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

[Bettacreek]

I'm zone 5. Our garden was supposed to be mostly peppers and tomatoes, all of which are supposed to be started 8 weeks early indoors. I should still have something of a harvest, I hope, though not as great as I should have had. I will probably have more work to do as well, keeping everyone alive on really hot and dry days.
Oh well, you live and learn I suppose. Next year, I definately want to do better and have more equipment for starting indoors (ie heat strips, which I already have one of, and grow lights and a greenhouse setup).

I hope that this lady shows up. She's supposed to take all of the chickens, some of the ducks and the quail. My brooder is entirely too full and I really need the cash to be honest. The quail I wouldn't mind keeping, they were originally supposed to be new breeders, but I can't handle the load of raising the rest of them. There are 12 ducklings and 9 chickens! That's more than what I have outside right now!

 

[Bettacreek]

I had to get pictures for my ads. I don't think that I'm charging an arm and a leg or anything. $6/pair of ducklings, $3/pair of chicks and $5/pair of buttons. The button pricing is a little high, but I haven't had a problem with selling them just yet. I'm selling under the feed store, under most auction finds, etc.
Anyways, here are some cute pictures:

 

[Bettacreek]

Well, today I called the feed mill and asked the wife if they'd take in ducklings and chicks for store credit. She said that she'd call me after talking to her husband (the owner). I then made another effort to sell them on the classifieds (one for the state of Pennsylvania and several regions of craigslist). I put the ducklings up at $5/pair and the chicks and buttons at $4/pair. I got a call asking how many ducklings there were (a dozen) and he asked how much I wanted for the group. I said $20, and he said he'd be up at 2pm! Hopefully this one doesn't fall through. I have about 10lbs of feed left, so I really needed this. It's $19.50 for 100lbs of feed, so I'll just make it after selling the ducklings. I have a little bit of money in my account from selling a fruit fly starter kit, but I have five packages of button quail eggs to mail out, and only two are paying for shipping. One package is sending money in the mail, and the other batch is one that's on ebay. It's listed at $.99, so I'll be lucky if I make $.75 off of them after fees. Oh well, that's better than nothing I suppose. I had a decent hatch of button quail yesterday. There were a dozen, but one ended up smooshed. The first batch of button eggs that I sent out hatched yesterday as well, 16 out of 18 eggs. I'm pretty stoked about that.
I'm still waiting on silkie eggs, hopefully they come on Monday. They were supposed to be sent out on the 11th. I hope the sender was just running late and didn't get them out on time vs them being in the mail for that long.
I'm getting excited about the cornish x. They're just over five weeks and are huge. They're really starting to slow down now, so they may be butchered at 6-7 weeks instead of waiting for 8 weeks to roll around. I'm really going to miss these guys!


ETA: the guy actually came for the ducklings. He apparantly has 50 mallards at his place for release and hunting. I wonder what he plans on doing with these ones, since only a few of them look like mallards. Anyways, the feed bill is covered for like the next two weeks now, piggy birds!

 

[Bettacreek]

Figured I should update this. Split up with the ex, and had to sell all of the birds, lost the garden, etc. But I'm much happier for it. Started enjoying the single life, wasn't interested in guys, but then met someone "by accident" through my cousin. Turns out he's a great guy, and we've been seeing each other for two months now. At this point, he's my best friend as well as my boyfriend. I've also reconnected with old friends. Going to be nursing school next July, since the classes will be in my county instead of my old county.
Bought a new bow (Diamond Razor Edge) and have my hunting tags (doe tag included!!!) I'm actually pretty good with it, if I may boast. Lol. Can't wait to butcher out and eat my OWN deer.
Otherwise, I've basically just been making soap. Not too much SS stuff that I've been doing.

Going to try to post some pictures...

Big catfish I caught with Jas and the boys.

6x6 Elk

Absolutely LOVE this picture. Jas and I both plan on blowing it up and framing it, lol. Nice 7x7 bull.

Same bull as above.

Same again

Smaller 3x3 running with the above bull.

The big bull again. This isn't a great photo, but it shows that it was close. I crap you not, he was ten feet away, this pic was taken through the back window of my car after he started getting sick of my pesty flash and walked off.

The goof Jas with his "monster bass". Nevermind the goofy outfit, he does dress much nicer than that, just not while fishing, lol. That's my oldest baby, walking like the hulk in the background, lol.

 

[Bettacreek]

There's a fair coming up next Saturday, so I've turned to hot process soap to get some ready for that fair. Hoping to make around 200 bars of soap for this fair, plus bath powders. Might add more things, just depends on what I can make within that time frame. A friend is going in on it with me, so I'll only have to worry about filling half a booth this time. Shouldn't be too bad.

Some of the HP soap in the crock pot...

 

[Bettacreek]

None of the soap could be used for the fair. Sold some raw sugar scrub and some fizzing bath powder. I had that and coffee scrub. I made it all the night before as a last ditch effort. My friend did very well, selling out of some of her stuff and selling a good bit of the rest of it.

