N E Goodies Update

Posted by George

May 11

Yesterday was my last day of work at the convenience store across the street. I think I told everyone in Albion about the bakery… could be an interesting start. We have our state certification, tax number, insurance and checking account set up.

There are always a couple of bumps along the way… due to our insurance company we will not be offering eggs for sale or antiques. Don’t quite get the antiques angle but will be pursuing this in the future.

Still have some work to do on recipes, decorating the entry way where the store will be and deciding our cooking schedule.

Needhams are currently available at the Albion Corner Store in Albion, ME. I will be expanding this business in the near future. Needhams will be available for shipment in the fall. Contact us then at 207-649-2230. These are the same needhams that we sold as Maine Goodies Needhams for years at MaineGoodies.com .

Opening is planned for late May or early June, stay tuned!

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So what’s up with NEGoodies?

Posted by George

Mar 25

So, it’s been over a year since posting on this blog…
Where to begin? Back while operating Maine Goodies, a website dedicated to selling products online that were only available in this area of the country, I had this idea to expand to New England Goodies. To that end I purchased newenglandgoodies.com, negoodies.com ( the short version) and quickly got smart, and thought, the negoodies sounded alot like anygoodies so I bought anygoodies.com too. Maine Goodies closed in February of 2010 and we have been thinking about what to do with these URL’s ever since.

Here’s the plan, for the last 25 years we have dabbled in several part-time businesses. When we lived in Norridgewock we operated a meat bird hatchery (Drickens Hatchery), a A 30′s to 50′s kitchen Antique Shop (Pastimes Antiques), and here in Albion we operated Maine Goodies as an online business. Since we were married I have done the majority of the cooking and baking in the house and always found it something I really liked to do… So here’s the plan.

It is our intention to combine all our “hobbies” and “interests” into a business called NEGoodies. A home based Bakery, here, along with cage free eggs, some antiques, garden produce from our garden, and any other thing that we determine to be of interest to us. You will be able to find this blog and web sites, as they are developed, under any of the above URL’s. Stay tuned for opening announcements!

We’ve sent in our license app, done the water and sewer certifications… getting excited!

George & Terri Stone

 

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Filed under: For Sale, General, goodies

Drickens Hatchery Returns!

Posted by George

Nov 26

In 1992 we owned and operated a small scale farm / hatchery in Norridgewock, ME. The name Drickens came from a contraction of Ducks, Rabbits and Chickens. At the time I was a director of a corporation, we had two small children and we had made the decision to home school them. We also ran an antique shop out of our house, had two pigs on the side lawn and hatched meat bird chickens for sale. Long story short we closed both businesses, ate the pigs and home schooled our kids. I continued to work.

Here we are about 20 years later. I’ve been hatching off and on as a hobby since we closed the business. Terri is working full time and after closing Maine Goodies I have been out of a full time job since February 2010. So the most predictable move for me… Drickens 2.0.

We have breeder chicks and plan to be hatching Red Star Pullets in April / May 2012. These will lay brown eggs and should start laying on 4 – 5 months from hatch. If you want to get on the list to buy some give me a call 649-2230 in Maine. I plan to concentrate on small order to local people. We will start with only 25 breeders and should be able to produce about 1500 pullets for the 2012 season beginning in April. We will see how things go from there. Future plans include guinea hens, meat birds and other breeds of layers.

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Who Coupons?

Posted by George

May 23

I DO! in the old days, I’m talking the early 80′s, we used to coupon in a big way. Some how that stopped over the years. Recently with prices rising, me being out of work for 15 months now, and having a lot of time on my hands we have re-entered the couponing world.

When we first got married we lived in Auburn, Maine. It was a huge event, back then, to travel to Waterville, Maine to a store that doubled coupons. Now the only store that doubles locally is Shaws. Now there seems to be many more very nice bargains at the national drug stores. So with very little effort you can purchase your shampoo, laundry detergent, toothpaste, deodorant and many other personal products for pennies on the dollar or free.

Get a Sunday paper and look at the weekly flyers for CVS, Rite-Aid, Wallgreens and you will be amazed. If you keep the weekly coupons you will find in a couple of weeks the items that have coupons will magically come on sale and offer real savings. Grab an RSS feed from a couple of the couponing blogs and they will direct you to the best deals weekly. I use coupon mom and surviving the stores.

My latest trip to Wallgreens cost me $34.23 for a total of $94.62 before coupons and sales. Not bad for less than an hour of effort! Picked up some toilet paper, Starbucks double shots, 2 laundry detergent, 4 deodorants and a couple of Christmas gifts ;~) In addition I walked away with a rain check for 4 tubes of Colgate toothpaste at 2 for $2 and I have 4 $1 on one coupons so they will be free when they re-stock their shelves!

Give it a try!

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Just like Wal-Mart!

Posted by George

Apr 30

Yesterday was the first sunny day above 60 here this year. So the mother hens decided to take their baby chicks for a walk. Apparently they decided to become our home’s greeters by planting themselves next to our front door. All the chicks have been digging in the gardens around the house this year so we’re just like Wal-Mart… greeters and no gardens out front!

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Hen Cam

Posted by George

Apr 28

I bought some wireless inferred cameras some years ago and decided to set up a hen cam to watch the chickens setting on the nests. We tried to hook the camera to out regular TV and it seemed to be too far from the chicken coop. Bright ides!, I have a TV in front of my treadmill with a VCR hooked to it. I put the camera’s feed in the back of the VCR and now I get to watch the chickens as I walk on my treadmill.

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Spring is in the air…

Posted by George

Apr 24

We have raised chicken for years and have always collected all the eggs and hatched most. This year, with 12 bantams as our only chickens, we thought it would be fun to let them hatch their own babies. Well we are learning a lot about what goes on in the hen house… First of all there seems to be a sense of sharing going around. We have 7 hens on eggs. Two of the egg holes have two hens in each and they seem to rotate from nest to nest. Doesn’t seem to matter which hole they sit in after they stretch and get some food they jut go to any hole with eggs and sit there.

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A little late for Easter…

Posted by George

Apr 20

I have a full incubator of colored eggs that will hatch the Monday after Easter. These are beautiful blue eggs that will hatch brown colored chicks. The breed is Araucana and they will also lay colored eggs when grown. A fun change from the boring brown or white eggs.

Araucana Eggs

Araucana Eggs

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Not my Chicken…

Posted by George

Apr 19

Recently we have noticed an intruder / visitor. There seems to be a wild rooster that has been living in the woods behind our property. Spring is in the air and as nature would have it here comes the rooster to check out our chicks. He is a full grown Old English Rooster and seems to think that he owns the place until our bantam roosters chase him away. It will be interesting to see who wins and where the rooster ends up.

Wild Rooster

Wild Rooster

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What’s going on here?

Posted by George

Apr 4

I was walking through the local Wal-Mart and spotted this interesting sight:

lemons?

Is this a new marketing initiative or just a customer who changed their mind on a purchase. Obviously it was a customer who didn’t want the lemons and lime that they initially put in their cart, or was it? As the minutes ticked by, while I stood in line to give up my money for severely overpriced packaged dog food, I began to wonder. Maybe this was a glimpse into the future. Imagine peg boards full of fruit in bags, packages of steaks dripping from the hooks, prescription drugs in little grab bags, bottles of milk hanging from displays all over the store, HELLO. Sorry, I must have dozed off, why doesn’t Wal-Mart have enough checkout clerks to get you out the door in a shorter amount of time than it takes to walk their 100,000 sq ft store to get 5 items?

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