New Week, New Exhaustion

Well, here we are at the beginning of another three nights on. But boy have we gotten a lot done in our time off. On Friday Kelly's daughters family left the farm for their own apartment. And their baby now has her own room. Saturday was a shopping day. Groceries, Wal-Mart, Feed store etc. With some laundry thrown in for good measure. Oh, and we got the new freezer. Sunday was sunny and warm. Actually Saturday was too for the first time in weeks. So we mowed and trimmed and tended gardens. Jasmine had a ball feeding new mown grass to the chickens. They had great fun eating it. Kelly got all the tools out of the kitchen now that construction has narrowed its scope to walls and ceiling. She spent most of the day cleaning house. Ugggh.We unpacked some more boxes that have been stored since last July. Like getting Christmas presents. Sunday late at night we stole into the coop and put the sleeping roosters into the carry boxes. No muss , no fuss and only the occasional squawk. Nothing like the dead of night by flashlight for unpleasant tasks. Early Monday morning we were off to the butcher.Jason's Butcher in Albion ME. Now I have never done this or seen this done but where we went was very clean and very humane. Also very quick. We handed them the chickens (actually Ted and I- Kelly stayed in the truck to avoid crying) and they put them in cones to kill and bleed them. Then to a big hot vat and off came their feathers. Now they no longer looked like our chickens , just food. Then they were thoroughly cleaned and packed in ice. But the chickens before and after ours were HUGH. Seems Layer/meat breeds mean layer and not much meat but meat breeds are big. So we have 40 smallish chickens in the freezer and we are going to order 25 big breed chicks right away to have ready by fall. Sunday night Kelly and Tiffany made two batches of soap. Tuesday Kelly and I drove Jasmine and her Mom back to their apt in NH after a nice summer vacation with us. We will all miss them and hope they can get up for awhile before school starts. Wednesday Kelly and Ted did business in town and I did piddly things around the farm like hoeing weeds and peel a couple of cedar logs for fence posts. The garden is still pitiful. Out of 6 long rows of corn I think we have 5 plants. No beans came up. We lost all the tomatoes,and most of the peppers but I'm replanting some of those. We have cabbage, Brussels, Spinach,onions and squash. We have one lone pumpkin plant. We have 2 baby grape vives, 2 blueberry bushes , 2 rasberry and 1 blackberry plants. About half the asparagus came up and it is so thin I almost missed it and weeded it out. Herb garden is doing well. And we unfortunately have a whole section of garden thick in thistle. We will dig all that out and burn it this weekend. We are all kind of tired. Kelly cut the new soap to harden in the evening. Today was very lazy. Hate to get too tired when we have to work all night. Ted however made a beautiful 9 unit condo for the hens when they get ready to lay. So now the farm is quiet with just 4 adults and only one rooster- Sampson. We'll have to see what we can do about that. I miss the noise. posted by Alex