Completed breeze porch South side.

 The breeze porch is painted!  It looks a ton better now that it is all one color.  The white really brightens the room and makes the holes and irregularities disappear.  I still have to macrame some new plant holders so I can clear off the table in the middle of the room.  I have hooks in front of all the windows around the room.  It will look like a jungle from outside. 

Monica had never painted before.  She didn’t realize how much prepping and time it took to get it done.  She was glad today when we moved all the furniture back in room.  Now we just have to get the white paint off the stained hallway and steps from someone stepping on paint and tracking it through the house, right foot only.  Lots of elbow grease and some nonscratch pads will take it right off.  

I have to repot most of the plants on the breeze porch to give them some more room to grow.  Annmarie and I collected the maps to go up on the walls.  I am going to store them in the attic for a couple of years until we get back to the breezeporch. 

Our number one priority for 2013 inside the house is installing a ventilation hood and fan in the kitchen. It will be a large custom number and is going to be $2-3K.  Annmarie wants me to tile the backsplash in the kitchen after that.  She is going to paint our countertops.  Outside, our priority is to spray weeds, finish barn roof and barn, plant some grass seed and work on figuring out the irrigation system and getting it operational.  Oh and fixing more fence!!

Completed north side. sitting area.

Christmas lights at night.

North side breeze porch primed, Monica had never painted before.

It is final, I have made a profit on the chickens!  After five years I will have made a whopping $47.15 this year.  Now, I am not keeping track over the last five years because that would make me be negative still.  My chicken door is still broke and I held off on getting it fixed because I wanted to be in the black for one year.  So now I will message the maker of my door and tell him it is broken again.  I love automatic doors when they work, but I sure have a lot of problems with them. 

So here is the 2012 annual chicken production summary:  I made a profit of $47.15 for the year.  My annual income was $645,  My annual expenses $525.10.   I purchased 1140# of chicken feed for the year.  My average laying hens for the year were 21.8 hens (currently only have 17 hens).  I collected on average 8.8 eggs/day for a hen productivity of 40% for the year.  The hens consumed 0.39 lbs of feed/egg produced.  It cost me $0.11/egg in feed only(or $1.31/doz).  I charged $3/doz for eggs all year long.  I had to purchase another 27 pullets in November to catch back up from the predator kill.  I lost 10 hens to predators this year.   If I could just keep the automatic chicken door working all year I could virtually stem all the chicken killing by predators.  They almost always come at night. 

So my goal this year will be to keep the automatic chicken door working or buy another one.  This time I will be researching guarantees.  I cannot seem to keep one working for more than about four months. 

It really has not snowed yet this year.

Well the new year is here and as always things are a happening on the farm.  We ran out of propane!  This doesn’t sound like a big deal but the hot water tank is propane, the stove is propane and all the heating in the house is propane.  We of course ran out on a Friday evening.  Annmarie had to call for an emergency fill Saturday morning.  I was of course at work.  We plugged in all six electric space heaters and attempted to keep everything thawed out.  It was a frosty 57 degrees F in the morning inside the house.   We went out for a warm breakfast at the cafe Saturday.  By the time we got back they had refilled the tank.  When it gets very cold outside we need to go on a every two week fill schedule for the propane tank.  Despite my track record of running out of propane every year, Annmarie insists I call and make the arrangements.  She reminds me frequently.  I had not done it yet… so we ran out again, five years running.  So she arranged for us to go to every 2 week fill and they are coming out and replacing our propane tank.  They are going to double its size! 

Old covering just before tearing down.

I had built an enclosure around our old tank to keep the tree limbs from falling down and breaking the connection piping.  Today I had to rip the whole thing down so they can swap out propane tanks.  It is all ready to be changed out.  This should happen in the next two weeks.  It will be nice to not have to worry about this problem in the future.

We have a couple of bald eagles living in the area.  We have seen them several times now and I have some pictures.  The pictures are not real close ups.  I have not been that lucky yet.  Our sheep still have not had any babies yet.  They are huge and should have babies any time now. 

Bald eagle scared by the vehicle.

Annmarie updated my chicken tracker for 2013 and added my predator tracker so I can tell how many chickens I lose every year to predators.