Monday, November 7, 2011

A Weeding Weekend

Much of the weekend was spent weeding the garden. It was one of those, ah-ha, I knew there were carrots in that row, times. With 2 inches of rain recently, it was a fairly easy task.  Much to my surprise I found the mache greens and the miners lettuce had finally germinated and were fighting for space to grow. The elephant garlic was finally put in the ground, 41 heads of that.
I have been unsuccessfully trying to separate the old laying hens from the young and finally figured out the young girls had an escape route via the door, one would not think to look for a hole there. I will be rewiring that this week and hopefully get everyone situated. We have made a sad decision to butcher all the old hens in the near future. The cost of feed is high for the number of eggs we are collecting and I have been unable to give the old girls away. I plan to add about a dozen new hens each year, for a total of 2 dozen at a time. I will only keep those less than two years old, which means I will butcher about 12 old hens each year, in addition to the the meat birds we raise. I know they will make excellent stock and meat for soups, stews and casseroles. Another lesson on being realistic on the homestead....

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