Thursday, August 14, 2008

Chinchilla plus two!

While chinchillas are not a productive animal in the sense they don't provide me with anything I can use, they sure provide entertainment. This morning my boys called me while I was at my bowling league and informed me that Trey's chinchilla had 2 babies in her dust bath! They are so cute!!!! Here is some video of the little critters.


Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Update on Veggies

We have watermelons and cantaloupe starting to grow!! We have had over a dozen cucumbers off the plants and tons of lettuce for our salads. The beans and peas are taking off and the tomato plants are getting so big the cages or bending over, I will have to find something to support them. The garden is doing great and I even saw some ladybug larvae on my pepper plants last night. We also have worms in the dirt so all in all it is slowly becoming a healthy garden. I am about ready to pick the beets and pickle them I just need to call the treatment plant and find out what grade the biosolids I got are.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Sexed the chickens WRONG

So, one of the chickens that I though was a female started crowing yesterday! And I think that one of the silkies is also a ROO! LOL!!! So I have been getting awakened every morning by not one but two roosters and soon to be a third! This is not good as you should only have 1 rooster to every 4 hens. So, we will be having roast chicken and then taking the bones and making chicken stock! Just so you know, I will not be killing Buster cause he is just too cute. One of the Japanese bantams has started crowing so he will be the first to go and then when the Silkie starts crowing he will be gone as well. Tyler is more hesitant about me killing them he wants me to post them on freecycle but I don't want to do that because I bought them with the intention of eating them. So, I am currently researching the most humane way to kill them and also how to clean them out and such. I will probably do it this weekend while my MIL is here if not it will have to wait till the end of the month cause my BF will be out here with her kids the weekend after that. Anyway, just thought it was humorous and wanted to share. I have included some video of the Japanese Bantam crowing and the other chickens hanging out.

Making Apricot Jam

I got a post the other day that a guy around the corner from me had apricots he didn't want so he was allowing people to come and pick what they wanted. So, Brant, Tyler and I went over and picked a large box of them. They were not quite ripe so I decided to make apricot jam with them. The following video shows the process of how I made the jam. It was time consuming but really fun and it tastes really good. I have been having peanut butter and apricot jam sandwiches for lunch. I was able to make 12 pint jars of it. I also was able to pick some from my neighbors tree today. They were just sitting there falling of the tree one by one so I asked and she said we could pick the whole tree if we wanted! Yeah an endless supply of apricots. I am going to be purchasing a food dehydrator so that we can dry some of them. I would also like to make some fruit rolll ups. The boys have just been eating them raw as well. I may not have to plant an apricot tree after all! Anyway, just thought I would share.