Good Morning Allllllllllllllllllllllllll

Admin wrote:morning erm well it will be morning here in about 10 mins or so lol
not much new happening around here

Hey what were you doing up soooo late??? If I knew that, I would have called you at 5am...of course I would have had to of been awake myself at that hour...

lmao too funny
I would of been asleep by that time

wait... is it still morning?

its now april - spring in your country - autumn in mine

this morning i planted 'cox' lettuce in the old chicken run and tidied the glass house ground ready for planting soft buttercrunch lettuce for the winter tomorrow.

after my lunch i am heading out to pick up my girlfriend for the weekend. she's had a bad fall and wanted to be with me for company and help i think. i will find out how bad she is when i see her - we both turn 70 next month - she is one week younger than me LOL

thankfully Tom is much better today - had spent all day in his bed yesterday - unusual for him - tummy-bug!

weather has been very kind lately but expecting rain tomorrow monday and maybe tuesday. so i had some washing done and now are hanging outside in the sun.

take care but have fun regardless

I bet y'all thought I died. LOL
I crashed my computer about 6 months ago. I looked for this place several times, but just found it again today.
Lets see. I have chicks in inside brooders and also Guinea keets. I have a variety of breeds and sizes running around outside. I moved a bunch of chickens around to different coops yesterday. It seems like they all want to go broody and they don't care if there are eggs under them or not. ROFL
I have two gardens that are both looking great. Blooms on tomatoes and peppers, but no little fruits yet. I go a late start on them due to having 20 inches of rain in a three week period. made the clay soil just a little too boggy to walk on, much less till and sow.
It is a beautiful sunny day here today. The yards are all grown up and needing a swather instead of a mower, but I plan to tackle them with mowers anyhow. Wish me luck!
I canned a batch of poke salad yesterday and I may try to get some roosters butchered and processed this afternoon.
My daughter, SIL and their two kids just headed out to do some fishing. She showed me worms they had to see if they were the kind I raised as a kid. They weren't, but it reminded my of the fishing story here and I came looking for y'all again. I am glad I did.
Talk to y'all again real soon.
Take Care and God Bless you.
Okie (((HUGS)))

Welcome back Okie...I was kind of wondering what happened with you. I just figured you had gotten busy with life somehow. Sounds like things are going rather well for you, besides all that rain.

Look forward to your regular postings again soon!

yay I am glad your back
I oh so know the crash your puter lol, happened to me the day before my bday lst Nov lol thank god for Deb we chatted and she read my emails to me til I got a new tower
I have the broody syndrome going on here too lol we have a crap load of broodies today I pulled out 4 hens fron this lil bucket I really need to take my cam weith me lol tis the funniest thing, we love patting and petting em to make em mad grin
erm what is Poke salad??
I am glad that you found your way back too.

You mean you never heard the song about Poke Salad Annie? ROFL
Pokeweeds is another name for a wild weed that grows in Southern climates. It is carried in by birds and grows to be as big as a medium sized bush in one year. It will come back every year after that from the roots. It is said to be poison if eaten raw, but I think it will just make you feel sick. You pick it when it is young and tender, boil it down and drain off the juice. Some folks will boil it a second time to get rid of more of the so called toxins. I usually just boil it once. After it is drained, I put it over in a hot skillet that has enough grease to keep it from sticking. I break a half dozen or so eggs in ith it and scramble fry it. It has a bunch of healthy properties and tastes great to. My daughter can not tolerate it at all. She loves to eat it, but it causes blisters in her mouth. I experimented and fixed Spinach fried with eggs and she loved it. There are a few other wild weeds we pick and eat similarly prepared. Lambs quarter is the other main one. It is a wild spinach that tries to take over my garden. I wait until it is about 8 inches tall and then I clean it out of the garden and put it up for the future. Nothing as good as free forage foods. rofl Danged wild hogs around here have just about rooted out all the Morrell Mushrooms. I sure wish I could find a batch of them. Some day I will turn loose of the money to get a mushroom growing kit. White caps are good, but they sure don't have the flavor of the morrells. :p

