Ended Official BYC Mini Contest - What is Your Hobby?

Quail (Hobby#3)
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Hobby # 2
Canning

I love to can things like tomatoes and to make and can jams and jellies from produce that I have either grown myself or picked my self.
This can be a very time consuming process depending on whether you are water bath canning or using a pressure cooker to can. The pressure cooker takes much longer!
I have mad a little bit of money because friends and family have requested to purchase some of my home canned jams, jellies, tomatoes and salsa but that was not the purpose of getting started with canning. I love the idea of being able to put up produce or meat that I have grown or raised myself and that it lasts 18 months!
I often get together with a friend that I introduced canning to, and we will can up things together! We even made watermelon jam this year. The jam that the most people loved this year was the "Apple pie jam".
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I believe this was a batch of "pear butter" that I made this year, but I'm not positive since I took the picture before I labeled the lids.
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These cases are full of jams and jellies and salsas and pickle relish that I canned this year. The quarts of tomatoes, pasta sauce, and pumpkin chunks are put away in the pantry or downstairs.
 
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ENTRY #2 - GARDENING

It started with a water garden. When gardening, why not dream big? So when my husband and children went away to visit grandparents for a few weeks, I dug and hauled rocks and liner and plants, and created a small water ecosystem complete with fish and frogs and water lilies that is still going 18 years later:

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I enjoyed creating that garden so much that next year I took a spade and dug up another area of the yard. This time I planted a garden of hostas and astilbes under two tall spruce trees.

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I didn't stop there. I kept digging and digging, putting in a new garden each summer. I had become a hosta fanatic, and before I came to my senses ten years later, I had planted over 110 hostas of 70+ varieties all around my yard. The gardens were gorgeous - but I had to weed them every year!!

Of course I have more than just hostas. Mainly I have shade plants because I live under large trees. I've planted various ferns, wild geraniums, bleeding hearts... And I have over 400 irises, all of them Siberian irises that look spectacular for one stunning week in early June.

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Naturally I photograph my flowers and gardens because my #1 hobby is photography :) I'm not an expert gardener and I don't make money at it, but I have learned a lot about gardening over the last 20 years. Perhaps one of the most important things I learned is how to keep deer from eating my 110 hostas so that my gardens continue to look good all summer.
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:frowHi everyone! This has been a great thread to read! The creative people here are truly artists! Not entering but wanted to share. I craft with just about anything,wood,metal,pencil,paint.I really enjoy using "junk" to create something beautiful. I crochet and garden. And there is all the critters!
My main hobby is lampworking. Making glass beads and other small things by melting glass.It's amazing to watch hard cold glass heat up and flow like honey!
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Hobby #2:
I am a writer. I have around ten book drafts, but it is currently NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and I am getting near the end of my first 30,000 word novel!

It all started when I was around 8 years old. I remember one evening when I had the oddest urge... I felt like pulling out a journal and writing. So, that's exactly what I did. I found a purple composition book with black speckles and I grabbed a pencil.

I remember staring at a blank page while sitting at the wooden kitchen table. It felt like I needed to draw something on it, write something on it, or even just scribble all over it! The sight of a blank page is very inspiring, but I couldn't come up with anything to write down.

With my freshly sharpened pencil, I stayed awake in my room trying to come up with an idea to write. Finally, I did. I came up with a silly idea about myself living in a Wii game I loved to play. It wasn't much, but writing about took me away into a faraway land that I can't describe. It is a very good feeling, so I kept doing it.

When I was 9, I made fanfiction of my favorite book, "The World According to Humphrey" which sparked my passion for hamster keeping. I then kept my first hamster, "Humphrey" (hence the book's name haha) but that's a story for another time.

I've made excellent progress in terms of writing, and it is one of the biggest parts of my life like playing guitar (above).

Since it is NaNoWriMo, I write mainly in the evenings from around 4-9 PM. I actually should be writing right now, but I'm here instead. :gig

I hope to make a career out of writing when I'm an adult, but writers are all too similar to musicians regarding income -- you either make it "big" or you are homeless living in a box in San Francisco.

