Friday, December 28, 2012

Inner Workings

I promised some of you a peek inside the buildings. 
Popcorn on the cob is delicious, but if you reuse the brown paper bag in the microwave,
it starts the whole thing on fire... oops


Catherine has a great potting shed that we can use to get our seeds started this year


Another view of the potting shed and various tools


We may have to replace the plastic on the shed since it's a bit ripped

Lodge after Neal sanded and applied polyurethane to the floors


Kitchen view with all of our stuff out of the way


Had to put our stuff on the shelves and out of the way


View of the loft from the front door


The wood stove really heats up the place

Lower barn where I believe Jersey cows were originally kept


Catherine's family kept pigs in here at one point

Now it's being used for storage

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Freezer Chickens

Well, it wasn't pretty, but we finally harvested eleven of our laying hens. This brings our total number of laying hens down to 25 (yeah... if you do the math you realize that we always had one more chicken than we thought... oops).

Catherine's friend, Rose, helped us pick out the ones she thought were least likely to be laying (she did pretty well, too... only 2 out of the 11 had formed eggs in them). Then she came back the next day and taught our "Motley Crew" (her words, not mine) how to properly harvest chickens. The whole process took about four hours from start to finish.

Many thanks to our friends for all the help! Enjoy the pictures below... don't worry, I won't post the more gruesome photos :)
Pat and Catherine learning the ropes

Waiting...

I think this is the heart


Lots of friends helping out