FaithManor Posted March 5, 2011 Share Posted March 5, 2011 A box of six Red Barred Rock Pullets!!! I have cheeps, egg laying cheeps to add to my precious show ducks. 25 years ago if you had asked me what I'd be doing now, I would have said, "Living in NYC, working as the rehearsal accompanist for something, maybe directing a pit orchestra or teaching music at a prep school, married to a none clingy guy who only cares about my career and stays out of my hair, and if I have a kid, there will be nannies!" Got married 22 years and 7 months ago, performed up until dd came along 19 years and 21 months ago, fell in love with my little girl and decided "no nanny", modestly performed here and there when time allowed, taught some music students, subbed a little school here and there, decided to homeschool her, got pregnant again, had three boys (not all at once), taught school for two years, homeschooled ever since, left city utilities and amenities behind to renovate a 110 year old church, keep six chickens, six ducks, two rabbits, one crazy, yet adorable not quite potty trained cocker spaniel puppy, one turtle, and currently have two bottle fed rescue lambs in my dining room. Oh, and there is still the horse at the boarding farm where I muck out after all kinds of critters and have an entirely spoiled llama (horse cookies) who follows me around the whole time begging! I can and dehydrate food. Well, so much for my well laid plans! These chicks don't get names. Everything else does and gets a retirement in their old age. These, along with the two spring pigs who will be showing up in April, do not. They have a purpose...lay eggs and when you are old, you will go to the Amish farm where he will process you and return you to me under cellophane for $2.25. You will be pressure cooked. I draw the line at butchering my own. Mr. Amish farmer will do them and as for the pigs, this is what God made meat processing plants for!!!!!! I don't go to college reunions. I dare not think about my old college chums reactions. Faith Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harriet Vane Posted March 5, 2011 Share Posted March 5, 2011 :thumbup1: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChristusG Posted March 5, 2011 Share Posted March 5, 2011 I have "heard" you mention your renovated home, the old church in other threads before. I would LOVE to see pics of this!! Do you have them on a blog or anything? I think that would be so neat! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peela Posted March 5, 2011 Share Posted March 5, 2011 Oh, I love my chooks too! I cant get my family to share my excitement though. It's amazing how life turns out, isn't it? I would never have guessed I would be married for 20 years and living in the burbs! Enjoy! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WistfulRidge Posted March 5, 2011 Share Posted March 5, 2011 So jealous... I want chickens, lol! Seriously, I spend a ridiculous amount of time drooling over chicks on hatchery websites and making notes about what I want even though I'm at least a year out from being allowed to actually order anything. What can I say, I like to plan in advance, lol. Enjoy them now while they're cute, eggs when their older, and as chicken soup and pot pie when they're older still! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
justamouse Posted March 5, 2011 Share Posted March 5, 2011 LOL! I wove cheeps! I ended up up learning how to butcher my own. The farmer I had called to ask told me *I* was a farmer now, and get to it. And so I did. As sad as it was, it was empowering knowing that if I *had* to, I could dress my own chicken. Best darned chicken I ever ate. Of course it had to sit in the freezer long enough for me to forget. :tongue_smilie: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FaithManor Posted March 5, 2011 Author Share Posted March 5, 2011 Justamouse, I think that my middle boy could do it. That child has natural born, farmer, mountain man, and survivalist blood. He's great with animals, but he loves dissecting and is not squeamish about dead things. But, poor DH, his family is scarred because of a story that his dad told them when the he and his sibs were little. Grandma H hated animals. Seriously, she was certain that all animals were disease riddled, germ infested, death traps. She was once at a relative's house and their dog touched a plate (with it's nose) that was on the table. Grandma inferiorated her sil by THROWING THE PLATE AWAY! From her perspective, if you didn't have an auto-clave then that plate could not be salvaged. Silly woman! So, growing up, dh's dad and uncles were never allowed a pet though they wanted one desperately. Grandpa H was a poor church planter for a small denomination. He worked as a shoe salesman, janitor, night guard, whatever he could find in each small hamlet that his church board sent him to because they didn't give him a salary...after all, in their eyes, until there was a congregation and offerings pouring in, he wasn't "earning his keep". So, they were always dirt poor. Literally, dirt poor. Many times they would have been 100% out of food if not for area farmers and hunters dropping off a side of pork or venison and a box of produce. Staple foods were oatmeal with nothing on it for breakfast or a little honey if they had some, homemade bread with a thin spread of bacon lard or whatever meat fat they had from dinner the night before, and then some sort of soup and homemade bread for supper. One time, grandpa took a job as a part-time night custodian at