Busy Times

We're not ones for resting on our laurels, I guess, but this has been a busy week in a series of busy weeks (months, years). All good stuff though.

Jane spent her birthday slaughtering a pig - a third of which is now butchered and in our freezer. We have a quarter of a cow coming soon too. Another steep learning curve was needed to put the theory of what we have been reading for years about dealing with intact dead animals - as ex-vegetarians neither of us have the innate knowledge of beef and pork cuts that many other folk probably have.

Our century farmhouse needs renovation and a good place to start presented itself when we saw an advert for grants available for energy efficiency work. You pay for a whole house audit, which looks at air tightness, insulation, heating systems, appliances - the whole thing. The consultant then produces a thorough report which highlights the work to be carried out, and the amount of grant assistance you can expect. You have 18 months to do the work, after which it is inspected. It was money well spent. We haven't had the report yet, but it sounds like there is a lot of scope for improving energy efficiency, and saving money. We are going to look at changing to a ground water heat pump with wood stove backup and do away with the oil furnace and water heater. More on this as we go along, I imagine.

Chickens 2 - Humans 3

We have always had our hens completely free-range before now, and put up with them shitting on the doorstep and hassling us when it gets close to food time...

This time, because we want to grow fruit and veg in a number of different locations, we thought we would try confining them to a moveable run using electric netting. $250 later we are one goal up on the day so far - we've fenced them 3 times, and they have found a way of escaping twice (so far... deep sigh).

It's the bloody leghorns - they are the sleek, fast, fit shock troops of the flock, first in to everything. First into the pot too at this rate... mutter, mutter.

Chickens bid for freedom

Chickens bid for freedom
Originally uploaded by rubhadubh

Trying out the blogging option direct from flickr - here are our hens, venturing out of the new chickenopolis for the first time!

First eggs!

Well after weeks of chasing leads on who might be willing to part with a few hens, we finally found someone who was desperate to get rid of loads! Yesterday we picked up 24 hens and 2 cockerels from Diane & Paul, fellow ACLers. 'Picked up' is an understatement. They were loose in the barn and it took a fair amount of cornering and artful diving across chicken shit covered bales of hay to get them all, but get them we did. And a lovely bunch they are too. Mostly young hybrid or white leghorn point-of-lay pullets bar one or two old timers. They seem to approve of their new quarters (a hastily constructed partial barn conversion) and just to prove it laid 10 beautiful eggs in their shiny new nestboxes. We'll be keeping them in for a few days till they get the idea that this is home, and till the snow melts a bit more, then we'll let them out and see how we get on. A couple from further south are coming to pick up 6 hens plus 1 cockerel (rooster!) on Sunday, so we will have fewer. But in the meantime we need to find egg buyers fast!

And as if that wasn't enough to celebrate, we passed our Nova Scotia drivers tests today, something that was quietly bothering both of us. Failing would have been inconvenient, not to mention highly embarrassing. However, all those sloppy habits developed over the last 25 years didn't put the 'driving enhancement officer' (not half as scary as the Uk examiners) off too much. Phew!