It has been a little over one month since I started sleeping outdoors regularly.

 

I highly recommend it if it’s safe to do so where you live. (I have a hammer, an air horn, and bear spray in my tent, so I’m well-secured.)

 

I sleep better (more soundly) according to my Fitbit reports, and my heart rate is athlete perfect.

 

I have less nasal congestion, and my hair and skin look better.

 

All this despite the fact  that I’m battling a couple of minor health issues (anemia, elevated TSH level, and I just finished a course of antibiotics for yet another urinary tract infection) that have laid me low for the past ten days or so.

 

I  experienced some symptoms of COVID but they’re the same as for UTIs and anemia, and my at-home COVID tests haD expired, so I’m considering myself “undiagnosed” as far as COVID goes.  The symptoms were extremely minor and not at all concerning: I’m well-boosted. (Sneezing, coughing, a couple episodes of chills, no fever or other symptoms other than lethargy/fatigue feeling like I could sleep 14 to 16 hours out of every 24.) I can walk two miles without issue, too, so I’m next to sure that what my body has been dealing with isn’t COVID related, but I’m taking no chances and not allowing visitors at this time.

 

I have a Coleman tent. It’s wonderful and I intend to stay out until winter drives me indoors. That will happen sometime in late October or early November, since it has been unseasonanbly warm and dry here all summer, so there is no need to even think about packing it all in yet for the colder winter months.

 

In Other News

Several of my hens started laying eggs about three weeks ago. The rest are starting now,  so I expect we’ll be collecting a dozen eggs per day within a couple weeks.  Right now we’re getting about six a day, but that has just begun reliably. Up until two days ago, we were just getting three to four a day.  It won’t be long now before all twelve girls start laying, and then we can let the word go forth to our family and friends to “come and get ’em!” Many of them are salivating already. Jackie and I would be, too, but we’re eating the few we get already, so we’re already enjoying farm fresh  eggs from pasture-raised spoiled rotten pet chickens.

 

Today the goats pushed through one of the hen pen fences, so half of the flock got out into the goat pasture. But all I had to do was prepare a plate of moist cat food and head out to the hen pen, and the escapees came running to take part in the feast.  They are super easy to re-corral — and the fence is fixed.

 

I wouldn’t mind leaving them out all day but they might lay eggs where I can’t find them. And if they came into the main yard and started kicking around in Jackie’s gardens or pooping on her back porch, she would have a fit, so I have to keep them confined.  (By confined, I mean within their designated hen pasture, which is far from confining, as you can see below — and these images don’t even show the full extent of it, but pretty close!)

 

 

 

 

 

Today’s bounty of farm fresh eggs… from smallest to largest…

 

The eggs start our pretty small (smaller even than any of the ones shown above) but as the hens get a little older, their circumference increases. The one on the far right is probably a double-yolker.

 

Some of the earliest eggs aren’t fully formed; they have very flimsy membranes instead of shells containing the contents of the eggs) but that only happens a time or two before their bodies start doing whatever is necessary to create shells.  They have everything they need in their diet to form sturdy shells.

 

Oh, and by the way for people who have not grown up on farms. The substances inside these eggs are not unhatched baby chicks. What’s inside them is what a developing unhatched chick would consume while it’s in the egg. None of our hens’ eggs are fertilized — we have no roosters — so we’re eating baby chick food (after cooking it, of course), not chick fetuses, in case you ever thought that. Some vegetarians and vegans will eat eggs because they aren’t  unhatched baby chicks.

The ENTERPRISE FLIGHT has been tentatively scheduled for December this year. I will let you know the extact date when I hear it in November.

Here is my announcement for what that’s all about, if you’re wondering:

Something I wrote and recorded on video for the memorial service about DeForest Kelley will be shown on the day before the launch at Cape Canaveral. I won’t put it in a blog post until after it’s shown officially, but below is a longer version I wrote for the service (not the same info at all) which was deemed too long. The powers-that-be at Celestis asked me to make it two minutes or less after the fact. At first, they said I could make it “as long as I wanted” but since then, so many more participants have been added to the flight, including the DNA of four Presidents of the USA, that they had to limit eulogies to two minutes each. So this one ended up on the cutting room floor. But YOU can still enjoy and share it.

 

Some of my mail got ripped off by my former mail carrier. He no longer is employed by the USPS. I was notified two days ago by a federal USPS investigator. BarbieSue McCrane (Hannah’s mom and my Scentsy consultant) helped us confirm the contents of the undelivered letter (She sent the letter to me that never reached me). The envelope was found along the roadside a few blocks south of my address by the inestigator and the contents were found in the fired postal delivery guy’s van, so they have the additional evidence they need to pursue charges. The investigator has the evidence (envelope and Scentsy samples) in his possession. And I signed up for Informed Delivery so I will always know what mail to expect in my mailbox every day. If something doesn’t arrive, I’m supposed to report it immediately.  (I wasn’t expecting anything from BarbieSue, so I didn’t realize it had gone missing. From now on, I will!)

 

I guess that’s all the news that’s fit to print right now. Enjoy your weekend!