Sunday we drove a hundred miles to sell one of the turkeys. It was the big old mean Black Tom, and I probably spent every penny I got for him on gas, but I really wanted to go look at this guys set up. He has turkeys, peacocks, some pheasants and chickens. And a lot full of smaller pens.

I'm planning on building something to house my breeders in and the little ones I plan to hatch next spring, so I need some ideas.

So we put the turkey in a large box from McD and I put two sticks through the top to hold him in, but still let him see out and get some fresh air. Put the box behind the back seat in the van, and then went through the drive through at McD. Was neat. And he would poke his head up and could look out the windows. He did great until we pulled into the guys yard and I turned the van off, then he jumped out of the box.

Another sunny and warm day today with a strong wind. Highs were about 50 degrees, and guess it has been getting into the mid 20s at night. Not the worst, but winter is here for sure.

Finally got a quote of the week.

Gavin has decided that everything is a head ache.

So the other day he said his tummy had a head ache. Think he meant he was hungry.

And the other one is:

Not today, maybe tomorrow. He would say that a lot when ever he was told to do something. Time to take a nap. No, not today, maybe tomorrow!!

And then we realized it was because Jeanne says it to him a lot when he wants something. Like to go to Granny's or can he have this or that. We both laugh everytime one of them says it.

Turkey Time

Wednesday 17 November 2010

Got a phone call from the automated substitute system and for once got to say “Yes” I want to sub. Only then did I realize that I didn’t know what my pin was to accept a job. So had to go out to the farm and look it up in my stuff. Then on Thursday I got called again but it was for only a half day, and at the elementary school, and I needed to work on my papers so I turned it down.

Friday 19 November 2010

Friday morning I was laying in bed thinking I should get up when I got called to teach again. Middle school, for Mrs. Smith. The best part was that I got called at 0735 and had to be there at 0805. So pushed that and didn’t get to go by McD and get my Latte. I was thinking that Mrs. Smith did English or something. Wrong. She just got married and changed her name. So I spent they day as the girls PE coach. Fun. Not like I hadn’t done it before. There is a male coach and the classes are together, so it was pretty easy. And I have always enjoyed doing PE there.

Then after school I went out to the farm to work some more on my papers and put the chickens and turkeys to bed. It gets dark about 1715 now. One of the guys I had been talking with showed up to buy 2 turkeys. I’ve gotten rid of most of the bigger ones, so I only charged him $35 for the two that he got.

So I was reading my email and Jeanne had sent me an ad from Craigs list about a riding lawn mower, so I made a call and when she got home, we all piled in my van and headed out to get a mower. Was quite the road trip! When we got there, the lawn mower wouldn’t start. But he had several of them, and we ended up getting a bigger one. Then we had to figure out how to get it home. It was a trip of about 70 miles, so this is what we did. I have one seat that I took out of the van long ago and it is in my room at the farm, so there is only the back bench in the van. We took the bench out and were able to get the mower in through the back hatch. Then we folded the seat down and it fit at the end of the mower and we shut the gate on it. Jeanne and Taylor sat on each side of it, and we put Gavin’s car seat in the front passenger seat. Then I drove home carefully. He even threw in a small gas weed eater because he felt bad about it not starting. Oh, he eventually got both started, but we got the bigger one. It was also newer. And yes, we cracked the back window just in case there were any fumes from the mower. My turkeys bought it for me!!

Saturday 20 November 2010

Got up and had to work at McD’s today from 9-5. Running lunch. Not like I know much of what I’m doing anyway, I’ve been gone so much and now I get to run lunch on the busiest day of the week. But we did alright. Jeanne went through her stuff and started decorating the apartment for Christmas. We’ll wait till after Thanksgiving to put the tree up or to turn the lights and stuff on, but they are up now and that will make it easier later to do the rest.

Sunday 21 November 2010

Been taking some allergy medicine and it makes me groggy and sleepy. Hate the feeling, but need to put up with it for a while and see if the meds help me get over this sniffle I seem to be unable to kick. Man, what did I do today? Oh, came out to the farm and did some school work and got things organized. I have about 8 assignments left to do, and they are all complex ones and build one upon the other. Most of them are involve, “Write an essay, suggested length 5-7 pages…” One is about learning goals, another about learning objectives, and another is create 3 lesson plans I used during my student teaching. All of them are about my student teaching. And then 2 others are about the results of my teaching. Compare the pre-assessment results with the post assessment results for the whole class, but learning objectives. Then pick a group, like boys or girls or high or low achievers, and compare them. Then from that group, break it into subgroups and compare their results. Finally, pick two students with different abilities and compare them pre- and post, and also some of their formative assessments. Explain why I chose the groups, subgroups and individuals. Also submit examples of student work. Didn’t’ keep as much work as I maybe should have, so I kind of have to reverse engineer things. Figure out who I have papers for, and then 2 of them will be my individuals. And somewhere along I will pick a groups and then decide how to sub-group it. And the learning goals and lesson plans need to match the material I have and will talk about in my essays. So it could be complicated. But I think I have it figured out, or at least have enough material together to be able to decide what I am using where. Then just get it all together.

