Things round here #5- teacher gifts and chickens

Tomorrow will be two weeks since we acquired our Barred Rock girls "Checkers and Chessie". Almost all of the tension in the coop is gone, and everyone is getting along. I think in this picture that the bucket says it all--the new girls learned where the water comes from, and taught themselves how to get a drink. They are adapting well, and also started to pop out eggs.

Today is the last day of school for this year. Which means class Christmas parties. I like doing "gifts in a jar" so I bought dry cookie mixes, added in some more chocolate chips, dressed up mason jars a bit, printed the recipes on decorative card stock and the boys are giving them to their teachers. I do these quite often and its always a hit.

Today is also a Christmas lunch thing at Seniors work, so I made "White Trash Candy" for the occasions. If you have never had any, its like crack, you cant get enough of it. And if you have had it, then you know what I mean. I told Senior that since it is so addicting to please not bring any home. I also put some in quart baggies, and added to the teacher gift bags for the kids. 

If you are looking for a quick snack to make, its really easy, just add dry cereal, such as rice or corn chex, cheerios, salted peanuts, pretzel sticks...coat it all with white chocolate, let it cool...and there ya go!  

In this case I also added in Christmas colored M&Ms, but I don't think you can see them too well. Anyways, if you have questions on making it, just go do a google search, there are tons of recipes for it. 

Well I can not believe that a week from today is Christmas. Is anyone else in shock over that? I have about all my Christmas shopping done, just got little things left to pick up. It has not been a bad year for shopping, Amazon has had amazing deals, and they had a free prime trial, so I had free shipping on everything. Yahoo!  lol . I just keep reminding myself to cancel it in the next few days so I am not charged 99.00 for it. 

So now I am off here to finish things up before kids get out of school. Happy Friday everyone! Stay safe out there...

-JUGM

chickens and a birthday

First the birthday, yesterday our girl Liberty Bell aka "Libby" turned 3. She is the alpha female and full of piss and vinegar. Ruger and Jack the Cat bow to her when she passes... But, she is protective and a faithful companion (as long as her bowl is full). Needless to say, life without her would be boring.  

do you know how it is when you start out to get one thing, but bring home other stuff? Well, here is our other stuff. See, I got this guy that sells barrels, and he had some nice, clean metal ones. Senior and I jumped on them. The mans son raises chickens for his 4-H Poultry Club, which I think we might join. Anyways, he was selling a pair of Barred Rock Hens. I jumped on the chance and brought the girls home. ND quickly named them "Chessie, and Checkers" because of their coloring. They are only about 6 mos. old and should start laying soon.Since they were from 4-H they had been vaccinated and accustomed to other chickens, so we went ahead and  added them in to the big coop. But, things there are a bit stressful and I am not sure if Senior should build a separate place away from all the alpha female chickens, as I am not seeing them drink much water. Every time they try, they get ran off.  My plan is to mate them with the Jersey Giant Rooster ( Black Jack) I think they would turn out a nice bird, that is not only a good egg layer, but good for meat too.The chicks should also net me a little profit at auction.

I know Senior just talked about this over at his blog last night but, remember back over the summer when I did the post about buying pullets from the feed store, only to have two of them be roosters? Well, we gave one away to our buddy Mr. Farmer, and the other one - was  a horrible nuisance crower. All the time, non stop, it could be 3 am and you would hear him. Black Jack who is housed in the large coop behind where this one was, is not at all that way. You can spend all day outside and not hear a peep. So, we had enough and butchered him.

 I got to say, Jersey Giants do make a nice meat bird. We roasted him last weekend, I do need to work on the marinating issues and seasoning, because he was a tad bit dry. I think next one we will do over the spit outside.

The leaves have been taking up our weekends, and I am happy to say that the majority is now off the trees. Christmas is literally around the corner, and  I have started my shopping and think Amazon and the free Prime trial is a wonderful thing. I just have to remember to cancel it before months end.
Take care all and have a wonderful day

-JUGM