Catch up

Catch up
You know how life gets away from you.
The children are out of school. My youngest is home during the week this summer and returns to my sister's house in Maricopa on the weekend. My oldest is the exact opposite. He stays at my sister's house in Maricopa during the week and returns home on the weekend. Perhaps someday we can have them both home without major fighting. My youngest works for the neighbor during the week. He does farm work. Cleaning out stalls, feeding and watering animals, working on fences and pens. When this work began someone told him he should be making minimum wage. He was sad to receive his first pay. I told him this is just farm work. He is after all only 15. He Is happy to see his earnings add up. His goal is to buy an IPOD. I am not sure which one. My oldest has yet to find a job. He is helping my sister in Maricopa. He helps cook and take care of her daughter.
I have been requisitioned to create several blankets. These are for my co-worker, Simona. I have made her many things in the past. This keeps me busy. Finding just the right color can be tricky. Did you know that Joann's will let you use competitor coupons and that they will let you use as many coupons as you can get. For instance if you have 5 items and 5 coupons you can use each and every one. This saves me some. Prices have gone up. People do not want to pay more money for craft items. If I sold a blanket 5 years ago for say $50 they want to buy it for $50 today. Anyway. This particular co-worker has given me a lot of business. She sends friends my way all the time. Which usually is like the snowball effect. Those friends tell their friends and so on. I usually give her the Simona discount.
It has been so hot here. I have been working hard at keeping all the animals hydrated and in the shade. We check the water buckets several times a day. My husband is surprised how much water they drink. The Mammas were drinking so much I put another bucket in their pen for fear they would run out. I keep all the feed and dog food bags for this purpose. I sew them together to create a tarp like fabric. This doesn't take me very long. While I am sewing the dogs are at my feet sniffing, sniffing, sniffing. Very funny. When it is all together we take it outside and tyewire right through the bags to the pens and coops. The chickens seem so relieved to have shade. They scratch and roll with new life. We built another chicken coop for the young chickens. Just a note. This time I bought stucco wire instead of chicken wire. It was much cheaper and serves the same purpose. To keep the rabbits cool I freeze soda bottles and put them in the hutches. They lay against the bottles to keep cool. I have also misted their ears. They do not like it very much. But they look so miserable. I wouldn't like to be in the Arizona heat with a fur coat on. Their pen was created with complete shade in mind.
It will soon be time to breed the rabbits. I hope this will be successful. The original rabbit Molly Magic broke free from her hutch and broke her neck. She is next to June. She was breed several times and never kidded. Not for the lack of trying from the buck. We even borrowed the buck from our neighbor. He sired many kits. I was lingering about putting her down. Molly Magic's story is quite funny. After getting our original 4 rabbits. I came home one night and checked on them. There were 3 black rabbits and 1 white rabbit. Strange I had all black. I asked my husband about it. He said he traded the neighbor who also just got rabbits. I asked him if he was sure this white rabbit was a healthy female. He said he wasn't sure and that I could check. Not happy that I was surprised. So upon investigation She had male parts. I showed my husband and then we took this male rabbit back. I did not need three males. He chose this one because it looked the healthiest. So the neighbor said we could trade another rabbit for this male. They were not the best looking bunch. One had a torn ear. One had a sore foot. One had a weepy eye. That is why my husband chose this one. Well they all had female parts all except the one my husband brought home. If I hadn't checked he would not have had a chance to breed his rabbits. Silly men. So I choose the one with the weepy eye. She looked the best. We treated her eye with neosporyn and it healed up in a couple of days. She could get out of any hutch I built. It didn't matter what kind of wire or lock it had. That is why she was called Molly Magic. Her original name was Molly. All the black rabbits passed away and Molly Magic still survived. So when My Husband found her one day lifeless I was saddened and relieved at the same time. I did not want to harvest her. My heart just wasn't in it. But she was not producing.
The chickens have moved to their new coop. They do not roost. I think they were in the tractor to long. We thinned out the other coop. Adding all the white leghorns to the new coop. Now you know how beautiful young chickens are. New full feathers. There were two white chickens who were pickers and egg eaters. Did you hear me. I found the egg eater. Or my husband did. One day I came home and one little red chicken was in with the ducks. Hum, Why I asked? He said they ate all her feathers off her butt. And wouldn't stop. The poor little chicken was a bloody mess. I said should we put her down. He said no she will heal. We were not sure which chicken was the culprit. So the next day. Another chicken in the duck house and two white chickens in Sprinkles and Chocolate's pen. He said it was them. So no more pecked eggs. The little red chickens are heeling. They like the duck house. Or so it seems. The ducks don't bother them. They eat what the ducks don't. The white chickens fly. They kept going out of the pen and pecking the dogs. Dogs do not like to be pecked. Dogs have sharp teeth. They had enough, eventually and the dogs won. These chickens were going on 4 years old. I have my eye out for anymore egg peckers.
