Birds

Since this is, in essence, our homesteading blog, I figured I would talk about birds and other critters. The idea was prompted by Turkey Day and the many different turkey dishes and how cheap buying turkeys in the store is right now. We bought 2, one for eating and one for unlimited turkey sandwiches...which are both hubby's and my favorite. But, it got me thinking about raising birds ourselves for food production.
Next spring, we plan to expand our animals for food, to include rabbits. Rabbits are a great protien source (but not fatty) and they are quick to raise and grow. However, we eat a lot of "white meat" and aren't ready to get into the "other white meat" of pork as yet. So, we were thinking about the bird choices available for home growers.
We would do a batch of broilers, but neither of us wants to be plucking by hand. Until we find either a home butcher who will come out and do a flock for us or find a plucker that is affordable, we just don't want to do it. However, to suppliment our poultry, we are seriously considering pheasants as an option. Both of us like pheasant, and it seems like raising a small flock would be doable. I'll have to check on line to see if they need any special care, but truthfully, in my less practical days, I had wanted a flock of pheasants that I could let loose in the woods and feed them in the yard. So, pheasants seem a natural for me. Turkeys are, from what I've seen, stupid animals that even need to be taught to drink. I remember my brother in law butchering his turkeys and finding that they voraciously ate alll the snakes they could find and that those snakes were pretty much inhaled whole and alive. When he killed the bird and gutted it, a couple of them were still in the bird and alive. That vision has made me rethink the turkey option. Not very "farmer-ish" of me I know. The circle of life etc, etc, but ugh! It just gave me the creeps. lol
Quail is another option, but they just don't seem to be big enough...a lot of work for a small bird. Maybe partridge, which is a bit bigger, but I'm not sure yet about anything other than the pheasants. Neither of us are crazy about duck meat, though hubby does like duck eggs. The issue for us is that everything that we grow, has to be penned up due to the dogs and other wild life. A nice pastoral field with a duck pond would be great, but in reality, we live on the edge of a State forest and we are THE bear depository for the entire county. We have our chickens in a coop with a dog run kennel attached and chicken wire over the top. The Red-Tailed hawk that has us in his "territory" has been known to sit in the tree by the coop and pen and screech his anger at not being able to get to them. While this type of set up works well and is long lasting and strong, it is expensive. I'll have to put my thinking cap on and figure out how to keep the new animals we get, safe and without breaking the bank. We do not have a "barn", so maybe that will be put on the "list" of future items to get.
There is always something to do, something to get but that is the story of homesteading. Now we just need to think "cheap" while we are doing it.
Have a nice holiday folks!

Weather

The weather has been fairly decent. I expected worse, so I'm happy. The chickens are happy, scratching around...I go out and feed them and talk to them, encouraging the gals to "cop a squat" and give me some eggs. lol the molt goes on, but I have to say, some of them are already looking pretty spiffy. When hubby comes home, we'll put a light in the coop so they'll have a bit of heat and more light to encourage the eggs.
The boy-o's, my scotties have discovered a mouse run under the deck. Fall digging is in full swing for them, leaving some rather nasty looking muddy paws to traipse through the house with. I don't think I can say "they're worse than my kids", but I think it's close!

Soon, work will start on the sunroom, getting it better insulated and a nice floor put down. Then we can put in a small wood stove to keep it warm and cosy. It's a nice big room, 36 x 14 and has a ton of windows. Plants should grow well out there if I can just remember to water them! I have a pretty decent green thumb when it comes to outdoor plants, but I'm not so good with the potted ones. It's a family joke (mean spirited, if I say so myself) that I can kill a potted plant faster than any master gardener has a right to. Ah well, it's something for me to strive for in life.
The snow blower has to go on next weeek as well...always something that needs to be done, so little time. I came here to make sure no one thought I'd forgotten to blog, but I think I just needed to come "home" and relax a bit, talking about ordinary stuff. My other blogs and the forums I'm part of are full of bad news and stress and teaching...it can be exhausting at times, so it's nice to come here and "visit" with some mellow folks.

