Introducing Donald and Daisy

Let's try this again. I was trying to correct my typos on the title and somehow this thing decided to publish itself.

We went to a hillbilly auction today. Scrufftiest bunch of people I've ever seen outside a biker bar - Grampa and I fit right in :) We bought a couple of ducks. Grampa suggested we name them Donald and Daisy. I like it!

We used to have a couple of ducks. One thought it was a chicken. We named it Daffy. He was lots of fun. So much so that Blue wanted to play with him. We lost almost all our small flock of chickens and the wanna be chicken when he was a pup. He knows not to play with them now. Some people says that once a dog has killed a chicken he will get the taste of it and you won't be able to stop them, but they are wrong. Blue only wanted to play and he's learned he can't do that.

Grampa made some connections yesterday that may open a market to restraunts in St. Louis. It looks very promising and we are excited! It just seems like God keeps opening up markets for us. Our only problem is meeting the demand.

Our first farmer's market this year will be in Burlington on Thursday, May 7th at the riverfront. Hope to see some of you there!

Oh ... and this has nothing to do with business ... I'm just so incredibly proud of Grampa! He's always been such a private, shy recluse, but he made the front page of the county newspaper with the speech he made at our little Tea Party protest in town. The editor gave me a link you should be able to use now and also when it goes into the archives.

I'm experimenting here. I added the link as an "enclosure link" We will see what happens. Hopefully you'll be able to find it and click. Anyway, the paper printed almost his entire speech word for word. I'll post it on the side bar if it doesn't.

Well, lot's to do!



God Bless You All!

Hanging Here and New Life

Yesterday I came across a hanging. Over the winter, a couple of birds took up residence in my stove vent. Their nest wasn't interfering with how the vent worked and since I tend to be a terribly lazy person at times, I had pity on them and decided to share the warmth of my house for the winter. Yesterday, I went to evict them because their nest was starting to drop materials on my stove. To my surprise there was a bird hanging by the neck from the vent by a thread! We had heard a lot of fighting out of them over the winter, but I didn't think it was that bad! I am a HORRIBLE person. I laughed.



Grampa has some gardens coming up. He's got beets, radishes, kolorabi, lettuce, spinach,onions and peas coming up. He's hoping he'll be able to get some potatoes, broccoli and tomato plants in this week. The farmer's market in Burlington will be starting May 7th. Hopefully we'll have some veggies ready to go by then.


Mutant chickens anyone? These are Cornish Crosses. I really don't like these birds. They are the ones raised in most commercial poultry opperations. They are bred for meat production at the expense of feather and bone. It's how they get those gigantic chicken breasts you see everywhere, but they never get all their feathers and they tend to have problems with broken legs. To me, they never really look healthy, but Farm & Home was practically giving them away and they were already 2 weeks old. They are ready to butcher between 8 and 12 weeks old so they were pretty big when we got them. They aren't going to be pastured, but we are giving them lots of hay. They don't seem to understand what to do with real vegetables like normal chickens do. We figured if we can't sell them, we will put them in our freezer.




We just got this shipment of baby chicks in this week. We have 100 Golden Comets, 25 Black Asterlops and 25 White Leghorns. These are all breeds that have a high egg production record. The Golden Comets and Black Asterlops have brown eggs and the White Leghorns have white egg. We're planning to alternate new chick purchases between high production and color.

Well, I'm off this morning to work for the US Census. I love this job! I get to tromp around the country side and see all the beautiful places God has created. I get lots of fresh air and exercize and ... I get to punch buttons!


God Bless You All! ~ Love, Grama Sue

Happy Easter!

I am so ready for Easter! The Kearns kids came and decorated for me last week and then DH brought this little girl in a couple of days ago! I've named her Shorty. I love to call kids shorty cause they almost always grow taller than me, but this one will always be shorter than me!

Remember that God loved you so much that He gave His only begotten Son for you! Jesus is the Lamb that was sacrificed for your sin!

Happy Resurrection Day!

Goose Eggs and Garden

Spring is springing! At least for a few days! The robins have invaded our yard in earnest and the temps have been above freezing for a few days. That will probably change of course. It's the Midwest you know!

Grampa has been busy planting lettuce, onions, kale, spinach, peas and radishes. Our gardens are set up so we can put a green house over each one, but we are missing the tubing we need to do this so we just put plastic on the soil for now.


Our biggest problem is keeping the chickens from scratching up all the seed. They love to scratch around in the loose dirt and find all the goodies we don't want them to find. We are trying to figure out how to fence the gardens in this year since we haven't had much luck fencing the chickens in the pasture.


We were discussing the noise the guinea fowl make the other day. Grampa hates it. I pointed out that the sheep are actually louder. He told me the sheep make money. He doesn't know how to make money with guineas. He was telling me he didn't want to listen to anything that didn't make him money. "Shoot," he exclaimed (with a great big mischievous grin), "I wouldn't even keep you around if I didn't think you were worth something. You make me dinner every now and then (and then he said some other things that can't be repeated in polite company)" Don't worry, I did hit him! Good thing I know he loves me. I just have to apologize to my daughters-in-love. Devan and Tristina, it's genetic. When your husbands are stupid, just take into account where they come from ;)



So ... guinea fowl anyone? Grampa says he will sell them at the Burlington Pigeon Swap if we've still got them by then.

