What did you do to prepare today?

[CreoleGenius]

If I handle certain hens too much, they start to moan and to 'present' themselves in a creepy way. Yes, I do try to be human with the chickens, but I will let them remain simple birds. I am raising several chicks from scratch after that one hen hatched them.

[iceagefarmer]

Thanks for the tips dirt and Creole!

[CreoleGenius]

A person that has 12V power tools is one that thinks a lot about preps. I have some good inverters, but maybe they are not efficient use of battery power.

[Elew]

Hahaha, you guys crack me up with the chicken talk I had a friend a while back who had a chicken pet. She kept it indoors, it had chicken diapers and the whole bit....but most people I know keep them for eggs and soup.

We are more northern in general, like we have always lived in the northern US, and most people seem to have insulated chicken sheds. They are raised up on cinder blocks and are basic sheds with a door on each end, linoleum floor for easy hose down cleaning. These are coop sheds with solid walls so you just go in to collect eggs. The roost boxes are just like shelves built along the walls, and the feed lives in 2 - 6 gal storage buckets (just like the ones we store grains in) up on the top shelf all around the shed. No rats, because they cannot smell it through the buckets. And everyone who gets eggs from the chickens also keeps a 'chicken bucket' in their home to put food scraps into...so daily when going for eggs we feed the chickens all the fresh food scraps. Most people I know have 6 - 8 ft solid wood fences around the chicken yard, with a wire fence secured around the bottom that is buried down 2 feet into the soil to prevent digging critters from getting in. Most of the yards are uncovered, but some are framed in with wire over them to keep out flyers. One lady I know who has had chickens for about 40 years, has a front and back yard for the chickens. She alternates which yard the chickens go out into each year. The one they are not in gets seeded to grow grasses and food for them.
So there are my observations on other people's chicken coops.

For me today, I just ordered a cheese making kit and cheese press. I pick one new skill to learn each year, and this year is cheese! I found one place in AU who seems the best starting place for me https://www.littlegreenworkshops.com.au/
He has nicely done videos on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1k1w7SnNEY and for the press and first kit to learn with (including shipping from AU) it cost me USD 203.00. To find the same in the US I priced it at over 300 and the kits here are no where near as good, at least that I could find.
From there I might get his hard cheeses kit...but for the most part after the first kit I will know what to order and can fill in as I need to.

Last year I did rug hooking, and so this year have a couple larger rugs in the design stages...I will be getting wool to dye and working on making them this year. I figured with the Eddy Minimum coming in, warm wool rugs would be a good thing to be able to make. I made a floor pillow for out grand daughter to learn on. I have a post on it here if anyone is interested in learning https://www.minds.com/blog/view/825914236851691520


But anyways I will log the cheese making progress in blog posts too as I learn...

[dirtmurphy]

Today I took a fecal sample from my chickens to my vet. All part of monitoring flock health. I also had a less than satisfactory experience with the wood stove installers.
Yesterday I traded some canned apples for some black walnuts. I want to experiment with making nut milk from them at some point this winter. I have some of them curing in the greenhouse now and need to process quite a few more bags of them tomorrow. I've really noticed the price of nuts going up big time over the past couple of years, so this has been a big priority. Black walnuts are a great source of protein and oils, and people typically don't utilize them so they're abundant.

[dirtmurphy]

Agreed. I was thinking that today. I do give my ladies crushed egg shells, but I dry them in the sun. They're only being dried to kill bacteria, and the sun will do it for free and not heat up the house in the process .

[SmartLikeTruck]

In the last week

Cast and fired 4" j-tube rocket core with flyash geopolymer ceramic, the performance isn't terrific but 4" and smaller j-tubes aren't known to perform real well without a good chimney behind them. This will give me a good baseline to compare the 4" batch box to. This j-tube was made with 2 monolithic casts which cracked more than I would like, will make batchbox with a higher part count of simpler castings to prevent cracking.

Turned and added to the compost heap once it got a little over 120F and then started to decline, heap is now double the size.

GW harvested this years garlic, unfortunately our first frost was a pretty hard one and it killed the garlic flowers before they could go to seed. Was really hoping to collect seeds to take advantage of acclimatizing epigenetics through the seeds. Made a wooden raised bed for replanting for next years crop, this should make it easier to add hoops and poly for an earlier spring start.

Cut more brush for compost, mulch and rocket fuel.

Been geeking out a bit on led growlights with ledgardener.com and growmau5 channel on youtube. Dont! Do! Burples!

[CreoleGenius]

Today, the Mean Old Moderator banned some innocent spammers and deleted their posts forever.

[Elew]

Today, I ordered a nice German made hand drill I have been waiting to get for almost a year (me and power tools don't have a great relationship).

And I am working on a new web site to sell my work on, to free myself up from venues like Etsy who can control the ebb and flow of my sales on a whim. I think it will be good.

[iceagefarmer]

The girls laid their first egg today. I call it the $400 egg, and from now on, they're free...

Everything I planted three weeks ago is thriving and I am extraordinarily grateful. It's still just a few heads of broccoli, some onions, beets, kale, cabbage, so nothing that will feed anyone for any real period of time, but these are my daily steps.