Oh Saturday

Oh Saturday!  That very special day where we work like crazy to get all the big projects done that we don’t have time for on the week days.  Our Saturday staple, of course, is weeding, lots and lots of weeding. Seems I am an expert at growing all sorts of noxious weeds, my speciality: bind weed, AKA morning glory. That is one wicked weed!

this Saturday was particularly busy, we worked from sun up until sun down with a small siesta during the peak heat of the day. Along with a few hours weeding, which was tough work in the long neglected areas we took care of, we also harvested 30 pounds of new potatoes (digging potatoes is as fun as it is exhausting) and slaughtered and processed eight roosters. Eight roosters may not sound like a lot, but since scalding and plucking are new to us (usually we just skin them) it was a long, educational process, a prelude to the 11 turkeys that are fattening up in the middle pasture.

My body was so sore by the end of the day. Oh the homestead life, only for the brave or insane, I’m afraid I’m starting to view myself in the latter category.

To top it all off, Dadzoo hung out in the chicken yard with his trusty shot gun until 2 am, waiting for our friend Pat the raccoon, who was a no-show for the first time in weeks!  So rude.  Now a normal woman, heavy with child, would have kissed her hunter goodbye and gone to sleep, but since we’ve established I fall into the “insane” category, I instead lay awake waiting for the sound of a shot gun, ready to call 911, because surly he would miss the raccoon and hit his foot instead.

Fortunately, this insane, pregnant gal was wrong, instead I got a tired frustrated man dragging himself, safely to bed. I guess I won in that regard. Raccoon-1, Momzoo-1, Dazoo-0, incase we are keeping score.

And that, my friends was our Saturday.

(This funny contraption is our solution to needing lots of boiling water to scald chickens, it takes about 4 hours to bring 55 gallons of cold water to a boil over a fire.  BTW wet chicken feathers stink.  Another fun fact, pulling feathers aren’t really that hard, just messy)