Cécile Stelzer Johnson

Cherries and plums are all in the "prunus" genus along with plums, cherries, peaches, nectarines, apricots, and almonds.
Although not all can "intermarry" or get grafted on each other, most of these drupes give you a better crop if you plant more than if planted alone.
I cracked and just bought another Nanking cherry 'bush' [prunus tomentosa] after both of mine died last year. One big reason is that it didn't branch until 3 ft off the ground like the one Timothy shows. [I'm secretly hoping that just like all the mulberry "bushes" and "trees" I raised from seed, I can opt to train them as bushes or trees. [The tree would be dwarf anyway, which would make it easier to harvest the fruit. [They are pretty good]
Mulberries are particularly amenable to be trained as either. That can come in handy if you want your chickens to have them.
James, if you don't want the chickens to torment your Nanking, you may want to put an apron around, or some wire protection: My little Velociraptors defoliate everything I plant in their yard so I started to place these rubber aprons: When they don't pick every leaf, they scratch the ground right against the trunk to take their dust bath! [those rubber aprons are expensive, but they can be reused year after year to protect the roots of the younger trees, so...
If you Google "Drip Depot Landscaping Tree Ring - Recycled Rubber" you'll see what I mean.
We have many, many wild cherry trees here, We tend to have the "serotina" type. However, mine are not as tart as advertised. In fact, if you wait util it is completely ripe, you can eat them right off the bush.

M Rives wrote:
Burgers for the grill won't work unless you add some fat or pork. It's so lean it will fall apart otherwise. We pan fry venison patties in butter and melt cheese on top. Add salsa if desired.

Deer burgers are indeed lean meat [and you definitely do not want to add deer fat to it! Yuck! if cooked "well done" we may get a lump that is about as tender as the sole of my shoe.
When I am sure of the meat , I like to cook it to very pink. Most folks might call it underdone, but I prefer it that way.
You have a very good recipe for the roast, by the way!

Tim is absolutely correct:  It starts in the field: make sure the glands by the back feet are not touched with your hands before you handles the "clean meat". If you touch that area by accident, wash your hands well with soap! [Cut the feet off early, before you hang it!].
Also, if the deer is "gut shot", you will have to take extra care with the bile sac. Also, the silver skin around each muscle should be removed for more tenderness. Do that before you grind it for hamburger, if you grind it.
It should hang in a cold area for a few days. Not freezing cold, but refrigerator cold.
You can use the standard recipe for corned beef, which is relatively easy: The salting solution for a few days in a cold fridge and rinsing adds an extra chance to get rid of the 'gamey' taste. Then put it in the crockpot. Low and slow does it.
If you have an older animal, you may want to chunk it in cubes and make stew in a crockpot: Again, low and slow does it. I can them in pints and by themselves: This way, I can make a hearty 'beef' stew with the vegetables of my choice and vary the stew recipe. I try to always have parsnips on hand because it gives the stew a delicious sweet taste.
To tenderize it you can pound the beejesus out of it and marinate in wine, or cream.
Some pieces, such as the loins [sliced] should be quick fried but kept as raw as possible. I do the heart that way and I helped some relatives who don't like deer actually enjoy it.
Canning that stew with some stronger spices or the steak sauce of your choice should remove any gamey taste, too.
So good luck with your project.

E Sager wrote:I'll put another shout out for pickled eggs. You can get pretty creative with different spices. We make a sichuan / korean pepper flake combo that is amazing. Another thing you can do is make egg noodles and then dry them out for storage.

Ouh! my hubby loves pasta. I had not thought about making pasta with eggs but that should be on my bucket list of "learning how to do". I'm going to look for recipes right now. You have to share the Sichuan/ Korean pepper flake combo. Is it as hot as it sounds?
I don't have an extruder but maybe...just rolling the dough flat and cutting in long strands would be really good. I understand that properly dried pasta will keep a looooong time.
About pickled eggs: Whenever I can beets, I keep the extra juice to make beet wine, which I use for cooking wine.[You'd be surprised how good that is. Cathedral window red and transparent. You would never guess it comes from earthy beets.]
Then, I use some of this extra juice also to make pickled beets. Placing hard boiled eggs, peeled, into the pickled beet juice is a special treat for the eyes... and later, for the tummy.

Timothy Norton wrote:Generally, I keep eggs either on the countertop or by refrigeration. I'm handing out eggs to family members and don't usually have a glut that needs long term storage.

Same here. I did glass eggs safely, just as an experiment, to see if it would work. It did: I preserved some for 2 yrs.
The results were good and except for one that must have had a slight crack, they were all useable.
Right now, I'm selling eggs for $3.00/ dozen to make a little money on the side, but also to put the brakes on rising egg prices: when they know they have competition, they don't raise their prices.
I also put 36 eggs in an incubator. They should start hatching on April 27th. I already have takers: Folks who were not raising chickens and have decided to take the plunge!
If I get them all sold, I will keep selling baby chicks. It will all be straight runs, with the cockerels for meat and the hens for eggs.
One dozen eggs nets you $3.00. A single baby chick can get you more than that! If I sell them for $3.00-4.00 /piece, that's another way to sell "surplus eggs", and it contributes to a better economy in my area.
Now, incubators are not cheap, $100-$300 for models with features like automatic egg turning and digital temperature control. But you can reuse them over and over.

