My blog seems to have had it knickers in a knot with
pictures and postings, user error I’m sure, so apologies if you see things
twice! I think I have it fixed now
though. Just in time for this, my 100th
blog post!
Of our many chickens, I have 2, a cockerel and a hen
that are a special breed to me, Lakenvelder.
I think they’re stunning looking in black, white and red and always draw
my attention. They were 22 weeks old on
23rd July which is the age the book’s say they start to lay, or
thereabouts. Well can you believe that
my lovely little hen laid her first small egg on 23rd July! Good for her!
Once she’s in full swing we will maybe pop a few in the incubator to see
if they’re fertile. I think one more
batch this year will probably do us. We
have our second lot of home bred eggs hatching at the moment. We popped them in the incubator with some
eggs (Jersey Giant breed) that we bought from the auction we attended. We have 5 hatched so far from 20, 4 of our
own and 1 auction egg.
Each year we will be hatching a lot of our own birds for
laying, eating and selling on. I know
Dawn over on Doing It For Ourselves has had her last lot in the incubator this
year, so it’s interesting to see when people stop for the year along with
why. I love the variety in everyone’s
blogs that I follow and I learn so much, it really has helped us starting out
on this journey and will continue to do so I’m sure.
In kitchen news, Steven is getting into this smallholding
lark including the grow your own and make your own. He’s made redcurrant cordial to sit alongside
the blackcurrant cordial he made and my elderflower cordial. We didn’t have any nice looking bottles for
the occasion as it was all rather spontaneous, so they went in sterilised
plastic/glass bottles. I will get some
glass ones for items we’re wanting to preserve to keep through winter and into
the new year (you have no idea the joy that I feel when I say that, I love
being able to “cook for the future”).
The elderflower and blackcurrant cordial are nearly
finished and I plan to make jam from the remaining blackcurrants and raspberry
vodka from the flush of raspberries that seem to have arrived since the last
picking.
I’ve done the usual menu plan over on the blog's menu
plan page that I’m going to try and start using. So Menu plan 4 for week 31 is out there
now. I’m also going to start a recipe
page for recipes that I’ve found I liked and used our harvest well. I’m not sure if the best format is an
additional page or just to include them as part of the blog. We’ll see.
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| Red currant cordial, yum |
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| My cockerel |
well done little chook, the reason I have stopped is until we build new poultry houses in there forever home we havent got the space for them in present accommodation, I dont want to overcrowd the birds, the new place Poultry Land, will have a house for egg layers, a house for table birds, a house for Turkeys and a house for geese, we are delayed because the buying of the new land is taking forever we need to move Alpacas onto new land to utilise small paddocks for poultry.
ReplyDeleteIt's easy to add pages at the top of your blog, you can then drop items into the page, I love using this methord as it keeps things together and saves me looking through old post.
ReplyDeleteI'm useless at the blogging page bits but I'm great with Window Office and produce lovely labels for all my produce. Once I have more time I'll study it a bit more and sort it then. Cordial looks very professional in the bottle.
ReplyDeleteI know exactly what you mean about putting things by for the future! I have a little thing, excting for me to share in a little while if I get round to it.
ReplyDelete