Weekend Projects Sans Photos

I worked on a couple projects this weekend but the camera software seems to have died.
I uninstalled it and am trying to reinstall as I type this but the program just locks up so I think something more is wrong.

I dug potatoes this weekend and had a real nice picture of the small little pile.
They didn't do very well for me. I was reading Sunday night and realized I confused potatoes and root crops. You don't want to fertilize root crops very much or you get forked roots. Potatoes on the other hand like a lot of manure. Well they didn't get any hence my poor production.

I grew them in a large box I made from 2X12 floor joists I got from the remodel at work. The box was about 9 feet long and I cut up the seed and put a piece about every 14". I then covered them with straw. When the plants grew up out of the straw I added more. I kept at it until a couple weeks ago. I had a small infestation of tomato worms until they found the brandywines.

When I forked them out I was surprised how hard and compacted the dirt was beneath them. It was covered all summer with straw and was not walked on at all but was still very hard. I guess I need more organic matter for this heavy soil. I put in three packed down pickup truck loads of leaves last fall and tilled them in this spring. I also added eight wheel barrow loads of poultry litter. But this was for the whole garden and obviously I needed more.

We also went to an animal trade show/flea market on Saturday. They have one every spring and fall about 10 miles from the house. We went looking for chickens since we wanted to get some again. There was not a huge selection and some of the prices I though were kinda expensive. A lot of folks wanted $10 each for birds.

We ended up getting two Americauna pullets and one Americauna rooster for $5 each and then picked up 3 Silver laced Wyandot pullets for $6 each. They should all be about ready to lay next month. Americauna's lay blue/green/pink eggs the Wyandots lay brown eggs. A friend had Silver laced Wyandots before and told me they were kind of flighty. But after having white leghorns last year I figured I could handle a couple of these. All six of them seem very docile in the coop and I even petted the rooster last night.

Our first Americauna roosters 4 years ago were very bad with children and even grown ups. The ones we sold in June were very friendly. We had raised both sets from eggs, I don't know why they were so different.

I have to give Tanya some credit here. She went and worked on the chicken coop to get it ready for the birds while I was down in the woods cutting firewood. She repaired the inside wire and shoveled out a lot of the old bedding.

We fired up the outdoor wood furnace on thursday night. So now I have wood heat and wood heated hot water. It is so much nicer than the electric on demand water heater.

Hope I can get the software figured out because I have some good pictures to share.
Randy