Consolidated Kansas

[cherwill]

Me either. In my last post I mentioned I had just put that BR rooster in the crockpot. Problem is, I didn't turn the crockpot ON. I am so glad I realized only a half hour or so later instead of letting him set there the whole day long!!!

Oh my! Good thing you discovered it so quickly.

Here is a picture of one of his sons. A handsome boy too but you can see the half German/ half American is quite a different looking bird than the full German.

I can't help you with the problems, but I just wanted to say how beautiful this roo is. Wow!

Has anyone been to the Mother Earth fair in Topeka?
http://www.motherearthnews.com/fair/kansas.aspx#axzz3DPca9pX8

The speakers look pretty good.

I'm interested to know if people have been, and what they thought. DH & I look at the magazine all the time, but whenever we buy one (not often), we're disappointed. The articles are short and very, very basic. We keep hoping for more in-depth information or discussion.

 

[Trish44]

I've been trying to catch up, there were quite a few posts while I was gone. We went to KC for an appt. with my Rheumatologist & I finally got my birthday dinner, a month late but it sure was good. We stopped by at Danz's place on the way back to pick up a duck for someone & some Buff Orp chicks for me. I'm glad to be back home & my birds are going to mob me since we got back too late last night to feed.

It sure is cool out there today, I had thought it was supposed to be warmer today. It looks like it's supposed to be 81, but it's only 68 right now & cloudy. I'm a little worried about Sat. since it says 80% chance of rain & we're supposed to be at the Walnut Valley Festival that day. I guess if we get rained out we do. It seems like each year it's either really hot or chilly & rainy, this year looks like the latter.

HEChicken, those are some strange looking feet on that rooster, I hope you can figure out what's going on, he's just gorgeous! The one I got from you looks like him, so he must be his son. I love the looks of the German New Hamps vs the American ones. I just think they're so much prettier.

 

[HEChicken]

I'm interested to know if people have been, and what they thought. DH & I look at the magazine all the time, but whenever we buy one (not often), we're disappointed. The articles are short and very, very basic. We keep hoping for more in-depth information or discussion.

I went last year and it was fabulous. It was in Lawrence last year and I attended both days. In the week prior to attending, I downloaded the schedule of workshops and highlighted the ones I wanted to attend, so when I arrived at the fair, I already had my weekend pretty much mapped out. What I found was that there was SOOOO much information being thrown at me that my brain got tired from taking it all in and I wound up skipping a couple of the workshops I had on my list because I was so tired and needed a veg break

They had a really wide range of topics from animal husbandry to alternative energy to alternative health. I attended workshops most on things we are not already doing, as a form of research for what we might want to do in the future. For example, I didn't attend any of the chicken raising workshops because they were all geared towards getting started and I felt I had the basics down already. However I did attend Joel Salatin's processing demo. Although I'd also been processing for years, I'd learned it from YouTube and was interested to see someone doing it "live". He did provide a few tips that helped me tighten up my process so it was definitely worth it. Plus he was selling all the equipment you might possibly need and I got my turkey cone from him after the workshop.

I also attended some workshops on alternative energy as DH wanted me to look into what is possible for us. And I went to one on food preservation as well. They had a lot of vendors selling various wares and I got tons of heirloom seeds, mostly for $1/packet. They almost all did well in my garden this year.

The main thing lacking was availability of food. There were no food vendors except the sanctioned MEN cafeteria which was expensive. Also, there were no drink vendors except the cafeteria either and they only had bottled health drinks. All I wanted was water and there was NO water to be found anywhere at the fair - no drinking fountains, no-one selling bottled water. I didn't want their flavored health drinks so I wound up leaving the fair and walking into town to buy a bottle of water. Lesson learned. That night I stayed in a motel and next morning stopped at a convenience store on my way back to the fair, to arm myself with snacks and water for the second day.

I've looked at the list of speakers for this year and see several on there that I attended workshops from last year and can highly recommend. I also attended two workshops where the speakers may well have known their stuff but were not good speakers. I note that neither of them has been invited back this year so perhaps I'm not the only one who felt that way.

Oh - funny story. While waiting for one workshop to start, I got to chatting with the guy sitting next to me. He talked about how the MEN fairs have all been in locations he has previously lived so he has attended fairs all over the country. I really enjoyed conversing with him (which if anyone knows me, I am an introvert and usually don't appreciate people next to me striking up conversations). Anyway, the workshop got started and the speaker said he'd like to thank Bryan Welch, the editor of MEN for his tireless efforts to get the fair started in KS, and everyone applauded and I realized they were all looking at the guy sitting next to me!!! All that time I thought I was just chatting to another fair attendee and instead he was the one responsible for it happening!

 

[HEChicken]

HEChicken, those are some strange looking feet on that rooster, I hope you can figure out what's going on, he's just gorgeous! The one I got from you looks like him, so he must be his son. I love the looks of the German New Hamps vs the American ones. I just think they're so much prettier.

Last night I soaked both feet in oil and then rubbed petroleum jelly on them so we'll see if it makes a difference. They really are not scaly at all like scaly leg mite pics I've seen, where the scales are raised because of the mites underneath. I'm starting to think this might just be calloused feet like Danz described on her brahma. But the oil can't hurt anything so it is worth a try. He tolerated it pretty well but then I went to put him back on the roost and of course he jumped/fell straight off so had tons of icky bedding sticking to his petroleum jellied feet so I'm sure he wasn't that grateful to me for my efforts.

Oh - one more thing about the MEN fair. They have moved it to Topeka this year so I don't know how much that has to do with the venue and maybe this year there will be drinking fountains etc. However I'm going armed with drinks/snacks just in case that is still an issue this year.

Ewwww....at least one of my dogs got skunked last night. I never heard any barking but am grateful they are out there taking care of my birds for me. Who knows what the damage might have been without them.

 

[HEChicken]

Ummmm....I just noticed it says "Golden Feather" under my name but I don't recall joining. How did that happen?

 

[zigzag45]

Oh - one more thing about the MEN fair. They have moved it to Topeka this year so I don't know how much that has to do with the venue and maybe this year there will be drinking fountains etc. However I'm going armed with drinks/snacks just in case that is still an issue this year.

That is really funny @HEChicken . I did something similar with a speaker at a conference I was at, although I was happy to recognize his name when we were chatting before lunch. It was so nice to know that I was visiting with the speaker instead of finding out when he started his presentation.

The MEN fair (the acronym seems to indicate a different topic) sounds really good. Hard to take a weekend away but there's alot I need to learn.

I'll PM you if we end up going. It'd be nice to meet between sessions or something.

 

[TaraBellaBirds]

Ummmm....I just noticed it says "Golden Feather" under my name but I don't recall joining. How did that happen?

Did you win a contest maybe?

 

[HEChicken]

Did you win a contest maybe?

No, I never leave Consolidated Kansas these days….and never did get into the contest thing even before.

 

[sharol]

No, I never leave Consolidated Kansas these days….and never did get into the contest thing even before.

Sometimes they send a PM about "awards" and such.

 

[Prairie Fleur]

Thought you all might enjoy pics of my new LGD puppy. He's a sweetie and doing well, staying out with the stock.