Jul 2009 Personal Preps
Jul 2009 Personal Preps
List your accomplishments here.
“Conspiracy Theories Are Wisps of Smoke From Fires That Cannot Be Seen” - The Watchman (2024)
Re: Jul 2009 Personal Preps
Who would ever have thought mayonnaise would be cheap at $1.97? It seems that just a year ago we were buying it on sale for $1.00. Our local Smith's had a sale on Kraft Real Mayo at $1.97 a quart. Also attached to the jar was a coupon good for $1.00 off each two purchased. Our final price for 24 jars was $1.47 each.
Update on the solar motion sensor. It is bright as heck! And comes on at the slightest motion. I would recommend it highly for any of you who are either off-the-grid or don't want to put in new wiring!
Update on the solar motion sensor. It is bright as heck! And comes on at the slightest motion. I would recommend it highly for any of you who are either off-the-grid or don't want to put in new wiring!
“Conspiracy Theories Are Wisps of Smoke From Fires That Cannot Be Seen” - The Watchman (2024)
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mjb9947
Re: Jul 2009 Personal Preps
Deciding to avoid paying rent until I find a new job closer to family, I bought a 25 ft bumper pull travel trailer. Got a heck of a deal a 1988 Starcraft in great condition for only $3,000. I'm working on making it homey. I moved some of my gear into the under carriage storage unit and would eventually like to make it entirely solar efficient, but everything is pretty pricey right now.
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bee_pipes
Re: Jul 2009 Personal Preps
6/27
Six more chickens in the freezer today. Totals were 20 lb 2 oz with an average of a little over 3 ¼ lbs per bird. Only two more days of this. We didn’t get started until 6:30 and the hornets and flies were ready for us. Still, the operation is going smoothly. Our plastic killing cones are a little dinged up – looks like three chickens is a good number to run before replacing them. We have plenty of empty milk jugs. Tonight I put up the feeder, out of reach of the remaining meat birds. This will give them a chance to empty out their digestive tracks by morning. It wasn’t a concern before because there were enough birds to empty the feeder by late afternoon/early evening. Since we are down to 12 birds the feeder doesn’t empty as quickly. Left to their own devices, these devils would eat until there wasn’t enough light to see, then resume as soon as they could find the feeder in the morning.
We didn’t get much done the rest of the day. It was hot, but the decreasing humidity takes the heaviness out of the weather. We received a good shower around 4-5 PM, measured ¾ inch on the rain gauge, which sort of put the kibosh on anything involved outside. Tomorrow we are expecting a cold front to move through, leaving us with weather in the 80’s, rather than the 90’s. That will feel like mild spring weather after the recent weeks.
The neighbor didn’t show up today or call about the trees. I’m not going to chase him. Plans were to use the ATV to tug the tree in the correct direction. That was before Joey dropped off the tractor. I’ll call Tony and see about getting his help. He has a similar tractor and would have no problem driving/tugging.
Karen made a big batch of spaghetti sauce for dinner. We have enough for at least two or three meals with enough left over to freeze for future meals.
My readings recommended not brooding ducks with turkeys or chickens. I can see why. The ducklings seem to enjoy motor-boating the waterer with mouths full of food. This results in dirty water that looks like weak coffee with cream. It has become necessary to change the water twice a day. When the meat birds are done we will clean up their pen and move the group of birds in the chicken tractor to the meat bird pen. There they will have a chance to grow without competing with the adult birds. At that point the tractor will be empty and we can move the ducklings in. They are not supposed to need heat as much as chickens for the first few weeks and could probably go outside now. They are growing quickly and it doesn’t take much food to keep the both of them fed. The turkeys probably have another 2-3 weeks at least in the brooder. With the small number of birds they will be quite comfortable in there for a long time.
6/28
17 lb 8 oz, average 2.9 lbs per bird.
Started weeding other bean patch. Some big beans hiding in those weeds! At first I thought we had horn worms, but they were big green beans.
We have four turkeys and their companion chicken in the brooder. The companion chicken provides the turkeys with an example of how to eat and drink. They are slow learners. The chicken also keeps at the turkeys – keeps them moving and active. After the guineas, chicks and ducks, the turkey poults have a pronounced difference in personality. Their call seems almost and inquiry – like they are asking questions. They are also more curious than fearful. When you reach in the brooder to grab one, they will run up to your hand to get a good look at it. They are not terrified by being picked up. Their most annoying habit is grabbing a toe on other birds in the brooder. It must not feel good because the other bird lets out a terrible cry, like they are being hurt badly. The first few times you hear the cry you go to the brooder to see what the problem is. Usually by the time you arrive the altercation is over. I wouldn’t have known what was causing the ruckus if they had not done it in front of me a number of times.
6/29
14 lb 12 oz, average almost 3 lb per bird. Grand total is 74 lb 6 oz of meat added to the freezer.
Today we were on chicken #22 when we saw something unusual. After scalding and plucking we noticed one of the legs was green. I expected it was just a bad bruise on the way to purple or black & blue, maybe a broken leg from the dying quivers. Well, we continued plucking and got the bird to the table to be dressed, Everything went normally until I got to the abdomen and opened up the skin between the leg and the body. The area was full of a green fluid - green like nyquill. The only thing green like that is bile. The gall bladder was intact and no way it would have that much fluid volume anyway. The fluid did not have a smell, at least nothing noticeable over the smell of an opened carcass.
I caught the bird, confined its legs and dispatched it. The bird was not acting sickly or favoring the leg, it didn’t seem injured and acted like all the other birds we have been slaughtering.
I put in a post to a livestock forum to see if anyone else has seen this sort of thing or has any idea of what it was. We disposed of the carcass. Hated to lose the meat but didn't want to take any chances. We slaughtered two more birds after that and I'm wondering if we contaminated our work area. We do the work outside, but cleaning between birds is usually a matter of hosing off the knives and work area between birds. Just to be safe, we have marked the birds processed after the weird one so we can dispose of them if necessary.
After finishing up with the meat birds, we cleaned out their pen and moved the guineas, wyandottes and Cornish chicks into the pen. The straw bedding we cleaned out was quite matted with manure and weighed a ton. The bottom layers had begun composting and made a fine cap for all the offal from the meat birds in the compost bin. We have company coming at the end of the week so this was also a fine time to get the compost collection buckets emptied and washed. Once the buckets were emptied, we covered the piles with the bedding from the meat bird pen. It has done a lot to reduce the smell and flies being attracted by all the waste.
With the chicken tractor empty, we moved the ducklings outside to the tractor. They are still quite fearful of people. My experience with ducklings in the past has been anything but this. Most are curious and will follow anybody that moves. Well, they now have plenty of room and plenty of water. They can make as much of a mess with the water as they want.
So, three of the more disagreeable jobs finished today – meat birds, cleaning the meat bird pen, and emptying and washing compost collection buckets. Not a bad day. The rest of the week will be spent cleaning up and getting ready for company.
6/30
With all the activity in the compost bin, I thought this would be a good opportunity to go around the yard and collect any eggs of a “questionable” age. I emptied a pile behind the house and cleaned out the guinea nesting boxes. One broody hen is sitting on a single duck egg that has to be past incubation by at least two weeks – best to get that out of the house before there is an explosion. Also cleared out the turkey nest. Most of the guinea eggs seemed okay – had yolks and whites and no explosions. The duck and turkey eggs were another matter. The duck egg didn’t explode, but it kind of sighed when I broke it and oozed out this thick green paste – looked like wassabe or old guacamole – the smell almost emptied my stomach. The turkey eggs were worse – all of them exploded when they were broken. An egg in a compost pile might break open on its own, but I don’t like to take chances. We have put egg shells in the bins and they seem almost unaffected by composting. The last thing I want is a salmonella or ptomaine bomb going off in my face as we are raking in compost. We do our best to be sure every egg is broken as it goes into the compost. The smell is really nauseating – the term “rotten egg smell” does not do it justice.
A friend responded to my question about the green fluid. She had encountered the same thing in the chest cavity of birds that have pneumonia. This variety of bird is bred for growth and meat production. They lie around a lot, generate large quantities of moist manure with high ammonia content. It’s a wonder their lungs are not scarred from breathing in the ammonia. She compared the fluid buildup to peritonitis in people. She is also in the habit of discarding carcasses with the green fluid too, but said basic sanitation – as we practice – is all that’s necessary between dressing the infected bird and dressing subsequent birds.
7/1
Another response to the chicken problem was posted:
“Uh huh, I've sure seen it before!
It's Ascites. The fluid is ascitic fluid.
The fluid can be greenish or yellowish...it's fairly common in broiler type birds.
Back when we were raising a bunch of pastured chickens....any bird with Ascites was sent to the compost pile.”
Gotta love the internet and being able to pick other people’s brains on problems.
Today and tomorrow will be spent getting ready for company. There are a lot of tools and materials from projects that need to be put away and preparations for getting the trees dropped before the company arrives.
This morning we were greeted by a most disagreeable odor coming from the compost pile. The offal from 24 chickens seems to be seeping through the pile of straw and litter we buried the mess under. I have to take issue with Joseph Jenkins and his book on composting. He assures the reader that the odor is not an issue if the “deposit” if covered with an adequate amount of material and receives enough water. After dropping the contents of three 5 gallon collection buckets on the offal and covering with all the straw and manure from the pen I should think that would be an amount considered adequate. At worst there should be a smell of chicken manure. I can only imagine the smell it would be giving off uncovered. A thermometer poked into the middle of the pile read 100º. The smell lessened as the sun came up and the day got warmer, and then started to increase again as the sun dropped and the day cooled off. Hopefully it will be gone in the next day or two. The dogs are quite curious and want to find the source of the smell.
