Chickens in the underbrush..

Hello!



Just a quick pic or two of the ladies diggin' in their new favorite spot in the bushes between my yard and the next door neighbors. Eatin' bugs, worms, ticks and whatever. They make me so proud! :-)



And finally, a group shot.. of most of them, anyway...



13 weeks old yesterday, they were. Started with 5, still have 5. No health issues, and smooth sailing so far with chickens. I can still whole heartedly recommend them to anyone and everyone. They give lots of laughs with the weird things they do out in the yard and take almost no time or energy to maintain. I also cleaned out their coop for the first time yesterday. There was virtually no smell whatsoever, but I cleaned it out anyway. they went just under two months with the first round of wood chips. It's all in the compost now.. we'll see how that goes.

Cheese and a smoked beer...

Greeting, kids.

Here's a pic of my ENTIRE hop harvest for 2009. All 13 (ick!) cones from my Cascades plant, thrown into the whirlpool of the American Wheat Apple wood Smoked Fresh Hop Ale. 1.060 gravity, so no slouch in the abv department. Me and Jody switched it up and went FLY sparging this time, just for kicks, and the brew house efficiency went through the roof, apparently. Hmm.


And here's a shot of the beer yesterday, with the very first wisps of foam getting chucked out the top of the fermenter. Smells like smoke! Hmm...


In other news, the chickens have had their 13th week birthday today (Yaay! Still have five of 'em!) and are all doing just great.

Kid's back!

Greetings!

Check this gnarly 'stash I sported for about 1/2 an hour while on vacation! SWEET!


Good news is, my cell phone came back to life towards the end of the trip... About 4 days later, after the swim, the phone started working and a couple days after that the front screen display started working again. Only thing not working right now is the camera function. Ah well...

The chickens are also back in their proper place, having had a good time down at Franks for the week. They're bigger now! 12 weeks strong, just a few more to go before, hopefully, egg time!

Here's a shot from the far back of the Tun Tavern and Brewpub, in Atlantic City, NJ. What you're looking at is the view across the entire room to the *elevated* serving and conditioning tanks. The actual brewery is located on the floor level, but after the brewing process, the beer is pumped UP to the next level to this temperature controlled and totally glass enclosed box where all the brite tanks are kept. You can see on the right side of this pic, just barely, next to the stairs, that there's a big, fat, gray colored hose about 8" in diameter.. that's where the beer comes down, right out of the brite tanks to the tap heads at the bar when you pull the handle. Oh, snap! This is easily the coolest, most weirdly setup brewery I've ever seen. The best part? The beer! I've only been here twice, but both times the food was excellent and the beer was fantastic. Totally recommended for anyone in Atlantic City to stop in there and have a drink.. you won't be disappointed. Right in the middle of town, too.