My youngest brought a puppy home from work one day. The neighbor's heeler had 10 puppies. My husband had his eye on a little white female. My husband never brought her home and the neighbor sold her. My husband was thinking we don't need more dogs. Here comes my youngest with Taco. He is all brown. I told my son he must stay outside. He lives with Bandit our goat dog. They greet me every night when I come home to get a cookie (dog biscuit). My husband and I keep them in our vehicles. It is a small thing to do to keep them happy. I went to the town feed store to get a 5 in 1 puppy vaccine. The service at this store is terrible. They are snotty and it was like I was inconveniencing them. I left with nothing and went to the Pet Club. I know I should support the locals but they have been increasingly rude each time I go. Pet Club is very friendly. They usually have everything I need. I can ask questions to the moon and they ack like they enjoy our conversation. Not like I am a stupid farm girl. I will continue to shop at Pet Club.
Little Uno the duck is out of the chicken tractor and in the duck pen. Uno spends most of the day behind the house. The older ducks don't really spend time with Uno. Uno will survive. We had another duck hatch and called it Dos. Dos got stuck in the corner of the aquarium and died. We tried to put Dos in with Uno, but Uno pecked him until Dos's little wing was bloody and sore. So I needed to go to the store and was gone for not more than an hour. Poor little Dos. The Ducks are setting on a clutch again. Two this time. My husband also has three eggs in the incubator. Who knows?
DQ had kids. She was apparently pregnant when she came to us. The neighbors sire was gorgeous. These goats will be beautiful. DQ had 4 kids. 2 males 2 females. 1 male was still born. 1 male died the next day. So we have Oreo and Barbie. Sadly. Oreo is blind. I saw DQ kick dirt in her eye. We treated it with penicillin for 4 days and neosporyn for 4 days. She can not see but it is clean. She eats and sleeps. Oreo does not run and play like Barbie. Every one says to put her down. I don't think that is the answer. She will adapt. Barbie is a bouncing baby. She is the friendliest goat I have ever seen. She is all ready eating and drinking alfalfa.
We had a lead on a herd of potbelly pigs. 1 cut male, 1 intact male, 3 pregnant females (due in 1 month) Must take them all. This person from craigslist wanted to get rid of them due to divorce. Anyway, we made plans to meet them on Sunday. The reason for this delay was they were in a city 2 hrs away, Tonopah. This person said that would be fine. This was on Monday at 4 pm. I checked craigslist on Wednesday and the add changed. 2 males 1 female. I emailed them and they said they sold the 3 pregnant females. Where did the other female come from. What happened to must take all. Then the craigslist add changed again. 2 cut males. Weird right. This person wanted to know if I was still coming. I said no that they changed their story to many times. And 2 hours was to far to drive for nothing. Bad people SUCK. I created a pen for this new herd. I worked all day Tuesday. Oh well Our female Meat pig will need it when she is breed.
I am busy in the house just keeping up. I make yogurt and chevre once a week It lasts all week. My youngest likes this yogurt he mixes honey in his. I poor it over cereal. The chevre is used for bagels, kind of like cream cheese. The pigs are getting 1/2 gallon of milk almost every day. They also are eating about 6 eggs every day. They make a scheeemmm scheeemmm scheeemmm noise when they are snarfing this up. I have had a concern with making raisin breed. When to add the raisins. If you add them first they are all mushy. If you add them through out the mix they are all chopped up almost missing. If you add them last they are only on the top of the bread. I use a bread machine. I have followed the directions and am not happy with the end result. How do you use your bread machine to make raisin bread?
I bought produce this week. I do not feel bad. Yes I do. I can not grow anything. So my husband said it was okay. I bought grapes( red and green), apples(red and green), oranges, pears, bananas, tomatoes, lettuce(ice burg, and Romain), spinach, cucumbers, celery, green onions, carrots, green peppers, lemons, cantaloupe, honey dew, and strawberries. I try every year to grow my own produce. I have spent hundreds of hours and dollars. I give up. I love love love to eat veggies and fruit. Please don't think I am bad. I know many people buy produce. I am supposed to be a homesteader. I just can not grow produce. It is to hot. To dry. I have a brown thumb. So I am done. I also bought squishy sandwich bread and store buns. I will hide my head in the sand now.
I bought a whole chicken. This also upsets me. I will be buying meat chickens soon to harvest for our freezer. We tried this last year but lost almost half. The neighbor also did this at the same time he had losses to. We think it was a bad batch. Anyway I bought a whole chicken. It was on sale. I baked it for 1 dinner. Made chicken salad for lunch the next day. And the next day we had chicken noodle soup. It was well worth it.
I boil a dozen eggs every week. We use them all week long. Most days we have eggs for breakfast. We also have bacon or sausage. I can not wait until our little pig gets bigger to put in the freezer. We will have our own sausage and bacon. Raising a few pigs has not been that difficult. We have 3, nowhere near the number the neighbor has. They are very simple to feed. We are still on our first truck load of corn. The other animals have helped eat it to. It has lasted a long time.
I guess that is it today. I will try to add pictures later.