Preparing for Winter I

(Picture from here.)

The weekend was mostly home stuff. I had to kill a couple of chickens-- which, I suppose, deserves an explanation.

We raise chickens for the eggs. We'd use relatives, as suggested by Woody Allen in Annie Hall, but we actually do need the eggs and the relatives just don't have the capacity.

This year, we purchased a lot of chicks, about 25 or so, that were supposed to be all hens. We raised them and sold some. Then, mid-summer, a raccoon got into the chicken enclosure and slaughtered all but two of our chickens: Sam, the rooster and Abigail, the oldest hen.

The hens went from being for sale to being our egg producers.

Chick sexing is not an exact science and we ended up, after John Carpenter's The Raccoon, with three roosters. One of them had completely kowtowed to Sam and they get along. The remaining two were kept separate. We had an idea that somebody might want them and we could give them away.

Nobody wants roosters.

Personally, I like the crowing. But I can see it can get on someone's nerves. Long ago when we first did this we got half a dozen young roosters. Wendy thought she might not be able to handle dealing with eating the birds we had raised. But after the summer of half a dozen competing and crowing roosters, she didn't have any trouble.

But now it's nearly winter. It's time. It's done.

Other pre-winter activities included: replacing the canopy over the chicken house, gathering up and mulching the leaves, making more wine-- or, rather, racking the wine that's already being made. (See here.) The "white" is now very dry. It's going to need aging but I think it'll be fine. The "red" still has a specific gravity of 1.060 so there's still a lot of sugar. I racked it but then pressed the grapes. So it still had a lot of sediment left in the fluid. So I'll have to rack it again later in the week.

Still a few more things to do until winter proper gets here. Battening down the hatches as it were.

Then, bring it on.
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Wall of Idiots
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The world is not cooling
Glenn Beck... again
Britons say teach both evolution and creationism


Links of Interest
More cool things about mantis shrimp and here and here
Ur Death
The 50 kiloton asteroid
The return of the Aral Sea
Naked Mole Rats vs. Cancer
Bear lore
Slap shot climate change: the hockey stick graph
Treatment for retinitis pigmentosa
Tribes against uranium mining
Bears like minivans. Bears eat minivans.
Economists vs. Entropy: Does economics violate physics?
Phantom limb topology
Pug v Dalek
Plastiquarium
Salman Rushdie Facebook Flirtation
V: A Short Film with Hardware
Most distant object yet detected
Einstein right again! Heavens not askew! Savants not agog!
The nature of evolutionary fitness
Desalination redux
Autoimmune disease vs cancer
Stem cells and infertility

DIY
Chickens in winter
Low tech tools
Sustainable agriculture
Cultivating new farmers
1000 ideas for creative reuse
Brave new world lamp
Professional water rocket guide
Tesla spirit radio
Beer
EZ Halloween Costumes
Solar power station
Phot-o-lantern