I need to get cracking for the December fairs, and hopefully some November shows if we can find some that don't cost $160 per table, lol. I'm also going to stick with online sales, have a few people who want soaps, just gotta get some around. I have two loaves made (approximately 28 bars each) that should be ready for our October show. Unscented and Lilac. So the October show is going to be a total bomb too, but I'm taking yard sale stuff down, so it won't be too big of an issue this time. As I've said about twenty times by now, I need to get off my arse and get some more made for November and/or December. Hopefully I can get enough done to make gifts for extended family members as well.

Working with my bow. I need to take it in to get it checked out. It shoots to the left and the sights don't go any further. And I was blindly listening to the ex and ended up setting my top pin as my 20yd pin, so now I have to completely resight everything. Might as well wait until I get it checked out though. I can keep a group, so once I get it fixed, it won't take much to get it sighted in properly and be ready for hunting season. All except for hunting clothes. Jason is getting all of his hunting clothes and has some that he's giving me, so that'll be good. I have no problem wearing big clothes, just means I can stuff more layers on underneath, lol. I'll work on buying new hunting clothes some other year.

 

[lorihadams]

I just got a good pair of coveralls and those have lasted me forever! I can wear jeans or sweats or whatever underneath and stay pretty warm.

LOVE the pics! I can't believe you got that close to an elk! Bummer about the soap....sometimes stuff like that sneaks up on you and you just can't scramble to get everything done on time.

Glad things are going better for you in the personal area too!

 

[colowyo0809]

Howdy!
I just wanted to pop in and say O.M.G!
I would like to be you (except male )
I am very impressed with what you are doing, what your plans are, and that planner you have at the beginning of the thread.

 

[urban dreamer]

I love your giant bass! LOL!

 

[Bettacreek]

Howdy!
I just wanted to pop in and say O.M.G!
I would like to be you (except male )
I am very impressed with what you are doing, what your plans are, and that planner you have at the beginning of the thread.

Lol. You flatter me way too much. I'm just a lazy arse who doesn't do much of anything. :/


I bought two big packs of wash cloths to use as wipes for the boys. Still gotta do some research on cloth diapers. Just way too much for disposables when you have no income and no freaking help from their father. The wipes are working well, much cheaper and my youngest hasn't been developing his major diaper rashes that he used to always have when I was using wipies.

Figured out the issue with the bow. Idiot me was shooting with my dominant left eye instead of my right eye. Just have to keep working on training myself to use my right eye, which is more difficult for me than I would have thought, especially since I have no issues with right handed rifles...

Soaps are going decent. I am very limited on my scents, so that's holding me back a good bit. For the December show I have a batch of Orange Clove beer soap, Unscented goatmilk, pepper/spearmint poppy seed scrubby goatmilk (my absolute favorite), some lilac left over, eucalyptus and white tea and ginger. I'm in the middle of an oatmeal milk and honey batch now. I'm going to make another batch of lilac since I'm running low, plus maybe a batch of anise, an unscented poppy seed scrubby soap and probably another eucalyptus, since I'm not sure how well the other batch turned out (still pretty darn soft).
I am also going to try my hand at bath bombs again. I absolutely love my bath powder recipe, so I'm just going to use coconut oil to hold that recipe together. Probably won't make any more scrubs, they don't sell well at all. Umm... Also looking into facial masks. I have some bentonite clay, and have to do more research to see what else I would need and how much the start up would be to get into masks.
I'm hoping to get enough stuff around to be able to make little gift baskets. Won't be much yet, but as I build on my inventory, I should be able to improve on the baskets as well. The baskets themselves are the main issue there. I could hawk thrift stores, but I'd like to have the same baskets for each one. So who knows on that.

Hunting season is in. Small game and archery deer. Have been out but twice. Haven't even gotten a shot at anything. Jas has an extra 12g shotgun that I can use for small game though, and he's super excited to take me out for pheasant, lol.


Urban, Jas caught two about the same size. One he tried to use for bait, but never got any bites, so he threw it back, lol. We had some good chuckles over those two "monster bass".


Working on my ideas for x-mas too. Most of my family uses liquid soap. I can make it, but it's a total PITA, and sometimes seperates a bit at the bottom. Certainly not a super quality that I would want to dispense as gifts. :/ I plan on making jams for the parents... My friend sent a case over for me to try and they ate it within two weeks, so I know that jam will be put to good use as a present, lol. My brother will get apple butter, since he's obsessed with it. He and his wife do all the cool stuff, they make a lot of homemade stuff, so hopefully they'll appreciate homemade gifts. My sister and her boyfriend are an issue though. I have NO idea what to get/make them!!! Ugh. I HATE x-mas. My family ALL makes excellent money and most splurge over a thousand dollars each year. I can never return it and always feel like such a piece of crap because of it. I HATE it!!! At least for birthdays I can make a meal tailored to whoever's birthday it is, and that's my "present" to them, and they all understand. I mean, they all understand that I'm piss ass broke and can't afford x-mas too, but it's just terrible. At least for my birthday I can at least request that nobody does anything special (though my sister insists on going out for lunch or dinner for her and I).