I have been playing catch up last week. I am trying to do multiple things at once. This is not working well for me. I just keep flitting from one thing to the next. I had to put the baby chickens outside. I wanted to paint and they are so dusty I needed to dust every day. I called it quits when they started sitting on top of the water dish. They are growing like weeds out in the baby area of the chicken coop. I have also managed to not catch the coop on fire this time with the heat lamp. I have enough concrete board to line the baby area this summer so it is fire proof.
I am currently trying to convince a coworker to raise two geese for me past the gosling stage or about 2 months old. I want to try keeping them up at the spring head and see if they cannot keep the waterway clean. If they can then I will move them to different sections of the waterway to keep it clean versus me having to pitchfork it clean three times a year. I am trying to let some livestock work for me. I hope it works. 
I have one wall in the dining room done and the kitchen done. Next up is to get the color on the wall near all the windows. Our trim is stained and ready. I just need to get it delivered and then start installing it. That will be a big job. I figure it will take about 2-3 weeks to get it all in.
I really wanted to get the last two rock cribs filled up with rocks today. Surprisingly, I did not wake up with my back feeling like I had been kicked repeatedly. My butt felt like i had hiked for 25 miles and was sore all over, so i must have been lifting right. I was attempting to maintain perfect posture while lifting. I started around 0900 and only took a light coat and light hat. Yesterday, I started out with too many clothes and had to keep taking them off. I just decided that to stay warm I could work faster.
I stopped for a lunch of Gatorade, granola bars and hot coffee from the back of the mistress. Some people wonder why I work so hard at home. The above picture is why, it was an absolute beautiful day, no wind, not too hot, sun was shining and spring is coming. I sat there and drank a cup of hot coffee from a thermos I had in my tractor canvas bag. It was an amazing cup of coffee.
I realize that this may seem like an obvious statement but have you really thought about it? I had lots of time today to contemplate this reality. The panel would normally cost $24 and the post around $14. Then after filling a couple of rock cribs I can say it takes three hours to fill one! Three hours of knocking rocks out of the ground with the tractor and then hand loading them into the bucket and dumping them into the circle with the mistresses help. She is as hard worker and really needs a bath. After said bath I need to take a hammer and beat out some of the dents and spray a little green paint over her rusty spots. She deserves to be pampered a little every once in a while. 
I only had one close call today. I had managed to get this humongous rock into the bucket then felt it necessary to throw in more rocks until the bucket was full. I backed down the hill to the rock crib and then lifted the bucket high in the air as I approached the metal circle. Just as I was attempting to tip the bucket forward the tractor went onto three tires and tired to tip over. I managed to keep the three tires on the ground but could not empty the bucket. I finally managed to back up enough to dump the bucket out onto the ground. I had to make three loads with the tractor to get it all into the rock crib. I am now only grabbing one rock when it fills half the bucket. It’s just too hard to control the tractor with that much weight on one side of the bucket. This is exactly why I keep the roll bar up on the tractor and wear a seat belt.
Before I could make it to the back hillside with the tractor I decided to try and level off the land behind the barn. It is still too muddy, but while I was back there I decided to dig down both old paths that got worn down. This will make it easier to get to the barn when its muddy out. I did notice that my board keeping the dirt ramp in place is starting to break. I am going to have to tear it out and put in a couple of railroad ties soon. I need about another 35 railroad ties. Unfortunately, they don’t give those things away. I have been watching facebook classifieds and Craigslist but have not scored yet. I found one place recently but the poles were used in a vineyard. Those are usually only 3 inches in diameter and I need at least 6 inch.
I was bending the third one when I made a mistake. I had kinked it in half and was trying to get it to form a circle. It just was not going so I jumped on it and ended up rolling up onto it and down the hill. Did I mention I was doing this on a steep hillside? Luckily, I did not go over the entire top and get thrown over the top and onto my back. Instead, at the zenith I went off the right side and came down onto the ground on my hands and knees. I did mention the entire hillside is covered in rocks? It hurt my knee a lot, I hollered and rolled around as the song Tainted Love played. It hurt something fierce. I finally managed to get it to a dull roar and just laid out on the hillside after finding a rock free location. I almost went to sleep but I was afraid that Annmarie or my mother in law would spot me and think I was injured and call the ambulance. So I gave up on the dream of a nice pleasant nap and got up and finished two more wire circles.