a sweetened condensed milk factory. In addition to his piddly salary, he was given a gallon of the s.c.milk each week. Grandma would thin it with water for the kids to have on their oatmeal and drink at meals. This was living high! Additionally, grandma H. had spent two years of her childhood having to come home every single day after school and she and her three brothers would help their parents slaughter chickens. Her folks had endured a couple of bad years on the family farm due to drought/crop failure and in exchange for room, board, and a tiny salary at a hotel in Bellaire, Mi. her parents became the main cooks for the hotel kitchen which served massive fried chicken dinners on Sundays. They had to butcher every day in order to have enough chickens for Sunday noon. SHE LEARNED TO DESPISE AND HATE ALL CHICKENS EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD, THE SMELL OF COOKING CHICKEN, ALL THINGS CHICKEN! This woman became a serious chicken hater. So, here comes the drama. At some point when grandma and grandpa's boys were all somewhere between the ages of late elementary to early middle school, a farmer gave them a chicken. Grandma had NO intention of butchering it and she didn't know what to do with it. Therefore, the boys adopted it as their family pet. They'd been given some dried corn and oats, but mostly the chicken ranged during all but the winter and then it was given a ration of food each day. The boys loved their chicken whom they named Beaky and Beaky in turn, learned to come when called, and would come to the front steps of the parsonage every day when it was time for the boys to come home from school. He was like a dog to them. Well, the inevitable happened. The cupboards became completely and utterly bare. Grandma had pulled together the last of her flour and baking powder with a tiny bit of lard and made two biscuits for each boy to take to school. But, once the morning oatmeal was gone, those biscuits were the end of the line. She and grandpa did not eat that morning or noon. It would be a while before he received any paycheck from his janitor job and the church, fledgling as it was, wasn't taking up offerings yet. Knowing she desperately needed to feed her boys something that night for supper and figuring with herbs she had in the house and some fiddlehead ferns she managed to find in the woods out back, if she killed that chicken, she'd have a meal for her family. So, the boys arrived home from school, looked all over frantically for Beaky, and to their horror, discovered that their desperate mother had roasted the family pet. Everyone cried at the dinner table that night. No one could eat it. They all ate the fiddlehead ferns and that was it. The chicken was scraped into the garbage. She swore she would never touch or eat a chicken ever again and she was true to her word. To the day she died at 102 years of age, she never, ever ate chicken again. As a matter of fact, the nursing home once tried to serve her mashed potatoes and chicken. Though the chicken hadn't even touched the other vegetables on the plate or at least as near as the staff could tell, she tossed the entire meal, plate and all, in the trash! Dh's dad was in his 40's before he ate chicken again for the first time. Until the day dh's dad died, mil never cooked chicken either! Now she cooks it all the time, LOL! Faith Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FaithManor Posted March 6, 2011 Author Share Posted March 6, 2011 Hi Carol, We are new to chicken keeping. I actually know more about ducks and especially bantum ducks than chickens. Buff Orpingtons were not an option at our local farm store. The barred rocks are pretty good egg layers and they had pre-s*xed them so we could purchase only pullets. Living in town, we did not want to get in dutch with our neighbors for having a rooster. So, the flock won't be self-replenishing. I see a lot of beautiful buffs at our 4-H poultry shows. They seem to be popular. Hopefully someone else will be of assistance. Our first attempt at having chickens was a set of three ISA browns. We got them for free as chicks but, we weren't far enough along in our renovation here to keep them and there were ordinances against them in our old town. So, we had to give them away when we realized it would be a delay of six months before we could move in here. Faith Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mothersweets Posted March 6, 2011 Share Posted March 6, 2011 Very cool! I love having chickens! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teachin'Mine Posted March 6, 2011 Share Posted March 6, 2011 Totally cool!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marylou Posted March 8, 2011 Share Posted March 8, 2011 I'm waiting for the post office to call to say that our 5 Silver-laced Wyandottes and 5 Golden Comets are in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlsdMama Posted March 8, 2011 Share Posted March 8, 2011 Well, so much for my well laid plans! Faith Thank God for best laid plans gone awry. :) I like the life God laid out for you much better than the one you laid out yourself. ;) BTW, we have three new little Welsummers, three Cuckoo Marans and two Red something that I cannot recall... They are in my house as well and I think I can smell them from my bedroom. Sigh. I hate chickens. But the three new rabbits have settled in nicely. And anything with fur (or WOOL) is so much more loveable than feathers, lol.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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