I had planned to butcher a few roosters today, but my daughter informed me they were gonna make a trip to a Community sale next Sunday. I am gonna send the roosters and see if they will bring a little more than they would be worth as meatbirds. They are Good linage Black Copper Marans, so they may bring a decent price. I traded off my Dark Cornish and got some Buff Orpington hens and also a Rhodes Island Red rooster and three hens. The man swore these were the old fashioned RIRs that laid a nice brown egg. He lied. These lay an egg that is a toss up as to whether it is beige or pink. Not at all like a true old Fashioned RIR is supposed to lay. Too much production blood has been bred into the RIRs these days. I think I will send the RIRs to the sale along with the Black Copper roosters.
I will tell you more about my chickens and gardening endeavors later. I need to go plant Marigolds amongst the tomatoes before more rains get here. I want them to be blooming before the hornworm tomato moths come around. They don't like the smell of Marigolds and they go on down the road to my neighbor's garden.
I have a cute story to tell about a little bantam hen who wanted to be a mama. I will post it over in the chicken area.
Take Care and God Bless,
Okie

Thanks for the good update and all that useful information. I just had a discussion the other day about harvesting nettle to use in eggs.

that is simalur to what we do with burrdock greens and dandilion greens too
we are selling 12 roo's at auction in a couple days, prolley will not get squat for em but they gotta go we have way to many roo's.
we are also selling some of our gaots too some times I hate farming I hate having to pick stays and who goes.
I am off to read your hen story lol

welcome back Okie!

good to read some posts in CP! i realised i missed this board.

my chooks are all ok and all fully feathered out. one 17 year old Goldie is blind now being kept in her warm little tractor as she will know where food is and gets the sun in middle of day and onwards. the morning sun warms her "bedoom". And anyone know of an old chook or a record of one? on warm days i let goldie out and make sure she gets her evening meal in her tractor,

last month a friend from freecycle.com/auckland NZ came and set up a worm-farm using an old bath he got for nothing for me. here's the link he gave me re the worm farm.
http://www.instructables.com/id/worm-farm-with-volume/

enjoy your summer all of ya

Summer isn't here officially yet, but the weather doesn't seem to know that. We got 3/4 inch of rain yesterday. Today we have chances of showers and tomorrow the heat index is supposed to be 105*
I have a little mixed breed blue hen that hid her nest under some tin on top of one of my chicken tractors. She was sitting on 10 eggs. My granddaughter came running in yesterday and told me there was only two eggs left and they both had chicks trying to hatch, but the ants were gonna eat them. I went out and sure enough, only two eggs were left. I gathered the two have hatched chicks up and brought them in to an incubator. I went back and found the little hen and 8 chicks under another piece of tin. She was as mad as a hornet when I caught her, but that is okay. We put her and the 8 chicks in a little brooder house. This morning I distracted her while I gave her other two babies back to her. Mama and all 10 babies are safe, dry and happy now.
Okie

awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww yay I am glad you saved the other two peeps sooooooooooooooooooooooooo where are the pics

funny i thought i posted earlier - sigh

awww love that story and giggled at "mad as a hornet" mother - naturally...!!!

thanks Okie for sharing.

yes pics please

Little mama and the chicks are still in the brooder house. I will turn them loose when the stormy weather has passed. I will get pictures once they are out in the green grass.
I have three Bantam Cochin hens that are as broody as all get out. One has her nest down in an old rabbit nest box, but the box is on it's end and there would be no way chicks could get out once they hatched. This little hen had about a a dozen eggs under her. I stole them and put them in an incubator. I candled eggs last night and the Cochin eggs are getting real close to hatch time. I am gonna move the old nest box into an unused rabbit coop to see if she will stay with the nest after it is moved and put on it's bottom like it should be. If the little gal sticks to the nest, I am gonna take her eggs back out to her and let her hatch and raise them herself.
This rabbit hutch I am gonna put her in is a divided cage. In the nest box on the other side there are two Bantams Cochins who are on empty nests, but sitting right together. I am thinking I might just take another batch of eggs out of the incubator and let them finish the job.
I had thought I might give them guinea eggs, but I am wanting to sell them as soon as possible, so I will just give those girls unfinished chicken eggs and I will hatch the guineas in incubators. lol
I will get out the camera and take pictures to post when I get a chance.
Okie