Bettacreek - New home? Plus a pic of some of the ladies here

[Bettacreek]

I'm changing my intro post again. I'm just going to post kind of a summary list of all the things I produce here at home.

Food stuff...
Working on a self sustained flock of cornish cross
Have a flock of laying hens for eggs
Working on a small flock of turkeys
Have a small group of pekin ducks for eggs and meat
Working on a group of muscovy ducks for eggs and meat
Not sustainable, but I purchased a lamb for butcher
Hunting, hoping to get out there again this year and tag out
Garden... Well, that's a work in progress, halted until spring. :/

Household Garble...
Make my own soap (bath soap, laundry soap, dish soap, hand soap)
Make my own household cleaner (I just dilute whatever bar of soap I have on hand or want to smell that day and use that to scrub the floors/counters)

Kitchen who-hah...
I try to bake my own breads (though I'm lazy and often buy store bread)
Pizza is homemade (well, the sauce and cheese is not, but whatever)
I make my own Hershey's chocolate syrup (typically with banana flavoring, OHHH so good!)
I make my own noodles in certain dishes (ham pot pie mainly, store noodles are simply inexcusable for pot pie!)


Ok, well, that was a pretty short list, wasn't it? Pathetic, lol. I'll add to it as I remember certain things, and as I add things to my homemade list.

 

[framing fowl]

90. Favorite sport to watch? Umm, in real life, just about anything. I just like the crowd.

I love that! I like listening to the sports broadcasts on the radio... I have no idea what is happening but you know when someone did something good!

 

[abifae]

*

 

[Bettacreek]

I actually stole the introduction! A few people have it on, but I personally stole Justusnak's. Some of our answers were the same (of course, that could simply be because Kevin Costner is simply amazing), and some were similar, however, I absolutely died laughing when I read her answer to #40...

40. Do you sleep with a stuffed animal? Only when hubby eats right before bed!

*Edited because drinking beer does not improve spelling*

 

[Bettacreek]

I'm super excited for right now. I finally got a female rabbit. She's a little harlequin rex doe, and will be bred with my dutch buck. I'm hoping to get a rex buck eventually, but for now, the dutch will do. Once I start butchering, I plan to keep the hides and eventually make mosaic blankets. Rex hides will make such beautiful blankets.
I also ordered quail eggs. I ordered some Euro/German button quail, but I'm not sure when they'll be shipped. Mark (gentleman who I purchased them from) said that he'd try to give me more pied eggs than the other varieties. I plan to keep only pied, unless I get a poor hatch or a low percent of pied chicks. Eventually, I plan to sell anything other than pied or splash, once breeding really gets going. I also ordered coturnix eggs. 20 of them. They're supposed to get to 14oz, so they'll be better meat birds than the last "jumbos" that I had (weighed in at 7ish ounces on average). I'm planning on having two sets of coturnix, one that will be my breeding pen, and one with laying hens. I just can't stomach eating "roo juice".

 

[Bettacreek]

Looks like after my quail are hatched, I'll also be hatching out about 60 pheasant eggs. They won't be for us to raise, but somebody at the BF's work wants me to hatch them for him. I contacted GQF and they're sending out a new turner motor asap. The incubator/turner was all under warranty, but it was close! I bought it on February 13th, 2009!
Anyways, I may see if I can bargain my way into getting two of the pheasant chicks for myself. Since I don't have the space here to breed them, I'll just butcher them out.

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

hey! this is great - thanks for sharing... and so.. you're a fishing pole thief??

is there a wanted poster of you down at the bait-n-tackle shop?!?!

 

[Bettacreek]

Lol. I actually "stole" it from walmart. I had it in the cart and the register lady and I were trying to figure something else out (I cannot even remember what it was) and I ended up walking out of there without paying for it. I felt like such an arse.

 

[Bettacreek]

So, I finally decided today that we will definately be ordering a snowball tree and a weeping mulberry tree with the tax returns. While we could put that $100ish towards a bill, I feel it would be better spent on the trees. The snowball tree won't really do us any good financially, but, it is more of a moral booster for the boyfriend. The mulberry tree will serve a few purposes. The most obvious one would be the mulberries that can be turned into jams, pies, etc. I hope to be able to trade the fruits/jams for other items. Second is that it will be a fun, natural play item for the kids (heck, they look so neat, even I want to go play in one! Third, silkworms will only eat mulberry leaves. I plan to raise silkworms for their silk and to supplement feed the quail, so I either need a tree/bush or I have to buy the powdered chow. My choice is obvious. I can then also sell the silkworms, the raw silk and even make my own powdered chow for others who wish to raise silkworms. I'm super excited to be getting this tree, it's just so useful that it's not even funny!

 

[Bettacreek]

Forgot to add that I've also finally started my mealworm culture and a flour beetle culture. The flour beetles will be good for my button quail and any young coturnix. They're also to be a main staple for the newts. The mealworms, same thing. The small ones will be used for smaller birds and newts, the larger ones will either be fed to the coturnix or traded/sold. I'm hoping to learn to roast/preserve them for bird feeding purposes.