Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Long time since posting.. got some wheels though!


Here's an artistic pic of the interior of the coop and several of the girls therein, taken by one of the girls. She took the pic at eye level to her, through the egg access door at the back of the coop, shooting out through the chicken entry/exit door out into the pen area. Good picture!

Well, I'd take some pics of this new modification and post 'em, but the wife made off with the camera, and I don't know where it is. In either case, I'm partially through putting some wheels on the coop now, after pulling my back out of joint and getting myself jammed up and out of work for a couple days. I think it weights more than I though. Like, well in excess of 200lbs. I've got the wheels and the holes drilled for the axles, and now I'm just shortening up the access door a bit to clear the way for the door to open and close to let the chickens in and out through. Not too bad a modification, really.. pics to follow, when the Boss returns the FAMILY CAMERA!

In other chicken news, one of the Rhode Island Reds seems to have jammed itself into the fence, slightly injuring herself in the process, when she was harried by a tiny dog. The chicken was in no real danger, cause she was inside the coop, but she didn't know that.. and subsequently skinned herself upside the left side of her head, just above the ear. She seems to be fine though, and is doing well. Sheesh!

I wanna tell you about the Southern Tier Series One and Two oak aged beers that me and Tim got together and tasted, but I can't seem to find my tasting notes on 'em right now. Darn it! Good stuff, the both of them, though I feel as if I'm partial to the Series Two beer between them. Have not had Series Three yet, so I can't comment.

In other news, I've got a beer fermenting downstairs right now, the Avalon Pale Ale, brewed in a five gallon batch by myself, solo, for our vacation trip next month on the shore. A bit of a sluggish take off on the ferment activity, but seems to be OK now. I've got it in the ol' Omaha Steaks Styrofoam cooler surrounded by ice packs to try and keep the ferment temps down to a reasonable level. She's sittin' happy now at a measured temp of 68 degrees, according to a digital thermo taped to the side of the carboy. This seemed to work well on the last beer too, as I have been fighting a weird flavor in the recent beers I've done here when I wasn't really monitoring the high ferment temps in the summer heat...

Also, in radio control news, the LiPo 7.4 volt cell I scored on eBay for dirt cheap arrived and I'm really happy with it's performance in my Brushless Traxxas Rustler. It's clearly faster than the NiMh cells, as it wheelies on command now and has a hard time keeping it's front tires on the ground.. seems the Low Voltage Cutoff (LVC) seems to be kicking with a lot of juice left in the pack though.. I should be jammin' at full speed for more time than I am, which is still a good amount of time from a 5000 maH pack, though. I'll definitely get some ore of these things, but I think a better charger is in order first. my Triton 1st gen is only capable of 2.5 amps output which takes over two hours to charge this big pack up... I need more power!

That's all for now, kids.. now go click my Google link!