miss kitty

glad you liked our pics.glad to hear your DoD is in good
health' mine passed away will be 1 year hallowen day.
good luck with straight fence line.i took my time on ours
and it looked straight until i stood back and looked at it
have mercy it was crooked [lol] i need glases.

after this hot summer looking forward to winter.
they say were gonna have a very cold snowy winter
in tennessee i hope there right. heres a pic of
tinkerbell and buckwheat . I enjoy your forums

Eddie [tenn] {{gwi:47800}}

here is sire sir bedrock dexter

{{gwi:47801}}

Nice looking goats!

Sorry to hear about your DoD. Losing a parent is really rough!

This winter is certainly looking like a stinker. My horses have already gotten their winter coats started. That last cold snap had them all fuzzy as their hair stood on end. They were racing around the pastures like foals, dancing around on their hind legs and bucking. I can't get over how beautiful they are when in motion.

Went to Lexington today and bought the Dominque chickens I wanted. Got six hens and a rooster.

Almost bought a pair of peacocks. But didn't have the cash.

Also picked up some Moscovies that aren't related to my flock. Hopefully some new blood will help revitalize my flock.

I'm ready for winter with a barn full of hay, and am hoping the new barn siding and windows get done before the real cold sets in. Otherwise I'll have to staple bubble-wrap over the missing windows again.

I had to pull the insulation down in the chicken stall so the carpenters could access a corner post that needs repair, hopefully they'll start working soon so I can re-insulate.

The horse is getting a wooly coat already, and the squirrels and duck seem to be preparing for a long winter. I think it's going to be a cold one.

I had gotten so used to Northern Winters that it feels strange to build a barn on the basis of hot summers.

I have been reading a book called the Long Emergency. Pretty scary stuff. Lucky we (every one reading this forum) are in a good position to have enough to eat should times get really tough and stay really tough.

Of course the homesteaders are a couple of jumps ahead of us on the 'survival' farming bandwagon. But I think we can all catch up.

The new chickens have settled in, they are remarkably different in termprement from the Rhode Island Reds that we had this summer. They don't scratch as much, but they aren't outside enough to get a good dose of bug hunting. My rooster is gorgous!

Maybe they will leave my flowers alone.

STill lots of rain our way. House needs a new roof. Got all the tape fencing replaced. Should have the roof on by the end of the month. I'm going to go back to work Monday to help pay for all of this.

TAke care everyone!

well here on Long Island it dropped to 30 degrees last night!!! It was 74 on thursday!
We have a long list of things to do to get the coop ready, we've been busy & haven't gotten anything done since september. I really wanted to have a yard sale but the weather is so cold I guess I'll be waiting till spring.
I'm going to try that book. I read one recently called "better off" that was good, another one I loved was "Rural Renissance".

Aloha Y'all,

Well, I was getting ready for winter then we had an 6.6 earthquake and got all shook up. We were pretty lucky, we were just shaken and not stirred. This old house is fine, it did the hula, it was just all the contents committing hari-kari that caused the mess. Many of our neighbors weren't so lucky but nobody was killed, not even anyone's livestock or pets that I've heard of yet.

One of our neighbors had some mainland hunters visiting who had just shot a wild pig moments before the earthquake. I wonder if they now believe in the Hawaiian Pig God, Kamapua'a? Anyway, when we were going around the neighborhood checking to see if everyone was okay, they gave us the pig so we made it into roasts and gave them to some other neighbors who roasted it. Everyone had roast pig the evening of the earthquake to go along with all the avocados which had fallen from the trees.

This winter I hope to get my garden planted. Around here folks usually put in the greens and peas to grow during the cooler winter months when there is more rain. Don't know if I'm going to make it or not, though, the rains seem to be starting already. Maybe I can start some seeds and put them out when they are big enough not to be washed away.

Well, we seem to have rain with lightening and thunder which is actually fairly rare considering how much rain we get so I should probably disconnect this computer from the net in case the cable lines take a lightening strike. We're off power, so a lightening strike won't come in on the power lines, but we do have cable and phone lines, so our electronics still aren't safe from lightening strikes.

A hui hou,
Cathy

I think I'd rather live in on the shores of Lake Erie than in an earthquake zone! But come to think of it, we had an earthquake there back in the 80's. Then again, to live in Hawaii . . . Maybe earthquakes aren't so bad. ;-)

What's with this cold? We were down to 28 degrees one night. All my plants are gone. Time to straighten up the gardens.

I'm back to work full time, working evenings. So I've had to turn over the chores to DH. The animals look good and ready for the winter. We stripped the stalls last week, then got a load of cedar sawdust. The barn smells wonderful!