I've heard of the phenomenon but I'm not sure if having your brain cross wired like this is a plus or a minus. Those who have it seem to think of it as a plus, and perhaps it is, to them.
I do not see any application where it would be a plus, beside this wonderful artistry. It might be a useable talent if those who hear colors or taste sounds heard the same colors or tasted the same sounds. Then it would be a secret way to communicate among themselves, a bit like the Navajo "code talkers" of WWII.
If they had another disability [like deafness, for example and their code could be discovered, it might be a way to help them? [Like if seeing a certain color translated to a sound?]
It certainly is fascinating.
I think the closest that most of us can experience is that we do not perceive tastes in the same way: some find certain tastes pleasant while others really don't?

I tried the suspended water cups but they seem to get dirty anyway as they dunk their beaks after eating yucky stuff. Plus these darn things manage to leak when you install more than 6 around a bucket: there is always one that leaks. Throw the bucket, start over...It has to be inside, too, to prevent freezing, and a leak inside the coop is pretty bad.
For the nipples, it just doesn't seem like they would be getting enough water from something like that. I tried it and they did use them but I suspect they can get clogged as well. And again, leaks, either at installation or later.
When it gets very hot, getting just a few drops at a time just cannot be satisfactory. [They can drink a quart a day, individually!] They would also be more prone to freezing because the water has to pass through a narrow tube that has metal in it. You would have to have it in a heated building.
They are also to easy to cross thread during installation, Yeah, [installer error. I'm not proud, so I'll admit it] which will cause a leak: If you have a tube with 20 of them or so and one of them leaks, you will have to change the whole pipe and start all over again. That gets frustrating and expensive.
The way I look at it, chickens will bring in their own dirt in the water, no matter what system you use, so I go with the low tech open container on a platform so they have to climb. Every 2-3 days I bring fresh water, on a sled or in my little cart with wheels. Using 3 of them [one outside, 2 for inside] insures that you have a spare when you need to do a through cleaning, with brush and bleach.
Seeing the water they drink helps me to gage the general cleanliness of the operation: If there is dust floating on the surface, it is too dusty. If there is gunk, it's time to clean. That's just part of life with chickens. We have to get our heads straight with that. Some systems will work better for some folks because of the setup they have. Like I've seen a system where water is pumped continuously from a pond and gets returned to the pond, so the chooks always drink from a clean stream. a half PVC pipe cut in half is where they drink from. If they poop in the water, it gets continuously flushed, like a constant urinal.
[I wish I had myself a pond I could use like that!]

Chickens, whose ancestors were small velociraptors, prefer to roost up on high, even when it is very hot. I suspect it is an ancient form of protection, as predators don't climb trees very well.
If you feel it gets too hot in the summer, open a hole up on high, under the eves and one down low by the floor.[Heat rises, so the cold air comes in at the bottom of the building and escapes at the top, without too much need for additional ventilation. Cover these holes with 1/4" wires] to limit insects, mice, etc.
There can be considerable jostling when there are many bars at different heights, and less when they are all on a set of bars that are all at the same height, but that's not always handy if you have lots of chooks.
As long as they can jump up on them and land without hurting themselves, the height of the bar isn't terribly important.
For your coop cleaning convenience, you may want to have poop boards under the roosts: They poop mostly when they are roosting, so a poop board is a convenient way to harvest pure poop [like once a week for 33 chooks] while keeping the rest of the litter quite clean for months on end! [In the winter, that's actually pretty important!]
They seem to prefer 2" X 4" to roost on, and if you want  to direct the poop, slant the 2X4 at almost a 45 degree angle: They will grasp the top of the board and sit on their feet, which keeps their feet warmer in winter. The poop with land under the low end of the slanted 2 X 4. Avoid them being nose to nose by placing the boards in a \  / pattern. This way, you will have a line of poop and they will be back to back on the bars.
I have some sheets of bathroom wall material so I can scrape the stuff clean and even pressure wash it on sunny days. I use a rectangular trowel and also a long handled metal "windshield" bar.

* My refrigerator space is limited, so I do leave them on the counter: they never stay there 21 days, which is the amount of time it stays safely under a hen for hatching. since the kitchen is warm, though, and now I have roosters, I refrigerate them right away so I don't have the bloody yolk of a fertilized egg!
* I sell them to neighbors and friends.
* I even tried glassing them and they were edible for well over a year, but extreme care has to be taken to not crack them when putting them in and select real good eggs. They tasted fine when hard boiled, but after a year, the yolk and the white were not as well separated and I couldn't do a "sunny side up": it always rant together, more like scrambled. When I hard boiled them, they were fine. The easiest way to eat them was to cut them in half [with the shell still on], and scoop them with a spoon.[ I may even do that all the time instead to trying to peels the darn things].
*When I peel them, it is to put them in beet pickle juice. [I always can extra red pickle juice, and they are so good that way].
* When all that fails, I've been giving them away to food pantries.