Thursday, November 29, 2012

First Seed Catalog of the 2013 Season

Lookie what came in the mail today!  It's my first seed catalog for the 2013 season.  It is from Seed Saver's Exchange.  I haven't ordered from them yet but spent quite a while perusing their website this year.  Especially during the Glass Gem Corn fiasco earlier this year, lol.  I haven't sat down with the catalog yet and will save it for a special treat when I can sit down with a cup of tea and spend my time browsing.

I told TH that I wanted to grow sweet potatoes next year and he asked if I'm giving up red potatoes or white potatoes to make room for them.  I then told him I wanted to grow yams next year and he kind of laughed and said okay ;).

TH has been reworking our chicken pen today.  We did a quick job of getting them some extra room this summer when they had to be pinned but now that they are able to graze freely, we have the chance to rework things before next year's garden season.

We were talking today about the need to throw the guineas out of the chicken yard once we have it repaired.  They need to live in the goat barn so they can get out and catch bugs for us while the chickens remain penned when we plant the gardens next year.  We have a little bit of time before we have to deal with that though.  If the guineas keep being mean to my chickens, we may be eating guineas this winter!

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Corn Sheller At Work

Things have been pretty quiet on the home front.  The guineas are grown now and think themselves barnyard royalty.  They push the chickens around and seem to hate them all except for our old rooster Roy and the hen that raised them.  They truly are the dumbest birds I've ever seen.  They will run back and forth along a fence for 3 hours just runnin' and squawkin'.  For some reason, they forget they can fly and could go over the fence any time they choose.  Sometimes Frank likes to help them remember by spooking them into flight.  I would yell at him for it but after 3 hours of squawking, I'm glad to have them over the fence.

Our momma hen sat one last time a few weeks ago and hatched one more baby for the year.  She and the baby live in the goat barn away from the craziness that is the chicken coop.  I believe we have 4 young roosters running around and we'll have to thin the herd very soon.  I'll choose one to serve along side Roy as he has slowed down quite a bit this past year.  There are two little feather-footed black and gray roosters that I like the looks of but I'll have to see how their temperament is as they get a little older.

The goats are doing well.  Bunny just passed through heat but we didn't have a buck ready for her so we'll be waiting for that to happen again.  When you add a goat in heat to five uppity guineas, you get quite the chorus in the barnyard.

I wanted to post a video on how TH's corn sheller is doing.  He had to tweak it a bit to get it to work but it is much better than using our thumbs to take off every little kernel!
You can see part of TH's woodworking area behind him.  We should be getting out there more as the weather gets colder.  I have lots of things I'm hoping to get built this winter!



TH made our corn crib to be able to roll around the garage floor.  One thing he forgot to build in was a way to retrieve the corn if you just wanted a few ears but he used his "I-Have-An-Idea" super power and came up with this solution:

                                                   Princess #2 thought it was a grand idea!

That'll do it for tonight!  I promise to try and update more regularly.  Thank you all for visiting!