The Word-Nerd’s Homestead – Mid-Winter 2022: Blog Edition #1

Howdy, Happy Readers!

Mid-Winter is here, but SPRING IS COMING!

Beauregard Lee, the Georgia Groundhog (*not a licensed meteorologist) apparently didn’t see his shadow this year, so maybe an early spring? One can hope!

The Homestead blogs have been on hiatus for a while now for a bunch of reasons…

1. Work
2. Holidays
3. My Battle with the Coof
4. Lack of daylight hours
5. Cold Weather

The ‘real job’ opportunity started back up for me in late November. That made it hard to have any time to do anything with the homestead other than maintenance. Then, we had Christmas and immediately after, I caught Omicron (pretty sure it was anyway) and all bets were off for a while. Simultaneously, I had a 2nd batch chicken somehow get back into the grow out pen with the little ones and give them a big chicken virus. I lost 9 of the little ones over the course of a week.

Then, when I figured the rest were going to make it, I tried to integrate them with the rest of the flock. Two days later the big chickens (with Laverne the guinea as instigator) killed one and plucked the tail off another. I had to do some emergency rearrangements, which included putting the Wyandottes in with the ducks and the littles back in the grow-out pen until they are big enough to fight back. This means I will now have to finish out the breeder pen section soon, or be prepared to sort Wyandotte eggs from Duck eggs (not too hard, but ducks are messy on the eggs!)

Anyway, more work in Jan. and the lack of daylight in the afternoon combined with rain/snow and otherwise cold weather just made for very little outside activity. Although I did fix some containment issues around the fence line where some of my more ornery hens kept breaking out… but never in at time to go to roost thus causing me to have to chase them! I also threw up some wire on top of the pen on the low side where they were hopping up and over (1st pic below). So far, they have not escaped anymore when I have them in the wider run.

The only real ‘progress’ I made was securing the outside of the duck house in preparation for splitting the Blue Swedish from the Welsh Harleys for breeding purposes. I got the 2nd duck pool repaired (I bought a new heat gun! New Toys! Yeah!), but I still have to add a drain plug and dig a ditch for it. That’s hard as hell to do when the ground is frozen solid!

I am already getting about 10 eggs a day from the girls, so I have to work on a plan of attack on how to sell some of those to locals. I also plan to sell some as hatching eggs, but I have to research the right way to ship them safely. Then there will be hatching of specific breeds of chickens and ducks for reselling as well.

So, yeah, I have plans in the works, but earning real money is always priority. Bird feed is expensive and I can’t grow it myself, so Work First, Homestead Second.

Anyway, have a look at some of the homestead pics below.

That’s it for now. I’ll post more Homestead Updates if anything worthwhile gets done! Thanks for reading the blog! Next time will probably be a book review if I find some time to actually read! Or, it might be a Corner Scribblers flash fiction release! Whee!!!

Happy Reading, Prepping & Homesteading!

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