So what's your easy weekend like?

Someone asked me yesterday at the poultry show, what an easy weekend was for us?  Well, this weekend was.....

Saturday The Tall Kid, Ms and I, left Hubby at home and went out to do errands.  Dog food, groceries, hunt for cage building materials, banks, more groceries, chicken food, etc.  You know the drill-we were out of paper towels, TP and strawberries.

And to top it off, my new card from the bank had not been received yet, so I'm using a lot of cash and checks, which is a pain when several of the stores we were shopping at don't take checks! 

We got everything, but the cage materials.  Going to go online and order some nice ones from at place in WI so the Ms can start building her racks for her show and breeding pens.

Then spent the afternoon cleaning peaches and strawberries.  The Ms spent the afternoon getting chased by Missy(Hubby's girlfriend) when she rattled the garbage bucket.  It was full of strawberry hulls which the little red hen goes ga ga over.  We debated washing chickens and ducks, oh and a goose, but opted to wait since we had had RAIN!!!! 

A four letter word missed greatly around here.  We got at least 1/2-1" from Thursday through Friday night.  Made it a delight.  Then it rained again on Saturday afternoon. 

Oh forgot the great chicken caper of 2012.  I fear due to be repeated in about another 6 weeks.  See, we sent 43 meat birds to the processors about 2 weeks ago, maybe 3.  Just no time to get them back home.  Hubby and the Ms road tripped it north on Friday and then the chaos started.  Where in the heck do you store 43 larger then average(another lesson learned) frozen chickens?  You use coolers, loads of ice and beg, borrow and steal freezer space.  You also do a serious freezer cleaning that tickled the poultry flock. 

Mom has a few now, the down stairs freezer is full, I've got a few birds defrosting in the fridge for a mass grilling tonight.  And THANK GOD for Dana!!!   She took her own, found friends who wanted chickens and then came back for more.  I can now fit a few more packages of hamburger in the down stairs freezer.

Kids and Hubby have asked that we plan on a cow next year as they aren't sure they will ever be able to look at a chicken nugget again.

Back to the weekend.  Rest of Saturday was spent getting things ready for our first poultry show other then the huge county fair.  That's where the cage material comes in-some shows require you to provide your own cages.  And as noted above, we are going to buy as well as build both breeder, show and exhibit cages soon.  In the meantime my dog crate addiction came in handy!   Plus xpens, we are all set to go. 

Then we went looking for birds to wash Sunday morning.  Such a big mistake that, well, we left for the show short two birds.  One just wasn't nice enough, the other-AWOL.  Rotten little hen.  Go figure, she'll be back in time for dinner. 

One chicken, four ducks and one pissed off goose later, we are all wet and giggling.  Loaded up and off we go to Wyoming IA. 

Small show compared to ours, in serious need of some Jackie attention, but fun and relaxing.  I didn't offer to help-this time sat in my chair, braided the Ms hair, chatted with everyone else and waited, and waited and waited some more. 

The runner drake got lots of attention in his pen all day long.  Ended up with a reserve champion on him--dog gone it, beat by that ugly black duck of Michael's.  The threat is to throw some bleach on it so it's got white spots!  Not really, but it's all in good fun.  Ms's white ameraucana pullet got a blue, just not mature enough yet.  No biggy. 

The ancona ducks got blues, the hard part there is that the judge has seen a lot of the Ms' birds and tends to be really picky with her on that breed.  Which is good and she got some great breeding advice on them.  We're headed down to Glen's farm and breeding operation in a few weeks for a tour and swap some birds.

Sparkles, though, was funny.  Sparkles is the goose, fyi.  She was pissed off about the bath, the crate and the ride.  The xpen was somewhat okay.  The cage up to be examined was okay, but when the Ms left to go take another bird back--that was not.  How dare she leave her up there all alone.  Oh, Sparkles was Grand Champion Goose!!!  Full disclosure, she was the only one :)

And of course, totally not ready for a showmanship class, all the exhibitors were entered(no fee for that class) and the Ms again, took up her duck-the silver ancona drake, and WON!  She figures she and Michael are even-he won the last two breed classes and she's won the showmanship classes.  Even got a big plaque for it.  She's beaming.

Load up, boy did it get hot.  Head home.  Walk in the house with an urgent need to pee(you really didn't need to know that did you?)  And realize, we had shut up the house because of the heat, but no one, no one, turned on the a/c!  Stuffy but not 1/2 bad in the house, but after the bathroom break I went over flipped the switch and turned it down! 

The Tall Kid, was down in Washington, IA to judge their county fair dog show.  All I can say is that someone seriously needs to have a chat with them about how to run a show and how to train kids.  None of them, none of them, were any where prepared for an obedience show and he had to argue with them about the score sheets, that the kids were not trained in what actually them needed to perform and they just made up how an exercise would be done.  I feel for them, they would all have a horrible experience at state fair should they go.  You can ask me more about this later, Tall Kid was so not happy.

And that my dears, was a slow weekend for us!  How about your's????

Later gators....
C