It's been 4 years since I started writing (still a young child haha) and I currently keep around 8 or 9 journals stuffed into my brief case and I write into them at night, keeping my unoriginal ideas into a small container that nobody else can see.

I am too embarrassed to give you the excerpt of my NaNoWriMo novel and I don't have photos, so that's it! :)
 
Entry #1
My chickens are my #1 hobby. What was supposed to be a small family thing to get rid of ticks and was just 6 birds quickly turned into 12, 24, 36... All in just the first spring. The next spring I got my own flock(supposed to be separated from the family flock as far as coops go). I started with 8 brown leghorns, and in a week I got 2 BLRWs, then we needed a new coop because we took in 10 hens from a lady who had to move, so I got 3 free birds(2 white hens of unidentified breed, and 1 buff orp roo), then my aunt gave me a hen to match the roo. Last winter a weasel got about 60 of our hens and I started incubating. We climbed up 160 before school was out for summer(I was even selling them left and right). So I suppose this morphed into multiple hobbies because I enjoy selling the eggs, incubating eggs, buying new breeds, raising and selling chicks, and just plain having fun with all my fluffy butts.
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(My little guy: Napoleon, named for his fluffy feet which look like pants. My big guy: Little Fire, named after his sister when my brother misunderstood when I said Sapphire. And an old jungle fowl(I think) roo we called Mr. Orange until we traded him for a misbehaving Barred Rock)
 
@Nats Chickens it would be nice to see a picture of some of your hobbies. Would you like to edit one or two of your posts to show us? No worries though, you don't have to if you'd rather not.
It wouldn't allow me to edit them, so I will post the pics here.

Entry 2# Fish breeding
  • I love to grow and nuture things, I originally wanted to breed chooks, but as parents won't let me, fish will have to do.
  • I just do it randomly, I only have nine goldfish so far, none of which have spawned, but I plan to get some guppies, platys, red cherry shrimp and 2 more goldfish, I guess this hobby has not relly started up properely yet, but it's getting there!
  • looking after the fish does take a lot of time, but I am not making any real sacrafices, I guess pocket money, and time I would normally spend worrying, pacing or reading lol!
  • As I have not really started up yet, and only have 9 goldfish, I am not even really an ametur yet.
  • I plan to sell most of the offspring, hoping to get some money back from this hobby!
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Some of my goldfish!

Entry 3# Photography
  • I just love capturing a moment, and being able to look back at it in high definition!
  • I practice photography when I can be bothered.
  • None, if anything, it has brought the opposite of sacrafices!
  • I am an ameautr.
  • I do not get an income, but I entered a few pics in an ameturephtography comp at the local showground and proceeded to win;
  • 1 first prize
  • 1 second prize
  • 3 third prizes.
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Some of my entries from last year!
 
Entry #3
A great hobby that i enjoy is Geocaching!
It's like a great big world wide treasure hunt.
I have a app on my phone that shows where all the geocaches are. Then we go out and find them.
The geocaches are containers usually containing a name log that you sign and some extra items that people swap around.
It's a great hobby to get you up and outside and exploring the world.
Here's some pictures to show some of the different containers that are used and a name log.
Casper and Gemma with Geocache GC7VZ43  Dingle Lane 'Top of the hill'  1st January 2019 (3).jpg Casper and Gemma with Geocache GC7VZ43  Dingle Lane 'Top of the hill'  1st January 2019 (2).jpg Casper and Gemma with Geocache.GC78N0Y   Dingle Lane. 'Spread your wings' 1st January 2019 (5).jpg Casper and Gemma with Geocache.GC78N0Y   Dingle Lane. 'Spread your wings' 1st January 2019 (3).jpg Casper and Gemma with Geocache.GC78N0Y   Dingle Lane. 'Spread your wings' 1st January 2019 (4).jpg
 

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