steelnut

It's more than you can see in a day so allow at least 2-3 days to experience everything.  Whether I go or not will depend completely on the roads.

If there were any attraction to bring me to PA, that would be it. I would absolutely love to see an Ag show with that many exhibitors. There are rural parts of SC, but the Ag shows here are severely lacking. You have to go to TN to even start getting into the big time chicken shows. I could spend days walking round a show like that

2018 Pa. Farm Show Guide - Jan.6 - Jan.13  ----  http://www.pennlive.com/life/2018/01/farm_show_2018_guide.html#incart_river_index

Jefferson County Recipe of the Day: Amish Breakfast Casserole                   November 20, 2017 12:01 am·                                                                                                              A delicious old-fashioned recipe for your holiday brunch! Amish Breakfast Casserole Ingredients 1 pound sliced bacon, diced 1 medium sweet onion, chopped 6 eggs, lightly beaten 4 cups frozen shredded hash brown potatoes, thawed 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese 1-1/2 cups (12 oz container) 4% cottage cheese 1-1/4 cups shredded Swiss cheese Directions ~Preheat oven to 350°. ~In a large skillet, cook bacon and onion until bacon is crisp. Drain. ~In a large bowl, combine the remaining ingredients. Stir in bacon mixture. Transfer to a greased 13-in. x 9-in. baking dish. ~Bake uncovered for 35 to 40 minutes. Let stand for 10 minutes before cutting.          http://www.explorejeffersonpa.com/jefferson-county-recipe-of-the-day-amish-breakfast-casserole/

I just toss things on the smoker and cook them until they are done. I think the smoke provides a distinct flavor and masking it with sauces and marinades defeats the purpose. Or maybe that is just an excuse because I don't do much planning in advance.   Try turkey legs and trout. 

Hey Steelnut, this recipe is from the Orion site, so cook times would be different on a traditional smoker, but this has been my favorite rib recipe
Hush Yo'Mouth Baby Back Ribs
Contributor: Lizzie Powell - Atlanta, GA
Serves: NA
Calories Per Serving: NA
Preparation Time: 1hr 30 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Ingredients:
• Baby Back Ribs (1-6 racks)
• Cayenne Pepper (1 tsp)
• Orion's Dry Rub Garlic (2 cloves)
• Apple Cider Vinegar (1 cup)
• Salt (to taste)
• Ketchup (1 cup)
• Mustard (5 tbsp)

Cooking Instructions:
Remove the ribs from the package, rinse, and pat dry. Apply Orion's Dry Rub evenly. Affix the ribs to the rib hangers and place in the cooker. Then, fire up your Orion Cooker and cook for 1 hour 15 mins*, or until done. Best if cooked with mesquite chips. Barbecue Sauce (optional): Mix vinegar, ketchup, and mustard until it's a light orange color. Add the cayenne pepper, garlic, salt and Tabasco sauce to taste. Apply before and after cooking.

I used to do that when I had a small flock, but now I just dedicate a section of the winter garden to the chickens. It's easier here in SC
 Kale seems to be the biggest hit.
Ok, this is very typical of one of my Marans' first eggs. Almost round, and not that dark to begin. You can see the darker flecking, and as they get older that becomes the color of the egg. They will lay nice and dark through the end of March, then they start lightening up gradually until the fall molt. Some of my molters have started laying again, and I'm getting some of my darkest eggs of the season.
 

Hah!  Add insult to injury.  I actually had to go buy eggs at Walmart today.  The grand kids got the last of the fresh eggs for breakfast.  Our chickens had better start spitting out eggs.  It's Christmas Cookie time and I need lots of eggs!