Interesting Ideas

I read an interesting story today. It seems that a town (a larger one too) is having money problems and one of the budget cuts was mowing a meadow. A lady who owns dairy goats is being allowed to let her goats keep the meadow mowed. Good fodder for the goats and free mowing for the town. I'm thinking that many towns might be open to such an idea these days. I wonder what other ideas like that will come out of these economic hard times. It makes sense though and government rarely makes sense, so it must be the smaller governments that do these things.
One year, the small town I raised my kids in had a budget shortfall and the school budget was targeted. It was decided that gym, art,and all extras would be cut. There were many teachers in the school who lived in the town too, and they fought their own union to be able to contribute to the solution. They gave up cost of living raises for two years. The parent group paid for a weekly sports program, volunteers came in daily and ran the computer program and volunteers ran two talent shows with afternoon practices to help with the art and gym issue. It worked and worked well. Solutions can start at the ground level, instead of letting big government come up with them.
This led me to think about how we can make common sense solutions a part of our lives. I think that barter must be a part of those solutions. I can barter a ton of holiday crafts or jam and pickles for some maple syrup and a couple of hours of wood cutting. We need to thik of these things and actually implement them into our lives more. We are so used to either doing without or paying hard cash for the things we want and need when barter and haggling is accepted in many parts of the world. I wonder when good sense went out of fashion in this country? Perhaps this is a case of "the proof is in the pudding" as the saying goes...this economy is in trouble and most Americans spend like nothing is different.
Just some thoughts.

Not so green, but important.

Something that a prepared home should have is a generator. It's not so green, but it can save you a ton of money!
Several years ago, we lived in NC. Right after we moved, with the two younger girls and our grandson, we got hit with a huge ice storm. The power was out for about a full week. We had no generator. When it became apparent that we weren't getting service back for a while, we ended up doing what a zillion others did, which was check into a hotel room...2 of them because of the girls and the grandbaby.
We finally got a line on a genny...someone said that they had heard that a guy was going two states over to pick up 9 generators and bring them back. They would be at the Home Depot at 9 in the morning. We got there a half hour early and they were all sitting out on the floor....with women sitting on all but one. My husband parked me on the remaining one and got what he needed to hook it up.
It took a while to get it ready and get gas and so on, and before we knew it, it was too late to cancel the room for the night, so we had another night in the hotel.
I think we probably spent about 6 nights total at the hotel, which cost us about $1200 (2 rooms @$100 per night). In the meantime, the freezer and fridge stuff all went bad, at a cost of about $750. The generator cost us about $600.
Another year went by and we got another storm that left us without power for about 5 days...we had no losses and spent about $30-50 on gas. An expensive lesson to learn. We found the generator to be well worth the $600 and going by the results of the next storm, it paid for itself.
One word of warning: keep it maintained and keep a couple of cans of gas around to run it with. Last year, my husband was working out of town and hadn't had the chance to clean up and prep the generator. It needed a new plug for our new hook up and a couple of other things. We got another ice storm. This one left me without power for 14 days. It would have been impossible for me to go out to get gas for it, since the road was impassable for 4-5 days. When hubby came home, he cleaned it up and got it working and we used it several more times during the winter. I lost about $1,000 worth of food during that storm and was no where near as comfortable as I could have been.
Even prepared people can mess up at times! Learn from the lessons of others and just break down and get a generator, keep it maintained and you will save money and be comfortable in your own home. I don't need much when I'm alone...canned soup, some candles, a stack of books. I had the wood stove and had plenty of water stored for drinking and for flushing. However, if there had been anyone else here, the comfort level would have gone down and in a crisis, a bit of comfort and normalcy is a good thing.

Adjusting to a new way of life.

First, I would like to say that I was informed (very nicely) that I may be leading people in the wrong direction with my feelings about this flu. I want to say that ANY flu is very serious. It can turn nasty, makng you very ill, even killing you. WHO says that this is a reasonably mild form of swine flu so far. So far are the key words. I bleieve though, that the vaccine is a personal choice. The info is on the web, do your research. I am so upset about all the things going on in the country with healthcare, the flu panic, the economy and my belief that this current administration is taking the country in a socialist direction, that I tend to get carried away.
This brings me to my topic today, Adjusting to a new way of life. We are working to be more self sufficient in our house, but after years of being able to just get what we want, when we want it, it is a bit hard. It's not hard things to do, just hard not to automatically do what we are used to doing. If something breaks, we tended to just replace it and that no longer fits in with our plan and goals. I find myself out of the habit of cooking full meals at a set time...the Schwanns man is my firend! lol Part of it is the transition from town life to homestead life, part of it is a laziness that has been developed about household things. It's an adjustment, for sure, but one we will make.
I remember when my kids were little and I started gardening and learned about organic gardening. It made so much sense to me, so natural. But getting the family used to eating nothing but home grown and organic foods was tough. It took several years to wean them off of soda and chips and Ragu. It took a lot for me to learn how to cook from scratch and make it taste good and be good for them. It was worth it, and it will be worth it to go back to that again. I just need to be patient. My belief is that soon, we won't have a choice and that things in our country will be really bad. If that happens, I want us to be ready and able to take care of ourselves. If nothing happens, well, retirement is just around the corner and all this saving and relearning skills will come in real handy!

