' Never Picture Perfect: Out of Hibernation....I hope

I feel like I've been hibernating over the past few months. Winter tends to do that to me. I think I'm more sensitive than the average bear (pun intended) when it comes to daylight hours and that winter-blah funk. Thankfully the daylight hours are on the rise.

The hens are laying again, after slacking off for a month or better. Egg sales are going well. Steve had someone from his building pop into his office and ask "So Steve, what exactly is it that you sell out of the back of your Jeep? It looks like egg cartons, but it couldn't be eggs, so what is it really?" So he had to explain we have hens and the whole "Egg Fairy" thing; he puts eggs in the cooler and sometime during the day the egg fairy comes, takes the eggs and leaves money. He has only ever seen one of the egg clients. Another of the clients rides his bike to pick up eggs, three dozen at a time, rain or shine snow and cold....must be good eggs!

Ben & Jerry are growing, adding about 10-12 inches since they came. They roam the place and have on occasion hopped up on the porch deck to see what exactly I am doing inside. They know when I holler "hear, hear, come boss" it means dinner is on.

Speaking of dinner, I got the hook-up when it comes to feed. I found out, compliments of Craigslist, that the local brewery has a bunch of spent grains that they have to haul to the dump each week. But alas, no longer. Now Ben, Jerry, Cheddar, Tigris, Gretel and the hens eat high off the hog compliments of the brewery. Last load I got was about 700 lbs of grain. They win because they don't have to pay to dump and we win because free feed is a always good thing.

I placed an order for 200 chicks. Woo hoo! I found a place that sells the days left overs for $45/200. So I scooped up an order of 200. They should arrive around February the 9th. I'll have a few schools hatching for me as well, so I'll probably end up with 250-300 chicks this year. Yikes! I'm going to raise them up till I can tell hens from roos and them butcher and sell the roos, keeping the hens to add to the egg business.

The goats have a new past time, rock climbing. At the north end of the property is a pretty big rock, I'm guessing 70 or 80 feet high. They like to climb that thing up and down back and forth. Scared the bejeebers out of me the first time I saw them up there. They even bedded down for the night up there once and I had to go retrieve them with a flashlight in one hand and a can of feed in the other to lure them back down. I've sold Tigris and Gretel, they go to their new home the first week in February. I'm really, really sad to see Gretel go, she is a very good-natured, affectionate, obedient doe, but I need to get out of goats.....they have a mind of their own and are just too stubborn and mischievous for me. The kids wont drink the milk, which was the purpose of getting them in the first place. Besides, I'm getting kinda tired of climbing that rock with a can of grains every day.

An incredibly beautiful sunrise

I'm an early to bed, early to rise sort of person. Gives me the opportunity to see the handiwork of God that those night owls in the family tend to miss.