The young chicks and guineas are taking quite well to the new digs. They managed to empty the feeder today but seem to be doing okay on water. The seasonal temperatures are good for young birds and the nights are mild enough that the problems of chilled birds is no longer a concern. The ducklings, alone in the chicken tractor, are getting along quite well. We placed the food and water at opposite ends of the pen to keep them from gumming up the food. They have dropped the water levels significantly in the waterers from “motor boating:” and playing in the water, but there is ample water and they will not need to be filled very frequently. I think part of the problem we are seeing with the behavior of the ducklings is a matter of bonding. One solitary duck, which was my experience as a youngster, has only people around to interact with. Two ducklings have each other and so have no interest in people. While they do shy away from people or dogs outside the pen, they do not seem to be quite as fearful as they were originally. Hopefully, as they get larger, they will become more used to people and a little more friendly. The adult ducks we have are far from tame, but they do well with being herded back to the pen in the evening and remain in the vicinity. When the ducklings under the broody duck start hatching we should be able to run them through the bin inside and on to the chicken tractor to accumulate until they are big enough to release. Right now, at this young age, they would not be able to flee or defend themselves from the adult chickens. It remains to be seen if the adult ducks will accept them, though there were no problems with introducing additional ducks to the one adult we had. The three new ducks seemed to fall in line and some sort of pecking order was established without any fighting.
This evening I managed to get a new battery installed on the brush mower and cut the grass in the dog pen and around the fruit trees. It was getting high enough to afford plenty of hiding places for snakes. I am not too concerned about the adult birds, but with all the youngsters around a single snake could do a lot of damage before it was caught. One summer I caught a chicken snake in the chicken house after it had swallowed an egg. The poor thing could not squeeze back through the mesh it had crawled in through with the egg stuck in its throat. When it saw me it knew the jig was up and tried to upchuck the egg. I was faster with a stick than it was at moving the egg. Our neighbor brought me a snake once. It had tried to swallow a month old chicken. Its eyes were bigger than its mouth. It had managed to swallow the head, suffocating the chick, but was not able to get past the shoulders. The bird was lost and the snake, caught in such a compromising position, was unable to eject the chicken and was dispatched.
7/2
This morning Tony and Kay came over to help drop two trees. Good thing too. The big saw would not run and Tony brought his saw along. The first tree was a 12-16 inch diameter sweet gum that had been eaten away by bugs. The tree was fairly tall and it seemed like a good idea to make it fall where and when I wanted to, rather than leaving it to the whimsy of the wind. Tony manned the tractor and tugged on the tree with a 3/8 inch wire rope. We used an extension ladder to get the cable as high up the trunk as possible – about 30 feet – to increase leverage. I threw a nail in to prevent the cable from slipping and dropping down the tree and marked the nail with spray paint. Funny thing is, when climbing the ladder it seems like you are placing the nail really high up on the tree – and you are increasing leverage – but when you step back and look to where the cable is, it doesn’t seem that far up on the tree. It did not drop exactly where I had in mind, but did fall away from anything important and in the general direction I had in mind. After the tree fell it was easy to find the nail and remove it, before the sawmill finds the nail and ruins a blade. The second tree, a big white poplar, had a bad lean towards the house and I wanted to get it gone before making other improvements. This tree had a diameter of 25 inches and a lot of big boughs on the top – a lot of weight high up. We used the ladder, nail and spray paint again to hold the cable up as high as possible. The tree was pretty spooky to cut on; the thing was so big that it was impossible to get a good notch with an 18” bar without multiple cuts. A smarter fellow than me would have checked the gas before starting on the second tree – of course it ran out and I had to stop in the middle to refill. Because of the lean and the potential to damage house, well and other structures, I had Tony tugging on the tree hard after the notch was cut. He must have tugged too hard because the cable broke. I heard something hit the tree and thought the hinge was giving way – the tree was falling. I scrambled out of the way to watch it fall, but the tree didn’t go anywhere. I saw Tony making motions, and looked to see the cable bunched up around the tree – it must have snapped and flew back at the tree like a rubber band. Impressive. The thing could have cut me in half if I was standing in the wrong place. Of course, Karen and Kay are watching and wondering if they will be widows by the end of the morning. We got the cable reattached and I went back to the felling cut. Tony kept an eye out and tension on the tree. Again, it did not fall exactly where I intended, but it did miss all structures and fences. We have two yellow poplars – tall straight tree – behind the well house. I was pretty sure that if we got the tree to fall on the right side of those poplars it would protect the well. Still, the top boughs landed closer to the fence than I would have wanted. Another foot or two and I would have been dealing with splintered fence posts. Now that they are on the ground they can be topped, cut up and skidded to the mill at my leisure.
The changes do let in a fair amount of sunlight and the intention was not to remove shade. The poor dogs, in their pen, have just been screwed out of a significant portion of their morning shade. In a few years, hopefully, the remaining trees will be sending out branches to get this new sunlight and increase the amount of shade again.
Today I cleaned out the rabbit shed. One of the dogs, Zeb, was with me while I did this job. I have seen the dogs watching me while I work and from time to time I see these looks of pure admiration cross their faces. Once was when I was planting fruit trees. We have hard soil and it is necessary to dig holes with a long steel rod. Zeb and his sister watched me work and seemed much impressed by the size and depth of the holes I was digging. This is not faint praise coming from creatures that are capable diggers in their own right. But this look was nothing compared to Zeb watching me fill up a large plastic bin with manure. Surely he must have thought I was some sort of king to have such a quantity of manure at my disposal. As I came out with trays from each rabbit cage, emptying my treasure house, his eyes got wider and wider. It seemed like I would never stop bring out trays and dumping them into the bin. He was also quite disappointed when the job was done and I slapped a lid on the bin. After all, what’s the use of having that much manure if you don’t share it with friends?
The smell from the compost bins is decreasing. The process must be working. There is still an odor, but you have to be standing right next to the bin to smell it. Hungry little microbes are doing their job, breaking the deposits down into nitrogen and binding it with the carbon supplied by the straw and sawdust. I have no doubt there are mice digging through the pile, they are small enough to crawl through the wire mesh stapled to the pallets that make the bins. This may be part of the process for all I know. Or the mice themselves, when they dig down to the food they are seeking, may be overcome by temperature and air quality, falling and becoming part of the process themselves. The wire is doing its job in that no larger animals are making it into the bins, where they would dig and drag buried stuff to the surface. We had that problem the first year – no doubt raccoons or possum. That was when we fashioned lids from additional pallets and stapled wire to the outside.
Our company – my mother, my sister Megan and my nieces Kaitlin and Allison – arrived around 4 PM. Karen put on a dinner of chicken pot pies made from our fresh chicken.
7/4
Lost one of the turkey poults last night. No apparent reason. The remaining three poults and their guardian chicken are all active. My nieces have wanted to hold them and I have indulged them. One niece had sprayed herself down pretty heavily with deet because of the ticks and chiggers. Now, I don't know that the deet caused the poult's demise but just to be safe I instituted a "no handling the livestock" policy.
This morning Karen, my niece Allison and I slaughtered six rabbits. One litter of five was a week past due, they were showing a little more fat than is normally seen on a rabbit ready for harvest. The sixth was an old doe with a bad set of teeth. I inherited her from the breeder we got the stock from. I have a feeling that she was kept as a pet and not as a productive doe. Her teeth would grow to incredible lengths – often curling around and back into her throat and tongue. The breeder showed me how to trim her teeth using the boning notch on a pair of shears. The operation was difficult and traumatic for the doe. I tried breeding her, figuring I didn’t care if the trait got passed on to kits that were to be harvested at 12 weeks, but she did not do that great of a job in the breeding department either. I have yet to get a litter out of her in the seven months we have had them. The litter of five added a total of fourteen pounds to the freezer in dressed rabbit, the old doe dressed out at four pounds by herself and will be run through a grinder and used for dog food. Two new does will replace the one culled and a doe that died a few months back. My niece was curious about slaughtering when she learned that we grew our own chicken. The meat birds could not wait another week and the work of putting up 24 chickens was a little more than we wanted to go through with company here. We compromised and saved the rabbits. She was not that thrilled with laying her own hands on the work, though she did, but was still fascinated with watching animals being turned into food. She also did a good job cleaning the giblets. I could hand these off to her while dressing the rabbits and she took care of them with no additional supervision. She is a quick study and can copy an operation after watching it done one time.
After the morning’s work we set down to a breakfast of blueberry pancakes and sausage. It was a great meal and very nearly brought on naps in all of us. Niece Allison, who had gotten up at 5:30 to help with the rabbits, took advantage of the opportunity and napped.
We set up a small target area in front of a hill across the creek.
My sister Megan had found an ammo shop in Murfreesboro that had .22 ammo. Walmart and the local shops are out of ammo and every time they receive a shipment from suppliers the boxes fly off the pallets before they can be shelved. Meg and her girls had never handled firearms before so we had a class on firearm safety and some target practice. Allison passed, having woken up from her nap and found it too hot outside for her liking. Megan and Kaitlin were quite gung-ho about the idea and did pretty well. Meg could not hit the broad side of a barn with a .22 pistol. Her daughter Kaitlin did better. We did not fire enough rounds to get a good feel for the pistol and make corrections with Kentucky windage.
Megan found the 20 gauge shotgun more to her liking. She did not want to fire it from the shoulder, but got pretty accurate firing from the hip.
Kaitlin was a bit apprehensive about the kick from the shotgun, but after the first shell she found it was not that big a deal and enjoyed peppering the target with shot.
Both ladies did pretty well and are now adequately acquainted with firearms to not pose a threat to those around them.