THE Flu

We continue to see the government promoting panic over this flu. In Sweden, they are seeing people collapse all over the place, not from the flu, but from the vaccine! I don't know how true that is, but the only person we have seen face to face that had the flu is one who got it from her daughter, who got it from the nasal spray (they assume).
We, at our house, are having a NORMAL cold going through the whole family. It sucks, but it IS just a cold. However, I am finding that constant new on the "panic" and the "flu" makes you double think what you have..."am I breathing ok?".."Is this a high fever?". Gah!!!
You should have on hand (at all times) certain items that will help when you have any cold or illness. Food, being the primary. Who wants to run out to the grocery store when they feel like crap? It gives me great comfort to know that I don't have to because we plan ahead. We also have on hand all of the usual cold meds, ibuprophen, throat lozenges and tissue. It's amazing how much of that stuff you go through!
I have dried elderberries, which I will stew up into a syrup. Elderberries are very high in vitamins and the syrup is very soothing. I also have a cupboard full of herbal teas, both bought and ones I made up myself. I put plenty of rose hips or hybiscus blossums in my tea bags because they have large amounts of vitamins in them and they tend to give the tea a nice fruity taste as well. I'm also brewing up a mint/oregano/tea tree tea/thyme that I can put in a spray bottle to wipe things down with. Natural items are generally right at your fingertips and can be just as effective as expensive store sprays and wipes. In fact, simple white vinegar will do a great job of helping to prevent the spread of germs.
When my Dad was a young child (about 8, I think), he got scarlet fever and a mild case of polio. They quarentined him with his grandma for an entire summer, while he came back from the illnesses. One of the things they did was to hang sheets up in the doorway to block the spread of germs and these sheets were constantly wet from being soaked in vinegar! I always thought that was odd, until I looked up the antibacterial properties of plain vinegar!
Cleanliness is the best thing to help with the spread of germs, but after a week of company and being a bit under the weather, I don't feel like cleaning! lol Maybe a session of "rest" with a good book will help.
Have a good day all! I so appreciate your responses to my last blog. It made me feel like I haven't been talking to myself all this time.

I always wonder...

Should I keep this blog going? I write on several blogs and I tend to look at this as more of a personal journal, which is a euphamism for "I forget about it".
I enjoy writing, but I tend to think that my life is pretty boring and no one would be interested. I'll have to "think on it" for a bit. At any rate, whether I keep it or not, I'm going to start being more open about how I feel about what is going on in our country. Sorry if this makes any of my readers not "follow", but I feel it is important. If I am wrong, I can always look back at what I wrote and see where my thinking went wrong. However, since everything I do leans towards living a healthier life, and a more productive life, this leads us up to our retirement and if nothing happens, then we will have less expenses and more cash for what we want and need.

Today, I have been hearing more and more about the "H1N1" flu. According to WHO and the CDC, it's much milder and much less deadly than even a normal flu. This leads me to wonder why the President felt it was so bad that he declared a "National Emergency" on a Sunday. Even more interesting, he has not given his own children the vaccine. After reading about the vaccine and the flu, we elected not to get the vaccine. I am not out in the public much and I use good hygiene precaustions when I am. IF the flu got a lot worse, I would probably take to wearing a mask in public. I don't care what I look like, safety is the most important. However, I honestly don't feel that it will come to that. My daughter, who works in the hospital, has finally (after 6 months of watching) seen her first case of "swine" flu. It was a coworker who got it from her adult daughter. They both recovered fine and it was interesting to note that the adult child had recieved both the regular flu vaccine and the "swine flu" nasal spray and had it. Neither reported any difference in symptoms.

36,000 people die each year in this country from the regular seasonal flu. It's never called a "pandemic" and the has never (in recent history) been a "national emergency" called for it. So, GIVE ME A BREAK! Any illness like the flu is serious and intelligent people stay out of the public when they have flu. Why the hype over this?
I spent many years following politics and what was going on in our country with the normal blinders that most people wear. No more! I am educating myself, researching everything and learning that we, as a country, have been woefully blind. Our country is at a tipping point. Everyone needs to wake up and learn what is going on. Keep food and water in case of an emergency and decide how you will handle the changes that might be coming. Ok, that's my rant for the day! lol

On the home front, we hooked up the generator and ran it through it's tests, but learned we need a different plug, so that will be gotten when hubby can do it, since one plug looks like another to me! We got the garden all taken care of, the chicken coop cleaned and the "proceeds" spread on the garden. The wood pile is done, the inside wood box is filled and the deck is all cleared off. We're good to go for weather related emergencies.