Plans B, C, and D

On Wednesday night’s newscast, the meteorologist said that Kalispell should watch for thunderstorms between noon and 3 p.m. on Thursday. Right on schedule, at 7 a.m. Thursday morning (that’s sarcasm), we got a thunderstorm with about 10 minutes of rain. We got nothing else for the rest of the day, and it was much hotter than forecast.

I should get paid so much to be so wrong so often.

I was going to make another batch of zucchini bread, but I had sold all our eggs to WS the night before. He buys them from me at wholesale and sells them from a fridge up at the corner. This kid is going to go far. He is a very savvy businessman and he’s only 6. I said to the husband that I probably could have gone up to the corner to get a dozen from the fridge, but he would have charged me full retail, LOL.

I went into the coop to check inventory, but the hens don’t finish laying until late afternoon. All of the nesting boxes were occupied, and the hens let me know in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t welcome in there. I should have enough eggs today to make more zucchini bread, though.

Elysian said that a woman stopped on Wednesday and bought all the eggs in the fridge. People who do not live on farms have a far different view of food production than we do. This lady wanted to know if she could reserve six dozen eggs every week for her family. (She is not the first person to ask.) Elysian is very clear with people that eggs are on a first come, first served basis. What’s in the fridge is what is available. We have no control over what the hens do. They might decide it’s too hot and stop laying. They might molt and stop laying. They might get mad at the farmer for bothering them and stop laying. Our chickens lay about two dozen eggs every day, pretty reliably, but I also know from experience that they tend to stop laying in August and we have a dry spell before the pullets start laying. Our chicks were later than usual this year, so our dry spell might last longer.

I listened to an interview with Joel Salatin a while back, and he said that when this pandemic/meat shortage started, he had people calling him up asking how much they had to pay him to get put on his “premium subscriber” list (he doesn’t have one) to get guaranteed purchases of meat. One of the bottlenecks we have here is a shortage of meat processors. We only have two left here in the valley, and the husband and I actually use someone two hours away in Eureka, Montana. I called our processor on Tuesday and got the last available processing date in November for the pigs. One of our neighbors processed his own cow a few weeks ago because the processors are booked solid. I might be able to do one pig, but I have no desire to process six.

[Thank your federal government for making the regulations so onerous that starting up a meat processing business is an uphill battle and one that no one wants to fight anymore. We have room here for three or four more processors but we won’t get them.]

The upshot was that I could not make zucchini bread. I thought I would start working on the Slabtown Backpack. Normally, I will cut bag pieces by measurement with the rotary cutter because they are almost always rectangles. This bag has some large, oddly-shaped pieces, though, that are best cut out with pattern pieces. I could have printed the pattern pieces on my printer, taped the sheets together, then cut the patterns out, but I have no patience for that. I will take the large-format file to the blueprint shop today and have them print it for me.

There went that project. I thought I might quilt some pieces for the large Poppins bag, but then I realized that I did not have enough of the foam interfacing I needed. I’ll have to stop at the quilt store and get more today.

There went that project. I finally gave up and made two more Noon and Night blocks, one warm:

And one cool:

Do I have a plan for all of these experimental blocks? No, I do not. They are pretty to look at, though.

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We have started Baby Rooster Comportment lessons here. If I end up selling a couple of these extra roos, I want them to be well trained. Every afternoon, I throw scratch grains out into the chicken yard and most of the chickens go out there to eat. The Buff rooster (who has recovered completely from his leg injury) comes back into the coop and waits for me to get a handful of scratch grains to feed him. The baby chickens stand inside their cage and watch as he eats out of my hand and then calls a few hens over to share. Yesterday, I fed the Buff rooster and then went into the chicks’ cage and crouched down with a handful of scratch grains. Some of the baby roosters came over to investigate but haven’t yet figured out what to do.

There are two roos that I am SURE are roos; the jury is still out on the others. Some of the chicks have developed combs and wattles, but that’s not a reliable characteristic because the hens of certain breeds also have them, albeit smaller than the males. I am watching to see who is crowing and who displays more dominating behavior. This guy, whose mother was a Light Brahma, has acted like a rooster since day one and clearly sits at the top of the baby chicken pecking order:

He likes to stand on top of the waterer and practice crowing. If he doesn’t turn into a jerk, I think he has the potential to be a very nice rooster. There is a baby Buff Orpington rooster, too. He’s not quite as dominating as this one, but he also has potential. We want roosters to know that their job is to protect the hens against threats, but not to see the farmer as one of those threats.