this was a slow week for me as i was focusing on getting out the next issue of herbal roots...so, i didn't do as good as usual.
clothing
-received some fabric from a freecycle table at the festival last week that i plan to turn into a skirt for me or a dress for jaden
food
-mixed seed starting mix from on hand supplies to start seeds
-harvested some seeding tyfon plants to feed to the goats and sheep who gobbled them up
household
-reusing plastic bags for trash bags
utilities
-diligently shutting off power strips each night for computer/dsl and tv/dvd player
-making sure lights are off when we are not in the room
gifts
exercise/self improvement
-knife throwing
-hooping
homestead
-purchased our chicks locally this year (rural king) instead of through mcmurray to save on shipping (as well as got them about $1 cheaper than mcmurray's price). so far, the chicks are all alive
-in addition to the purchase, we are attempting once again to hatch. i'm following a fellow homesteader's advice of hatching only the round eggs. round are supposedly hens while pointy are roosters. we'll see how that works out. i'm being very diligent about monitoring the incubator this year.
education
weaknesses
-went out to eat last night instead of cooking. after baking bread and cookies and dealing with sage all day, i was in no mood to cook dinner.
-running the incubator and heat lamp for the eggs/chicks is running up the electricity bill
-bought the older 4 kids a set of throwing knives for their spring basket along with a minimal amount of candy
purging
-found another bag of clothes to give away to a new mama
I am having horrible luck incubating. Jayedee sent me a dozen buckeye hatching eggs and not one hatched! I did have a 4 hour power outage during a storm about a week after I placed them in the incubator; I was hoping they stayed warm enough. I am letting them go an additional week before I give up. I've only ever had but one chick hatch from artificial incubating.
ReplyDeletethe new coop were building is going to have a small separate run and small attached roost/ separate entrance/ nest box- basically a second 'coop' for the rooster and a few hens of the same breed. this way when we have a broody we can gather pure, fertile eggs of one breed and then slip em' under the broody, knowing they are all one breed of chicken. we are hopeful that the advent of the chicken plucker will make dispatching male chicks more savory.
ReplyDeletebrooding chicks is such a pain (not to mentioned expensive with the electricity!!), i prefer to have the hen raise em'. of course, we have only done it once, but all the eggs hatched and the hen raised them all perfectly!
we've been using grocery sacks for trash and it is great, because they are small and we think more about what we throw away.
I will jump in on this one. It sounds fun. I will start with my first post on Sunday, okay?
ReplyDelete