We had an old fashioned cookout for the 4th. Hotdogs, hamburgers, chips and beans. Nothing fancy, no major big deals or complicated dishes to cook. After diner we joined Tony and Kay and their family for desert and fireworks. It is good to live in a country with enough freedom left to do what we want on our own land, shoot off firearms if we so desire, and travel to a neighbor’s house to enjoy their company. Hope you all had a happy fourth of July. If you have not read the Declaration of Independence and Constitution lately, I highly recommend them.
7/5
Rain came in last night about 8 PM or so. We broke early from Tony and Kay’s place. When we arrived at our house the rain was starting to increase and we found our dog, Zuzu, waiting for us in the yard. She had been left out in the pen by herself because she can’t be trusted inside (she chews things up) and can’t be left alone with the other dogs. She seemed to have found a way out of the pen. I checked this morning and think I have found her escape point.
Last night’s rain came with a vengeance after we got home. Tornadoes just north of the Kentucky border and south of us had the weather radio going all night. This morning I checked the rain gauge and found it pegged at 5 ¼ inches – the thing was full to the top of the collection funnel. The creek is much swollen running rapidly. To put icing on the cake, the air conditioner seems to not be working. We shall see how the day pans out.
Tony, who used to run an HVAC business, came over in the morning to look at our air conditioner. We can’t really complain, it has been four years and we have not had a problem yet. I was able to watch him work and track down the problem. He started out by showing me where the power enters the outside unit. We checked for voltages – 250 – and found one side of the unit was open. These lines were checked on the breaker box end. This is where it got confusing. Two 250 voltage connections entered the outdoor unit, but only one 250 volt connection was on the breaker box inside the house. After puzzling this one out for some time, we eventually arrived at the service entrance to the house. There is another box outside the house where this entrance occurs. For whatever reason made sense to the original electrician, the heat/furnace side of the unit originates from the inside breaker box, the air conditioning side of the unit originates at the service entrance box. I guess it makes sense, the house originally had a furnace – we sealed up the vents in the old utility closet a year or two ago. The heat pump replaced the original furnace and no doubt a window air conditioner or two. Rather than run new wiring from the breaker box, the wires were run from outside the house. Well, the 250 volt connection to the air conditioner was the problem. A poorly made splice gave way. There was a little melted insulation, probably a little arcing, and the connection was lost – resulting in the open where the power entered the outside unit. We redid the splice, ensuring the threads of the cap made contact with both sides of the splice, and wound everything in ample electrical tape. The A/C fired back up and has been running like a champ since then. I could have spent a long time poking around and might have never found the problem. Tony knew where the bodies are usually buried and checked those spots first.
We had a good storm roll through our region the night before. There was much electrical activity and rain in the storm. A surge through the power lines may have caused this bead splice to reach the tipping point. If there was a surge, it was nothing noteworthy – not a single breaker was thrown. We saw additional storms today – nothing as rowdy as the night before, but a little lightning. Overnight the rain gauge was overflowing with water, indicating an excess of 5 ¼ inches. In the course of the day we received an additional 1 ½ inches. The creek is a little swollen and the ground is soaked. We should see the garden go into over drive with the much needed water.
We did a little rearranging in the rabbit shed. A new free-standing set of cages was brought in, adding two litter cages to the two we already had. This is getting important as we have three litters we need to start weaning. The youngsters are eating from the cage feeders and the mothers have to compete with their own young to get food. A collection arrangement needs to be built for this new cage stand to redirect all droppings and waste into a bin. I can see shortcomings in the last one of these I built and have in mind a couple of improvements. There are ample home built cages and a few of them are made using 1 x ½ inch weld wire. This wire is difficult to find at local suppliers and is more valuable as flooring, so a few cages will be cannibalized and replaced with more common wire. Urine deflectors also have to be fabricated for the new cages. Much of this sort of work is hand work and can wait until the company has left – we’ll focus on more active chores that the girls seem to enjoy.
The girls were a big help with topping the trees we felled in that last few days. I was able to concentrate on working the branches with loping shears while they loaded the ATV trailer and moved them to a staging area near the chipper. They like driving the ATV and this makes the work interesting to them. We are just about to the point of getting out the chainsaw to do the final topping and turn the trees into mill logs and firewood. Once the timber is removed from the area we can start digging with the backhoe, turning the low ground in front of the house into a pool for the creek. The ducks will like larger water; it should provide a nice view to the front of the house and keep the ducks in an area where we can watch for predators more easily.
As we were breaking the tree into logs we hit a hollow spot. I had seen squirrels run into the spot, it was above a branch at the first major fork in the tree. When we saw the second log had just caught the bottom of the hollow, I cut the next three feet off trying to cut out the hollow. As I was rolling the hollow portion to stand it up and get it out of the way, I noticed paper comb falling from the end. Man, I backed out of there just before a swarm of angry wasps came flying out of that hollow section of tree. Standing at a safe distance, my sister, her daughters and I watched as the wasps patrolled the area looking for the cause of this insult to their nest. Next to the tree the chainsaw was idling but I didn’t dare wade back into that group to retrieve the saw. We watched for about thirty minutes as the wasps calmed down bit by bit. Finally I was able to run in and get the saw. With the saw out of the way we took the hose connected to the well and shot it in the air, trying to get it to arc down into the hollow. It took some doing, much like finding the range with a mortar. We flooded the nest as best we could and called it a day for clearing brush.
While sitting on the porch I had a chance to observe the turkey mating ritual at length. This may have been a bit voyeuristic, but I had seen bits and pieces for the lest two years. The tom does a little dance that is reminiscent of Buddy Ebson, in his role of Jed Clampet in the Beverly Hillbillies, doing his tap dancing. Tom will strut, stomp around – first on one leg then the other – and generally puff himself up as if preparing for a parade. The hen, if she is so inclined, will open her wings and drag the tips on the ground – turkey for “come hither”. As the tom approaches, if he has done nothing to spoil the mood, the hen will face away from him and crouch on the ground. Most creatures would be satisfied with this opportunity, but this is not adequate for turkeys. At this point the tom will climb up on the hen’s back and continue his dance. Of course, the footing is more treacherous and the dance is more of a mark time – marching in place. According to the books, the female had erogenous zones that are being stimulated by all this pacing. The hen is a small light bird, when compared to the tom. The discomfort of being walked on, like a Japanese massage, by a 20-30 lb tom must be considerable. This is a real testimony to the amorous nature of the hen – to be willing to go through this for the promise of sex at the other end of the ritual. If the tom has done his job, the act is eventually completed by coupling. From my observations, this does not seem to be so much a matter of intent as much as a matter the tom slipping off the hen. In retrospect, it would seem the little dance the tom does would be the equivalent of lewd gestures to try and arouse his intended. He would be a busy, dancing bird if he had a harem to service, rather than one poor hen to receive all his attentions.
Regards,
Pat
Six more chickens in the freezer today. Totals were 20 lb 2 oz with an average of a little over 3 ¼ lbs per bird. Only two more days of this. We didn’t get started until 6:30 and the hornets and flies were ready for us. Still, the operation is going smoothly. Our plastic killing cones are a little dinged up – looks like three chickens is a good number to run before replacing them. We have plenty of empty milk jugs. Tonight I put up the feeder, out of reach of the remaining meat birds. This will give them a chance to empty out their digestive tracks by morning. It wasn’t a concern before because there were enough birds to empty the feeder by late afternoon/early evening. Since we are down to 12 birds the feeder doesn’t empty as quickly. Left to their own devices, these devils would eat until there wasn’t enough light to see, then resume as soon as they could find the feeder in the morning.
We didn’t get much done the rest of the day. It was hot, but the decreasing humidity takes the heaviness out of the weather. We received a good shower around 4-5 PM, measured ¾ inch on the rain gauge, which sort of put the kibosh on anything involved outside. Tomorrow we are expecting a cold front to move through, leaving us with weather in the 80’s, rather than the 90’s. That will feel like mild spring weather after the recent weeks.
The neighbor didn’t show up today or call about the trees. I’m not going to chase him. Plans were to use the ATV to tug the tree in the correct direction. That was before Joey dropped off the tractor. I’ll call Tony and see about getting his help. He has a similar tractor and would have no problem driving/tugging.
Karen made a big batch of spaghetti sauce for dinner. We have enough for at least two or three meals with enough left over to freeze for future meals.
My readings recommended not brooding ducks with turkeys or chickens. I can see why. The ducklings seem to enjoy motor-boating the waterer with mouths full of food. This results in dirty water that looks like weak coffee with cream. It has become necessary to change the water twice a day. When the meat birds are done we will clean up their pen and move the group of birds in the chicken tractor to the meat bird pen. There they will have a chance to grow without competing with the adult birds. At that point the tractor will be empty and we can move the ducklings in. They are not supposed to need heat as much as chickens for the first few weeks and could probably go outside now. They are growing quickly and it doesn’t take much food to keep the both of them fed. The turkeys probably have another 2-3 weeks at least in the brooder. With the small number of birds they will be quite comfortable in there for a long time.
6/28
17 lb 8 oz, average 2.9 lbs per bird.
Started weeding other bean patch. Some big beans hiding in those weeds! At first I thought we had horn worms, but they were big green beans.
We have four turkeys and their companion chicken in the brooder. The companion chicken provides the turkeys with an example of how to eat and drink. They are slow learners. The chicken also keeps at the turkeys – keeps them moving and active. After the guineas, chicks and ducks, the turkey poults have a pronounced difference in personality. Their call seems almost and inquiry – like they are asking questions. They are also more curious than fearful. When you reach in the brooder to grab one, they will run up to your hand to get a good look at it. They are not terrified by being picked up. Their most annoying habit is grabbing a toe on other birds in the brooder. It must not feel good because the other bird lets out a terrible cry, like they are being hurt badly. The first few times you hear the cry you go to the brooder to see what the problem is. Usually by the time you arrive the altercation is over. I wouldn’t have known what was causing the ruckus if they had not done it in front of me a number of times.
