Someone wants some peace and quiet

This little girl has been "missing" from the coop every night for over a week.  Each time, I find her alone in the "guinea coop".  Each time, I scoop her up as she fights back, and carry her into the big coop.  Poor Girl.

I think she needs a name since she has been standing out from the rest of her flock.

Apples and Storage

I woke up this morning knowing we had to get those apples taken care of.  It turns out that making apple sauce is really easy!  Luckily a neighbor loaned me a sieve to attach to my mixer and we ran to Target to buy a grinder so this made it even easier.

The first recipe that we tried only had us core the apples before tossing them in a pot for awhile and then tossing them through the sieve.

The first batch was a little thin compared to what I like, but man it tasted good.

This was the stuff that the sieve filtered out.  It was all the seeds and peels with the juice squeezed out.  Pretty interesting.

I even realized that I could sit in the living room and peel while I watched the football games.  The oldest snapped a picture of me hard at work, with Faith just waiting for me to toss her some apple peels.

We put a lot of peels in the dehydrator with a sprinkling of sugar and cinnamon and I'll slice up the rest of the apples and dry them as well.

We managed to get through a full box of apples (40 pounds) and about 15 pounds from the second box.  I already told the woman that we bought them from that I think I want another box before our order from another source comes in next week.

Once we had all of that done, I finally enlisted the boys' help to carry the boxes of jars down to the basement storage room.  Last week, the oldest and I built this shelf.  It's not quite done yet because I need another 2x4 to finish the lowest shelf, but we were able to fill one shelf with all of the tomato products and we put the jams and peaches on the top shelf.

Then I moved another shelf into the room to fit all of the other jars.  I'm not sure if I realized just how many things I had canned this summer until I started filling the shelves.

Peaches

Pickles 

Some of the apple sauce and canned apple chunks

Pie Fillings 

I plan to can a lot more apple slices and then to do some apple pie filling with the next batches.  It may look like we have a lot, but really it doesn't seem like it would last very long with these two boys and considering how many cases of jars I purchased during a recent clearance sale, I have a lot of work to do still.  We'll be building a couple more shelves in that room soon.

More manageable chicken numbers

We've known for about a month that we had too many roosters.  I originally thought that we should have about 5-8 hens for each rooster, but then read that you should have about 10 hens per rooster.  We had only had about 20 hens in all, and when Clyde was still around, we had 9 boys.  While I would rather give the boys to homes that would keep them as pets, there just aren't homes for them since everyone is dealing with the same issues that we had.

Every week or so, someone would pull up our driveway and ask if we sold chickens.  I would always tell them that we had a few roosters that we needed to get rid of, and if they promised to kill them as quick and painlessly as possible, I would sell them.  It was always hard for me because I felt so guilty giving the birds to someone that was going to eat them, but I knew I couldn't keep them, and I didn't have any other options.

After a few visits from strangers, we sold our last birds yesterday.  The man came on Friday asking if we sold birds but he needed someone that would do the killing and plucking, I managed to find someone that would do it on Saturday, so he came back for them.  He asked us to lead him over to her house and since I was curious to see where the woman lived, I went along.

I've met the woman a few times and she was the one that helped to band the goats last spring, but I'd never been to her house.

While they killed and plucked the birds, I stayed pretty far away but the set up was interesting as long as I didn't think about it happening to a live animal.

I did get pictures of the equipment, but even as I write this, I feel bad to post them.

So, we are down to 4 roosters, with plans to get rid of one more to someone that wants to breed him.

We have two pure bred Buff Orpington roosters, one of the larger black and white roosters (that doesn't crow as often as the one we got rid of), and the gray rooster.

There is one more hen that I think we need to get rid of and we need to see what Silkie Sue's current chicks grow up to be, but hopefully things will go smoothly from here on out.

I know where two of the votes AGAINST rain are coming from

It rained for three days without stopping.  We had to have had over 4 inches at our house based on a container that was sitting outside and dry before the rain started that was later half full.  

This was how I found Carrie and Kelly every time I went outside.

They may have been dry, but they were not happy.

Apples coming out of our ears

Apples are the next thing that I planned to can, and probably the last thing that I would have a chance to can before all of the fresh produce is gone.  I ordered 4 bushels of apples from a fundraiser at the youngest's school but they won't be coming in for another week or two.  Then I heard about an apple festival fundraiser that was happening about thirty minutes away from us, and when I asked if they had apples, they confirmed that they did.  

So off we went.

The oldest was not happy when we got there and I told him what we were getting.  He was more unhappy when I told him that we would be canning all of these apples this weekend.  

We bought two boxes like this, a foot deep.

This will be the practice round for when the other orders arrive.  Wish us luck.

The end of the garden season is near

Unfortunately the garden has been neglected over the last few weeks with me going back to work and being overwhelmed with that, their activities, and volunteering at the youngest's school.  So tonight I thought I'd go out just to grab the tomatoes that were all over the tomato plants.

