Fermented Chicken Feed

So I'm trying something new with the chickens - fermented feed.

I've been wanting to try it for awhile now, ever since I heard about it. But as always, it takes awhile before I get around to trying it out :D Well, I finally started it a couple of weeks ago and so far so good! I was warned they may not like it to begin with but would eventually warm up to it and start gobbling it down. So I started out with just a little bit cause I didn't want to waste any. Well, the girls took to it like they were starving!!

I had been told they would eat less food due to the nutritive value of the fermented feed (among other truly positive health changes including glossier feathers and better eggs). I wasn't so sure about that but it turns out that it is indeed true.  I always throw in some greens I pick along the way to the coop, then come in and refresh the water and add to the food bucket before gathering eggs.  Well, I still throw in 9 handfuls of greens (one handful for each hen) when I first go in (this also keeps them busy while I'm trying to come in with my hands full and securing the door all the while). They still attack it like it is manna. Well, I've learned that after I throw in the greens to go about other business first before pouring the fermented feed into the bowl used for it, otherwise they leave the greens and attack the fermented feed. They don't even take a second look at the regular layer crumbles any more... well, technically I guess they do because some is always gone but not devoured as in the past.

I still give kitchen scraps as well for them to turn into wonderful compost for me :)

So my routine is now, throw in the greens, bring all my stuff through the door, secure the door, add the kitchen scraps to the greens if I have any, refresh the water, gather the eggs into the water bucket, refresh the crumbles, then dump the fermented feed in its bowl. At this point I can even take my time getting my things back out the door and getting the door closed because they will stay gathered around the feed bowl lol
No really, they do take turns between the greens and fermented food as long as I throw the greens in first. If I fermented feed out first they will eat it all gone before taking an interest in the greens or scraps.

I'm hoping to report on positive health changes here soon!!

Now how to make this feed you ask? Well, here's how I do it. You can make changes depending on the size of your container (smaller, larger). I'll even give a couple of notes at the end.

I use gallon vinegar containers.
1) fill half full with grain feed
2) add a glug or two of unpasteurized apple cider vinegar
3) fill the container the rest of the way with water
4) I half close the top so that there is the equivalent to a couple of holes drilled in a five gallon bucket lid
5) leave it on a shelf in the garage
6) that night close the lid and shake it up, making sure to the get the air bubble all through the feed. It makes an anaerobic atmosphere if you don't make sure to get air throughout the feed every so often. This will cause spoilage and stank if you don't do this - gross.
7) open lid back up and let sit over night
8) next morning, close lid and shake again - you will notice the feed getting thicker - this is what you want, ultimately being the consistency of oatmeal-ish
9) open the lid and sit it back on shelf.
10) repeat 6, 7, and 8
11) but instead of opening lid and putting it back on the shelf, you will pour out a cup of the liquid into another container, then go feed half the feed to your chickies!
12) then come back and repeat steps 1 and 3 with the second container - yes we skipped two because you used the 1 cup of liquid from the first container!
Now just keep repeating the process each day so that you are feeding half a bottle to the chickies each day.
There are some things to watch for to know whether to adjust the amount of fermented feed you are feeding daily. You can find these things in a thread here: http://www.backyardchickens.com/t/645057/fermented-feeds-anyone-using-them
I have a feeling that I will eventually be backing off on how much I feed them because I have 9 chickens and feed about a quart per day. Others have 12-15 chickens and feed 2 - 2 1/2 cups per day in summer and 4 - 4 1/2 cups in winter. It's definitely spring here now so I might need to watch it carefully. I'll update as I have something to update!!

Grandbean1...

....has made his arrival!

GrandBean1
Monday
March 24, 2014
3:30 pm
8# 15oz
21 in

Parents: Bean1 and DILBean1

Menu Monday

It's time to revive Menu Monday!

As always, the menu is gluten-free, dairy-free no matter what it sounds like and starts off with a big green salad. Added to the "-frees" my menu is now egg-free, soy-free, peanut-free, and when the family has chicken, I have turkey, pork, or extra veggies instead. Shellfish are cooked separately from other foods for my shell-fish-free child who will eat other non-shell mollusks instead such as octopus or squid.