6/29
14 lb 12 oz, average almost 3 lb per bird. Grand total is 74 lb 6 oz of meat added to the freezer.
Today we were on chicken #22 when we saw something unusual. After scalding and plucking we noticed one of the legs was green. I expected it was just a bad bruise on the way to purple or black & blue, maybe a broken leg from the dying quivers. Well, we continued plucking and got the bird to the table to be dressed, Everything went normally until I got to the abdomen and opened up the skin between the leg and the body. The area was full of a green fluid - green like nyquill. The only thing green like that is bile. The gall bladder was intact and no way it would have that much fluid volume anyway. The fluid did not have a smell, at least nothing noticeable over the smell of an opened carcass.
I caught the bird, confined its legs and dispatched it. The bird was not acting sickly or favoring the leg, it didn’t seem injured and acted like all the other birds we have been slaughtering.
I put in a post to a livestock forum to see if anyone else has seen this sort of thing or has any idea of what it was. We disposed of the carcass. Hated to lose the meat but didn't want to take any chances. We slaughtered two more birds after that and I'm wondering if we contaminated our work area. We do the work outside, but cleaning between birds is usually a matter of hosing off the knives and work area between birds. Just to be safe, we have marked the birds processed after the weird one so we can dispose of them if necessary.
After finishing up with the meat birds, we cleaned out their pen and moved the guineas, wyandottes and Cornish chicks into the pen. The straw bedding we cleaned out was quite matted with manure and weighed a ton. The bottom layers had begun composting and made a fine cap for all the offal from the meat birds in the compost bin. We have company coming at the end of the week so this was also a fine time to get the compost collection buckets emptied and washed. Once the buckets were emptied, we covered the piles with the bedding from the meat bird pen. It has done a lot to reduce the smell and flies being attracted by all the waste.
With the chicken tractor empty, we moved the ducklings outside to the tractor. They are still quite fearful of people. My experience with ducklings in the past has been anything but this. Most are curious and will follow anybody that moves. Well, they now have plenty of room and plenty of water. They can make as much of a mess with the water as they want.
So, three of the more disagreeable jobs finished today – meat birds, cleaning the meat bird pen, and emptying and washing compost collection buckets. Not a bad day. The rest of the week will be spent cleaning up and getting ready for company.
6/30
With all the activity in the compost bin, I thought this would be a good opportunity to go around the yard and collect any eggs of a “questionable” age. I emptied a pile behind the house and cleaned out the guinea nesting boxes. One broody hen is sitting on a single duck egg that has to be past incubation by at least two weeks – best to get that out of the house before there is an explosion. Also cleared out the turkey nest. Most of the guinea eggs seemed okay – had yolks and whites and no explosions. The duck and turkey eggs were another matter. The duck egg didn’t explode, but it kind of sighed when I broke it and oozed out this thick green paste – looked like wassabe or old guacamole – the smell almost emptied my stomach. The turkey eggs were worse – all of them exploded when they were broken. An egg in a compost pile might break open on its own, but I don’t like to take chances. We have put egg shells in the bins and they seem almost unaffected by composting. The last thing I want is a salmonella or ptomaine bomb going off in my face as we are raking in compost. We do our best to be sure every egg is broken as it goes into the compost. The smell is really nauseating – the term “rotten egg smell” does not do it justice.
A friend responded to my question about the green fluid. She had encountered the same thing in the chest cavity of birds that have pneumonia. This variety of bird is bred for growth and meat production. They lie around a lot, generate large quantities of moist manure with high ammonia content. It’s a wonder their lungs are not scarred from breathing in the ammonia. She compared the fluid buildup to peritonitis in people. She is also in the habit of discarding carcasses with the green fluid too, but said basic sanitation – as we practice – is all that’s necessary between dressing the infected bird and dressing subsequent birds.
7/1
Another response to the chicken problem was posted:
“Uh huh, I've sure seen it before!
It's Ascites. The fluid is ascitic fluid.
The fluid can be greenish or yellowish...it's fairly common in broiler type birds.
Back when we were raising a bunch of pastured chickens....any bird with Ascites was sent to the compost pile.”
Gotta love the internet and being able to pick other people’s brains on problems.
Today and tomorrow will be spent getting ready for company. There are a lot of tools and materials from projects that need to be put away and preparations for getting the trees dropped before the company arrives.
This morning we were greeted by a most disagreeable odor coming from the compost pile. The offal from 24 chickens seems to be seeping through the pile of straw and litter we buried the mess under. I have to take issue with Joseph Jenkins and his book on composting. He assures the reader that the odor is not an issue if the “deposit” if covered with an adequate amount of material and receives enough water. After dropping the contents of three 5 gallon collection buckets on the offal and covering with all the straw and manure from the pen I should think that would be an amount considered adequate. At worst there should be a smell of chicken manure. I can only imagine the smell it would be giving off uncovered. A thermometer poked into the middle of the pile read 100º. The smell lessened as the sun came up and the day got warmer, and then started to increase again as the sun dropped and the day cooled off. Hopefully it will be gone in the next day or two. The dogs are quite curious and want to find the source of the smell.
The young chicks and guineas are taking quite well to the new digs. They managed to empty the feeder today but seem to be doing okay on water. The seasonal temperatures are good for young birds and the nights are mild enough that the problems of chilled birds is no longer a concern. The ducklings, alone in the chicken tractor, are getting along quite well. We placed the food and water at opposite ends of the pen to keep them from gumming up the food. They have dropped the water levels significantly in the waterers from “motor boating:” and playing in the water, but there is ample water and they will not need to be filled very frequently. I think part of the problem we are seeing with the behavior of the ducklings is a matter of bonding. One solitary duck, which was my experience as a youngster, has only people around to interact with. Two ducklings have each other and so have no interest in people. While they do shy away from people or dogs outside the pen, they do not seem to be quite as fearful as they were originally. Hopefully, as they get larger, they will become more used to people and a little more friendly. The adult ducks we have are far from tame, but they do well with being herded back to the pen in the evening and remain in the vicinity. When the ducklings under the broody duck start hatching we should be able to run them through the bin inside and on to the chicken tractor to accumulate until they are big enough to release. Right now, at this young age, they would not be able to flee or defend themselves from the adult chickens. It remains to be seen if the adult ducks will accept them, though there were no problems with introducing additional ducks to the one adult we had. The three new ducks seemed to fall in line and some sort of pecking order was established without any fighting.
This evening I managed to get a new battery installed on the brush mower and cut the grass in the dog pen and around the fruit trees. It was getting high enough to afford plenty of hiding places for snakes. I am not too concerned about the adult birds, but with all the youngsters around a single snake could do a lot of damage before it was caught. One summer I caught a chicken snake in the chicken house after it had swallowed an egg. The poor thing could not squeeze back through the mesh it had crawled in through with the egg stuck in its throat. When it saw me it knew the jig was up and tried to upchuck the egg. I was faster with a stick than it was at moving the egg. Our neighbor brought me a snake once. It had tried to swallow a month old chicken. Its eyes were bigger than its mouth. It had managed to swallow the head, suffocating the chick, but was not able to get past the shoulders. The bird was lost and the snake, caught in such a compromising position, was unable to eject the chicken and was dispatched.
7/2
This morning Tony and Kay came over to help drop two trees. Good thing too. The big saw would not run and Tony brought his saw along. The first tree was a 12-16 inch diameter sweet gum that had been eaten away by bugs. The tree was fairly tall and it seemed like a good idea to make it fall where and when I wanted to, rather than leaving it to the whimsy of the wind. Tony manned the tractor and tugged on the tree with a 3/8 inch wire rope. We used an extension ladder to get the cable as high up the trunk as possible – about 30 feet – to increase leverage. I threw a nail in to prevent the cable from slipping and dropping down the tree and marked the nail with spray paint. Funny thing is, when climbing the ladder it seems like you are placing the nail really high up on the tree – and you are increasing leverage – but when you step back and look to where the cable is, it doesn’t seem that far up on the tree. It did not drop exactly where I had in mind, but did fall away from anything important and in the general direction I had in mind. After the tree fell it was easy to find the nail and remove it, before the sawmill finds the nail and ruins a blade. The second tree, a big white poplar, had a bad lean towards the house and I wanted to get it gone before making other improvements. This tree had a diameter of 25 inches and a lot of big boughs on the top – a lot of weight high up. We used the ladder, nail and spray paint again to hold the cable up as high as possible. The tree was pretty spooky to cut on; the thing was so big that it was impossible to get a good notch with an 18” bar without multiple cuts. A smarter fellow than me would have checked the gas before starting on the second tree – of course it ran out and I had to stop in the middle to refill. Because of the lean and the potential to damage house, well and other structures, I had Tony tugging on the tree hard after the notch was cut. He must have tugged too hard because the cable broke. I heard something hit the tree and thought the hinge was giving way – the tree was falling. I scrambled out of the way to watch it fall, but the tree didn’t go anywhere. I saw Tony making motions, and looked to see the cable bunched up around the tree – it must have snapped and flew back at the tree like a rubber band. Impressive. The thing could have cut me in half if I was standing in the wrong place. Of course, Karen and Kay are watching and wondering if they will be widows by the end of the morning. We got the cable reattached and I went back to the felling cut. Tony kept an eye out and tension on the tree. Again, it did not fall exactly where I intended, but it did miss all structures and fences. We have two yellow poplars – tall straight tree – behind the well house. I was pretty sure that if we got the tree to fall on the right side of those poplars it would protect the well. Still, the top boughs landed closer to the fence than I would have wanted. Another foot or two and I would have been dealing with splintered fence posts. Now that they are on the ground they can be topped, cut up and skidded to the mill at my leisure.