They got the metal roof on the house. Still need to get the water damage inside cleaned up. I can't believe how much warmer the house is now. I guess we REALLY needed that roof. I think there is 10 degrees difference in our bathroom and the office. Hope the change shows up on the electric bill!

Got two duck hens setting. Will be watching for a hatching really soon. The chickens have settled in. The last two RI Reds seem to be a roo and a hen. They will go to the folks for Xmas. I'll need to hatch a couple of chicks out to get them a nice sized flock. They have serious tick population as well as spiders and flies. Should be a nice feed suppliment for the chickens.

Happy Holloween!
Kitty

Love this thread, Miss Kitty - thanks for starting it. I've been awol for awhile - busy with school and family (I'm finishing a degree, working, and mom/wife).

Here in our corner or Canada it's getting chilly. Today is the coldest so far 6 deg. Celcius (sorry, don't know the Farenhiet scale). The beef cows went last Friday to the butcher - two Charolais and one Belted Galloway. We raise them and 4 families split them. It will be nice to have a full freezer again.

Friends and I killed/processed chickens about a month ago. We had 13 in freezer - now only 11. Yummy!

DH is hunting this week. Deer season opened here Monday. Hopefully we'll have some venison, too.

The veggie garden is pretty much done. Didn't get it tilled this fall, but managed to get it cleaned out. Lots of leeks, carrots, and greens left. Still have to dig parsnips. Picked all of the apples and am going to make cider/wine this weekend. Planted the garlic last week. I was looking longingly at the flower beds today - still a lot to clean up, but it may wait until spring.

My "flock" is doing fine (one Barred Rock roo and 6 hens, various). They are only laying one or two eggs a day now, but daylenth is quickly decreasing and some are molting. I'd like to get a few more hens, but will likely wait until spring. Had 4 hatch this year - 3 were roosters! Found a good home for them and kept the hen - a Barred/Silkie cross, she's so cute!

Bought a few daffodils today (clearance sale) so I'll have to get those in this weekend. We've had no snow so far, but it won't be long. The weather to this point has been mild, but it's turning now. Our trees were glorious a couple of weeks ago - now most of them are bare.

On the bright side, it's time to start thinking/planning Christmas! I'm such a big kid..............

Enjoy the last few days of October, everyone. Hope things have "settled", Cathy.

-We've been downsizing our critter population - when we can find a dry day, which is perhaps twice a week. I have never seen such a gloomy, cloudy, rainy, muddy, yucky October. The last half of September wasn't much better.

But instead of taking this as a sign of a long cold winter ahead, I prefer to think that November and December are going to be nicer than average - to make up for all this rain. LOL. An optimist, or at least I try hard to be one...

We culled our remaining eight Speckled Sussex hens and made soup. Brian finished building the "Chiclet Box" as I like to call our new little chicken house and the Chiclets (Dominiques, just short of six months old) are installed there. They are laying really well, but we've had some unscheduled downsizing by our mystery predator. I started with a dozen day olds, 10 pullets and 2 cockerels. We lost one of the cockerels at about three weeks. And now two of our pullets have disappeared. All our losses to predators this year - several old hens, two young geese and these two pullets - have been of the "without a trace" variety. There are fishers about, coyotes and big hawks... so I don't know which is to blame.

Our geese are doing well, the youngsters as big as their mamas now. I have a trio of Pilgrims, a Buff and five mutts, offspring of our horried gander. I managed to find a buyer for the five and he will collect them in about a month. I got $60 for them, not as much as I'd hoped, but I really was not looking forward to culling them myself. So we will only have the four to take through the winter and I hope they will raise lots of little Pilgrims next year. (The Buff will be a foster mom; when she goes broody I'll give her Pilgrim eggs.

The rabbits are doing great. We put seven in the freezer last week and today we processed three of the adults, just keeping the best three breeders through the winter. (And our two indoor Angoras that popped up unexpectedly in one of the summer litters.) We have another five youngsters to do and nine more month-old babies running around in a large pen in the rabbit house (former chicken house). Very cute right now and thank goodness by the time they are big enough to eat (just before Christmas) they lose a lot of their baby bunny appeal.

We've been really cutting back our spending on just about everything non-essential, but whatever we go short on this winter, it won't likely be meat or eggs.

Not much left in the garden now, just some leeks and the perennial Egyptian onions. We didn't get much planted this spring due to opening the antiques shop (which is limping along, but is fortunately supplemented by sales on Ebay.)

Well, that about sums it up here. Hope everyone is having a good autumn and that winter stays away for awhile yet.