Progress report

We had been busy getting ready to continue building the house and today we nailed up the first boards of the season! It was the supports to hold up one of the two beams that will be put up later.

Yesterday and the day before we finished processing 150 chickens. We got 200 used laying hens from the Hutterite community three days ago. They were already gutted and plucked but we still had to cut them into chunks and seperate the bones. We canned about 150 jars of meat and broth mixed together. Steve helped us with them. We payed $1.50 per hen after gutting and plucking. It was a big job! We started around 9:00 a.m. and went to about 10:00 p.m. the first day and the second wasn't quite that late. We stored the chickens, some in the freezer and some in our second refrigerator.

Our ducks have been doing pretty good. The lake is mosty thawed so they can paddle around now. The puppies are already lapping milk from a bowl and are running around. We have them outside in a portable dog house with a chicken wire fence around them so they won't get into trouble.

Today (after we were excused from building the house) we tryed to fly a kite. The string ended up snapping and the kite floated to the end of the field. That was about a 1/4 mile away. It is windy here!

We have cleaned up around the yard and have the hoop house plastic on and our shed (is more like a out house) is moved closer to it. Our turkeys have been getting pretty mean. When they are both together (we have two) they will start thier war tune and dive at your feet. They must not have liked us chasing them away so much so they want to chase us away. We have our incubator going and when we get a couple extra eggs we stick them in there and monitor the days. It takes 21 days for a chicken egg to hatch.

That's about all,

Peter

P.S. The wood ticks are out so beware!