The changes do let in a fair amount of sunlight and the intention was not to remove shade. The poor dogs, in their pen, have just been screwed out of a significant portion of their morning shade. In a few years, hopefully, the remaining trees will be sending out branches to get this new sunlight and increase the amount of shade again.
Today I cleaned out the rabbit shed. One of the dogs, Zeb, was with me while I did this job. I have seen the dogs watching me while I work and from time to time I see these looks of pure admiration cross their faces. Once was when I was planting fruit trees. We have hard soil and it is necessary to dig holes with a long steel rod. Zeb and his sister watched me work and seemed much impressed by the size and depth of the holes I was digging. This is not faint praise coming from creatures that are capable diggers in their own right. But this look was nothing compared to Zeb watching me fill up a large plastic bin with manure. Surely he must have thought I was some sort of king to have such a quantity of manure at my disposal. As I came out with trays from each rabbit cage, emptying my treasure house, his eyes got wider and wider. It seemed like I would never stop bring out trays and dumping them into the bin. He was also quite disappointed when the job was done and I slapped a lid on the bin. After all, what’s the use of having that much manure if you don’t share it with friends?
The smell from the compost bins is decreasing. The process must be working. There is still an odor, but you have to be standing right next to the bin to smell it. Hungry little microbes are doing their job, breaking the deposits down into nitrogen and binding it with the carbon supplied by the straw and sawdust. I have no doubt there are mice digging through the pile, they are small enough to crawl through the wire mesh stapled to the pallets that make the bins. This may be part of the process for all I know. Or the mice themselves, when they dig down to the food they are seeking, may be overcome by temperature and air quality, falling and becoming part of the process themselves. The wire is doing its job in that no larger animals are making it into the bins, where they would dig and drag buried stuff to the surface. We had that problem the first year – no doubt raccoons or possum. That was when we fashioned lids from additional pallets and stapled wire to the outside.
Our company – my mother, my sister Megan and my nieces Kaitlin and Allison – arrived around 4 PM. Karen put on a dinner of chicken pot pies made from our fresh chicken.
7/4
Lost one of the turkey poults last night. No apparent reason. The remaining three poults and their guardian chicken are all active. My nieces have wanted to hold them and I have indulged them. One niece had sprayed herself down pretty heavily with deet because of the ticks and chiggers. Now, I don't know that the deet caused the poult's demise but just to be safe I instituted a "no handling the livestock" policy.
This morning Karen, my niece Allison and I slaughtered six rabbits. One litter of five was a week past due, they were showing a little more fat than is normally seen on a rabbit ready for harvest. The sixth was an old doe with a bad set of teeth. I inherited her from the breeder we got the stock from. I have a feeling that she was kept as a pet and not as a productive doe. Her teeth would grow to incredible lengths – often curling around and back into her throat and tongue. The breeder showed me how to trim her teeth using the boning notch on a pair of shears. The operation was difficult and traumatic for the doe. I tried breeding her, figuring I didn’t care if the trait got passed on to kits that were to be harvested at 12 weeks, but she did not do that great of a job in the breeding department either. I have yet to get a litter out of her in the seven months we have had them. The litter of five added a total of fourteen pounds to the freezer in dressed rabbit, the old doe dressed out at four pounds by herself and will be run through a grinder and used for dog food. Two new does will replace the one culled and a doe that died a few months back. My niece was curious about slaughtering when she learned that we grew our own chicken. The meat birds could not wait another week and the work of putting up 24 chickens was a little more than we wanted to go through with company here. We compromised and saved the rabbits. She was not that thrilled with laying her own hands on the work, though she did, but was still fascinated with watching animals being turned into food. She also did a good job cleaning the giblets. I could hand these off to her while dressing the rabbits and she took care of them with no additional supervision. She is a quick study and can copy an operation after watching it done one time.
After the morning’s work we set down to a breakfast of blueberry pancakes and sausage. It was a great meal and very nearly brought on naps in all of us. Niece Allison, who had gotten up at 5:30 to help with the rabbits, took advantage of the opportunity and napped.
We set up a small target area in front of a hill across the creek.
My sister Megan had found an ammo shop in Murfreesboro that had .22 ammo. Walmart and the local shops are out of ammo and every time they receive a shipment from suppliers the boxes fly off the pallets before they can be shelved. Meg and her girls had never handled firearms before so we had a class on firearm safety and some target practice. Allison passed, having woken up from her nap and found it too hot outside for her liking. Megan and Kaitlin were quite gung-ho about the idea and did pretty well. Meg could not hit the broad side of a barn with a .22 pistol. Her daughter Kaitlin did better. We did not fire enough rounds to get a good feel for the pistol and make corrections with Kentucky windage.
Megan found the 20 gauge shotgun more to her liking. She did not want to fire it from the shoulder, but got pretty accurate firing from the hip.
Kaitlin was a bit apprehensive about the kick from the shotgun, but after the first shell she found it was not that big a deal and enjoyed peppering the target with shot.
Both ladies did pretty well and are now adequately acquainted with firearms to not pose a threat to those around them.
We had an old fashioned cookout for the 4th. Hotdogs, hamburgers, chips and beans. Nothing fancy, no major big deals or complicated dishes to cook. After diner we joined Tony and Kay and their family for desert and fireworks. It is good to live in a country with enough freedom left to do what we want on our own land, shoot off firearms if we so desire, and travel to a neighbor’s house to enjoy their company. Hope you all had a happy fourth of July. If you have not read the Declaration of Independence and Constitution lately, I highly recommend them.
7/5
Rain came in last night about 8 PM or so. We broke early from Tony and Kay’s place. When we arrived at our house the rain was starting to increase and we found our dog, Zuzu, waiting for us in the yard. She had been left out in the pen by herself because she can’t be trusted inside (she chews things up) and can’t be left alone with the other dogs. She seemed to have found a way out of the pen. I checked this morning and think I have found her escape point.
Last night’s rain came with a vengeance after we got home. Tornadoes just north of the Kentucky border and south of us had the weather radio going all night. This morning I checked the rain gauge and found it pegged at 5 ¼ inches – the thing was full to the top of the collection funnel. The creek is much swollen running rapidly. To put icing on the cake, the air conditioner seems to not be working. We shall see how the day pans out.
Tony, who used to run an HVAC business, came over in the morning to look at our air conditioner. We can’t really complain, it has been four years and we have not had a problem yet. I was able to watch him work and track down the problem. He started out by showing me where the power enters the outside unit. We checked for voltages – 250 – and found one side of the unit was open. These lines were checked on the breaker box end. This is where it got confusing. Two 250 voltage connections entered the outdoor unit, but only one 250 volt connection was on the breaker box inside the house. After puzzling this one out for some time, we eventually arrived at the service entrance to the house. There is another box outside the house where this entrance occurs. For whatever reason made sense to the original electrician, the heat/furnace side of the unit originates from the inside breaker box, the air conditioning side of the unit originates at the service entrance box. I guess it makes sense, the house originally had a furnace – we sealed up the vents in the old utility closet a year or two ago. The heat pump replaced the original furnace and no doubt a window air conditioner or two. Rather than run new wiring from the breaker box, the wires were run from outside the house. Well, the 250 volt connection to the air conditioner was the problem. A poorly made splice gave way. There was a little melted insulation, probably a little arcing, and the connection was lost – resulting in the open where the power entered the outside unit. We redid the splice, ensuring the threads of the cap made contact with both sides of the splice, and wound everything in ample electrical tape. The A/C fired back up and has been running like a champ since then. I could have spent a long time poking around and might have never found the problem. Tony knew where the bodies are usually buried and checked those spots first.
We had a good storm roll through our region the night before. There was much electrical activity and rain in the storm. A surge through the power lines may have caused this bead splice to reach the tipping point. If there was a surge, it was nothing noteworthy – not a single breaker was thrown. We saw additional storms today – nothing as rowdy as the night before, but a little lightning. Overnight the rain gauge was overflowing with water, indicating an excess of 5 ¼ inches. In the course of the day we received an additional 1 ½ inches. The creek is a little swollen and the ground is soaked. We should see the garden go into over drive with the much needed water.
We did a little rearranging in the rabbit shed. A new free-standing set of cages was brought in, adding two litter cages to the two we already had. This is getting important as we have three litters we need to start weaning. The youngsters are eating from the cage feeders and the mothers have to compete with their own young to get food. A collection arrangement needs to be built for this new cage stand to redirect all droppings and waste into a bin. I can see shortcomings in the last one of these I built and have in mind a couple of improvements. There are ample home built cages and a few of them are made using 1 x ½ inch weld wire. This wire is difficult to find at local suppliers and is more valuable as flooring, so a few cages will be cannibalized and replaced with more common wire. Urine deflectors also have to be fabricated for the new cages. Much of this sort of work is hand work and can wait until the company has left – we’ll focus on more active chores that the girls seem to enjoy.
The girls were a big help with topping the trees we felled in that last few days. I was able to concentrate on working the branches with loping shears while they loaded the ATV trailer and moved them to a staging area near the chipper. They like driving the ATV and this makes the work interesting to them. We are just about to the point of getting out the chainsaw to do the final topping and turn the trees into mill logs and firewood. Once the timber is removed from the area we can start digging with the backhoe, turning the low ground in front of the house into a pool for the creek. The ducks will like larger water; it should provide a nice view to the front of the house and keep the ducks in an area where we can watch for predators more easily.
