The cat, eggs, 13k steps of piddling, cleaning up, lost items, Mission’s Conference

It appears we have another feline visitor at the farm. Mama is trying to encourage the cat to hang around by putting out food for her/him. We have not gotten close enough to tell if the cat is male or female, but I do know it is fast as lightening. Yesterday evening, as I was feeding the goats on the East side of the property, the dogs chased the cat up a tree behind the shop. When I approached the tree to take a photo of the cat, it leapt from the tree and shot to the back of the property – Gemma within inches of gaining hold of the fleeing animal. I was not entirely certain that the cat actually made it to a safe position, but Gemma did not seem to complete her attack. We will know soon enough if the cat still lives, but I have high hopes it beat out our vigilant guardians in its hasty flight yesterday.

Mama and I checked the eggs in our incubators twice this weekend. In one incubator we placed the eggs Mama took from the Banty hens that had been diligently sitting on those eggs for a couple weeks already. Of the original twenty we collected, we had to discard four in our initial candling of those eggs. That left sixteen, however as I did a little bit of studying about what to recognize in candling the eggs, we looked once more and discarded another two eggs. That leaves us with fourteen. Our dilemma is that we have no clear idea of when to expect those eggs to hatch since we have no idea when the hens laid or began sitting on any of those eggs. So, my proposal to Mama was that we remove the egg turner from that incubator Thursday morning when we had planned to remove the egg turner from the incubator with the six duck eggs. Those eggs were candled this weekend and we pared down the count to six from the nine we started with. We will not count our ducks or chickens before they hatch, but we have made our best attempt to ensure we have viable eggs remaining to be tended to.

When these hatchlings are out of the eggs and out of the incubator, we will quickly run out of spaces to house the newcomers. What is fun is that all these hatchlings will have come from our little farm. At this point we must stop hatching out either chickens or ducks because we are getting overloaded. However, I have been setting aside quail eggs to be incubated once the larger incubator is available. My plan is to place thirty-eight of the eggs I have saved – they are in the refrigerator awaiting their turn in the incubator – and see how many successfully hatch. With all that do hatch I plan to dress out the little birds once they are sufficiently grown. We certainly do not need any additional quail. The twelve we currently have are giving us between six and ten eggs per day. Plenty for pickling or eating hard boiled.

Meanwhile, Mama is getting between twenty and twenty-four eggs per day from her chickens and four to six eggs per day from the Banty chickens – when they decide not to sit on them. More than she has a market for at this time. Plus, we are getting five to eight eggs per day from the ducks. We are flush with all types of eggs. An interesting note is that one of the Cayuga ducks is laying a black egg. It is probably one of our newest additions to the pen, but it has been interesting to see the very dark egg among the other white eggs.

Saturday, I registered over 13 thousand steps as I piddled around the farm. Most of my efforts were focused on cleaning up and reorganizing the garage and the shop. I have been looking for weeks for two items that have been either taken from the farm, been thrown away, or just placed somewhere I have not yet looked – as impossible as that seems. To date, although I have found a lot of other things I was not seeking, I have not found either of the items I was trying to locate. It is frustrating to have so completely misplaced them. I am beginning to hope that they have found a different home by some means – i.e., Norman claimed ownership of them – or they were thrown out. That happens with frightening regularity as Grandma takes it upon herself to “straighten things up” in the kitchen or dining area. The issue is that she does not remember when she helps us out in her own compulsive way.

On the bright side, in looking so urgently for the lost items, I have cleaned up, straightened up, reorganized and thrown out items from multiple areas in both the garage and the shop. Unfortunately, there is a lot left to discard to gain the image I want in for final setting of the over abundance of things we plan to keep. All this with the express goal of greatly limiting what we even consider placing in the storage container we are planning to buy. That space is to be reserved for Mama’s plethora of craft items which currently occupy large spaces in Grandma and Grandpa’s bedroom, one side of the living room, a massive number of totes in the garage and well house and a portion of our bedroom. The two wardrobes, the dressers, the tables and totes will not be enough to fill a forty-foot container but it will make the container look comfortably full once the furniture items and shelves are placed inside it. Mama is really looking forward to getting the container to the farm but the seller we are dealing with has not been easy to deal with so far.

Our Mission’s Conference started Sunday. The preaching has been fantastic! We will be eating at the church with the missionaries each evening tonight through Wednesday night. It is a busy, difficult schedule we have to keep to attend all the services, but we will manage.

It is always worth the extra effort.