What I've Been Doing
Oct. 10th, 2009 11:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
farlaSo mostly, I've been busy with productive but uninteresting things you aren't interested in.
Aside from that, there's been much chicken-related work. Three of the chickens turned out to be roosters, leaving us with one extremely codependent hen. At the farm, we asked if we could take a hen, but the person in charge wasn't there. Months later, after we've bought more eggs and raised them up, she finally gets back and says of course we can have a hen.
New chickies are easter eggers, or mutts that may lay blue eggs. There's Red, who's more of an orange color. There's Chubby Cheeks, who has a chipmonk face. And there's Sir Whiny, who we think is male due to his comb, size, and bossiness. He's at the bottom of the pecking order, presumably because he kept trying to do male dominance posturing at the girls. Chubby Cheeks has an araucana head, so she might be a he as well. They're actually bitchier than Fluffles, constantly panicking and jumping around. (The two girls aren't too bad, but Sir Whiny will start screaming bloody murder at the least thing, and then the whole group is in a panic.)When I first started taking them out this was nice because it meant I didn't need to worry about them getting attacked by a cat while I wasn't looking, but it gets annoying when you have to chase them around. Also, if you grab one and wait for it to make distress peeps, the other two will run over, which means I have to really worry about the cat getting one of them. They're great foragers, though.
They're three months old, but still too small to hang out with Fluffles. They're much slower maturing in terms of egg production, and it seems that covers just regular growing as well as egg laying. One of them has just started making adult sounds occasionally, but they're basically still peeping.
Speaking of which, eggs! They're still pullet eggs, which means they're quite mall, although about once a week or so she'll lay one that's the same size as a store one, which so far has always been double yolked. Fluffles has laid one a day since she turned four months old. Cooking with them is a bit troublesome, although part of that may be that I'm not converting it right - last time I used three pullet eggs to one, as the internets advised, but it seems that I should have used two. But also, the cake batter ended up grainy, kind of like I was using fresher eggs than the recipe expected and so overbeat them when following the directions. They taste good - much like my strawberries, the best description is "They taste like eggs, only actually tasting like them." I want to try to make a meringue or something where fresh eggs is actually helpful.
Speaking of strawberries, chickens eat them! (And thus, Fluffles was banished from the garden...) And anything else I feed them. It's actually really nice because growing stuff like tomatoes means you'll always have some that go bad or get damaged or become slugridden, and it always seems like such a waste to throw it away. But the chickens love it. A neighbor has a pear tree for some reason that always drops all its fruit in the street, and we've been collecting that too and feeding it to the chickens.
The human food aspect of the garden didn't go so well. We basically didn't have summer this year. It finally managed to hit early June sometime around late August, and now we're having a slightly warmer than usual fall. What really bothers me about this is it's not even like the weather's gotten variable, it's that every year, summer is a week or two later than last year.
Oh, and there's this jackass hawk who keeps trying to kill Fluffles, so we had to stop letting her run around in the yard and make an enclosed run for her using plastic netting. Plus, today a random terrier showed up. (It ran off when I approached, and I lost track of it, so I'm not sure what's up with that.)
When I'm not hanging out with chickens, I've been making my brother play Exalted, because I want him to have hobbies other than playing fangames over and over and something that involves actual human interaction is a huge step up. We're all kind of creeped out by his test scores, as well as his general inability to follow conversations (The UN? That's the United Kingdoms, right?) due to having absolutely no real world knowledge. He does occasionally read books, but they're things like the Warriors series, you know, with the cats named Sparklepaws and stuff. And Eragon.
I've also been listening to audiobooks, but my hate for any one of them would be a post in itself. Suffice it to say fantasy writers, in addition to sucking, are all a bunch of fascist psychopaths. Who wouldn't recognize medieval times if it smacked them with a sword. And are currently in a three way competition to see which they can manage to fail most at - sociology/history, biology, or psychology.
Aside from that, there's been much chicken-related work. Three of the chickens turned out to be roosters, leaving us with one extremely codependent hen. At the farm, we asked if we could take a hen, but the person in charge wasn't there. Months later, after we've bought more eggs and raised them up, she finally gets back and says of course we can have a hen.
