I fenced today all alone.  My help had to do other things so I was at it all alone.  There is a price to be had for reusing old fencing.  It has holes and needs to be patched, it comes in too short lengths and has to be spliced together.  On the upside we did save 75% on the fencing costs.  I finished the L side completely.  I may have to build another rock jack to hold the fence down in the low dip.  I stretched it pretty tight and I am afraid it may pull up the metal posts.  So now I need to build another jack.  The long side has half the woven wire standing up already.  I may very well get all the fence up tomorrow even if I do it alone.  The only problem is installing the three gates.  I will need help with that.  I will have to work on the fencing again on Monday.  I am crossing my fingers for a completion date of Monday. 

I had to run in to Pendleton to get some T-post clips (these are used to hold the fence against the metal posts).  I went into PGG and asked the checkout gal for T-post clips, she called someone and this young gentleman came out.  I asked him if the clips came in packages of 25?  He said they did, so I asked for 30.  He gave me this weird look and went off to the store room.  I wandered the store and kept trying to figure out why he had given me “the look”.  It took him a few minutes and out he came with 30 clips.  A single bag of 25 and 5 loose clips!  I laughed at him and said I need to do “some real fencing” and I wanted “30 bags” of clips.  He looked chagrined and went back and got a large bag full of clips.  I chuckled all the way to the pickup. 

I did an official count tonight on the chickens and there are 43 chickens, two of those are roosters.  Not all are mature yet so I only collected 9 eggs tonight.  I did want the record to show again that my shotgun blast was only 8 inches away from the raccoon with an overhead shot over a board and in the dark.  I didn’t get the promised pictures.  Instead, Mr. Vice-President and myself went out and worked on the fence.  He drove in all the metal posts while I used the tractor to drag the ditch sides down so that a pickup could be drive through the ditch without the bumper dragging on one side.  We did have to build one rock jack at the base of a rock outcropping.  Luckily, there used to be one nearby that had fallen apart so we just scavenged the pieces from it and pounded in some new nails, used some old barbed wire to support the wooden pieces and instant rock jack.  Mr. Vice-President is going to be gone for a couple of days but when he gets back he will be filling the rock jack full of rocks!

On a more official note there is a new tractor rule.  Rule #1, always, 100% of the time wear the seat belt that is provided.  I got bucked off the tractor today and the only thing that saved me from the ground was the control lever for the bucket.  The control lever was not designed to keep a 155# from hitting the ground.  I will now have to take it off and straighten it out on the vice.  The roll bar does me no good if I run over myself.

The last load of hay is parked next to the barn and ready to be unloaded, Mr. Vice-President is all over this upon his return.  We gathered all the tools and wire necessary to secure the chicken coop from animals crawling under it.  Mr. Vice-President rolled the rocks away and started digging the trench.

I also filled in the hole in the front yard from the water line repair today.  A lot of little things that needed to be done.  The goal is to have the fence up and secure by Sunday!  I also want to burn the scrap wood pile.  One of the fence challenges is that four gates have to be installed also.  They take time.  I will attempt pictures on Friday.  Annmarie has already informed me that if the chickens raise a fuss tonight I am to leap out of bed and run outside immediately to dispatch the predator.  I forgot to grab the carcass this morning as I was rushing out of the house.  The cats and chickens at the whole thing.  Only some loose feathers this afternoon.