As we were breaking the tree into logs we hit a hollow spot. I had seen squirrels run into the spot, it was above a branch at the first major fork in the tree. When we saw the second log had just caught the bottom of the hollow, I cut the next three feet off trying to cut out the hollow. As I was rolling the hollow portion to stand it up and get it out of the way, I noticed paper comb falling from the end. Man, I backed out of there just before a swarm of angry wasps came flying out of that hollow section of tree. Standing at a safe distance, my sister, her daughters and I watched as the wasps patrolled the area looking for the cause of this insult to their nest. Next to the tree the chainsaw was idling but I didn’t dare wade back into that group to retrieve the saw. We watched for about thirty minutes as the wasps calmed down bit by bit. Finally I was able to run in and get the saw. With the saw out of the way we took the hose connected to the well and shot it in the air, trying to get it to arc down into the hollow. It took some doing, much like finding the range with a mortar. We flooded the nest as best we could and called it a day for clearing brush.
While sitting on the porch I had a chance to observe the turkey mating ritual at length. This may have been a bit voyeuristic, but I had seen bits and pieces for the lest two years. The tom does a little dance that is reminiscent of Buddy Ebson, in his role of Jed Clampet in the Beverly Hillbillies, doing his tap dancing. Tom will strut, stomp around – first on one leg then the other – and generally puff himself up as if preparing for a parade. The hen, if she is so inclined, will open her wings and drag the tips on the ground – turkey for “come hither”. As the tom approaches, if he has done nothing to spoil the mood, the hen will face away from him and crouch on the ground. Most creatures would be satisfied with this opportunity, but this is not adequate for turkeys. At this point the tom will climb up on the hen’s back and continue his dance. Of course, the footing is more treacherous and the dance is more of a mark time – marching in place. According to the books, the female had erogenous zones that are being stimulated by all this pacing. The hen is a small light bird, when compared to the tom. The discomfort of being walked on, like a Japanese massage, by a 20-30 lb tom must be considerable. This is a real testimony to the amorous nature of the hen – to be willing to go through this for the promise of sex at the other end of the ritual. If the tom has done his job, the act is eventually completed by coupling. From my observations, this does not seem to be so much a matter of intent as much as a matter the tom slipping off the hen. In retrospect, it would seem the little dance the tom does would be the equivalent of lewd gestures to try and arouse his intended. He would be a busy, dancing bird if he had a harem to service, rather than one poor hen to receive all his attentions.
Regards,
Pat
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BillHicks
Re: Jul 2009 Personal Preps
Well I just recently bought several more Better Bottle carboys, they are good for several things. First off I use them to brew beer and wine, they also make excellent water storage units. I just purchased 5 more for use only as water storage containers. I bought the 5 gallon ones, this makes a total of 50 gallons of water that I have for storage now. You can learn more about them here http://www.better-bottle.com/.
Also have the garden and the dehydrator working in tandem right now, the wet spring and mild summer so far are a boon to zucchini, corn, and squash so far. Tomatoes are doing excellent as well. Don't know how well the hot peppers will do though I have always heard and noticed from personal experience the hotter and dryer the summer the hotter and more flavorful the pepper. Will just have to wait and see if this holds true this year.
Also have the garden and the dehydrator working in tandem right now, the wet spring and mild summer so far are a boon to zucchini, corn, and squash so far. Tomatoes are doing excellent as well. Don't know how well the hot peppers will do though I have always heard and noticed from personal experience the hotter and dryer the summer the hotter and more flavorful the pepper. Will just have to wait and see if this holds true this year.
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195357
Re: Jul 2009 Personal Preps
July preps are coming along here. I just finished canning 50 lbs of carrots and the garden is getting ready to begin producing. We had to plant late due to heavy rains. My husband has his plans for the new wood shed and will be starting construction shortly. The old shed rotted and had to be taken down. A friend with an outdoor wood furnace is taking most of the old wood to be burned. We have more wood to split and stack for next year, and will be moving the wood for this year into the new shed, hopefully soon.
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dejure
Not for forty years
Cherries are in. Did I mention that cherries are in? They're everywhere. A guy just invited the world to his place to pick for free. The warehouses are so full they are not taking anymore crop and his trees are so heavy the branches are breaking. He needs them off. We called everyone and their brother - not one person was interested.
I haven't seen this happen in forty years. Back then, I was handed an orchard because they couldn't get enough pickers (they were all over thinning the apple crops).
We have three fridges and one freezer full of cherries and we are dehydrating as fast as our system will allow. We have, maybe, a week left and the crop will be gone to spoilage and birds. How sad. So much free jam, cider, dehydrated cherries, canned cherries....... all going to waste
I haven't seen this happen in forty years. Back then, I was handed an orchard because they couldn't get enough pickers (they were all over thinning the apple crops).
We have three fridges and one freezer full of cherries and we are dehydrating as fast as our system will allow. We have, maybe, a week left and the crop will be gone to spoilage and birds. How sad. So much free jam, cider, dehydrated cherries, canned cherries....... all going to waste
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bee_pipes
Re: Jul 2009 Personal Preps
7/12
On Tuesday, a few hours after seeing our company off, Karen and I got in the car and drove to Columbia to pick up granddaughter Kaydence. She stayed with us through lunch Friday. My goodness! One nearly three year old can really put you through your paces. We wouldn’t have made it if not for naps. Kaydence was quite interested in the animals and helped with feeding. We also had toy golf bag and baseball set. With a small piece of plywood for a putting green, she spent a lot of time knocking balls off the porch. When we tried the baseball she had trouble hitting the softball sized ball that came with the set, so we substituted a large rubber ball for batting practice. She did well enough with that, but we had to put down a piece of wood for her to stand on, like a home plate, because she had a tendency to creep closer to the pitcher, putting the pitcher at great personal risk with her plastic bat. We also picked up a small, inflatable swimming pool but never got around to setting it up. She is a typical little girl and was most interested in coloring and playing with old purses and other items we had picked up for her at yard sales. It seems like the more junk we collect for her, the busier she gets with dumping out the contents of purses and rearranging the items into other purses.
This morning Joey came by and picked up his tractor. We had a fine visit on the front porch, drinking coffee and enjoying the moderate temperatures of the day. Joey had just gotten back into town and had a long “to do” list that needed to be attended to. He had been out of town for a few weeks and the rain had put his land in dire need of brush hogging. While he was here I picked his brain for large scale digging, as concerning the low ground next to the creek. He said he had done jobs like that in the past and a trick they used was to measure the desired depth on the arm of the back hoe and mark it with a tape. This provides a lot of help with keeping the depth of the area uniform.
Joey had called the night before to let me know he was in town and would be coming by to pick up the tractor. With all the events of the last two weeks I had made precious little use of the tractor. After a rain that day I got out and dug a trench we needed to run power to the shed. The old power line had been buried very close to the ground and was snagged twice while working on the storm shelter. I didn’t want to repeat that mistake and have dug a trench 24 inches deep to ensure it stays buried this time. We will pick up PVC pipe or vinyl hose to act as a casing for the wires, they are three separate wires and seems like they should have some sort of casing for burial.
7/13
1 ¾ inches of rain last night. The creek seems to be staying in place. A good thing, I still have tree tops that need to be cleaned up and could cause a backup if the flow increased significantly.
Let the ducklings out today. We tried herding them towards the adult ducks and didn’t have much luck. We closed both groups in the outdoor pen and both groups seemed indifferent to each other for the most part. One exception was the broody duck. She was off her nest and chased them briefly a few time, keeping them away. We returned them to the portable pen after 45 minutes or so. We’ll continue this experiment as time permits.
We have MS excel on our computer – it came with it. I have had some experience with spreadsheets in the past and was aware of their usefulness, but I am not a real wizard with the software. Among some of the most useful things they do is to calculate dates. We had been using one to track rabbits – when a bred doe is due, when a litter is ready to wean, when to slaughter. With this year’s influx of poultry at varying ages, we have put together a small sheet to track ages. We were beginning to get confused about which group was how old, neither of us have a memory that can be trusted and flipping through a wall calendar was getting tiresome. The spreadsheet is most useful for this purpose and can be set up with little effort. It is nothing impressive to look at but can be referred to with little effort when making decisions about moving birds. At present we have our own, locally hatched guineas and one buff – they are two months old right now; the dark Cornish and silver laced wyandottes we ordered from a hatchery are five weeks old; the ducklings are 24 days old and the turkeys and their chick are 18 days old. The growth of the ducks is most impressive. They dwarf the guineas. The cautions I had read about feeding them medicated starter cite that the ducklings consume so much feed that they would receive a toxic dose of the antibiotic. I find that believable in view of their growth. Karen and I were entertaining the idea of introducing them to the adult ducks today. They are large enough to make them inconvenient for snakes and other smaller predators, though we are not quite out of danger yet with that regard. It would simplify things to be able to keep them with the flock, but I have a few concerns about how well they might fare with the chickens. Neither of the ducklings is large enough to protect themselves against a rooster or even a cranky hen. For now I would prefer to keep them on starter feed – we are getting good results – but would like to observe the reactions of the adult ducks and give the youngsters a chance to swim in the creek.
Encased old trailer wiring in 1 inch PVC and dropped into trench. This is not a water tight casing, just a protective casing to keep the wires from getting badly damaged. Joints are being made with duct tape. The old casing, PVC, used a similar method and seems to have worked.
7/14
Weeded and manured half of the tomatoes today. The tomatoes are not performing at all so we figured they could use a little attention. The results are pleasing. We used newspaper as weed shield and expect the good results this method has produced.
The lawn mower has been returned to operation. A frayed fan belt took it out of commission. The local auto parts store, a little NAPA shop, managed to get in a belt overnight.
Mowed the garden and bee yard today. Past experience has required dressing up and firing up the smoker. I used to be able to do this job without suiting up or smoking the hives but have either lost my touch or the hives are too strong to permit this sort of activity. Weather has rain predicted for the rest of the week and claims Saturday will be mild and clear, so we are planning on the first honey harvest this Saturday.
Let ducklings out again today. They did find the creek and did a little swimming, but did not seem to have any interest in the adult ducks. Returned them to their pen when we moved opn to other tasks where we were unable to watch them closely. These birds do have an impressive rate of growth.
