Sunday, January 4, 2015

A time for every purpose under heaven

Hello everyone!  It has been an interesting day here in the frugal maven haven.  Not such a haven today with what had to be done, but interesting none the less.  We finally were able to get the last two roosters in the freezer.  Well that is one will go in the freezer and the other to my nephew as payment for fixing my computer.  Our Friend "J" and his grand daughter came over to the house to help and we were glad to have them.  We got about half way thru the process of butchering the roosters.  The fire had gone out from under my pot of hot water (need that for removing feathers) so we had to re-light it and wait for it to heat up again to finish things up.  So DH and "J" went to look at the ahem toilet in the guys bathroom (no man's land) cause it was leaking.  I finished up removing the feathers while they were otherwise engaged and I was coming into the house to finish dressing out the birds (it was pouring down rain).  As I come in the door carrying the two birds, I hear a commotion and find out the valve on the toilet had come off and water was going every where.  Dh has to run outside and turn off the water.  Yay!  No water so now how will I get these birds finished.  Well long story short the water wasn't off too long and I was able to get them finished (thanks guys).  All in all a productive albeit odd day.

I have some thoughts on butchering chickens.  Not fun.  It is a sad, sticky, yucky, messy job.  No part of it is attractive except the fact that you get meat out of it.  But there's nothing I can do about it.  If I am choosing to raise birds and hatch eggs, I will get roosters sometimes.  I don't know if you know this, you probably do, but Roosters don't lay eggs.  So now that we have that clear, I can say with confidence that I will have roosters in my future which need to be disposed of.

Problem I now have is time.  I have lost another 12 hours a week to my job,  Benefits of that are obvious....money, but the disadvantages are some of that money will go to pay for things I can no longer do at home. Add to hours lost to work and I am losing hours to my sons going to school,  That is a worth while trade off.  More than worth while.  It is my most important job right now.  So now there comes a time when I am having to re-think what I do and don't do here at home.  I haven't decided yet what will stay or go, but one thing I have thought of is a way to cut back some on having roosters in the flock.  This means I may buy chicks already sexed in order to keep the rooster level down.  I am trying to figure if that is worth the extra cost.  Still in a thought process.  Butchering chickens is a time consuming process; at least for us as newbies.  We will see.  For right now as I have time, things will remain the same, but I am in the slow time of year for me, so things are apt to change.  Stay tuned.

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