I took a break on Saturday and went pheasant hunting.  There was two of us and the weather was cold, dreary, foggy and wet.  I was hoping it would keep the pheasants from jumping too early.  We took Bailey with us.  She loves to hunt, but doesn’t understand the concept of staying close.  She gets locked on a bird and nothing else in the world matters.  After the first hour she started to tire and it was much better.  My hunting partner shot a young rooster and I missed a clean clear shot at an older one.  The pheasants wanted to jump early and were very spooky.  We saw over 30 roosters.  The only ones we almost stepped on were hens.  We spent four hours slogging all over the property.  I was very tired, a little cold and very wet from the knees down.  It did start to rain the last hour we were out.  I came home, warmed up in the shower and then laid down on the bed to just “stretch out”.  I woke up 1.5 hours later after hearing this voice call out my name repeatedly.  I thought it was a dream.  Annmarie was going to town and could not find me.  She had hunted all over the house (except our bedroom) and was outside calling my name.  I gave up on being productive and went to town with her to run errands then we had dinner with her folks.  It was a very nice day.  Gotta get a lot of chores done today and some quality time with the wallpaper.  I only have 23 days before our company shows up for Turkey day.  The count down has begun!

Here is the flock minus two.  The three dark brown ones in the middle are boys.  The farthest one is a wether (castrated male), the white faced middle boy is our up and coming ram (Lucky is his name because he is not getting eaten), he is in training and learning from our current male.  Lucky imitates our current ram.  It is pretty funny to watch.  Oreo is the large ram in the front of the trio of dark colored sheep.
On the far right and far left are our two new female lambs.  They should be ready in the Spring to start having babies.  We decided to not dock their tails.  Everything I have read about hair sheep says you do not have to do it, so we didn’t.  I will know in a year if it was a mistake or not.  All the sheep we purchased already had their tails docked.
The larger central three sheep are our ewes.  They are all three pregnant at this moment.  We should be getting lambs from two of them in November and one in December.  Now, we are locking the sheep up in the barn every night so we can find the lambs.  Hopefully, this will also prevent the coyotes from killing the newborn lambs (lost two last year this way).

Here is the back side of the barn.  You can see all the critters running around together.  The dogs were in the yard just so the sheep didn’t get spooked.  The dogs can run around with everyone also, but one of the pregnant ewes head butts our chocolate lab when she isn’t looking.  It causes chaos.  I wanted some relaxed pictures.  The lab and rug rat dog do not attack the sheep, cats or chickens.

The cats don’t do well with the chickens when the chickens are small.  They look like food (quail) and get eaten.  Once they are adults then the cats will leave them alone.  It is pretty funny when you are trying to feed the chickens bread.  The sheep come over to eat bread, the cats come over to eat bread, the dogs want bread and the chickens all scramble around trying to get whatever is left over.  I put in the bridge for the humans but one of the lambs taught all of the sheep to use it so now everyone uses it, even the chickens.  Go figure…

Here is the closet before I got started.  You can see I have the power pulled and my sheetrock patches in place.  The wallpaper is killing me.  It is taking forever to get off.  Hence my desire to do something else (closet).

Everyone was gone today (still are) so I made great strides on the library closet (pause while I remove bandaids from my finger tips, too hard to type).  I wanted to get the pegboard up in the closet, but I needed to close in the return duct going through the closet.  As no lumber is straight anymore and no wall inside any house is square or plumb it was quite the endeavor.  Yes, I did make a substantial blood sacrifice in the process.  Any carpenter will tell you that it is essential when working in tight spots when nothing is straight, level or plumb!.  I can finally feel my fingertips on my left hand now.  I smashed them good.  I was wondering if my primer’s stainblock guarantee covers blood?  I tried to hide it all, but I think there is some showing.  On the bright side, I only had to go to the hardware store once.  I needed some longer screws.  I had too short and too long, not just right.  Besides, the hardware store guy, (name edited for privacy sake) buys eggs from me and I needed to deliver them.  I randomly drop in with eggs every once in a while.

Here is the duct before I got it covered.  This is a return duct to the central heating system.  It pulls from the living room goes under the house and comes back up here.  It goes into the library ceiling for about four feet.  So we won’t be able to raise this ceiling unless we just want to box in the duct.  I don’t really like that unless it is a basement so we will just live with the ceiling a foot lower in here than everywhere else.  It is hard to tell since you have to go under the stairs to get into this room.
The blue bag is powdered milk for the baby sheep.  Enough there for the next three years at the rate we use it.