I found two guineas hatched in the hen house. Two old broody biddies seem to be competing over who gets to sit on the three or four guinea eggs in the chicken house. The brooder presently has three turkey poults and a chick. These are much larger than the keets and pose a physical danger. We put a piece of ¼ inch hardware cloth in as a partition for the brooder. The poults and chick were getting big enough to not need the brooder lamp close to their floor, so we were able to provide heat for the keets and allow enough floor space on the other side of the partition to meet the needs of the poults. The poults are growing quickly and we may move them to the pen with the chicks and guineas outside. The chick may be another matter, we shall see how it works out. Poults can be hard on other birds. They are not so much aggressive as they are curious. The problem being that they express this curiosity with their beaks – pecking and grabbing the object of their curiosity. When they get significantly larger, they can be of extreme hazard to smaller keets and chicks. Last year or the year before we had to cull crippled keets that had the misfortune of being stepped on by large poults. I have clsed the hen house to the adult guineas and opened access to the young guineas and chicks. This is a big help in keeping the food dry. While the pen is covered, blowing rain seems to have no problem getting the food wet. So far no problem with moldy food, but it requires dumping the feeder and has the potential of being extremely wasteful of feed.
7/15
Finished weeding and manurieng the tomatoes today. We have nearly exhausted the rabbit manure in the bin we were using and it is time to empty the rabbit shed again. We have piled ample mulch on the papers and need only a good rain to soak the mulch and plaster it down to the bed. After finishing the tomatoes we took a trip to our farmer and picked up some tomatoes, cantaloupe and potatoes. Karen has plans to put up the potatoes. We have enjoyed canned potatoes for the last year and it is time to get a new batch up. The cantaloupe were early and not as sweet as I remember, but they should be running well in the next week or two. We tried to get some additional sweet corn to eat fresh for dinner, but the second crop is not in yet and the first crop has been exhausted. On the way home we stopped by the local newspaper office to see if they had old papers. Today is Wednesday, the day they send out the week’s paper. It would seem they collect unsold papers for recycling, but will give old papers to anyone that asks. We have exhausted our supply of old paper so took advantage of this situation. We still have a number of beeds in the garden than need weeding and mulching. We managed to get enough paper that we may be able to give a similar treatment to the fruit trees.
While I was outside I heard a real ruckus amongst the chickens. It sounded like someone layed an egg but the behavior was all wrong. I peeked in through a window and saw the two broody biddies were no longer inside. I walked inside to take a closer look and saw a chicken snake in the corner trying to swallow a guinea egg. Apparently there was only one egg left that the broody hens were fighting over. I had seen the snake a week or two ago but was not fast enough to catch it. It managed to find a safe place within the pallets used to separate the dog pen from the chicken pen. The dogs had kicked up a ruckus while we were working on the tomatoes, in hindsight it may have been they saw the snake moving around. With the small chicks and young guineas, it would only be a matter of time before this snake got around to trying to swallow a bird, so it had to be taken out. I had no stick or other object suitable for dispatching this critter and am loather to try and catch a live snake bare handed, so I stepped on its head and kept grinding my foot. The snake did not care for that at all and coiled around my leg. I eventually thought to pull out a pocket knife/pliers combo and used the pliers to crush its spine. Both the snake and the last guinea egg were deposited into the compost bin. The snake apparently had a scent because all the dogs showed a great deal of interest in the leg the snake coiled around. The two older dogs are seasoned snake killers. The pups have not killed any snakes to my knowledge.
We let the ducklings out again today. They were allowed a few hours while we cooled off in the house. I was able to keep an eye on them through the front windows and from the porch. They seemed to enjoy swimming in the creek and found much to graze on. While they were in close proximity to the adult ducks, they did not seem to have any urge to join them.
7/16
Tremendous amount of rain overnight – 2 ½ inches - and more coming this morning.
Procrastination will someday be the death of me. I had not completely cleared tree tops from the creek and they were beginning to impede the flow of water. With the heavy rainfall we are sure to see a rise in the creek’s level. Any impediment to the creek could cause flooding. During a lull between last night’s rain and the rain this morning I got out on the ATV and used the winch to pull branches from the creek. Many of them were too large and heavy to pull without the assistance of the ATV. These all need to be cut down and moved to the chipper. The work in the tomato bed has also exhausted our supply of mulch.
Speaking of procrastination, yesterday we managed to check the wiring to the old trailer. It is almost half buried in the ground and Karen mentioned it might be a good idea to make sure I was not burying a short. We had an old pallet near the trench so I put the wires on the wood, wedged into position and separated by a good amount of space, and had Karen throw the breaker to turn the line on. With a voltmeter I checked the leads – one good 240v circuit and two good 120v circuits. Karen threw the breaker again to kill the line and I checked the circuits with the ohmmeter. No detectable shorts.
Regards,
Pat
On Tuesday, a few hours after seeing our company off, Karen and I got in the car and drove to Columbia to pick up granddaughter Kaydence. She stayed with us through lunch Friday. My goodness! One nearly three year old can really put you through your paces. We wouldn’t have made it if not for naps. Kaydence was quite interested in the animals and helped with feeding. We also had toy golf bag and baseball set. With a small piece of plywood for a putting green, she spent a lot of time knocking balls off the porch. When we tried the baseball she had trouble hitting the softball sized ball that came with the set, so we substituted a large rubber ball for batting practice. She did well enough with that, but we had to put down a piece of wood for her to stand on, like a home plate, because she had a tendency to creep closer to the pitcher, putting the pitcher at great personal risk with her plastic bat. We also picked up a small, inflatable swimming pool but never got around to setting it up. She is a typical little girl and was most interested in coloring and playing with old purses and other items we had picked up for her at yard sales. It seems like the more junk we collect for her, the busier she gets with dumping out the contents of purses and rearranging the items into other purses.
This morning Joey came by and picked up his tractor. We had a fine visit on the front porch, drinking coffee and enjoying the moderate temperatures of the day. Joey had just gotten back into town and had a long “to do” list that needed to be attended to. He had been out of town for a few weeks and the rain had put his land in dire need of brush hogging. While he was here I picked his brain for large scale digging, as concerning the low ground next to the creek. He said he had done jobs like that in the past and a trick they used was to measure the desired depth on the arm of the back hoe and mark it with a tape. This provides a lot of help with keeping the depth of the area uniform.
Joey had called the night before to let me know he was in town and would be coming by to pick up the tractor. With all the events of the last two weeks I had made precious little use of the tractor. After a rain that day I got out and dug a trench we needed to run power to the shed. The old power line had been buried very close to the ground and was snagged twice while working on the storm shelter. I didn’t want to repeat that mistake and have dug a trench 24 inches deep to ensure it stays buried this time. We will pick up PVC pipe or vinyl hose to act as a casing for the wires, they are three separate wires and seems like they should have some sort of casing for burial.
7/13
1 ¾ inches of rain last night. The creek seems to be staying in place. A good thing, I still have tree tops that need to be cleaned up and could cause a backup if the flow increased significantly.
Let the ducklings out today. We tried herding them towards the adult ducks and didn’t have much luck. We closed both groups in the outdoor pen and both groups seemed indifferent to each other for the most part. One exception was the broody duck. She was off her nest and chased them briefly a few time, keeping them away. We returned them to the portable pen after 45 minutes or so. We’ll continue this experiment as time permits.
We have MS excel on our computer – it came with it. I have had some experience with spreadsheets in the past and was aware of their usefulness, but I am not a real wizard with the software. Among some of the most useful things they do is to calculate dates. We had been using one to track rabbits – when a bred doe is due, when a litter is ready to wean, when to slaughter. With this year’s influx of poultry at varying ages, we have put together a small sheet to track ages. We were beginning to get confused about which group was how old, neither of us have a memory that can be trusted and flipping through a wall calendar was getting tiresome. The spreadsheet is most useful for this purpose and can be set up with little effort. It is nothing impressive to look at but can be referred to with little effort when making decisions about moving birds. At present we have our own, locally hatched guineas and one buff – they are two months old right now; the dark Cornish and silver laced wyandottes we ordered from a hatchery are five weeks old; the ducklings are 24 days old and the turkeys and their chick are 18 days old. The growth of the ducks is most impressive. They dwarf the guineas. The cautions I had read about feeding them medicated starter cite that the ducklings consume so much feed that they would receive a toxic dose of the antibiotic. I find that believable in view of their growth. Karen and I were entertaining the idea of introducing them to the adult ducks today. They are large enough to make them inconvenient for snakes and other smaller predators, though we are not quite out of danger yet with that regard. It would simplify things to be able to keep them with the flock, but I have a few concerns about how well they might fare with the chickens. Neither of the ducklings is large enough to protect themselves against a rooster or even a cranky hen. For now I would prefer to keep them on starter feed – we are getting good results – but would like to observe the reactions of the adult ducks and give the youngsters a chance to swim in the creek.
Encased old trailer wiring in 1 inch PVC and dropped into trench. This is not a water tight casing, just a protective casing to keep the wires from getting badly damaged. Joints are being made with duct tape. The old casing, PVC, used a similar method and seems to have worked.
7/14
Weeded and manured half of the tomatoes today. The tomatoes are not performing at all so we figured they could use a little attention. The results are pleasing. We used newspaper as weed shield and expect the good results this method has produced.
The lawn mower has been returned to operation. A frayed fan belt took it out of commission. The local auto parts store, a little NAPA shop, managed to get in a belt overnight.
Mowed the garden and bee yard today. Past experience has required dressing up and firing up the smoker. I used to be able to do this job without suiting up or smoking the hives but have either lost my touch or the hives are too strong to permit this sort of activity. Weather has rain predicted for the rest of the week and claims Saturday will be mild and clear, so we are planning on the first honey harvest this Saturday.