MONDAY: Veggie Soup with Cornbread
TUESDAY: Smoky Quinoa Chili
WEDNESDAY: Bean, Broccoli, & Cauliflower Tacos
THURSDAY: Seafood Salad (literally, just the seafood on top of a green salad)
FRIDAY: Veggie Plate (Mashed Potatoes, Green Beans, Garlic Carrots, Balsamic Mushrooms)
SATURDAY:
SUNDAY: Grilled fish, Corn-on-the-Cob, Steamed Broccoli, Cauliflower, & Carrots

I'll try to get links up to some of the recipes soon :)

Pee Pee Tee Pees

Such adorable little creations! This is actually a photo of my very first one. I can't wait for the other photos to upload :) Now the question is, how many does one little boy need???

If you notice in the background, the terry cloth that became the back of the burp cloths. At that point they were simply lain together, ready to pin.

Kyra Saracosti

Miss 40 Days of Lent

Typically a family will have one Kyra Saracosti doll, whether a paper doll or one made of bread, to countdown the 6 weeks of Lent plus Holy Week. Well, we aren't most families lol

Each child wants to decorate a Kyra Saracosti doll AND waiting a week to remove a foot is sometimes too much for a really little one. So my solution?? 8 Kyra Saracosti dolls 1 for Cheesefare Week, 6 for Lent, 1 for Holy Week. Since each doll has 7 feet this was perfect to countdown the days until Pascha!!

Here are our Kyra Saracosti dolls hanging on the mantle this year :) Usually they are on the kitchen wall with the Lenten Treasure Boxes but the kids are just getting too old for that now. This is probably Bean8's last year but I have Grandbean1 arriving soon who can carry on that tradition even if it is only at Grandpa and Mimi's house :)

I hope to get the rest of our Lenten decorations posted soon :)

Burp Cloths

I have been sewing for our little grandbean1 a lot lately :) What fun it has been! I'm having a few issues with uploading the photos so I will post each thing as I can get the photos to post :)

These are some fanciful burp cloths :) There are 8 altogether and each one is a little different. Only one is not how it ought to be - one of the giraffe ones is supposed to have two ribbons :( Oh well, they are still different from one another.

Hopefully I can get the photo of the backs on here soon :) They have 3 different colors. The whales and octopi have sky blue terry cloth backs, the froggies have lime green terry cloth backs, while the giraffes have brown terry cloth backs.

Each one has a different edging/topstitching. And easily seen is where it has one or two ribbons across them.

Now the question is, will Bean1 and FianceBean1 like them??

Psalter Prayer Group

I just wanted to mention a little something I've been taking part in for several years now.  It's a Psalter Prayer Group hosted by OrthodoxMom at orthodoxmom.com!  I know three people personally who are now doing this - and I had nothing to do with directing them there!!  I love that  :D  So if you are interested in praying the psalter twice through during Lent then hop on over to OrthodoxMom's blog and sign up each Nativity and Lenten Fast.

Renewed Spirit

Oh my look how long it's been since I last posted!! As I predicted the fall semester took over my life. My family did without a wife and mother for nearly 6 months as the classes were pretty much all-consuming. However, that was my last hard semester and this spring is my last semester altogether. A health crisis has put an end to my schooling. I am treating it herbally and it is doing so much better!! BUT the amount of stress I was under also played a part and I was told I had to put an end to that stress. For the moment that is easy - come the near future this will not be easy at all and I will have added stresses on me that may be just as bad as school stress. Prayers for guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Let's add some news!!! We're gonna be grandparents any day now!!! The little mister is due any day now :) We simply cannot wait to meet this little mister and have a baby in the family again!!! So as you can imagine, I've been doing all I can to get ready for a new grandbaby - a baby shower, sewing up a storm, helping Bean1 and FianceBean1 any way we can, etc :D

Sadly, we are also not expecting my father-in-law to last much longer. We've already had what we consider an extra four years with him, when they told us that he wouldn't last another month. We were sort of expecting that same thing but it's different. They finally told my mother-in-law that there is absolutely nothing left for them to do for him. Prayers for his physical comfort these last days, his spiritual health, and my mother-in-law's ability to deal with all of this would be even more greatly appreciated than the ones I mentioned above.

