Back creek running again.

The back creek is running again.  This is a good sign for moisture content in the mountains.  Or a bad sign that all the snow is melting off the mountains early.  As you can see in the picture the wind has been blowing lots!  The weeds are starting to pile up in the fences all over the farm.  I need the wind to die down and a few days of rain or snow before I go out and deal with the weeds.  The worst part is going to be digging the weeds out of the fence before burning them.  I don’t want to replace any more fencing next year.  I had enough of that this year.



Chicken coop

Annmarie told me I wasn’t taking enough artistic photos of the farm lately so I decided every time I have the camera I need to shoot a few artsy fartsy photos.  One can never have enough pictures of the chicken coop. 



Dexter bull.

The cows are still outside the pen running around the machine shop and cars.  They don’t eat cars, they don’t run through every little hole in the fence and they aren’t tearing the place up in general.  We like them.  We had just been feeding them over the fence when we feed the horses and sheep.  So now they run over and wait for food.  The bull will even holler when we don’t get over there soon enough to give them food. Otherwise, the cows are very quiet. 



Wind damage

Breeze porch, ceiling still needs second coat of paint.

The other day Mother Nature let it be known that I had chicken coop issues.  In the middle of the night the wind started to howl.  Annmarie checked our weather station and we recorded winds over 60 MPH.  The next day when Sarah went to get eggs it was discovered that my wall was trying to blow over.  The door acted like a kite and it blew over this wall.  I don’t have the posts very far into the ground as I couldn’t dig them very far.  I will have to put up a board between the coop and wall and then a cable tightening the two together.  Once that is done I will probably set both those posts in concrete.  Otherwise they just will not stay now that they have been loosened. 
This is a priority but with my schedule that means next week at the earliest. 

I did manage to get a second coat of paint onto the breeze porch walls.  I ran out of paint before I could finish the ceiling.  The walls completed will let me reinstall the lights and thermostat.  I will have to pick up another gallon of paint and a gallon of primer.  The old primer was hard to mix and kinda curdled.  Time for it to go away.  Trouble is it takes forever to dry out in the winter.  It has to be dry before you can throw it in the trash. 

Things have been hectic here and I have not had the drive to keep up on the blog.  This is my attempt at rectifying that situation.  Truly not a lot happened in November.  The rain came and our mild weather allowed all the pasture to green back up.  A nice change which let us stop feeding the animals for most of the month. 

We moved the baby chicks out to the chicken coop the day before Thanksgiving.  They were starting to smell like chickens in the house.  They have done great.  None have died.  I will definitely order from that company again. I replaced the fuse in the automatic chicken door.  It only moved 1/2 inch before the fuse blew again.  I am going to have to email the gentleman who built it again.  Not sure why I keep having so much trouble.  We still have 17 hens and 1 rooster with 27 babies.  Currently we are getting around 6-7 eggs/day.  More chickens are needed to cover all the customers that are not getting eggs.

Doug and I tagged the two boy sheep, the new baby(#19) and our ram(#18).  The ram was kinda skinny which I thought was odd but he seemed fine.  Last week we had to put him down, he was so weak he could not stand.  We cannot afford for a sick animal to make the rest of the herd ill. In a couple of months I will have to get another ram. 

We didn’t do a wood project this year.  I was just too beat.  So the girls, Doug and I worked on painting the breeze porch.  The girls washed the walls on one half and then we primed and put the first coat of paint on.  It is a boring white paint with 87% light reflectivity.  It is amazingly brighter in that half of the room. We don’t really have any plans to finish the breeze porch any time soon, I was just getting tired of the four different colors of paint.  Annmarie and I thinking about just sheeting the walls with 1/4 inch plywood then decoupaging maps all over them.  This project has a low priority but it is nice to have a plan.  The white just cleans the room up and makes it brighter.  My plants will love it!

Other half of breeze porch to be painted.  Lovely color scheme.

We have not had any new baby lambs since the last one.  Soon, very soon from the look of the ewes.