New chickies are easter eggers, or mutts that may lay blue eggs. There's Red, who's more of an orange color. There's Chubby Cheeks, who has a chipmonk face. And there's Sir Whiny, who we think is male due to his comb, size, and bossiness. He's at the bottom of the pecking order, presumably because he kept trying to do male dominance posturing at the girls. Chubby Cheeks has an araucana head, so she might be a he as well. They're actually bitchier than Fluffles, constantly panicking and jumping around. (The two girls aren't too bad, but Sir Whiny will start screaming bloody murder at the least thing, and then the whole group is in a panic.)When I first started taking them out this was nice because it meant I didn't need to worry about them getting attacked by a cat while I wasn't looking, but it gets annoying when you have to chase them around. Also, if you grab one and wait for it to make distress peeps, the other two will run over, which means I have to really worry about the cat getting one of them. They're great foragers, though.
They're three months old, but still too small to hang out with Fluffles. They're much slower maturing in terms of egg production, and it seems that covers just regular growing as well as egg laying. One of them has just started making adult sounds occasionally, but they're basically still peeping.
Speaking of which, eggs! They're still pullet eggs, which means they're quite mall, although about once a week or so she'll lay one that's the same size as a store one, which so far has always been double yolked. Fluffles has laid one a day since she turned four months old. Cooking with them is a bit troublesome, although part of that may be that I'm not converting it right - last time I used three pullet eggs to one, as the internets advised, but it seems that I should have used two. But also, the cake batter ended up grainy, kind of like I was using fresher eggs than the recipe expected and so overbeat them when following the directions. They taste good - much like my strawberries, the best description is "They taste like eggs, only actually tasting like them." I want to try to make a meringue or something where fresh eggs is actually helpful.
Speaking of strawberries, chickens eat them! (And thus, Fluffles was banished from the garden...) And anything else I feed them. It's actually really nice because growing stuff like tomatoes means you'll always have some that go bad or get damaged or become slugridden, and it always seems like such a waste to throw it away. But the chickens love it. A neighbor has a pear tree for some reason that always drops all its fruit in the street, and we've been collecting that too and feeding it to the chickens.
The human food aspect of the garden didn't go so well. We basically didn't have summer this year. It finally managed to hit early June sometime around late August, and now we're having a slightly warmer than usual fall. What really bothers me about this is it's not even like the weather's gotten variable, it's that every year, summer is a week or two later than last year.
Oh, and there's this jackass hawk who keeps trying to kill Fluffles, so we had to stop letting her run around in the yard and make an enclosed run for her using plastic netting. Plus, today a random terrier showed up. (It ran off when I approached, and I lost track of it, so I'm not sure what's up with that.)
When I'm not hanging out with chickens, I've been making my brother play Exalted, because I want him to have hobbies other than playing fangames over and over and something that involves actual human interaction is a huge step up. We're all kind of creeped out by his test scores, as well as his general inability to follow conversations (The UN? That's the United Kingdoms, right?) due to having absolutely no real world knowledge. He does occasionally read books, but they're things like the Warriors series, you know, with the cats named Sparklepaws and stuff. And Eragon.
I've also been listening to audiobooks, but my hate for any one of them would be a post in itself. Suffice it to say fantasy writers, in addition to sucking, are all a bunch of fascist psychopaths. Who wouldn't recognize medieval times if it smacked them with a sword. And are currently in a three way competition to see which they can manage to fail most at - sociology/history, biology, or psychology.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-10 06:59 pm (UTC)I'M INTERESTEDDDDDD
Also, CHIKKINS!!!!1 <3 In Calgary there's a big fight going on because you're not allowed to keep "livestock" in the city limits, but several people keep them and they're really not a huge thing.
See if your brother will read His Majesty's Dragon, since it's a dragon-riding book that doesn't suck and has some historical background, and The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, since it's a talking-animals book that doesn't suck. Whee!
no subject
Date: 2009-10-10 07:17 pm (UTC)That's kind of like here. We're not entirely sure if we're allowed to have chickens (closest we could find was that you have to ask your neighbors for permission to have livestock, which we didn't do because we didn't want them to know they had options). The whole thing seems weird - I mean, you can keep a giant dog but not a mini pig? And two dozen rabbits are pets but one chicken isn't? It seems it should be based on how much land you've got and how many animals, really.
See, it's not so much he can't read, or doesn't like reading, it's just he...doesn't read. Like, right now he's reading The Omnivore's Dilemma. Yay! It's just that he's going to get distracted by some godawful computer game in five minutes. He's read some Pratchett, so I guess I could try throwing more at him...
no subject
Date: 2009-10-10 08:05 pm (UTC)Me too! I teach the other students to do it! And then I mark their assignments! And then I get money!
no subject
Date: 2009-10-11 12:25 am (UTC)So that's the step I was missing. But that would get in the way of listening to audiobooks, so perhaps it's best.