Let ducklings out again today. They did find the creek and did a little swimming, but did not seem to have any interest in the adult ducks. Returned them to their pen when we moved opn to other tasks where we were unable to watch them closely. These birds do have an impressive rate of growth.
I found two guineas hatched in the hen house. Two old broody biddies seem to be competing over who gets to sit on the three or four guinea eggs in the chicken house. The brooder presently has three turkey poults and a chick. These are much larger than the keets and pose a physical danger. We put a piece of ¼ inch hardware cloth in as a partition for the brooder. The poults and chick were getting big enough to not need the brooder lamp close to their floor, so we were able to provide heat for the keets and allow enough floor space on the other side of the partition to meet the needs of the poults. The poults are growing quickly and we may move them to the pen with the chicks and guineas outside. The chick may be another matter, we shall see how it works out. Poults can be hard on other birds. They are not so much aggressive as they are curious. The problem being that they express this curiosity with their beaks – pecking and grabbing the object of their curiosity. When they get significantly larger, they can be of extreme hazard to smaller keets and chicks. Last year or the year before we had to cull crippled keets that had the misfortune of being stepped on by large poults. I have clsed the hen house to the adult guineas and opened access to the young guineas and chicks. This is a big help in keeping the food dry. While the pen is covered, blowing rain seems to have no problem getting the food wet. So far no problem with moldy food, but it requires dumping the feeder and has the potential of being extremely wasteful of feed.
7/15
Finished weeding and manurieng the tomatoes today. We have nearly exhausted the rabbit manure in the bin we were using and it is time to empty the rabbit shed again. We have piled ample mulch on the papers and need only a good rain to soak the mulch and plaster it down to the bed. After finishing the tomatoes we took a trip to our farmer and picked up some tomatoes, cantaloupe and potatoes. Karen has plans to put up the potatoes. We have enjoyed canned potatoes for the last year and it is time to get a new batch up. The cantaloupe were early and not as sweet as I remember, but they should be running well in the next week or two. We tried to get some additional sweet corn to eat fresh for dinner, but the second crop is not in yet and the first crop has been exhausted. On the way home we stopped by the local newspaper office to see if they had old papers. Today is Wednesday, the day they send out the week’s paper. It would seem they collect unsold papers for recycling, but will give old papers to anyone that asks. We have exhausted our supply of old paper so took advantage of this situation. We still have a number of beeds in the garden than need weeding and mulching. We managed to get enough paper that we may be able to give a similar treatment to the fruit trees.
While I was outside I heard a real ruckus amongst the chickens. It sounded like someone layed an egg but the behavior was all wrong. I peeked in through a window and saw the two broody biddies were no longer inside. I walked inside to take a closer look and saw a chicken snake in the corner trying to swallow a guinea egg. Apparently there was only one egg left that the broody hens were fighting over. I had seen the snake a week or two ago but was not fast enough to catch it. It managed to find a safe place within the pallets used to separate the dog pen from the chicken pen. The dogs had kicked up a ruckus while we were working on the tomatoes, in hindsight it may have been they saw the snake moving around. With the small chicks and young guineas, it would only be a matter of time before this snake got around to trying to swallow a bird, so it had to be taken out. I had no stick or other object suitable for dispatching this critter and am loather to try and catch a live snake bare handed, so I stepped on its head and kept grinding my foot. The snake did not care for that at all and coiled around my leg. I eventually thought to pull out a pocket knife/pliers combo and used the pliers to crush its spine. Both the snake and the last guinea egg were deposited into the compost bin. The snake apparently had a scent because all the dogs showed a great deal of interest in the leg the snake coiled around. The two older dogs are seasoned snake killers. The pups have not killed any snakes to my knowledge.
We let the ducklings out again today. They were allowed a few hours while we cooled off in the house. I was able to keep an eye on them through the front windows and from the porch. They seemed to enjoy swimming in the creek and found much to graze on. While they were in close proximity to the adult ducks, they did not seem to have any urge to join them.
7/16
Tremendous amount of rain overnight – 2 ½ inches - and more coming this morning.
Procrastination will someday be the death of me. I had not completely cleared tree tops from the creek and they were beginning to impede the flow of water. With the heavy rainfall we are sure to see a rise in the creek’s level. Any impediment to the creek could cause flooding. During a lull between last night’s rain and the rain this morning I got out on the ATV and used the winch to pull branches from the creek. Many of them were too large and heavy to pull without the assistance of the ATV. These all need to be cut down and moved to the chipper. The work in the tomato bed has also exhausted our supply of mulch.
Speaking of procrastination, yesterday we managed to check the wiring to the old trailer. It is almost half buried in the ground and Karen mentioned it might be a good idea to make sure I was not burying a short. We had an old pallet near the trench so I put the wires on the wood, wedged into position and separated by a good amount of space, and had Karen throw the breaker to turn the line on. With a voltmeter I checked the leads – one good 240v circuit and two good 120v circuits. Karen threw the breaker again to kill the line and I checked the circuits with the ohmmeter. No detectable shorts.
Regards,
Pat
-
WillyPete
Re: Jul 2009 Personal Preps
I've mostly been looking around for prep items and have found quite a bit at the retailers where I tend to their HVAC systems.
Canning jars are a good item right now at most of my retailers. I'm seeing pint and quart jars selling for $6.99 a dozen and the same with wide mouths selling for $8.99 a dozen. They had extra lid and seal packages for $2.99 a dozen both regular and wide mouth.
I found a canner with jar racks selling for $15.99 at one retailer yesterday. I'll be picking up a large quantity of jars and a canner in the very near future and begin learning and actually canning foodstuffs to keep handy.
I've been seeing and purchasing fair quantities of ammunition for my firearms, powder and bullets for reloading but, it's still tough getting any primers right now. I've also purchased an extra shotgun.
Since school supplies are beginning to be stocked in all my stores, different types of bags for a BOB can be had for fair prices. I've seen them in messenger bag style, sling bag style as well as the regular backpack style. Prices ranged from $8.99 to $15.99. They're inexpensive but, decent quality and ought to last for a good while if you don't expect them to take a lickin' and keep on tickin'. My apologies to Timex.
I also found a handy bug out item. We're all familiar with the "starter logs" by various names. I found what are called "starter matches". They are a strip of the "starter log" material with a match head on one end. Strike the match tip against the box and use it to start a fire. I haven't tried it yet but from what I see, these things might do right well with getting a fire started even with damp wood. They're on clearance at one of my retailers for 50 cents a package of 10 starters instead of the regular $2.99 a package. I've gotten 4 packs and I'm getting the rest of them when I can get back there.
It isn't a lot but, I must say, having to work my trade for these retailers does have its rewards.
I'll be purchasing a right fair selection of prep, etc. items as I do my work at all these places.
Canning jars are a good item right now at most of my retailers. I'm seeing pint and quart jars selling for $6.99 a dozen and the same with wide mouths selling for $8.99 a dozen. They had extra lid and seal packages for $2.99 a dozen both regular and wide mouth.
I found a canner with jar racks selling for $15.99 at one retailer yesterday. I'll be picking up a large quantity of jars and a canner in the very near future and begin learning and actually canning foodstuffs to keep handy.
I've been seeing and purchasing fair quantities of ammunition for my firearms, powder and bullets for reloading but, it's still tough getting any primers right now. I've also purchased an extra shotgun.
Since school supplies are beginning to be stocked in all my stores, different types of bags for a BOB can be had for fair prices. I've seen them in messenger bag style, sling bag style as well as the regular backpack style. Prices ranged from $8.99 to $15.99. They're inexpensive but, decent quality and ought to last for a good while if you don't expect them to take a lickin' and keep on tickin'. My apologies to Timex.
I also found a handy bug out item. We're all familiar with the "starter logs" by various names. I found what are called "starter matches". They are a strip of the "starter log" material with a match head on one end. Strike the match tip against the box and use it to start a fire. I haven't tried it yet but from what I see, these things might do right well with getting a fire started even with damp wood. They're on clearance at one of my retailers for 50 cents a package of 10 starters instead of the regular $2.99 a package. I've gotten 4 packs and I'm getting the rest of them when I can get back there.
It isn't a lot but, I must say, having to work my trade for these retailers does have its rewards.
I'll be purchasing a right fair selection of prep, etc. items as I do my work at all these places.
Re: Jul 2009 Personal Preps
Preparedness and survival takes on many forms. If you will indulge me, I need to tell a little story about a man I used to know many years ago. He was a senior USAF NCO stationed with me in Maine and he was from Hawaii. His name was Felix TimTim and one day he related his life philosophy to me. It basically was 'I will help anyone, anywhere, at any time, regardless of the cost to me.' I asked him why, when 90% of them will never even give a 'thank you' and his reply was that 'those who did appreciate it and relay their thanks were ones he would trust with his own life and that the returns were oh, so sweet'. I don't say this to call attention to myself, not in the least, but I have tried to adopt Felix' philosophy over the years as much as I am able. Well, Thursday we came home from errands and found a large flat of strawberry plants on our front porch. I think I know who sent them - we just got finished planting them - hopefully they will take root and produce healthy plants this time next year. The very best security we can ever produce for ourselves is to educate our friends, relatives, and especially neighbors. Those who live near us could either be a first line of defense or our destruction. I'm not saying to trust every Tom, Dick and Harry who comes along - use discernment - and the good ones will gravitate to you if you exhibit the same traits. That also can be a double-edged sword. I have heard the following comments so many times over the years. 'If the SHTF, I know some Mormons nearby and I'll just go take what they have'. I am not a Mormon but have some good friends who are and I might say, are heavily armed. Education, education, education.
“Conspiracy Theories Are Wisps of Smoke From Fires That Cannot Be Seen” - The Watchman (2024)