So anyway, let me get posting about a few of the things that have happened in this past almost year...
1) Two trips to Washington, D.C. - Molly Marine Monument Dedication in Quantico and Bean4 donating Bone Marrow at George Washington University
2) Church Camp
3) A hike at Tallulah Gorge, Georgia plus a few other hikes that day in the same area
4) Caving trip to Raccoon Mountain, Tennessee
5) Homecoming
6) Bean3 coming home for a visit / tailgating at UGA
7) Bean6, Bean7, and Bean8 Birthday Parties
8) Gingerbread Nativity Scenes
9) Beach Trip for a Baby Shower / Engagement
10) New Year's Eve
11) MrBean's Birthday
12) Baby Shower
13) A few church school projects
14) A few church school snacks
15) Snow at the homestead
16) Baby Gifts
17) Lenten Projects
18) St. Patrick's Day goodies
19) Once a Month Lenten Cooking with a friend

Bone Marrow Donation - Washington, D.C.

BeTheMatch.org

Last fall Bean4 decided to "get swabbed" and register for the Bone Marrow Registry. About two weeks later she was called up - "You're a match!" Thus began a two month journey toward donating :) You can't imagine how proud I am of her! Her recipient is a 40-year-old woman.

So after all of the medical tests and getting all the paperwork where it needed to be at the right time - all from overseas in Italy - it was time to fly to the states and start the donation process.

Bean4 needed a companion so the bone marrow donor association flew me out to meet her the Wednesday prior to her Monday donation. We flew into Dulles International and were driven to Georgetown University Hotel which is literally in the same parking lot as the hospital not 30 yards away. That was good because it was cold!!

Thursday morning we were met in the hotel lobby and taken over to the hospital. Here she had vitals and stuff run again before her first injection was given. Oooops there's a problem - "You're here but your medicine is not."

"WHAT???"

"Okay, we are getting it all taken care of, no worries."
So she finally gets her first injections. Two shots in the back of both arms.

And then we're off until the next morning for the next set of injections. Each morning she had to start off by going across to the hospital to get those two injections. She and I did some shopping (I finally found a wool coat I liked!) and met my godbrother and his son for supper - actually he picked us up :) They had just dropped off his lovely wife at the airport for her duties with the U S Air Force.

The next day the rest of the family still living at home drove out to meet us and spend the weekend in D.C. as a mini family vacation while visiting with Bean4. That night they picked me up and dropped off Bean5 to stay the weekend with her at the hotel while the rest of us stayed with my godbrother's family.

The next day we started touring D.C. for the family had never been there before. The only thing I'm sad they missed was Arlington National Cemetery. I got to show Bean4 the day they left but unbeknownst to me it closes really early in the winter - in fact I didn't really know it closed at all. At Arlington we visited two graves - one of a man whom Bean4 knew and the grandfather of my friend, Rose. It was so cold that day that my breath froze on my coat collar and neck scarf.

Anyway, Monday morning rolls around and MrBeans takes me back to the hotel while picking up Bean5. Bean4 and I are met in the lobby along with 4 other folks... 2 donors, 2 companions. The 2 other donors are guys. The process was much like dialysis where blood comes out of one arm, goes through a machine to have the stem cells removed, and the blood goes back in the other arm. Because Bean4's body took so well to the meds, her time on the machine was drastically reduced. During this time the donors had to lie still and could not move one of their arms. We companions were ushered in and out of the room as one or the other had a procedure done so we wound up out of the room as much as in it :) This is also where we got to learn about each of the donors. I would like to highlight one of the donors - well actually his fraternity.

This particular donor was from Atlanta. He is in a fraternity and one of the brothers was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma. So every single one of the brothers registered with the registry. He was the third one to be called as a match to someone!

Anyway, Bean4 was pretty much up and running afterwards :) We did go take a little nap after lunch but I think that had more to do with staying up half the weekend with her sister than the donation itself.
She got an update on her recipient a month later. It stated that considering her recipient's disease and age that she was doing as well as is expected. That's about as good of news as you can get at this stage. There will be at least one more update later on. I'll post it when we get it.

Pictures from around D.C. coming up in another post.