Finals week

Do you remember finals week? Do remember trying to cram a semester's worth of learning into your brain for that one final test? Well that is kind of like this week on the farm. This is the final week for the meat chickens that will be butchered on Sunday. We will have a 8-10 people visiting on Sunday and so there are lots of preparations to be made. Trying to cram all the preparation in during the week is a challenge.

So no pretty pictures in the blog this week. Just a down and dirty recap of the last few days.

This past Monday was supposed to be my main chicken crate building day. I had it all planned out. It was my last day off work at the end of my vacation. Perhaps when one goes on vacation, one should not tell people at work that one will actually be at home. First thing in the morning I got called in to work to perform an emergency c-section on a dog. Actually that is not a bad thing. I like doing c-sections especially when live puppies are the result. The problem was that this totally disrupted my chicken crate building day.

Tuesday I work evening office hours so I didn't get home until after 6:30pm. The next batch of day old meat chicks arrived via the US Postal Service. I had to do the finishing touches on getting their pen ready and get them all situated with feed and water and a heat lamp. Then I had to do my regular poultry chores. I didn't get finished with all of this until about 9:15pm. Then I joined Mike and our farmer friend Bill who were having a few brews in the driveway. The net result of all of this was that we sat down to supper at 10:10pm and zero progress was made on the chicken crates.

Wednesday I came home, did my usual evening chores (which take me about 1 to 1 1/2 hours) then started painting the bottoms of the chicken crates. Mike worked in the fields until dark. We ate around 9pm then I went back outside and worked for another hour on cutting lumber for the crates. Another neighbor came by and we talked in the driveway until after 10:30pm. The late hours are starting to build up at this point because I get up shortly after 5am every morning.

Tonight I made a decent amount of progress on the crates, but still not what I hoped for. Decided to come inside early at 9pm and eat dinner and quit for the evening. It won't be the end of the world if I don't get the crates done for Sunday. It's just something that will make butchering day more efficient. I'll post some pictures of the finished project when I get one totally complete.

The boys picked peas today and Mike says there will be peas ready for the markets this weekend. He will have sugar snap, snow and shelling peas. There will also be onions. Broccoli is coming quickly but won't be ready this week.

So that's the past few days in a nutshell. I keep telling myself I just have to make it through butchering day on Sunday.