Saturday Stuff

What a great day! This morning, I went with my friend Stephanie to the Eastern Iowa Poultry Association show. We saw vast numbers of chickens, ducks, and geese. I saw lots of chickens I liked, especially some blue-grey feathered ones and some lovely big cochins. There was an excess of Columbian wyandottes and partridge wyandottes, but they were all nice birds. We met some members of the forum BYC and shared stories. I sold two frizzled barred cochin bantam hens and a bantam silkie who I believe is a hen also. I was very tempted to buy some very cute ducks but we haven't got anywhere to keep ducks safely so that idea was quickly squashed (yes, all by myself I managed to resist). I also eyed the Rouen ducks quite intently. They are large, and unlikely to be targets of the snapping turtle(s?) in my pond. I will ponder this. I was also tempted to buy some new hens but I didn't see anything that caught my fancy to a point that I could not resist, and besides, I had blue Andalusians at home in the incubator in the process of hatching (7 hatched out of 11, not too bad!) Here's one of the little fluffballs to look at!


Afterwards, we went home via the outlet mall and found that the Geoffrey Beene store was having a tremendous sale. That was somewhat disappointing, because they are closing down. All their clothes fit me very well, so I am annoyed at their disappearance, however, I was able to buy a number of nice items for winter and some things for Kelly for Christmas, all at 70% off regular price. Not too shabby!

When I got home, Kelly had already been to pick up our new tractor. This is a very exciting moment for our farm - our very first tractor. If you had told me 5 years ago that I would own a tractor today, I would have laughed hysterically and told you not to be so ridiculous. Ah, how life changes unexpectedly! And so delightfully too! I haven't taken pictures of it yet, but it is a Kubota 7200 and it's a nice bright orange, and it comes with a belly mower and a snow blade and a 3 point hitch, which is fabulous because we can now buy a tiller (hopefully on Craig's List for a good price) and a bale fork.

I went out to collect eggs and there were 6 eggs. This is my first ever 6-egg day. I decided to commemorate that by starting an egg counter here on my blog. I will try to keep it updated but can't promise every day will be a 6-egg day! I had leftover chicken/apple/gouda sausage rolls for supper with leftover sweet potato from the Thanksgiving meal, with a nice cold Woodchuck Apple Cider. Yum.