Before I even made it to the tomatoes, I was pulling up some carrots.  The oldest left the gate open last week and the goats got out, and then got into my garden.  They ate the tops off at least half of the carrots so I thought I'd try to pull up what I could.

Then I pulled up one parsnip.  The tops look really good, but the parsnip was pretty small so I'm going to do some reading.   I think they don't get harvested for another month.

And then there was my celery that doesn't look like celery.

I finally made it to the tomatoes and quite a few were split open.  I'm guessing we dipped below freezing one night this week.

I figured while I was out there, we might as well knock the potato cages over and see what we could find.

Purple potatoes!  Really!  Even when we cut them open, they will be purple inside!

We hosed them off before we headed inside and I laid them out on the counter, along with a couple onions I pulled out of the pot by our door.

I suppose I should be happy to have gotten this much, but it really feels like so little.  I've been planning the garden for next year for the last month or so.  As long as each year gets bigger and better, I suppose I can't get too mad at myself.

Feeding Frenzy

Almost every day this week I have taken some time to go outside and feed the birds. 

I think the joy these girls bring to me is clear on my face.

I'm sure I thought "chicken people" were nuts before I owned any, but I just can't explain how peaceful and calming it is to sit with them and watch them just be.

The good news is that almost all of them are now willing to eat out of my hand.

The bad news is that the girls seem to think they can just walk into our mud room to look for more treats.  (Please ignore the mess!)

This post was shared on The Homesteaders Blog Hop

Homemade Halloween

After collecting milk jugs and other containers for a few weeks (thanks to my students for helping!) we got to work with some homemade Halloween decorations.

The ghosts and pumpkins along the driveway have votive candles inside that we can light up.  We've added another twenty or so of them.

Update:

We finally put votive candles in the jugs one night and I got a few pictures of them lit up.  I liked them a lot but I wish the votive candles would last longer.  I'm thinking those battery operated votive candles would be good but they're more pricey and I'm sure I'd forget to turn them off afterward.

This post was shared on The Homesteaders Blog Hop

The Gold Mine On Our Property

When the plumber first came out this week to see what was going on and come up with a plan, we were walking around near the woods looking for a possible gray water pipe.  We didn't find one, but as we turned around to walk back to the house he looked down and saw the edge of a round piece of concrete.  A lid.

We have been over in this area 100 times and had never seen this thing, but now there was a piece that was partially uncovered.  

My imagination went wild as we had the boys bring us shovels, "What if it is a buried treasure?  Oh, if it's an underground bunker that would be so freaking cool.  If we find money, I'll split it with you."

We shoveled and dug for about 15 to 20 minutes and uncovered the lid completely.

We let our handyman do the dirty work of lifting up the lid.

No treasures.  No underground bunker with 50 year old canned goods.

Turns out that this must be a drainage area for the water that seeps into the ground around the house.  It must get routed here, fill up this chamber, and then leak out when it is full.  We aren't sure why there are brick inside, unless someone wanted to be able to stand inside of it and not drown.

Mystery is solved, and the lid was put back on.  

Plumbing in an old house

We've been having issues with our kitchen sink for awhile, but it got really bad this week when it completely stopped draining.  We'd had the drain snaked a few weeks ago when it was slow to drain and that didn't help.  So then we had the septic tank pumped early this week, and that didn't help.  It took a day for our handyman to be able to come check things out again and he crawled up under the house in our crawl space.

The black pipe is our kitchen pipe

He found that the pipe that was coming out of the sink came down, but then arched up, declined again, arched up again, and then dropped again to the main pipe lines.  His theory was that there wasn't enough water pressure and the water and debris was getting stuck in those areas that went up.  He wanted to cut that pipe out, put a new pipe in, and set it up to have a consistent decline to the main line.

I was doubtful.  I figured if there was water in that pipe, it should still flow out simply because there was so much.  I thought for sure that after he fixed the decline, it would still need to be snaked.

For two days we had to hand wash dishes and then scoop the water out of the sink with a pitcher and take it outside to dump it.  Time consuming, annoying, and just gross.

The handyman was able to come over this morning and he got to work in the basement.  It turns out that there is another room in the crawl space that I didn't know about that goes under the kitchen area.  He was down there for a few hours before he told me to turn on the kitchen sink.  Sure enough, the water flowed right down the drain.

He was right!

I got some pictures of the pipes that he pulled out of the basement because, quite frankly, it was disgusting.



It was gross looking, but really I just wanted to know what it was that had built up and clogged it.

The pipe was completely blocked.  There was no light that I could see through this section and it was only about 3 feet long.  

We knocked some of it out just to figure out what it was and the pieces that came out were solid, like a block of cheddar cheese.  Some of it has definitely been in there for many years (verified by the handyman).  

First thing that I did was run over and press the button to start the dishwasher.