Well, the big egg production, for which I have planned since buying chicks in the spring, has started and I'm very quickly running out of egg cartons, though I have collected from folks all year. This means buying some misprinted cartons off eggcartons.com.
I had a half a box of the grey paper ones(about 100) last year that I donated to the Christian Assistance Network because I didn't think I would be getting all these chickens!
I'm going to start seriously marking down each day's egg count on the calendar~ if I can remember, keeping all the money received from egg sales and doing a profit/loss comparison at the end of the year. I've saved all my feed bill receipts in a file.
My big ticket item this year is a refrigerator....mine is so old in this house that the insulation is showing through the door where the plastic falls off each time I clean it. It is the tiniest fridge I've ever seen in a house and, when I got here, had no shelves left on the door and the freezer door is always frosted shut.
Its very old, so I'm going to relegate it to the garage where it will be put to use storing eggs for sale on the honor system. I will mount a mailbox to the side of the garage with a lock on it and folks will just put the money in there and take the eggs.
I'll have to make a sign for the roadside. Fortunately, my dumpster diving skills yielded a real pretty rooster (I know, wrong sex
) that looks very antique. It is part of a set of lifesized nativity scene animals that I scavenged from the local nursing home trash. You know the kind that looks to be decoupaged onto plywood and covered with a very thick, yellowing layer of varnish? Maybe circa 1950s or 60s. I think I will incorporate him into my signage as an eye catcher.
