Happy 27th Birthday Cathy!

Hurricane Sandy

This is out the back door this morning as we get more Hurricane Sandy winds.  It's slowly been getting worse throughout the night.  I'm still waiting for the water to rise.

Hard Boiled

I'm just sitting here listening to the rain and wind and worrying about whether the water is going to rise as far as the chicken coop.  We are having sustained winds of 30 - 40mpg out of the north right now from Hurricane Sandy and it is supposed to increase and last through the night and tomorrow.  North winds pile water up into the end of the bay where we are so I will be watching closely.  I'm not worrying about the house flooding like last year but it could easily get up into the chicken coop.

What do you do when you can't eat all the eggs that your chickens are giving you?  You hard boil them, chop them up, then feed them back to the chickens.  They love them.

New Old Jeep

This is my 8 year old Jeep.  I just put a 2 inch lift kit on, some new shocks and larger, more aggressive tires.  Finished it off with a new stereo system and some new headlight assemblies to replace the old hazy ones.  That made a huge difference in the way it looks from the front.  I love this vehicle.  160,000 miles on the odometer and it has never required anything but some new tires and oil.  I had much rather spend a little every so often to fix it up rather than get back into making payments on anything.  I used to pay $450.00 a month in payments.  It only took the equivalent of 3 of those payments to pay for all of these upgrades.

 

Last Harvest

Wow.  I finally finished my five 60 hour weeks and have been decompressing.  The weather is absolutely gorgeous which is helping to chill out.  Today I changed the blades on my riding lawn mower (bent them last time I mowed riding over a root), mowed the yard and harvested the last of my veggies (mostly peppers).  I then cut all the vegetation out of the vegetable planters and put it all in the compost pile to make compost for next year.  This years experiment of growing vegetables in the Earth Box planters was a complete success.  Next year I will install an automatic watering system with the boxes to save the daily watering chores.  Below is a picture of the vegetables I pulled today just before putting them into freezer bags and freezing.  The front center are cherry tomatoes.  Left to right around the tomatoes are bell peppers, anaheim and banana peppers, jalapeno peppers then carribean red hot peppers.  I won't be lacking for peppers this winter.

Vote!

Guess what I did today?  Today was the first day of early voting here in North Carolina.  The courthouse was PACKED.

4 More Days

Just four more days and I will be back posting.  Work and sleep have been my life (and a sad life that is) for weeks now. 

A Brilliant Mind

I have used my superior human intellect to outwit my hens which have refused to lay eggs in my special, custom built egg laying box.  I purchased some wooden eggs then placed a couple in each of the egg laying bays.  Voila!  The next day each bay had eggs in it and the corner of the coop where the chickens had been laying was bare.  If my employer could see how brilliant I am I would surely be CEO by now!

Neuse River Ferry

Just riding the Cherry Branch to Minnesott Beach ferry.

Make it a Double

One of my eggs was a double yolker today!

Pantry

This is a picture of my pantry.  I like to keep a little extra in case of emergency.