-made and froze a bunch of breakfast sausage patties for our weekly "breakfast for dinner" meals. The pork chops are in packages of two and are nice and thick just like I requested, and the roasts are in nice small 2-ish lb packages.  I've gotta say that having so much meat just sitting in the freezer waiting to be eaten is kinda nice when figuring out what to buy at the grocery store. It's like... Do I pay $8/lb for chicken thighs? or $12/lb for beef? OOOoooorrrr, do I make a meal based on the $6/lb pork sitting at home already?

As for the goats, the boys have grown well and are around 100lbs each. Since we definitely do not have enough freezer space for goat meat, we told the butcher we would not be hiring him this November like we had planned. He suggested that he might want to buy the wether we had planned to butcher to sell to his customers. We're still in talks on that as this is his busy season so he's over booked, and I'm in no rush. They can both stay with the ladies for now. It's not like he's eating a lot of expensive feed. Wethers are healthiest when fed standard hay and browse. It's just the does in milk that need that extra calcium and a calorie boost.

Unfortunately the little guys are still milk thieves even though they are definitely old enough to be fully weaned and have been on solids for a long time now. If I don't keep them in the kid corner overnight, Honey decides she's full enough to stop kicking them off and we get no milk that morning. I do hope they get out of that habit before Star's kids are born. I would hate to have the equivalent of an 20 year old still trying to nurse when there's actual babies around.

Honey is still giving an average of a liter of milk daily through the low season so the leap-frogging plan seems to be working. I dried up Star's milk production so she could focus on getting pregnant and making good kids. Technically some folks milk until two months before the does kid again (which means they're 3 months pregnant at that point). I figured that there's no need to push their production and dried her up when breeding season came around.

Star did take two tries before getting/staying pregnant, but that may be my fault on timing. As far as I can tell, she is pregnant and her due date is April 26th.

Shadow loves watching the bluejays in the morning.

Making new friends has been hard for us considering we don't really go anywhere or do anything besides groceries, so I've looked into the bigger library about 15 min away and there's a gardening club that meets each month. I'm going to go and see if I can meet some folks with similar interests. 

I hope all my online friends had a good holiday season and I wish you all a wonderful new year.