I will have to do a recount tonight just to figure out how many chickens we have lost to predators this year, it is going to be over 24.  They are decimating my birds.  Annmarie woke me up in the middle of the night again to the sound of chickens squawking.  I did not want to get out of bed.  The bed was warm and it was still dark.  After some “discussion” and a final blood curdling squawk from one of the chickens I leaped to action (after I found my glasses).  Due to paranoia reasons I no longer take the 22 out at night, so I grabbed the shotgun and a truly crappy $0.99 flashlight (my good ones keep disappearing, must be the flashlight gremlins, they are trading with the sock gremlins).  I hold the flashlight in my left hand on the pump mechanism.  I pumped a round in the chamber and hustled over to the chain link gate shining a crappy weak light into the coop yard.  A black blur ran toward the back of the coop and I ran after it.  The sheep were on the backside of the coop yard earlier in the night but luckily they had moved so I didn’t have to run through them.  I heard some scrambling so I knew some thing was crawling up the 4×4 post.  I shined the light and there was a big raccoon sitting on top of the fence.  I was on the outer corner, but when I aimed the shotgun the barrel was pointing toward the old house and our house.  I had to move four feet to the left, but now I had to raise the shotgun up high to get over the chicken fence I had just stepped behind to change angles.  I shot, damn flashlight fell on the ground, I heard  the culprit jump down (didn’t sound like a belly flop) so I stepped right and blindly shot at the ground in the approximate area.  There is a reason I don’t let the dogs come out with me at night.  I found the flashlight (still on) and picked it up off the ground.  NO dead raccoon.  I shined it up to the spot it was sitting on the fence and there is a 1 inch x 4 inch wide chunk of wood missing from the 2×4 the raccoon was sitting on.  Unfortunately, it is eight inches to the right of where it should have been.  I missed.  I met Annmarie on the way back to the house.  We had a discussion about how she only hears the chickens when I am home.  I will run out and throw the dead stupid chicken (not supposed to roost in the yard) into a live trap today and tonight I will set it up and see if the raccoon comes back. 

I tried to get Mr. President to help me this week.  I have so much stuff to do at work that this is my last week of pushing to completion the home projects.  I have decided that hired help is needed ASAP.  He was busy all week long, but luckily for me his older brother just came home for a couple of weeks and is available.  He came out to help today and will be further referred to as “Mr. Vice-President”.  We went to work on the horse enclosure.  It got dug out completely, OSB boards to separate the sheep and horses, completed the outside wall, added another support beam in the middle of the wall.  It looks decent, very functional.  The scrap wood pile was moved to the burn pile and I raked out the yard.

Next, we went and installed the horizontal supports for the fencing railroad ties.  Mr Vice-President put in the slanted wire and tightened them all up.  I tried to use the tractor loader to pull dirt into the low spot on the upper fence.  I just managed to rip up the ground and make it very uneven.  I need to use the box blade for this type of work, but the box blade was not on the tractor.  They make a fancy mounting system ($350) that lets you just back up to a piece of equipment and flip three switches and you are hooked up.  This doesn’t even require you to get off the tractor seat.  I did not purchase said system, so it took me almost 45 minutes to hook up the box blade and needed the assistance of Mr. Vice-President.  I could not get it done alone.  In my defense this is only the second time I have put an implement onto the tractor, that should count for something. 

Annmarie said that the horse feeders are mounted too high and need to be lowered about one foot.  I kinda suspected that once we got them in place, but needed the expert opinion before altering any thing. 
My poor chicken yard looks like someone tore open four goose down pillows.  There are feathers every where!  Mr Vice-President is going to dig a trench around the coop tomorrow a foot deep then we will attach wire to the side of the building, lay it in an “L” shape in the trench, fill said trench with very large rocks and add dirt to fill in crevices.  I think the predators are living under the chicken coop again.  Stupid problem #11. 
At the rate things are progressing I expect to have the entire upper fence job completed by Sunday!!!!  All of the outside work for the year will have been done before Winter, simply amazing. 

I went out to lock the chickens up and did a head count.  Only 46 chickens roosting in the coop and I had to chase out the mother cat and her five babies out of one of the nest boxes.  Sarah later informed me that there was a chicken carcass in the yard.  I am not sure who is doing the killing.  On a positive note, I did get the wheat truck running and drove it over to get the last 80 bales of hay loaded.  No one was around so I hoofed it the two miles home.  If the weather will hold for another 3-4 weeks I may be able to get the upper fence completed.  Here is to surface frost only and no deep freeze.