Here is the finished enclosure.  Not too shabby.  I still need to throw some primer and paint on things, that will happen after I get the sheet rock up.  I want to prime and paint all in one step.  I hate having to keep washing the walls all the time.  It does get tiresome.  Annmarie is picking up some paint tomorrow.  Sherwin Williams sent us a coupon for 30% off and I had been thinking about getting some more paint, so that just cinched the deal.  I had them mix it up already.

Here it is finished.  I even hung one basket to make sure I had the pegboard far enough away from the wall.  I have a few small pieces of trim to install.

No more excuses to not tackle that wall paper.  I tried scoring it and using Downy and water on it.  It helps, but it is still taking forever.  Someone suggested I use a heat gun.  I can borrow my father’s and give it a try.  We have company coming the week of Thanksgiving and they will be sleeping in this room so I am sure they would like some light.  So I need to get all the wall paper down, all the mud applied to the walls, texture applied, primed and painted then wire in all the outlets and the light.  As an added bonus, I am doing the small area under the stairs at the same time.  It just needs some new tongue and groove wood and lots of mud.  I will take a picture of it soon.

Chickens wandering the property, I ended up making a burn pile of all the different broken tree limbs and discards.

I spent all day Saturday shopping and getting ready for the big remodel in the Library.  I have all the pegboard, plywood, 2×2, 2×4, and sheet rock needed to fix everything up.  I also bought 500# of wood pellets for the chicken coop litter.  I use the deep litter method in the coop so I (and Sarah) only have to clean it out once a year.  By the time I ran my errands and unloaded everything I didn’t get a lot more accomplished.

 So on Sunday we made great strides to get the farm ready for Winter.  I followed Annmarie’s advice this year and shut down the outside water!  I don’t want to have to replace those risers again next year.

new bedding and the nipple waterer in the chicken coop.

 Sarah finished digging out the coop and put in new bedding for the chickens.
  I added a nipple waterer inside the coop.  It is just a five gallon bucket with three little mechanical nipples inserted in the bottom.  The nipples don’t let the water drip out of the bucket, but do form a small drop of water on the end of them.  The chickens peck at the water causing more to come out and they learn how to get water in no time.  Our babies only took a single day to get the hang of it.  I love the no mess angle.  The other waterers cause quite a mess inside the coop.  The other nice thing was this was very cheap.  Annmarie got me a couple of aquarium heaters to use inside the bucket this winter.  We are hoping it is enough to keep the water thawed.  I might take some insulation and tape it to the lid and sides using a feed bag and some duct tape on the outside of the insulation.  Still thinking about that.  It is probably necessary.

 We cleaned up the steps and windows.  I added stepping stones to the yard so you can cross it in the Winter without getting all muddy.   The baby chickens are not  very good looking chickens.  I keep reminding myself that they are not for their looks, they are for the eggs.  They are supposed to lay true blue eggs.  We will see.  I should start getting eggs from them in the next 2-3 months.  That will be the true test of whether the seller was truthful.

 We decided that it was time to let the babies out with the adult chickens.  They are not really babies any more, but the roosters are not crowing yet.  I have a banty hen that is tiny, she might get eaten. She is a little Showgirl that was free.

I went out to lock the chickens up last night (have not forgotten since our favorite chicken got killed) and one of the babies was outside the coop in his enclosure on a perch outside alone.  I had to grab him and take him inside the coop.  All the babies were in their pen (door wide open) crouched down on the floor together.  It will take about a week for them to integrate with the other chickens.

  I also crawled up on a ladder and attached a chicken weather vane we found somewhere on the property.  I cannot remember where now.  I fixed the wood shed’s loose tin roof.  It had a piece on the end that would flap and bang around during a wind storm.  Sarah cleaned up all the buckets we had laying around outside and all the Summer chicken supplies that need to be put away for Winter.  We are pretty much set!!  I am sure something else will come up, but for the most part we are ready.  I also attached a cow bell to the sheep barn entrance.  We are going to start teaching the sheep to come in at night with food and a tolling of the cow bell.  It will probably take a couple of weeks to teach them that the cow bell means night time lockup.  We should have a couple more lambs late next month or early December.  I think next month, but I forgot to write it down and cannot remember now!!  Go figure.