Finnie- Finally A Journal

[Finnie]

Dang it then! I thought you were some kinda genius and would know how to convert my Iphone 14 photos which are dot HEIC to dot jpeg. Imgur, here, other forums will not take my HEIC photos. Only FB will....

Oh well. If you're not a genius, you're still nice!

Ha ha! Thank you!

 

[Finnie]

So far I’ve only made one prototype of a cage bird and I just used a thick blue leftover yarn I had and it didn’t come out very well.

Ok, so I didn’t mean to leave you all hanging. I can’t believe it’s been almost a week since the bird fair and I haven’t posted about it!

Funnily enough, that big prototype bird was the first one to sell! (On the right in this photo)

So, I spent a couple of months putting crochet above my other priorities, and I was still only able to make a small portion of what I had imagined. I have SOOOO much “bird and chicken” yarn leftover! Each one takes so long.
It takes at least an hour to get a chicken to this point:

I do think I was starting to get faster, though, because after so many, I didn’t have to refer to the pattern for the repetitive parts.

A sulphur crested cockatoo and a normal cockatiel:

Here are all the chickens I finished before the fair:

And the top photo above was all the caged birds I had done. I also started on 3 more caged birds, but didn’t finish them:

(Rainbow Lorikeet and 2 Peach Faced Lovebirds)

My sister got really excited about the project, since she was the one who got me started with the emotional support chickens. She is a knitting addict, so she started sending me photos of all these birds she was making. Then she said she wanted to ship them to me for the bird fair. (From New Jersey.)

So these are her contributions:

Better photo coming in the next post. I’m at my 10 photo limit.

 

[Finnie]

Here is my vendor table before the fair opened:

Counterclockwise starting with the seagull, Baltimore oriole, cardinal, quetzal, owl, bluebird, blue tit, and fuzzy unknown baby bird.

Sadly, only 3 of these sold. I even marked everything half off at noon, but either they weren’t appealing to the target market, or I had them priced too high. The caged birds, however, all sold, and most of the chickens. I wish I would have gotten more caged birds finished. In the afternoon there was a lull, and I was able to sit down and finish the last 3, but by then traffic had slowed down and none of those 3 sold.

I briefly considered doing a future bird fair just to sell crocheted birds, but it wouldn’t be profitable. Might break even, but it’s too time consuming to just do it for fun. I did get one lady who took down my name and number because she thinks the emotional support chickens would make great awards for her 4H fair poultry kids. I got the impression she runs that part. So she will get back to me on what colors and sizes she wants. Again, I don’t think I could charge her enough to make it profitable for me, but as long as it covered my expenses, I wouldn’t mind donating my time to help out for the fair.

Ok, so part way through the fair I only had this much stuff left:

And here is what I took away:

And only the tub on the left of personal belongings and unsold birds made it home. The other two white items got dropped off at Goodwill on the way. So yay! Another huge hole in my basement mess!

I am getting very close to being able to show you the after photos.

The plan for this weekend: Thin my collection of children’s books in half and remove one of the 3 book cases they are on. The shelves are all double-stacked, so I don’t know if half of the books can even fit on 2/3 of the shelves.

One of my favorite things when my 5 kids were little was to buy them books. (And read to them, of course.) I have kept so many of those books. I had hopes of my grandchildren enjoying browsing through my library stacks and picking out vintage books to read from their parents’ generation. That may still happen. The oldest two are just getting into the age of reading. And I might not be done getting new grandchildren. But I think I can safely say that half of what I’ve got down there will still be plenty!

Ok, looks like I’ve made up for the huge gap between posts by writing a giant one.

 

[Finnie]

Went on a hour drive in the rain to look at this trailer. I’m not planning to get out of the truck unless DH needs my help.

If he buys it, I’ll post a better picture on a less rainy day.

I need to improve my chicken facilities. This could come in very handy. (He wants it to haul motorcycles and for cleaning up brush piles etc. around the property.)

 

[Baymule]

It’s always nice to have trailers! I have a 18’ flatbed and a 16’ stock trailer, both bumper pull. Son has 3 gooseneck trailers, all flatbeds, up to 32’ long. Between the two of us, we got it covered.
I have a small lawnmower trailer, all rigged out for laying hens. Not ready for hens, but it was such a bargain that I had to drive 3 hours to go get it.

 

[Finnie]

I have a small lawnmower trailer,

You just reminded me that we can use it to haul our lawnmower into the shop ourselves now instead of paying an extra fee.

 

[Finnie]

Here’s a better picture of our new trailer, already being put to use.

Have a major project underway. I think I mentioned before that some of my poultry housing is deteriorating and will either need to be repaired or replaced. It only needs to last a few more years until we move ( )but some of it just won’t make it. Ideally I should just downsize my flock. However, I don’t really know what things will be like in the next phase of our life, and these are the birds I have now, so I just want to maximize what I can do with what I’ve got while I’ve got it. And downsize later.

Therefore, I have hatched out over 300 chicks this year!

Some are already sold, but many will be grown out here so I can pick the best ones when they are mature, and then sell the ones that don’t make the cut. I’ll be back down to my 100 chicken overwintering limit before the end of the year.

So, I have one pen that’s falling apart that I’m just going to demolish. I’m going to replace that pen with a smaller coop inside a dog kennel run. And then I’m adding more dog kennel runs around several of my other coops so that those birds can have more room, and so that I can stop struggling with tiny cheap wood doors that are hard to open and shut. Not only are they hard to close once you get them open, but it’s hard to change the food and water in those coops without the chickens escaping. With the kennel runs around them, I will be able to just remove the fiddly wooden doors permanently and only have to contend with the kennel gates, which is much easier.

The kennel panels are mostly where I want them, but I will have to tweak their placement as I set them up and connect them.

I know this plan will be an improvement because I already have one coop-inside-a-kennel and it’s my easiest one to work with. The new replacement coop will be adjacent to this one:

I’ll have to attach some kind of visual barrier onto the shared walls to stop the roosters from fence fighting. And I sadly already discovered that I will need to put plastic or wire mesh thresholds to block the gaps at the bottoms of the gate doors. I lost a hen (just her head) to a fox recently. All it had to do was scare the hens and they all tried escape out through the door, which they know is the exit of their pen. Well panicked chickens bent on squeezing out their door don’t pay any attention to the fact that the fox has now positioned itself at said door, and they don’t run away.

Putting some plastic mesh I had across the threshold seems to have worked to stop that problem. I may consider making an apron around all the bottoms and a couple of feet up the sides. That will not only prevent chickens sticking their heads out, but will also allow me to house grow out chicks, which have a tendency to run in and out of chain link holes until they grow bigger.