I have nearly 50 hand-blown goose eggs ready to decorate and available for Easter. We have been getting 2 ever other day so I will have a few more by Easter. They have just one small hole on the large end. There are several simple crafts you can do with your kids that are really pretty.


Of course you've seen my golden goose eggs - very simple, just spray paint them gold and put them in a basket! I have golden goose eggs and smaller "nest eggs" in this basket.



Last night I used a glue gun to attach some sparkly cording to these eggs and then spray painted them with glitter spray. I've also rolled eggs in glue and then in glitter for a stronger sparkle effect.


Some sites that look interesting are:

http://www.allfreecrafts.com/easter/ribbon-eggs.shtml

http://freestuff4kids.net/2008/03/06/13-creative-ways-to-dye-and-decorate-easter-eggs/

http://www.ehow.com/how_2163885_decorate-easter-eggs-tissue-paper.html

http://crafts.kaboose.com/oil-and-food-coloring-marbled-eggs.html

I've got some chicken eggs that I've blown too. Here's a picture of them with a goose egg.


I don't have to many chicken eggs blown and on hand, but it wouldn't take long to get a batch together! Thought I'd take the biggest and the littlest chicken egg in this picture and put them beside a tape measure so you can get an idea of their sizes. The little one is a pullet egg ( from a hen that has just started laying). We should be getting lots of these in browns, blues and greens soon. The large one was a double yolker. They are fairly rare.


This next picture is of a typical sized chicken egg next to a goose egg.


Goose eggs are not only bigger than chicken eggs, they are also much thicker. They still break, but not as easily. This makes them easier to work with for crafts.


If you are interested they are 75 cents each plus shipping. Call or e-mail to order.

I'm taking a goose egg pie to a sick friend this afternoon.

Recipe:

2 goose eggs (or 4 chicken eggs)
1/4 cup milk
1/8 tsp natural sea salt
1/8 tsp pepper
1/4 cup diced onion
1/4 cup diced ham or bacon
1/8 tsp garlic
1/8 tsp chili pepper
1 cup grated cheese

Whip eggs and milk until well mixed. Add all remaining ingredients except 1/2 cup cheese.
Pour into oiled pie plate. Refrigerate for at least 24 hours. Then cook at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until firm. Add the remaining 1/2 cup cheese to the top about 5 minutes before it is done.

This recipe freezes well. Just put the uncooked mixture on a level place in the freezer. Then thaw in refrigerator before cooking.

God Bless You All! ~Grama Sue

Spring is teasing us! We have a few days of warm temps then we plunge back down! All the sheep but 3 have lambed. We have 24 little ones so far!



The geese are loving this weather and giving us eggs. I have a supply of blown goose eggs if anyone is interested! $0.75 each plus shipping.


Our chickens have gone off strike status. We are getting around 20 dozen a week now. We are also getting a few pullet eggs from the chicks we bought last fall. By next month we should have 40 to 50 dozen a week. Still not enough to fill the orders we have, but getting closer. We have ordered another 150 chicks, but it will be late October before they start laying.


I wanted to show you all some of the variety we have in egg colors. When I took them outside so I could get a good picture this little hen was very interested!



She seemed to be asking, "What are you doing with my eggs?"



I bred some blue roosters to my brown egg layers last year. I am so pleased with the khaki color that resulted! It is fitting for a mom that has 2 kids who are full time military! If you look carefully, the egg on the upper right is two toned. We've been getting one like this almost every day.

I have updated my Beyond the Paycheck intro on the right side of the blog website. The first two paragraphs are the same, but I changed the end. If you get this by e-mail and would like to check it out you'll have to go to the website.

I'm thinking I probably ought to do this monthly during the winter. Come summer though, I hope to have at least a menu of what we available on a weekly basis so local folks can order home delivery.

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue

State of the Projects Report

Here's the state of the projects report! We haven't reached my goal of 30 by a long shot, but we have found some things that work and some that haven't.

Plans for next year:
1. I'm planning to offer home delivery of produce and eggs.
2. We plan to continue to going to farmer's markets.
3. We'd like to establish our own roadside stand.
4. I'm exploring the idea of providing a welcome service for this area.

We'd like to produce pastured turkeys, chickens and rabbits for meat sales, but we haven't quite figured out the logistics of pasture areas and butchering yet. We hope to do a little of this for ourselves this year just to get a feel for it. Maybe next year we'll offer some for sale.

We are also very interested in breeding chickens for hatching eggs. We have to figure out how to keep them seperate in order to do this. We can't keep the chickens we have in the pasture right now. They roam the yard, the garden and the surrounding fields at will right now. Once we figure out how to contain them, maybe we can work on breeding.



1.The garage sale

Bit the dust. We have such a big demand for eggs. We had to have more room for chickens. So now the all the feed and equipment is in the garage instead of in the feed shed.




