People were starting to talk....

Well well well... it looks like my Big Gay Friend Jason is now officially Big Married To A Woman Jason... who woulda thunk it??

Congrats big guy!! You held up really well all things considered! Hope I'm around when you get a chance to open the present I gave you.... ;)

I think t'wife was trying to kill me this weekend... That was a LOT of work to squeeze into one weekend for sure!!

Saturday was a run to Jerry's (of course) to spend another $100 on chicken and garden stuff... picked up a dozen 2x4's for the side bracing on the chicken run and a beefier heat lamp thingy... after some work around the house, it was off to Hop Valley to spend some time w/ friends Les and Tami who are back in town after 10 days... thanks for picking up the tab Les!!

After all THAT and almost dark, we put up version one of the cold frame. It looks like crap but it was dark cold and wet so we threw it together in about 10 minutes... watching it over the weekend steaming up it at least seems to be working...







Sunday was cleaning 5 kegs, kegging 10 gallons of the Honey Orange Wheat, cleaning the chicken brooder, oh and why not brew up 10 gallons of the Red and smoke a pork roast while I'm at it... I've come up with a pretty reasonable clone of Hop Valley's Stepchild Red if anyone wants the recipe... gotta keep t'wife happy...

One of the kegs I cleaned went Mt. Saint Helens on me when I opened it.... this pic is from about 5 minutes after the lid was removed... that's what an infected beer will do - luckily that's only the 2nd one I've ever had in something like 300 batches...




I was going to give my spent grain to this woman I met at Hop Valley, but she wasn't available so ended up connecting with this guy at Shooter's and he was all over it - he'll take all I can give him. Turns out he and a dude raise about 25 hogs a year so I'm gonna try and work something out... I'm a beef guy but t'wife prefers pork,

Mmmmm - that's a stinky snack!

I took my first class last night put on by the OSU (GO BEAVERS!!) Extension Service - Master Food Preparers folks...

The class this time was on Fermented foods - yogurt, kimchi, kefir, apple cider vinegar, sourdough bread and yes, even chocolate. They let us sample all this stuff and this one item (name escapes me at the moment) is like a runny sour cream that was just yummy - MUCH better than what we normally use. Some of this and a bit of garlic and pepper and that would make one fine salad dressing me thinks...

Not so sure I learned a LOT but it's nice to get the creative juices flowing... the 'cheese experiment' a while back was a success for the most part, but there's a lot of room for improvement. A bro in the brew club is going to hook me up with a couple gallons of fresh goats milk and I'll see what I can pull off with that. Gotta love a fresh Chevre!

Other classes down the road (about one a month) are Emergency & Food Preparedness for your Family, Pickling, Jams & Jellies, Tomatoes and Salsa and I think there's one on canning meat... mmmm meat...

Watch your step - in more ways than one... chickens, alpacas, and....




Visited a friend with Belgian Tripel in hand to check out his chicken setup, homebrew sampling and barn stuff etc....


One lesson I am learning about chickens is that Nic and I are WAY overdoing what is necessary to care for these girls... but that's okay - it's still all a lot of fun...


And, of course, the latest pic of our own girls...

Beer (and Chickens of course)

No, it's not always about chickens...

We had our annual Cascade Brewers Society Real Ale Fest this Saturday and even though it as not as well attended as in years past, it was still a good crowd... Some good food and of course some great cask ales on tap...

This event also includes a People's Choice competition and after tying for the win, I lost in a taste off when two late arrivals were asked to vote and decide the winner.




I lost to Brandt "Beer on the Floor" W. our club prez... funny thing is he counted the votes... Hmmm... (okay okay, I watched him tally things up and unless he's really good at slight of hand, it was fair and square).





Nic put some primer on the chicken coop in anticipation of painting it sometime soon. Brandt "Beer on the Floor" W swung by and blessed the coop and our overall plan and offered to help me build the door. Glad he did because I was gonna go down the wrong path and probably have a horrible time with it.

Picking up chicks - with the wife's permission even!!

Well we done did it....

Brought the six chicks home on Wednesday night and have managed to NOT kill them off for the last two days... Miracles DO happen!!


We immediately realized that the brooder I had set up was going to be WAY too small (48 qt cooler) so feverishly swapped everything over to a nice big tote that was storing a couple sacks of brewing grain... Good timing - now I know there were MICE in the grain though I haven't got a clue how they got in there...


Anyways, the chicks seem to be settling in... One of them Nicole named Stella (I call her Chicken-Butt for soon to be obvious reason) has an ongoing pasting problem (crap stuck in/on/near her vent) so our first two nights we've had the pleasure of wiping a chickens' ass for her... at first she was rather lethargic but after this TLC she seems to be perking up. We shall see...















I've read six books on raising chickens, reread two of them again and still one more a third time... when we picked up the chicks they offered us a single sided page of paper titled "How To Raise Chickens" with what they feel is everything you need to know to pull this off... Keep them warm, feed them, water them, keep them clean... Heck - I got it all down to one sentence!!

Things are taking shape with the Chickens!

It's been a pretty busy week as I recall, but all I seem to remember is the work we did this weekend on the chicken coop and run.

Saturday was errand day and made a run to Jerry's for supplies to build the chicken run... fence posts, fencing, paint, clamps & gizmos, and $233 later we were on our way... it's gonna take a loooooong time to recoup our costs on all this I'm sure...

After picking up yet more supplies from Coastal Farm (another $13) Nic offered to buy me a beer at Oakshire... Our friends Les and Tami were leaving town soon so we called them to touch base and have a nice trip, next thing we know the afternoon was over with... not that we had lots planned, but...

Sunday morning I disassembled anything that would come off the coop (thanks again Jeff and Joan!!), cleaned up and lubricated any hinges, did an inventory of where the coop might need some TLC... swept out the interior then blasted everything with the hose. It was a pretty nice day so I wasn't too worried about things not drying out...

Our friend Les was loaning me his fence post diggers and offered his help as well... do we have great friends or what?? Four holes in the ground was a lot more work that I thought it was going to be... back on the farm I dug fence posts in my sleep, but that was more than 30 years ago and I've been riding a desk for the last 10 years... where's the Advil ???

Next up is framing the chicken run w/ 2x4's, string the fencing, build a door... I'll probably wait until after the coop is painted before putting the wire roof on... plenty of time to finish this whole thing up but with the way weekends get filled up I'd rather stay on top of things as much as possible...

Tonight I'll try to remember (NCAA Championship game is on) and do another brooder test... we get our chicks Wednesday night!!