A weekend of half dones

Last weekend was hot, I was off Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday and I think only on the Thursday was it cool enough to be outside working all day. The other days had a few hours mid-afternoon that just had to be spend sat inside in the cool until outside was cooler.

So really it doesn’t feel like much was done, Rhys did very well at cleaning the kitchen. We started taking down an old chicken shed ready for a move round and new goat pen, we collected and shredded a load of gorse for the goats and picked branches for them all but Sunday, changed over the water butt by the goats as the old one had started to drip and we were given a much bigger one, gave most of the sacks of muck that had been collected away on Freecycle (me and mummy were told a very funny story about mice and shampoo), I picked out wood for splitting one of the goat houses in two ready for kidding at the start of next month but we didn’t actually manage to split the house.

I half-heartly started planting some more potato’s in sacks (we eat alot of potatoes and I can’t bare the thought of any being left in the ground so they’re all going in sacks) but gave up because of the heat. I thought about planting some carrots and beetroot in the garden (cats have messed mummy’s up) but never got out there to do so.

Ooh, I did pick up some ‘new’ hutches for the quail to go in from someone belonging to LETS, it’s my first time spending Deans and the people I got the hutches from had an interesting holding and might want some quail…

…Basically lots of things got started and were on My List but never got finished.

Nice post

Two mornings running I’m impressed, I’m even more impressed as I’ve spent the whole day thinking it was Sunday.

This morning I got the certificate for my “training the trainer course” I went on at the start of April - which I passed with a credit! And I got the official job offer letter for the Play Ranger job I got (and a load of forms including a CRB check, oh joy, I can never write in boxes)

And then there were none

This hatching really hasn’t gone well.

Out of the eight eggs I put in the incubator one hatched, another one started to hatch and a day and a half later I did the no-no of trying to help the chick out (I REALLY wanted the one chick to have a friend) but it lived for a few hours and then died.

Another egg I found had a small chip in it and had dried up inside. And the other five… Well I’m sure they have chicks in (because of the weight of them) but they’re just not showing any signs of life, or hatching.

And to cap it all my ONE chick died for no reason at all!

I came in at about seven o’clock from cleaning out the chickens and was going to sit with a cup of tea (with honey not sugar) for half an hour ‘watching tele’ which really means watching the chick as the brooder is next to the tele and the chick is a lot more interesting. I watched it pondle around a bit, have some feed, sit in the feed dish looking at me for a while, then it went over and had a drink and came back to the lamp and settled down and went to sleep, all very normal behaviour, then it just stop breathing.

That was it, nothing I could do.

Cuttlefish

Since I stopped buying loads of stuff I didn’t really need from ebay I never really get any interesting post anymore, so it was extra nice this morning to get a little package full of cuttlefish fresh from the beach for the quail.

Thank you to TheGirlsMum from the River Cottage Forum who sent them to me!

Keyring

I haven’t done any seed beading for a while, I just haven’t been inspired enough to sit down and make something until the other day.

It’s a keyring for my memory stick.

Thunder storms and hatching

There was a huge thunder storm on Sunday morning. It had been rumbling away since about 10 o’clock the night before and finally started raining at about 6 o’clock in the morning, really raining. It was raining so heavily that there was a mist as tall as the parked cars coming off the road where the rain was hitting the surface so hard. The power went off and a few seconds later there was a huge thunder clap which felt like it shook everything at set off a neighbors car alarm.

It took me about a minute to manage to drag myself in to a sitting postion, muttering about bloody power cuts and how my eggs were never going to hatch at this rate and thinking that the thunder might well have done something major leaving us with no electricity for days, ready to find a jumper or something to put over the incubator to try to keep the heat in until the power came back on. It had already come back on.

About 5 minutes later the power went of again and the car alarm went silent, within a few seconds there was another huge thunder clap. As the noise finished the power came back on again and the car alarm started up, the rain slowed and the storm cleared up leaving the rest of the day sunny-ish.

The weather really hasn’t help my eggs, two days before the thunder storm happened the temperature when down for no apparent reason, the weather outside was reasonable, then the humidity shot up and dropped right back down again after the storm. Even with putting extra water in it’s not got back up to 70% yet.

Even so, two eggs started piping Sunday evening and one has hatched so far. The other eggs are all very still and quiet. Normally the eggs jump around before they hatch and once the chicks start coming out they call non-stop. I really hope even just one more hatches, just so as the one chick isn’t all on its own.

New Books

It’s my brothers girlfriends birthday tomorrow and last week I order her a book I hope she’ll like.

Of course, as I was already paying postage for one book I thought that I might as well order a few books I’d been keeping an eye on as well, only because I was already paying postage of course.

The Self-Sufficiency Handbook arrived on Thursday and ever since then I’ve been flicking through it when ever I’ve got a spear minute. It’s a lovely book, with gorgeous drawings.

Lists

I have to start making them again, I sat down last night and tried making one for today and my mind just went blank. I know there were more than to things I wanted to get done today but when I’m at work all I can remember is all the jobs that need doing at home, and vice-versa.

In the news

A Thai journalist being sued by Tesco. 

I’m not a big fan of super markets and at the moment Tescos is trying to build ‘mega-store’ in one of my local towns, there are two arguments, Tesco’s will bring much need employment to the area vs Tesco’s will kill of the small, ex-mining town centre. Seeing as I have no desirer to work for Tesco’s, I’m in support of the latter, the town alread has two supermarkets (a co-op and a Lidl) and if people really want to shop at Tesco’s they could take the free bus that Tescos provide.

Health and safety experts are investigating the death of a woman who died after being trampled by a herd of stampeding cattle in Suffolk.

Stories like this always make me worry that there’s going to be an up-rising against farm animals, and there have been two stories involving cow recently, I know the people involved have been hurt (or in this case worse) but I always find myself thinking “what were they doing?…” possibly wrong of me.

Measures designed to curb the power of major supermarkets and improve choice for consumers have been announced by the Competition Commission.

I’m in two minds about the really price of food, I do think that supermarkets should be paying producers the true cost of what it costs to produce food, but I’m not completely sure we’d (the family) be able to afford to eat if it wasn’t for supermarket own brands

The good and the bad

Today has been a mixed day.

I had an interview this afternoon for a local sessional play ranger job, I applied for it last month and I’ve been really hope I’d get it. It sounds like a great project to be involved with and is only just starting in the area. I got the job!

My birthday pressie from Rhys also arrived, a laptop, so I can now start writing sat on my bed which is where I do my best thinking. Having things on computer might mean that I finally do something with ‘it’ (short stories, etc.) instead of just having it all in different note pads.

This evening I found my youngest sisters cat, she’d been missing for a few weeks and we’d all been hoping that she would just turn up but she was under my bed dead, which has put a nasty tint on things this evening. Poot wasn’t our oldest cat but she must have been 12 years old now, it is better to know what has happened then not though.