2.Pastured raised eggs

Wow! There is a huge market for these out there! Hy-Vee in Macomb wants 60 dozen a week, Ducks in Nauvoo goes through 3-7 doz a week, we can sell 15 to 20 dozen a week at farmer's markets and we have several people and offices that have expressed an interest in having eggs delivered. We've only just begun to tap the tip of this iceburg. Naturally, a great deal of our efforts are being focused here. We have ordered 125 more chicks to fill the feed shed with.




3.Sheep

Hair sheep are incredibly good mamas. It has been so cold and they are popping out babies with no problems. But the chickens are making us more money. We plan to downsize the herd to only 4 or 5 ewes and a ram.

4.Cows

Don't have any at the moment, but Grampa would really love to have a milk cow or two. We have bought bottle calves to raise and sell for several years, but we're not sure we'll be able to do that this year. Chickens are going to be top priority! Grampa says he wants to be the chicken king of Hancock county first. To be truthful, I think he probably already is. There just aren't many egg producers around here.

5.Egg noodles

We are working on our taxes. It is amazing, but we sold almost as many dollars worth of noodles as we did eggs last year. I've managed to start making some noodles for the markets this year. I could have sold more, but didn't have the time to make them.

6.Natural and recycled crafts and craft supplies

My golden goose eggs and blown eggs were a hit. Not as big a hit as the noodles, but we'll be doing this again.





7.Great Pyrenees dogs

Haven't seen Pinky for quite some time. She disappeared at the same time our mutt came home with a huge wound on his back. A couple of weeks later the cat came home with a very similar wound. We really loved this breed though. We would still like to breed these dogs, but we'll have to wait for a while.




8.Honey bees

It is amazing, but we still have one hive alive after the ice storms. Grampa had a bad reaction after being stung several times. I won't let him work the hives anymore. I'm not crazy about taking care of them myself. I'll do what needs to be done to utilize the 4 hives we have, but this won't be a big money maker for us.

9.Avon

Have just started to push this. I've made the 30% level. I'd like to get to the Unit Leader minimum and then focus on recruiting.

10.Farm crops from the 10 acres we own with our son

Fairly good year, considering the fact that the company that was supposed to spray the weeds was really late getting it done. We will be converting a couple of acres of it to sweet corn this year.

11.Garden produce

Didn't produce nearly enough! Trying to figure out how to do more this year.

12. Affiliate marketing

No income yet, but I haven't given up hope. Just got to figure this one out. Remember, you can help me out by ordering your vitamins through the ad on the right column of my blog!

13. Building low maintenance gardens

No time! Maybe someday.



Here's a picture of the latest species addition to our farm, guinea fowl. What are we going to do with them? I have no clue! They were given to us with a bunch of chickens.



God Bless You All!

~ Grama Sue

Happy New Year

Granddaughters! They had so much fun decorating Grampa. We really enjoyed having them here last weekend. I'm mostly OK with not having kids in the house all the time, but when they come to visit, I realize how much I miss them.

Happy New Year! My prayer is that all of you are blessed with all the blessings has in mind for you in 2009! Oh yeah, I know I'm late (seems to be a common theme in this blog). I've been having some problems with my camera software and I promised I'd post a picture of our egg cartons. So here it is, by request of those those who live so far away that they can't buy Grama Sue's Rainbow eggs:

I've also had problem with transferring this from my MS Word program to Blogger. Anyone else experiencing problems? It won't let me copy so I'm having to retype everything.

Next time I'll try t give a "State of the Projects" report. You wouldn't know it by our bank accounts, but we've had a very good year. We've accomplished a lot and learned volumes!

Thank You LORD for:

My teeth!

Sometimes God does miracles - I've experienced a few - but most of the time He answers our prayers with solutions.

Several years ago, my teeth were so bad I was resigned to getting false teeth. My gums had been bleeding since I was 16 and my teeth were brown, terribly porous and falling apart. I didn't want to put new teeth on a credit card. Grampa would be getting a bonus that would be big enough to cover the bill in a couple of months, so I was determined to wait. In desperation I started to do 2 things. I swabed them with tea tree oil and started taking coral calcium.

Within a month, the gum infection cleared up and my teeth grew much stronger and whiter. So much so that I didn't have to get false teeth. Whenever I've tried to get away from either of these two treatments the problems return, but whenever I go back to them my teeth and gums heal up.

Last year, I switched to natural sea salt and Ester C instead of regular C. The Ester C has a lot of calcium and the natural sea salt has trace minerals so I thought there was no need for the coral calcium.

A couple of months ago I realized my teeth were getting very dark and porous again and I was having a lot of pain too. I decided to go back on the coral calcium and my teeth are almost back to normal again!

If you are interested in tea tree oil and coral calcium, two warnings!

Tea tree oil tastes NASTY!!! But you can get used to it.

And most vitamins and herbal supplements are made in China. My brand, Puritian's Pride is made in the USA. If you click on the ad in the right column on my blog ( If you suscribe to this by e-mail, you'll have to go to the website.) and order, you will help me out too!

Uggh! For some reason I can't seem to get this all into one font. Sorry about that!

God Bless You All!