Thanks Katie, I hadn't heard.
Better, but probably less than a month's worth of trash. Wait until the lawyers get involved...
 2 interesting things to me in that article:
1. required to submit a written “Root Cause” Report. What will this report say, and will it be made public? Who determines the actual cause, and if witnesses dispute the findings, what then?
2. Limit municipal sewage sludge and approved non-hazardous waste with flowable characteristics to 15% of the monthly scaled tonnage, with a maximum of 20% of the total scaled tonnage on any one day
Finally. I have been screaming this for years, but why only Greentree? This should be a national standard, especially the "on any one day" note. Even with a company policy of 20%, that is calculated monthly, so that number can be as high as 40+ on any one day as long as it averages out by the end of the month.
If this story goes quietly away, it won't be the last.

I was provided a copy of that report. Due to past accusations, I'm not going to break it down here, but there are many, many things in that report that the lawyers will have a field day with.
To the locals, I would be asking questions about contamination...

I sat through a very lengthy conference call this morning. The hammer is being dropped from on high about the volumes of wet waste accepted. There is a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth because the reduction in revenue will cost a lot of people a significant portion of their bonus. It will cost me personally several thousand dollars if the revenue isn't made up with something else. Good
A certain incident north of me was specifically referenced. The good news is certain companies are paying attention and reacting. The bad news is that it isn't a federal law, it's a voluntary business practice. When we turn it away, it will have to go somewhere...

No eggs from the Marans yet but  I didn't realize that the lights had fallen down and were unplugged.  That was fixed a few days ago so we'll see if it helps.
I finally got a good picture of all the roosters from the eggs you sent last spring.  I hope it's good enough to see the details.

BRANDY SMOKED TURKEY: I tried this for THANKSGIVING and it was great. I had a 20 pound turkey and thawed it. I injected with the following marinade.3 cups Christian Brothers BRANDY $10 + 1/4 cup orange juice+1/4 cup vegetable oil 3 Tablespoons bacon drippings. Inject the day before smoking. RUB RECIPE: 2 TBL. ONION powder+2 Tbl. of orange juice, brandy, bacon drippings, salt, pepper,and brown sugar. Add more or less ingredients to suit yourself. Put rub on turkey and put in smoker. I have a MASTERBILT 30 inch electric smoker. I put a disposable foil pan half filled with a 50-50 mixture of apple juice and water on bottom rack below turkey. I used apple wood and smoked at 225 degrees until internal temperature reached 165 degrees.

3-2-1 ribs. Use your favorite rub then Smoke for 3 hours at 225 then wrap in aluminum foil and smoke for 2 more hours but no need to add any smoke during this period. Than unwrap sauce with BBQ sauce if you like and smoke for 1 more hour. Adding smoke for the final hour is optional.

It's just so wrong. Total disregard for employee's lives.

I hate egg eaters, that's a tough habit to break. We are right at 24 weeks on our birds, and I've had Marans take 26-27 to lay. Hopefully by Thanksgiving

1st year layers start medium then go to large-XL. By year 2 you will get XL with a few jumbos. The color stays when you boil them, and they are incredible for baking

Petee should have some in a few weeks  

Thanks. It's almost not fair, the only way to beat these chickens is with more of these chickens
My wife said "There's probably some little old lady that has won that division for the last 20 years that hates you now"

