Bountiful Acres Homestead: Cherry Harvest

The new header photo is of the path going down to the river on the back of our place. Hard to believe that pretty peaceful looking river turns ugly brown and violently washes across our place every winter!

Today is thankful Thursday. I am thankful that I am finished with the cherry harvest this year. I am thankful we have bees that are doing a great job for our orchard. I am thankful for the good crop of cherries from our two trees this year.

The pantry now has 36 quarts of canned cherries and 8 pints of cherry jam on the shelves. There is also a gallon of pitted cherries in the freezer for smoothies this winter.

What will be next? Well plums of course! They are thick on the trees and will be ripening next month.

Last week I meant to post about being thankful for a planer mill here that gives away their shavings for free. We got a pick up load and cleaned out both barns and put fresh shavings in them. How nice it is to have a clean barn again! Now I must let you know who "we" consists of. When it came to getting the shavings "we" composed of my Dad and Ed. Cleaning out the barn was Ed alone. And putting the clean fresh shavings I helped Dad and Ed do that part. : )

I am also thankful that my turkeys know me and like me. Why would that matter you might ask? Well on the 4th when we had gone to watch the fireworks one of our turkeys got out. Ed looked for it everywhere in the dark and couldn't find it. We went to bed upset that we had lost a turkey. I prayed and asked the Lord to keep it safe and help us to find it in the morning. We slept with our bedroom window open and what woke us up at 5am?? The sound of a lonely turkey calling and calling! We jumped up and got dressed and headed outside to find it. Well come to find out, it was in the trees/bushes across the road beside our property. I went out there and called it like I always do when I call them for a treat or want them to come to me. I just kept saying "come on turk turk turk". Then I heard him talking back to me, and the bushes began to rustle and soon out popped our turkey onto the road! It came right up to me and let me pick it up and I carried him back to the barnyard and into their pen. I was so happy to get our turkey back unharmed! Thank the Lord for answered prayers!

We have decided to do away with our Dark Cornish chickens. We aren't going to keep them separate from the other chickens. The roosters are pretty aggressive and we only keep calm animals here. So next weekend will be a butchering time. We will do the roosters and the some of the hens and some of the older ducks that hatched this year. That ought to put some meat into the freezer! I am going to keep a few of the Cornish hens and let them in with my laying hens.

Then we are going to use that part of barn #2 for our drake pen. We are hoping that we can keep the drakes away from the hens (duck hens that is) and they won't fight with each other. That way we can keep a few of the prettier colored ones from this years hatchings.

Speaking of hatching, we have two hens sitting again! One duck has 9 eggs under her and the other has 4. Yes, more ducklings will be on their way!