Something to Crow About

This morning, I was sitting at my computer when I heard the first, low, strangling attempts of crowing from our young chickens. I knew it was going to happen soon. I figured about a month or so. So I was pleasantly surprised when I heard this at the crack of dawn this morning. Even Mel woke enough to ask if this was the babies crowing.

I'm not real sure, because it was still to dark to see, but I think it was Houdini making all the noise.  I've heard of young roosters crowing at about seven weeks old, but these babies are twelve weeks old. So, they are a bit behind on the growing curve. So far today, since daylight is in full force, I haven't heard it again.

I know this is only the beginning, but as a proud mama hen type I had to do a bit of my own crowing. It looks like I have THREE buff roosters out of the five. Not a good ratio at all. Someone or two may be heading for freezer camp in a few weeks. Right now they are less than three pounds a piece. I'll let them fatten up a bit first. Now the Rhode Island Reds are holding to the planned ratio of two roosters, I think.

We have one hen (yes she's a hen) that is definitely not a RIR or a Buff. Not sure what she is. She's not red enough to be a RIR or light enough to be a Buff. She may be a different type or a mixture of the two. She'll live in the Buff side of the hen house and run. A very tiny crown and an almost nonexistent wattle.

We'll have to buy some more Buff hens at a later date. Probably later in the summer for butchering. I should have done it earlier, but didn't want to have to butcher a lot of chickens plus set up the garden. There's only so much you can handle when homesteading. Since I'm the one that tends and weeds the garden and the only one that butchers animals, I have my limits. I have other things demanding my time including physical therapy once a week and the rabbits.

Speaking of time. I think we lost our WWOOFER, Amy, and son. I haven't seen them since October or November. It's  a shame too because plenty of extra hands would have worked wonders here at the Cockeyed Homestead. Instead of going full tilt, we are moving at a snail's pace only partly because of being short staffed. The tomatoes, potatoes, zucchini, green beans, pole beans, and corn did get planted but it took several weeks instead of doing it all in a day. A wealth of information was lost by them.

It's been in the high 50s and low 60s with all this rain. I've been taking advantage of it by canning. So far, I've pressure canned about five pounds of navy beans into baked beans, four pounds of small dry limas beans, and four pounds of kidney beans into chili beans. I still have about six pounds of dried black eyed-peas to can for the following year. How do I know how much I'll need for a year? I simply kept a running mental total of what I've bought the last year.

We're a Zaycon Influencer. If you didn't know, Zaycon is a farm direct meat supplier of hormone free meat. I'd bought 10 pounds of all beef hotdogs. Not the kind made with beef waste products but whole meat ground like ground beef. We like baked beans with this. I also bought 36 pounds of hickory smoked bacon, 40 pounds of 80/20 ground beef, and 40 pounds of sausage links. With all this meat in the freezer, I need vegetable sides to go with them. Now keep in mind there are only two of us one this homestead. This is approximately a year's worth of these items for us. Throw in some steaks, beef roasts, pork chops from our local sourced farms and the butchering of our own chickens and rabbits, we have plenty of meat for a year.

Mel hails from England so a meal of Bangers and mash with green peas is often a full meal for us. I make a mean onion gravy to accompany it. Breakfast fare such as bacon, eggs and grits are also appears a fair amount also. It all depends on what is going on during the day. If it's a quick, slop on the table because we've been busy this often is the quick fix.

We'll that's it for this week from our homestead.

Y'all have a blessed day.