Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Been awhile, again...

     I haven't been up to much different, just work, feeding the chickens, spending time here or at the Girl friends house in the big city. Big enough anyway lol Got the chicken house mostly done, still have some things to finish up on it but it holds the chickens well enough :O) Iv had the two roosters for a while, went and bought 8 hens a couple of weekends ago. Been getting a few eggs but they are not very reliable so far. Have gotten about a dozen so far and they are so good lol even better since they are mine lol  Same chicken same food same everything except they are laying their eggs in my chicken house :O)  That's what makes them taste so much better lol They are miss matched bunch of chickens lol barred rocks, orpintons, uummm   them kind and those kind and that other kind lol   This spring we are going to buy some chicks and it will look alittle more organized, I hope.  Some of them have had a rough time of it, there's a chicken plucker among them, going to stalk them this weekend and find the culprit. will be fresh chicken in the skillet this weekend maybe :O) 
  Things are really going pretty good around here, slow but its going. Got the woven wire over the gate finally the other day, been along time getting that done :O(  Still no goat pens yet but its at the top of the to do list before winter sets in, I hope. or atleast get them started.... I'm thinking the lean too is the next big thing on the list that I need to get going on. That way I can get some stuff in under the shelter.    I have come to the conclusion that I have entirely too many irons in the fire but isn't that how it works on a place like this in the country? Have to pick my projects on a priority scale...
  Lets see, Lean too, Have to get the power poles from down the road to do that, have the tin and boards to mount the tin on.   So I need to get the poles home then get to going on that.
  Then the goat pens, have to get more poles, wire, steel posts and ties, and then get busy on it. Need to finish the chicken pen, build the pen gate, put the chicken door on the chicken house for the chicken to come and go out of into the pen. Put another chicken exit on the east side so they can come and go during the day free ranging in the yard. Built the pen mainly for them to get outside while I'm gone on some weekends.  I haven't let them free range yet since we got them, about two weeks. I bet red and whity is ready to get the heck out of there and down into their favorite spot in the trees.
  Need to plow the garden up and get some more cow manure to put on it, and I have to put the tube in the tire on the trailer before I can do that too.   I still need to put the new hydraulic hose on the dump bed to make life easier when dumping the manure too. The Tomato plants are still going strong, they are full of tomatoes ready to pick yet again.  The bad ones I give to the chickens, they love them.  I sometimes give them some sunflower seeds as a treat.  Also checking into how to raise meal worms, looks easy enough lol I guess chickens go nuts over them.
  Oh yea, don't remember if I said anything but I actually bought me a new to me vehicle, the hoopty just wasn't going to hold up running back and forth to see the girl friend very much longer and besides that, I was really wanting something more reliable and usable. I bought a little two wheel drive pickup,  Its my "car" lol this way when I see stuff along the road or at a yard sale or whatever where ever I can pick it up.  gets good gas mileage and its comfortable to drive.
  Hooked up the icemaker and water dispenser on the frig last night finally. not real impressed with the water dispenser, I really think I can pee faster and harder than that thing does.... But the ice maker works fine lol  lets just say that getting the right stuff for the job and making it all work was a interesting time. grrrr.   But its done and there is no water leaks (knocking on wood/my head lol )  I have heard so many horror stories about the hose breaking or the frig springing a leak that I was half scared to leave the house this morning with it on. Came home to a dry house though yay.
  In other news, Here a while back I got on Pinterest. I had always thought it was a chick thing, sorry for sounding so typically a guy but I did.  I have found a whole new world in Pinterest lol   I'm always looking on there lol  If you cant find it on there it really doesn't exist ... I really enjoy the metal art and the homestead stuff, chickens goats, gardening ect ect ect lol its amazing lol   but any  way.  it really is amazing :O) 
  the weather got pretty chilly there for a while and I was loving it :O) got alitlle rainy at times but I still was enjoying it. But the mosquitoes got pretty bad for a while too uuggg.. The lows were around 45 at times loved it. now the lows are around 55 or 60 and the high yesterday was around 80. not too bad. 
Oh yea, back to the list..  still need to organize and build shelf's in the storage trailer too :O(  It never ends lol  I'm going to go through all that stuff and put a lot on a for sale place called "offerup" you can sale anything and everything on there and find just about any thing you could want. Pretty cool. thanks Ro for showing that to me :O)   I have sold a few things on there already, I actually take pictures of the items then send them to the girl friend and she posts them on there a couple of days before I go see her and usually things get sold while I'm there for the weekend :O)  What I don't put on offer up I'm going to give to good will or just simply give away or shit can it....   Tired of holding onto a lot of the stuff. Need the space for other things more than I need the stuff. Time to clean house!!!
  Weve been grilling a lot and its been burgers or chicken for the most part, been trying to catch things on sale but sometimes you cant. Ro had been buying boneless thighs and I really fell in love with grilled boneless thighs but they cost a lot of money, so we started buying bone in thighs and taking them and boning them out ourselves. so much cheaper to do it that way :O) we save the trimmings and bones to boil up later to make chicken broth.  its a win win :O)  Any more I would rather have a grilled boneless thigh over a chicken breast.   Going to buy some cheap beef roasts and make some minute steaks too, love me some chicken fried steaks.  Its really handy having a actual tenderizer on hand to use. :O)  Thanks Howard old buddy R.I.P Miss visiting with you.  He told me to take his home out of the blue one day. Said if he needed to use it he knew where it was...

Here is the bone in chicken, it really is pretty easy to take the thigh bone out, just need a good sharp knife and just start in doing it. Wont take but a few and you will get a feel for it and before you know it your will be whipping them out :O)
 

There's the pile of boned out on the right and the little pile on the left is the bones and fat trimmings with a few meat pieces. Like I said earlier, will boil them up and make some home made chicken broth. and of course you will need to pressure can the broth to safe it for later use. So we are saving all the stuff in the freezer until we have enough to process.



all packaged up and ready for the freezer, I divide them up into four thighs per package then I toss them all into a gallon size bag, keeps it from getting freezer burnt for quite a while. They usually don't last long enough in the freezer to get burnt lol


The fat cat :O)
  I was thinking the other day about patches and what all we have been thru together and realized that she is getting old. She was born in the spring of 2005, She was such a cute little kitten, She had a eye infection in both eyes and couldn't see. She was a outside barn cat up till that moment lol I cleaned her eyes up, took her to the vet and she got some shots and such. I brought her home and that was the last time she was ever outside willingly lol  Cricket and I just about lost her twice when we were living in the motor home, once she fell out of the screen door when she jumped against it to catch a fly, she freaked out and ran under a bunch of junk in the yard.   Got her back in and she wouldn't touch the screen door again, she would sit there all day and watch out it but would not touch it lol. The other time was when we were in the mountains and cricket I had walked up a dirt road to make sure it was safe to go up with the rv and trailer, we had got in a pretty dicey place once and didn't want to do that again...  But anyway we came back and was getting ready to go and I heard the cat meowing kind of weird. cricket was hanging out the window just about ready to fall out looking at something. It was the cat lol she had fallen out the driver window and was panicking under the rv. Good thing I heard he and cricket was acting stupid hanging out the window lol  after that she never got close to the window either lol   Patches will be 12 this spring.  


  Well all, going to get off here and get ready for bed,  I still haven't figured out the problem with the pictures on windows ten and my phone. Once I do I will be bombing my blog with a lot of pictures. I might just have to go some where and have someone show me or fix my problems that I am having with this.  I have so many pictures I want to share with you all. Bare with me :O)  I will figure it out one way or the other :O)   
Be safe all :O)  talk to you all again :O)