And the Rest of Life This Week

I left you all having finished the dill pickles and moving onto grinding fish.

My husband is an avid deepsea fisherman http://www.turnerscustomrods.com/ , preferring to be 30 miles off shore fishing in 200’ – 300’ of water. He prefers to catch cod but one can no longer keep any cod at all. Our favorite fish is the little redfish aka ocean perch but they have moved on elsewhere at this time of year.

That leaves haddock, which you can only keep a few of a certain size, and pollock, unrestricted. He went fishing on Friday and got a couple haddock, a few pollock, and a cusk.

We had the haddock for supper Saturday night but none of us likes pollock. Pollock are great fun for him to catch, but he does not take anything he will not use.

It turns out that chickens need animal protein daily and they will eat fish. So he catches pollock to his heart’s content (or ability) and brings them home for the birds.

When feeding animal protein supplement, you don’t want to exceed 10% of the daily ration. And with fish, you really don’t want a bogart in the flock, because you will get a fishy tasting egg. Not nice at breakfast….

So we figured out a way to feed it to try to eliminate these problems. We grind the raw fish with our meat grinder. It’s the law the fish have to be cleaned and a bit of skin left on for ID purposes. So we just get filets.

Then we package it in daily rations, each bag labeled. Each bird would get ¼ oz/day, so a flock of 18 needs 4½ oz. So I label the bags with what it is, how much, and the date. NOTHING goes in the freezers unlabelled.

We got just over 3 weeks of fish for the birds. We use these red trays and several of them, and sprinkle the fish thinly in them. Then the trays are widely spaced so no one can hog the fish. Problem solved!

You remember the potato digger holding the paprika? Here it is again. The tomatoes and peppers are doing some better out there. I need to sucker and tie the tomatoes up again, and see what’s starting to ripen, when I go out today.

Tuesday night my husband went up to do chores and called to say there was a double rainbow over the barn. It was still raining and by the time I got downstairs, found the camera, got down the driveway being eaten alive by mosquitoes, and took the photo, the double had gone and the primary had faded.

I stopped VERY briefly along the fence gardens to get this shot of my husband’s favorite phlox in the rain. Then dashed back into the house while I still had some blood left…

Next up, processing garlic and putting the potatoes away finally…

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