A bit of a mixed bag
Oct. 13th, 2025 01:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mousmeI am just about halfway through this last night shift, and I am very ready for it to be over.
Last week was a bit of a mixed bag, mostly because I really hate having to give up my sleep during night shifts, but as they say in French: "À quelque chose malheur est bon!" Which translates roughly to "sometimes misery leads to good things."
I sacrificed more sleep today in favour of staying up long enough to make a split pea soup, which I will be freezing sometime tomorrow (well, technically today, I guess). I have several other soups planned, as I mentioned, so we will see how many I have time to get done before Tuesday night. The problem is not the soups themselves, but rather my limited number of containers in which to freeze/store them. I may just use Ziploc bags for whatever I can't put into the silicon moulds in time, so that way I will have plenty of soup even if it's not stored in the way I originally planned.
I also bought extra pre-made things at the grocery store just in case I want or need something that's not soup. I picked up some protein drinks (the Premier Protein brand) because it's particularly important that I get enough protein every day, and I rather suspect that I will struggle with that, especially as I won't be able to manage meat for quite a while. I also got some unsweetened apple sauce, and I picked up several more cans of beef consommé (which I adore, but as I understand it is not to everyone's taste).
I'm really hoping that I won't find recovery too arduous, because I have a couple of small cooking-related projects I want to get done, namely I want to make apple jelly before the apples I picked last weekend go bad, and also remove the hulls from the black walnuts I gathered last weekend and get them washed and into the dehydrator for processing.
Realistically, I have too much to do to be able to get it done in the next two days, even if I don't sleep until nighttime tomorrow (which would result in a Very Tired Phnee, Indeed), and I have priorities other than the apples and walnuts, even if the apples go bad.
My main priority tomorrow is the quail. Tomorrow I will be vent sexing all the adults now that they're old enough for me to be able to reliably tell what sex they actually are. Once I've done that I will band them, so that in the future I can make sure to avoid interbreeding them too much next spring when I start incubating more eggs. KK has promised to help me replace the screws on the roof of one of the hutches with piano hinges so that I can open it from the top. Right now the newest hutch is actually really difficult to get into with food containers and waterers. I have to angle the food containers in particular, which means a fair bit of spillage, which isn't ideal.
KK also promised to help me move the quail hutches into the garage, because the weather is turning cold at night. We've had two nights when the temperature dropped to below freezing, and I don't want to lose any more of them to their habit of flinging their water around and getting soaking wet. From what I've understood from the internet, quail are particularly stupid little birds who are determined to kill themselves. Yesterday morning I got home and found one of my four-week-old chicks face down in its waterer, eyes closed, completely unmoving. It looked like it had managed to wedge itself between the waterer and the cardboard box I gave them to hide in (quail like to have little shelters to hide in to help them feel safe). I assumed it was dead, but no, it was just stuck and being Very Dramatic, so I'm relieved about that. I confiscated the box, because hiding privileges have to be earned and can be revoked if you try to use them to die by suicide, GDI.
Anyway, yes. Moving the quail into the garage will provide them with more shelter from the elements and hopefully keep them from freezing to death even if they get a bit wet. I will have to install more lighting in the garage if I want the quail to lay during the winter, since they need lots of light to lay and the garage is very poorly lit.
I fully expect Operation Quail Displacement to take a couple of hours at the very least. There's the sexing, the banding, cleaning out the hutches, fixing the hutch roof, and then moving the hutches into the garage, which means clearing a bit of space in the garage to ensure there's enough space for KK and I to carry them in without tripping over anything.
After that it Operation Cook All The Soup will continue, which I fully expect to take the rest of the day, and possibly a good chunk of tomorrow. Somewhere in there I also need to do laundry so I'll have clean linens while I'm recovering from surgery, and have a Zoom call with my parents as well. I don't know if I'll be able to get to the apples and walnuts, but I also don't want them to go bad.
The good news is that KK's shoulder appears to have recovered from whatever she did to it last week. Or, if it hasn't, then she at least hasn't mentioned it to me in the past few days, so I am choosing to see it as a win.
