Now that the scaffolding is no longer needed on the house, we moved it to the corn crib. We previously put new metal on the roof, one side, and parts of two other sides. Now we can work on the high part on the ends.
It sure beats climbing up and down a ladder with drills, tape measures, and sheets of siding!
There’s nice park nestled within the city limits of Rochester, MN called Quarry Hill. There are ponds, nature center, old quarry relics, caves, lots of fossils, and a huge unmarked cemetery.
Not many November 24 days when shirtsleeves are appropriate attire in Minnesota! Here are the kids after the hike up to the top of the quarry. It stopped producing in the 1950’s.
There are also many caves – some of the bigger ones which were used by the state hospital for food storage from the 1880’s to the the 1940’s. There’s a big field within the park where the state hospital buried patients who died. There are over 2,000 people buried in the field, without markers. They were buried until 1965 when the hospital closed. There are efforts to mark the gravesites appropriately.
There’s also a great 20 acre Oak Savanna on the highest point overlooking the city.
Here’s this week’s “Thingamajig Thursday” entry – a special holiday thingamajig! Also check out
last week’s answer.
As always, put your guess in a comment below.
answer…
This is a “turkey cookie” made by the kids.
Never one to pass by a better and creative way to feed animals, I was intrigued with the post on the “whizbang chicken plucker” Yahoo group – a place where many people with small flocks of chicken post questions, problems and answers.
I’m able to pick up a few things here and there on this group – but the posting describing “free feed” went over the edge for our operation. It described growing maggots for chicken feed. I think maggots would be a great chicken food – however the growing method described – get beaver guts (or other dead animal) and hang in a plastic bucket over the chicken yard and let the maggots fall down to the ground. According to the author, it wasn’t bad unless the wind was blowing toward the house. Don’t think I’ll risk it!
Here’s one of our thanksgiving turkeys. Today was the day they went to the locker – so they are fresh for Thanksgiving.
It was a rough start to the turkey season – first 10 of 15 of the poults arrived dead from the hatchery this summer. As the replacements weren’t sent for a month, we were worried about the turkeys getting to size. Then a feral cat, ate some of the other turkeys out on the range. At $5 a poult, it adds up in a hurry. We ended up with 9.
The biggest two were about 26 lb and the rest were 12-16 lb, which wasn’t too bad. We kept two – one 16 lb for Thanksgiving and the biggest one Emma cut up and vacuum-packed for many meals. We traded a couple of turkeys for some berkshire pork from Eden Farms. We fried up some chops tonight and they were the best I’ve ever had – literally melt in your mouth chops.