Local Updates: Dads Finances, Tanning, the Harvest
I’ve been distracted lately. So much that I don’t know where the last two weeks went, honestly.
Someone bought a lot behind our house and have started construction on their home. I’m at work all day, so the noise isn’t as noticed by me, but is noticed by my father, and most certainly by our chickens. They have not been laying very well at all due to anxiety from all the noise. I only hope they can settle and get used to it, because it will probably there for months.
Another reason to look for land elsewhere.
Still no significant rain. We’ve been conserving a lot of water, saving greywater, whatever needs to be done. We were able to harvest a bit of corn on Tuesday, which was rather good. But the masses of corn around here are still very malnourished and short, despite one of my city Grovemates commenting that Lughnasadh was after the harvest, so any wishes for balance in the weather during ritual were needless. And here I’ve been on a farm all my life, so obviously I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about, such as our tomatoes being harvest well into October every year.
I dug out our pressure cooker from the basement because I intend to do some canning of said tomatoes fairly soon. I want to try my hand at my own tomato sauce. I make a mean homemade spaghetti sauce as it is, but I usually buy the tomato sauce for it.
I’ve also decided I’m going to sit my father down and teach him how to use a computer. He needs to get his financial stuff straightened out, because he’s been having a lot of overdraft charges lately. If he can check his account online, and use ING with no overdraft charges, I think he’d be in great shape.
His birthday is next month. There is a book on guinea fowl that I plan to get him, even though we’ve been raising them for years anyway. I should have half a dozen keets ready to donate to Highland Farms in 2 weeks or so to help their tick population. If the guinea’s I have now lay eggs, I’m going to try and start hatching them and selling guinea’s to folks around here. I also want to start getting some broiler hens in addition to our laying hens.
We should be doing another round of killing rabbits sometime soon, in which I’m going to try my hand at braining the skins for practice. I may even tan a set with eggs, because I’ve never done it before, but obviously it’s a method I should become familiar with simply because of the fact that we sell eggs.
A smokehouse might also be on the horizon in a year or two.
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