7/28/2012

Dirty Politics rears its ugly head on BI--- AGAIN!

Well, some of the folks who live here on this little piece of glacial terminal moraine, have decided to move us ever closer to the quagmire that invades and is invested in the state politicians who infest this State. The Medical Center here on BI is "governed" by a board of approximately 12 people who come from all walks of life. They are all volunteers who were duly elected by the taxpayers of this burg. Most all of them over the years have given selflessly to make a go of the venture and it has worked well most of the time. Sometime earlier this year the makeup of the board changed and with the installation of some of the newer folks, the behind the scenes shinagians began to unfold. There was Monty Stover having been there for 16 years originally just taking care of the money end of the Center. Making sure it had the funds to continue operation through every sort of fundraising and grant writing. At some point the administrative director found reason to depart the Island and Mr. Stover with the concurrence of the then BOARD of directors, stepped in to fill the gap. This man worked 12 hours a day on average, 6 and sometimes 7 days a week in order that the Center would continue to thrive. He didn't get many thanks, and probably even fewer pats on the back for a job truly well done. Enter the pretenders! After a while, and with a lot of backdoor "gatherings" a few of them unilateraly decided to get rid of Mr. Stover so that they could have his job! How blatantly uncouth,nefarious,underhanded,slyly,and maliciously they were in designing the hatchet job they then delivered to the body of M. Stover. None, to not much warning was given him before they so unceremoniously fired him one morning! No reason given apparently except that two of the board members wanted his two jobs!! Dr. Peter Baute wanted the overall Admin job. while Pete Tweedy grabbed the finance position for himself. What a God damned travesty that they would ruin someones life, especially someone who had given their all to the center, for the sole purpose of gaining a little"power" and lining their pockets at this guys expense. This little charade is an exact parallel of how the present Administration in D.C. conducts the day to day,ostensibly, the peoples business, while undermining the Constitution and stuffing their pockets with taxpayers money. Throw ALL the bastards, locally and Nationally OUT/1 TIFN.

7/20/2012

What's up with the Young Turk's?

Back to those turkeys. It turned out that apparently Mr. Thomas had a preference for only one of the ladies.. The one who laid 28-32 eggs did not have a single viable hatch. Hell I don't know, maybe she was gay and didn't like the attentions of that guy.

On the other hand, the remaining hen was well serviced because after laying about 20 eggs, today we were greeted with 18 baby poults of which 17 survived the birth ordeal. After leaving them with mother for just one day, we removed them too the brooder cage we built specifically for doing this to chickens and turkeys.

Didn't want to leave them to the vagaries of nature as there are many hawks and Herring Gulls that are adept at grabbing small hatchlings right out from under moms nose. She is not to happy with the situation as she can hear them cheeping away but cannot see them or get to them. Oh well, such is life on the farm when you are in the process of providing some protein for the extended family.

I am typing this in the early evening and had wanted to take a couple of pictures to include in these two posts. A few of  them will be of the Whizbang Feather Plucker the boys and I built. Well, I started it and about half way into the process was oh so gently elbowed the hell out of the way!! Anyway, it turned out very well and will remove the feathers from a properly scalded chicken/turkey in about 15 seconds.

When I mentioned I had this machine to a couple of my cohorts in chicken raising, they wondered if I might be interesting in trying it out on a few of their birds that were ready for the freezer. I said yes and so we arranged to do them on a Sunday morning. After Church of course!

On the appointed day they each arrived with their respective victims and we proceeded to do "the deed". There were 17 of them, mostly roosters and with the aforementioned devices, we were able to do them all in about an hour and a half. That was from setup till cleanup was finished! What would usually have been at least a six or seven hour job was thereby reduced to a time frame we were all impressed with! The black table is two plastic pallets held together with 2, 2x4's screwed to them on the inside. The sink is a small cast iron one salvaged from a friends "sink heap"! She has a few! And the water fed hose nozzle is hooked to a hose under the table. The 2" PVC pipe is just there to keep the water and small pieces of viscera out from under foot.

I originally built this for my own use as we will now be getting back into raising meat bids solely for the freezer. But after looking at how well it did the job, we decided that we would lend it out to any and all folks here on BI that wished to make use of it for a nominal fee. NOT cash, but maybe a chicken or two depending on length/amount of use. Some sort of barter, as I am sure we will all be delving into that manner of payment in the not to far distant future.

So now I am going to "save" this till tomorrow morning when I'll try the picture imbed trick! HA HA!

Well that didn't work worth a shit so I guess I'll just try and post the pic's in another separate post and write underneath them like I see all the smart people out there do. Well that lets me out! TIFN

7/17/2012

Screw the Politicians!

The title says it all for me. I am tired of hearing all the outrageous lies, spread with straight faces and the sincere desire that all conservatives "would just die"! Their words delivered by one of their hollywood elitists. In order to keep my sanity what little is left, I'm going to, for the most part,refrain from indulging in more of the same ranting as has gone on before. For the conservative folks I'm just preaching to the choir, and to all the libtards it is a useless endeavor as they have ALL drunk deeply from the well of stupidness and assimilated its poison deep into their physche and their fat globules!! Although on occasion I may loose control of myself and say something like, F*** OBAMA!

 So, back to the post about piggies, turkeys, etc. The piggies have been through some trying times and two of them have succumbed to some kind of stomach virus that they kept passing around between themselves. It appears to have run its course as of this date and two of the remaining 4 have begun to put on weight. They are still about 4 weeks behind in their growth. The other two are even further than that behind, but I do believe that by late Nov. they should be ready to pass into piggie heaven..

 As to those prolific turkeys, well things there have been mighty slow. Of the nine eggs we incubated, only one was hatched. Right after he was de-egged, we started 31 Rhode Island Red/Plymouth Rock eggs not knowing which rooster was the most desirous of propagating his species, or should I just say "horny", we had no idea what we would get. Turns out 23 days later we had 5 RR Reds and 19 PR's. Still no idea even now, as to the gender of any of them. Any that commence to laying eggs and will be, by default, considered Pullets. The others will be also considered by default, Supper, or Dinner, or Fingers, whatever the case may be.

 After a few weeks in a brooder with the 3 week older poult,(turkey), until they were completely feathered out, they were moved to the outside run where for some reason their genes from a few million years ago came surging to the fore and in the best imitation of their Velociraptor ancestors, they turned on their nest mate, young Mr. turkey and pecked him to death by bleeding him out through removal of his appendage that grows from just above his bill. Not sure what it is called. This discourse to be continued in the next post which shall appear post haste I Hope! TIFN