November 11, 2007 

finally got all those feral chickens caught up last night. I will clip wings this morning. I like the free range chicken idea, but not when they are on my front porch crowing at some hour when the sun is not even up yet. I just fixed their goose.. my appologies for the pun. I will also finally be able to take a head count and see how many ended up for hawk and skunk dinner. And see how many I need to cull out and stick in the freezer. I had a 'barnyard hatch' for meat birds last summer, so that way I had no excuse to wanting to keep any as they are mostly crossbreds. I will have my breeding pens built next year. I also decided I need a single pitched sloped roof to the back to remedy the rain and snow situation. I have been holding off butchering the culls/roosters until I see how much room the pig will take up in the freezer. By the way, it still smells like skunk in the chicken yard. That incident was almost 5 weeks ago. *ugh*

6pm Update

I gave up on the chicken count until another day. I forgot to take paper and pencil out there with the scissors, so it will have to wait for another day, I am guessing 40 or so to butcher out. I decided to keep a few extra hens. But I got all the wings trimmed and I noted there are no loose chickens lurking about today. It was a pretty productive day in all. Brought wood down, did some things up in the barnyard. Took the homemade bread I made 2 days ago and cut it up into cube to make croutons for a Caesar Salad with them,  I found turnips and beets in the garden yet, so I need to pull those and store them in the root cellar.  I am trying to go through at least one box a day which had been stored in the infamous basement and I got three done today. I found pretty things!! Things like from my great-grandmother.