So, yeah. Busy, busy, busy. We shall see how successful I am at making everything work. Catch you on the flip side, friends!
Last week was a bit of a mixed bag, mostly because I really hate having to give up my sleep during night shifts, but as they say in French: "À quelque chose malheur est bon!" Which translates roughly to "sometimes misery leads to good things."
I sacrificed more sleep today in favour of staying up long enough to make a split pea soup, which I will be freezing sometime tomorrow (well, technically today, I guess). I have several other soups planned, as I mentioned, so we will see how many I have time to get done before Tuesday night. The problem is not the soups themselves, but rather my limited number of containers in which to freeze/store them. I may just use Ziploc bags for whatever I can't put into the silicon moulds in time, so that way I will have plenty of soup even if it's not stored in the way I originally planned.
I also bought extra pre-made things at the grocery store just in case I want or need something that's not soup. I picked up some protein drinks (the Premier Protein brand) because it's particularly important that I get enough protein every day, and I rather suspect that I will struggle with that, especially as I won't be able to manage meat for quite a while. I also got some unsweetened apple sauce, and I picked up several more cans of beef consommé (which I adore, but as I understand it is not to everyone's taste).
I'm really hoping that I won't find recovery too arduous, because I have a couple of small cooking-related projects I want to get done, namely I want to make apple jelly before the apples I picked last weekend go bad, and also remove the hulls from the black walnuts I gathered last weekend and get them washed and into the dehydrator for processing.
Realistically, I have too much to do to be able to get it done in the next two days, even if I don't sleep until nighttime tomorrow (which would result in a Very Tired Phnee, Indeed), and I have priorities other than the apples and walnuts, even if the apples go bad.
My main priority tomorrow is the quail. Tomorrow I will be vent sexing all the adults now that they're old enough for me to be able to reliably tell what sex they actually are. Once I've done that I will band them, so that in the future I can make sure to avoid interbreeding them too much next spring when I start incubating more eggs. KK has promised to help me replace the screws on the roof of one of the hutches with piano hinges so that I can open it from the top. Right now the newest hutch is actually really difficult to get into with food containers and waterers. I have to angle the food containers in particular, which means a fair bit of spillage, which isn't ideal.
KK also promised to help me move the quail hutches into the garage, because the weather is turning cold at night. We've had two nights when the temperature dropped to below freezing, and I don't want to lose any more of them to their habit of flinging their water around and getting soaking wet. From what I've understood from the internet, quail are particularly stupid little birds who are determined to kill themselves. Yesterday morning I got home and found one of my four-week-old chicks face down in its waterer, eyes closed, completely unmoving. It looked like it had managed to wedge itself between the waterer and the cardboard box I gave them to hide in (quail like to have little shelters to hide in to help them feel safe). I assumed it was dead, but no, it was just stuck and being Very Dramatic, so I'm relieved about that. I confiscated the box, because hiding privileges have to be earned and can be revoked if you try to use them to die by suicide, GDI.
Anyway, yes. Moving the quail into the garage will provide them with more shelter from the elements and hopefully keep them from freezing to death even if they get a bit wet. I will have to install more lighting in the garage if I want the quail to lay during the winter, since they need lots of light to lay and the garage is very poorly lit.
I fully expect Operation Quail Displacement to take a couple of hours at the very least. There's the sexing, the banding, cleaning out the hutches, fixing the hutch roof, and then moving the hutches into the garage, which means clearing a bit of space in the garage to ensure there's enough space for KK and I to carry them in without tripping over anything.
After that it Operation Cook All The Soup will continue, which I fully expect to take the rest of the day, and possibly a good chunk of tomorrow. Somewhere in there I also need to do laundry so I'll have clean linens while I'm recovering from surgery, and have a Zoom call with my parents as well. I don't know if I'll be able to get to the apples and walnuts, but I also don't want them to go bad.
The good news is that KK's shoulder appears to have recovered from whatever she did to it last week. Or, if it hasn't, then she at least hasn't mentioned it to me in the past few days, so I am choosing to see it as a win.
So, yeah. Busy, busy, busy. We shall see how successful I am at making everything work. Catch you on the flip side, friends!