Tomorrow night I plan to butcher several turkeys. Someone might come over to help, not sure. But I need to butcher at least 3. Getting to where I don’t have that many anymore. I plan to keep a Red tom and two Red hens, and the black and white speckled tom I hatched this year. With him I will put the Slate hen from last year, and maybe one other hen. Still not sure. So I will have either 3 or 4 hens. Only had 2 last year and hatched about 50 eggs, and of them about 30 poults survived to adulthood. And I had them free-ranging. This spring I’m planning to build a new coop to house them in and have room for some brooders so I don’t have them in the living room or my bedroom any more. And I also plan to enclose them and that should cut down on the number that drown in the goose pond and that the owls take for dinner. But even at a conservative estimate I’m looking at $400 to build something big enough for them. On the other hand, I should have more turkey poults and I’ll try to sell the babies also. Someone told me a friend was selling them for $9 each. That is what they cost at the hatchery. So even if I sell mine for $6 or $7 each, if I can sell some of them I can recoup some of my investment, plus I won’t have to feed them all summer. And if I do good, then maybe I’ll keep a few more hens the next year and see how that goes.

And before I butcher them all, I’ll try to take some pictures and post on here. This spring I had the Bourbon Red hen and tom, the Spanish Black tom and a Blue Slate hen. And I just pretty much let them breed however they wanted to. Toward the end I tried to pen the black up with the slate, but thought he was going to kill himself trying to get out of the pen. So I’m hoping to pen them earlier this year and hope that the confinement won’t be such an issue. They started laying in April and ended in August sometime, maybe July and the last patch hatched early August. I’d have to go back and see what kind of records I have, but I think I put about 60-70 eggs in the incubator and about 50 hatched. The numbers could be a little higher for both. So with 4 hens I’m anticipating about 100 eggs, and with them being confined I should get every egg and not have to search the yard for them, so I could get a few more. And I’d say an 80% hatch rate, so if I can hatch 80 chicks next year I’ll be more than happy. That would be 40 for each bird. I think they layed for about 3 months, and even if I only get 20 eggs each month from each bird…

Holy cow!!! When you look at the numbers that way, with 4 hens I’d have 80 eggs each month, times 3 months, or a grand total of 240 eggs!! And at 80% that comes out to between 200 and 220 poults!! A whole lot of turkey!! So I’ll see what happens. May end up eating a lot of turkey during the summer!!

I'm Back

Monday 15 November 2010

Finished up my student teaching last week so I’m trying to get my life back. Well, I finished the classroom portion of it, now all I have to do is complete all the paper work and other little things that go with it to get the degree. And then after I get the degree need to apply for the actual teaching certification. And even that is going to be fun. Missouri won’t accept my transcripts directly from the college, so I have to apply to North Carolina to get my certification. Then I can take that paper work and give it to Missouri and they will give me a Missouri Teaching certification. And while they are at it, I’ll get certification in both middle school science and high school biology. When this all gets figured out and everything, I’ll try to add middle school math to it. Hopefully with those I’ll be able to get a decent job somewhere close.

In other areas, Thanksgiving will be here next week, and that means it is time to start butchering the turkeys. I lost count of how many I successfully hatched this summer, but it was a lot. I figure it was right at 50. Of them, I think I have about 30 left. Lost some to the owl that lives out back, and wouldn’t be surprised if a few other animals made meals of my birds. I also lost about 6-8 of them to drowning in the goose pond. Not sure how that happened because they should have been able to get out. Figure either they got knocked in and suffered from hypothermia or the geese actually knocked them down. Or maybe they just panicked and freaked when they couldn’t get out easily. Not sure, but either way, at one point I was taking one a day out, and one day I took 2 out of it. They pond was also a major source of water for all the animals, but it was bigger than the others. So at one point I stopped using it and just used the 2 other little ones. Never found any drowned in them.

So today I sold 12 birds to a 12 year old boy that does it as a hobby. Was originally going to charge $20 each, and meant to give him one for free, and ended up giving him 12 for $200. Still, since I hatched them all, and now I don’t have to feed them any more, not a bad deal. Think I have the mean Black Tom sold, and a few others. That should just about take me down to the breeders I plan to keep for next spring.

Some of you may know may know by now that I met someone new, and we are planning on getting married next spring. She went with me for Veterans Day, and I realized that is the first picture that has been taken of us together. So I have decided to share it. Her name is Jeanne, she is younger than me, and shorter, has 2 wonderful kids and we make each other very happy. And yes, this is the EXACT uniform I wore 15 years ago!

