May has now come and gone.
May is the month when there is so much we always want to get done around the homestead with mowing and planting at the least. May is also the month when my job always comes to a smashing climax for the year which tends to take up most of my time and energy.
I haven’t had much time at work to blog this month, and I have found that I can not blog here at home on my Macintosh except for the comment feature. As a result, May of 2007 has seen fewer number of entries in this blog than any other month since I began this journaling journey 9 months ago.
Not that less has happened this month at Pure Water Hollow, just less words and pictures.
Now it is time for my Month In Review post, and I find myself to not be in very much of a reflective mood. As a matter of fact, I do not feel like writing much. These Month In Review posts of mine have tended to be rather lengthy in January, February, March, and April, but you are just going to get a condensed version for May.
(After writing it I see that it doesn’t look like it is very condensed. But believe me, had I written everything that has been running through my mind about our homestead happenings, then it would have been pages longer!)
Chickens:
333 eggs this month did not break April’s record of 352 eggs, but still a great month. We crossed over the 1000-egg mark for 2007 on May 5th, which was significant since we only had 947 eggs for all of 2006! We have more than doubled our layers over last year, so we should expect more eggs. Two of our hens are setting on nests that should begin hatching next week, and we are missing two other hens that are likely setting somewhere in secret.
We have made $45.00 in egg sales now since we began on April 20th. We took out of it the feed costs for April and May, which was about $21.00 for two 100 pound sacks of cracked corn. The remaining $24.00 we split between Erica, Matthew, Christina, and Simon, giving them each $6.00 for their efforts in raising the chickens. I know it is not much, but they were happy to share in the profits. (We use these times to show how at least 10 percent, in this case 60 cents, should be given back to the Lord, which they each did last Sunday.)
Pigs:
We are still waiting to get Porky processed. We spent $116.50 on pig feed in May for the 4 hogs, but we still have 2 100-pound sacks of feed that we have not yet used. That means they ate about $88.10 in purchased feed. There were many days in May that we did not have any spoiled milk to give them.
Goats:
Mathew got an addition started for the goat pasture, but it has stalled out waiting to be completed. In the mean time we keep buying feed for them: $57.50 in May. We also had Tiny Tim and Big Jim castrated today, making them both wethers. Our vet does it for only $10 a piece!
We could have traded Big Jim for a breeding buck, but we just are not yet ready to jump into having a buck lot and all the trouble that can go with that. Some day we will get a buck to breed with Mama Belle and Little Lulu and begin growing our herd, but lets get some pasture hills fenced in first!
We also got tetanus shots for all 5 of them and worm medicine for each of them, so our total cost was $52.50. We gave the shots and wormed them ourselves
Honeybees:
We put an additional hive body and super on our Genesis colony of honeybees on May 6th. They seem to be doing very well.
Trees and Berries:
We planted 20 dogwood trees across the road, 2 chestnut trees near the barn, and 7 pecan trees between the clearing and split rock. Matthew planted 18 trees along the east ridge all by himself, including 4 coffee trees, 7 chestnut trees, and 7 pecan trees.
11 of the 12 catalog cherry trees we planted last month are doing great. (One lost a battle with a lawn mower.) 3 of the 6 catalog blueberry plants we planted last month are still surviving. (The other three were apparently killed by Luna)
This time last year we had a bountiful cherry harvest, but this year not one cherry made it through the Easter freeze. Also no peach crop for us this year thanks to the freeze, but we do have one peach on a tree on the riverbank!
We have enjoyed many Strawberries beginning on April 19th and still continuing.
We have several plums growing in the plum trees and it looks like we may have many grapes on our vines later this summer.
The walnut trees have many walnuts forming on them this year! Last year we were disappointed in our walnut trees.
Raspberries and blackberries look like they will do well.
Weather:
Hot and dry. We are experiencing somewhat of a drought here. We had 2.4 inches of rain the first week of May and a half-inch on May 16th, but that has been all. We counted 7 days that reached 90 degrees or better, 9 days in the 80s, 13 days in the 70s, and only 2 days in the 60s. That sounds more like Florida weather to me!
Misc:
Please pray for my dad. He is in the hospital tonight and he has been battling cancer. Thanks.
1 comment
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sheryl on June 15, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Hey,
Wow you all have been busy. I just got to read this post today. I really haven`t been on here that much. I was glad to hear about the egg production. I can`t wait until all my mine are laying. I only have 5 hens and two bantam hens laying right now but I got some that should start laying this fall. I hope anyway. Good luck. I am going to try and catch up on some more of your post and some others too.
-Sheryl
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