From what I hear this story is not over. The last I heard DEP had another driller in taking samples. I wanted to post today because I actually met with one of our sludge producers this week for the first time at their facility, and I have a better understanding of where it comes from, how it is solidified, and why certain materials have to be used. This will be kind of a long and boring post, but for anyone wondering what sludge actually is I will try and explain it.
Wastewater treatment sludge is easy to visualize, it's just whatever settles to the bottom of a treatment pond, and it makes up about 40% of our sludge intake. The rest is classified as "industrial sludge", so in my mind it was coming from the back end of a plant as the sludge I see. I asked our hauler if he would give me a tour of the facility, because we have to work with each other on haul times so I'm not bombarded with more than I can handle in a short period of time. Sometimes this puts our hauler in a bind, so I wanted to see what he was up against. I was surprised to learn that his facility isn't producing the sludge, he is taking liquid waste from all kinds of industry, solidifying it, then sending it to the landfill. When I say liquid waste, I mean almost any liquid you can think of. Oil, ammonia, shampoo, milk, all different kinds of liquid chemicals. He said almost every manufacturing process produces liquid waste on some level. His facility receives these liquids and what can be recycled, like oil, is recycled. All other liquids are hauled in tankers, or in 50-100 gallon totes. These liquids are dumped into a "solidification pit", a concrete lined pit about 15ftx15ftx10ft deep. The next step is to add a binding agent, and this is where the dangers of sludge in a landfill begin. Sawdust is commonly used, and I love it, but the problem with using sawdust is it doesn't totally bind the liquid. If only sawdust was used, the trucks would leak from the facility all the way to the landfill, about 45 miles away, so other binding agents have to be added. One option is a cottony looking material that soaks up the liquids, and that works for me because the liquid is squeezed back out in the landfill by the weight of the equipment and the weight of the trash stacked on top of it. Picture it like a saturated sponge. The problem there is you still risk trucks leaking en route, so another agent they use is binding polymers, basically powders that lock the liquids. This is the stuff that makes sludge so hard to handle, so dangerous if it isn't mixed properly. The very thing that makes it safe to haul is what makes it dangerous in a landfill. It's not like a sponge, it doesn't release the water. It never dries and stabilizes, and if too much is placed in one area it makes an impervious layer that will trap other liquids either above or under that layer, creating those invisible underground ponds that I've described before.
This is why I want the story of Greentree to come out. If it is proven that sludge was responsible for that collapse, the waste industry needs to take a long look at what it is, and what it is doing to us. Liquid waste will always be generated, and it has to go somewhere. Modern landfills are the best option we have at this time, but the workers in those landfills have to be protected. When "wet waste" studies are done, they are done by engineers, and those results are shared with upper management. The field operators are not brought in to the discussion. Things that look good on paper don't necessarily translate to good practice in the field. One of my engineers came to me after one of those studies, excited to tell me they had proven that the "moisture retention capabilities" of the polymers were very high. To the people watching the bottom line, what that means is less leachate generation, less liquid at the bottom of the landfill that has to be hauled off and treated. An engineer doesn't think about what this waste that never dries does to the surfaces we work on every day, and how those initial savings in leachate generation turn into expense exponentially for years and years after the waste is dumped. You have to dig up bad areas and repair them, you have slides that if not repaired turn into exactly what happened at Greentree. You have odor issues because of gas migration, and lawsuits have been settled for millions of dollars with neighboring communities. The biggest issue of all is the instability it causes, and the dangerous conditions employees have to work in if it is not handled properly. There needs to be a national discussion about how this liquid waste can be safely disposed of. You can't dump free liquids in a landfill, so it will always have to be solidified in some fashion. I want the industry, regardless of the company you work for, to take a look at this issue and make common sense decisions that include input from the people that actually have to handle this material. It can't be fixed by a spreadsheet.
If the Greentree collapse doesn't get everyone's attention, then nothing will. If it is swept under the rug and disappears quietly, it will happen again

We worked outside all day today with our son and grandson.  They were putting up posts for electric fence (yes, we're still working on it) and I put away a lot of "stuff" for the winter.  Then I pooped out and sat enjoying watching the hole digging and grandson learning to split wood.  
Tomorrow I can probably take pictures of the girls.  Everyone is integrated, no herds of different colors of chickens any more.  Hubby has been tearing down an old decrepit shed and found the old waterer and chicken feeder.  I keep forgetting to order the electric fence!  

I still haven't gotten eggs from the girls yet, but I'm hoping by November. The Upstate fair is next week, and tomorrow I'm dropping off a dozen of the mamas' eggs for the brown egg division. Won the blue ribbon last year

lol, I reread what I said twice before I got it. 😹

My !!! had more to do with the way you chose to phrase your statement