So now that all my time isn’t taken up with school and school work, I’m hoping to have a life again and be able to write on here about all the things that happen. And be able to include all the people in my life, too.

Teaching

Seems it has been a while since I wrote on here. Life is crazy. I’m student teaching now full time during the week, and then work all day on Saturday at McDonalds. I love the school. Some times it is still scary and I have a ways to go before it comes naturally, but I think I can do this.

The teacher was absent on Thursday so I got to be the Sub, and I’ll get paid for that.

It is a real challenge because they have what are called Grade Level Expectations, or GLEs. And that is what we have to teach. Nothing more, because there really isn’t time, and nothing less because that is what they will be tested on, or should be tested on in the big exams like the MAP exam. We just finished taking the Terra Nova exams. Hadn’t heard of them, but they are another big one that is used to measure student performance and school progress. And the teachers all work pretty hard to make sure the kids know the material too.

So for me, the greatest challenge is going to be taking the GLEs and breaking them down into small steps that can be taught in class. An d I am learning what materials she has and has used and such, and then fitting them into my lessons or building my lessons around them. And constantly referring back to the GLE to make sure I’m teaching what I’m supposed to be teaching.

I also have to write a journal, so I’m thinking about posting that on here. It has most of the things for school and then I wouldn’t have to write it again. All I would have to do is add things about the farm.

The turkeys are getting so big. And they are eating so much! Just got 200 pounds of feed or 4 bags. Each bag lasts about 3 days. So yeah, that is right at $20 a week. Hope these birds are all big! Lol. And it would seem that they are all toms. I may have to just keep the two hens I had last year, because I don’t have any other hens to keep!

School

Tomorrow is the first day of School. We had open house and it was really neat having her introduce me as her student teacher.
Right now I am having computer problems. The power cord went out in my computer so it is down. Take a week or so to get a new cord. And I'm still learning how to use mom's and it doesn't have some of the programs I need on it. And besides, it is Vista. Yuck.
But I think I have it figured out so I can start creating files on a thumb drive and it shouldn't matter which computer I use, and I can take them to school with me too.

The Yard

Well, we had planned to go out and burn the tree stump and such this weekend. It has been a while and we have had really hot, dry weather for a few weeks and figured it should burn well.
Then it rained a few nights ago, and Saturday night it rained again. One of those big thunderstorms that comes and dumps lots of rain. So when we went out to burn, everything was wet. We were able to get things going on the stump easily enough, but the brush pile just wouldn't burn. Guess I'll have to let it set for a few more days to dry out again and then burn it in some unceremonial way.

Cars.
Realized that Drew and I each have 3 vehicles and none of them are working well. He has the Mazda RX-7 in the shed and I have the Pontiac LeMans. At least it runs, just has a water leak in the pump or some where.
He has the Chevy Lumina that has a blown gasket. He has started taking it apart to fix. It is either the lower intake manifold gasket, or the head gaskets. Then I have my trusty old Ford pickup. It still runs great, if 8mpg is great. Has a leak in the brake lines some where and the exhaust pipe is broken off at the muffler. Not street legal but good enough for around the farm. Planning on making it a farm truck and probably wont register it any more for the road.
Then there are the vehicles we are driving. He has his new Ford F-150. The right rear leaf spring is broke, worked out last week and rubbed his tire till it popped. It also has a transmission fluid leak that he is trying to locate.
My trusty Caravan is starting to give me problems. Am probably going to need a new transmission. It is giving me a code for the thing saying it has worn pieces floating in it that have stopped up some valves a few times. I'm hoping to get to this weekend and then pop the cover off the transmission, drain and clean it out some and refill it. Will do two things: 1, clean out any loose pieces that have worn off. And 2, give me a better idea of what is in there. If it looks pretty clean and not much on the magnets, I'm hoping it will last a while longer. If not, then I should probably start working on fixing the LeMans.
The turkeys are getting bigger. I'll try to get some pictures on here soon. For all that I hatched this year, I don't have very many left. I think I have 5 Grey ones, 5 red ones and 5 black ones. Plus I have about 11 more babies in the cage. I'm trying to take better care of them and keep the coons out of them. But bringing them back in the house each night and taking them back out each morning is a real hassle. One of the things I have to fix for next year. Get a better system and some place secure out side to keep them; A second coop probably.

Student Teaching

Today I start my student teaching. The kids aren't in school yet, but we have teacher training to attend all day. I'm really excited about it, but also a little nervous. I know most of the teachers there and they will accept me and be happy and excited for me too. It will also be a real challenge, to learn all the new skills and things I will need to be a real teacher.