I had big plans yesterday to work on our trash can holder.  I am going to make a wooden building that looks like an outhouse to store our trash can.  I am tired of the wind blowing it over and the animals rooting through the trash.  It goes everywhere!  I had headed out with the plan to set some posts and get this started, but we had decided to let the sheep out of the pasture while we were home.  So they had been running around eating grass outside of their normal pasture and my mother-in-law became concerned they would go out into the CRP fields. Normally this would not be an issue, but last year I ripped down a fence behind her fence that was made out of cattle panels (I needed them to make my other fences cross the creek).  So now the sheep have access to the CRP, so my two nephews and myself put up a new permanent fence yesterday.

There are two more lengths of smooth wire above the woven wire the sheep are not getting through this fence.

This will keep the sheep out of the CRP now.  Everyone in our households don’t need any more things to worry about.  The ground is still very wet.  I am going to hold off about a month before starting the rest of the fencing projects.  This week I am going to concentrate on the outhouse/garbage can holder.  Finishing up a bunch of day to day stuff in the house today and will be back outside later in the week.  I really need to start spraying some of the thistles that are starting to emerge. There is always something.
Annmarie has had plenty of time to knit as she is in one hospital or the other.  I took a picture of the latest batch of baby booties.  She has done several baby hats recently.  She tells me that she should have enough booties in the store that she is going to switch to fingerless gloves next.  She likes the variety.  She has several shoe rejects she is thinking about turning into pin cushions.  I keep snagging them for baby showers at work and since half the department is currently pregnant (small exaggeration, but not much) or has just had a baby, I have been making serious in roads into the booties going to the store.

Annmarie hand knitted all these.  She takes them into a local craft store and lists them for sale.

 The plumbing is fixed again.  We had to call the plumber on Friday, he came out on Saturday.  Our cold water shut off valve under the sink was full of loose glue strands from the PVC line that was replaced in the orchard.  I also had to do surgery on the water aerator that goes with our fancy sink spigot.  It has 6 pieces all with microscopic/pin sized holes in them to create that aeration feel when the water comes out.  I used a 1/8 inch drill to add my own holes.  It works much better now.  Our water is hard and the holes were plugging up.  Now that problem is fixed and you really cannot tell, honestly.  So we have water at the kitchen sink.  It no longer takes five minutes to fill the dog water dish.

One of these eggs is supposed to be blue, I just don’t see it, looks green to me.

Well, it is April fools day, but I am not fooling, the price of eggs is up!  I have officially raised the price to $3/dozen.  After all the Spring cleaning in the coop, new litter for the coop, heat lights for the baby chicks and new baby chicks I am back in the red again.  No big surprise there, but it still sucks.  The weather really killed me last month.  It rained, it snowed, it got warm then it did it all over again in no particular order.  The chickens just do not do well with unpredictable events, plus I had some molting.  
I lost $96.07 for the month on an average 27 hens laying (Sarah counted the hens a week ago and says we have more than 27, so I am going to try and do an official recount this weekend).  My net income total is $62.31 for the year .  I had $55.60 in expenses for feed (250#) this month.  For the year, my monthly expenses are $65.42. We collected a total of 302 usable eggs (50 less than last month) averaging 9.7 eggs/day collected (for the year the average is 12.1 eggs/day).  My productivity for the month was 37% (down 10% from last month) (for the year it is 45%).  The chickens ate 0.83# food/egg (for the year are averaging 0.66# food/egg).   It cost $0.18/egg or $2.16/doz for feed ($0.50/doz more than last month) (my yearly average is $0.14/egg or $1.68/dozen).  We collected 20 quail eggs for the month.  
Of course, I do not want to discourage any new chicken owners, just run out and get some chickens!!  If you only have a few it is not bad.  I am trying to get up to 50 laying hens, which is the maximum number for my coop size. Some people would say my coop needs to be a little larger for 50 chickens but that will give them 120 sq ft inside and the whole farm outside, so I figure they will be comfortable with that arrangement.  I am still considering getting another dozen chicks.  I had one today that was sick.  I had to isolate and contain that chick from the rest of the flock (farm talk for remove potential vector).  I have always started my baby chicks with one 50# bag of medicated feed.  When they finish that I switch to unmedicated feed and never give it to them again. This year when I bought chick feed I forgot to ask for medicated feed and they gave me plain chick feed.   I realized this before the chicks arrived but figured I would give it shot.  That is why I always clean out the coop before the chicks arrive.  Didn’t seem to work, this is the first time I have had a sick chick, it had some yellow goop all over one eye and the other almost covered up.  We found it laying on its side in the enclosure.  It was one of my Brahmas!!  I didn’t want it to be one of them.  So we went out and bought a 50# bag of medicated feed.  I will bleach out the feeder and waterer in the morning and start over with the new feed.  My adult chickens have never had any problems. 
 The sheep have started finding all the holes in the fence again this year.  We just decided to let them roam outside while we are home.  The fenced in portion of the pasture has some very short grass, while the rest is 8 inches high.  

Upstairs hallway looking toward master bedroom.  You can see the attic access door.

Upstairs hallway looking toward the breeze porch.

Well, I did it.  I finished painting and wiring the upstairs today.  I was cussing the idiot who did the initial wiring 3.5 years ago.  I had no clue if I was doing it right as I was wiring the four lights.  I have three switches, four lights and the power comes in on the light side not the switch side.  I had to get my book out and hope the bozo that wired the switches (me) 3.5 years ago did it right.  On a plus side, I did not get electrocuted this time, nor did I melt another set of cross cutters.  I turned off the power for two rooms and checked it with a volt meter before starting (just gave a lecture in TNCC yesterday on burns and electricity…).  I thought I only had to wire the four lights, nope, had two more outlets and a smoke/carbon dioxide detector.  I ended up installing six smoke detectors in our three bedroom home.  Since it was a remodel, I did not link them all up so all six alarm when one of them goes off.  On a positive note the lights all worked flawlessly when I turned the power back on.  My daughter went up and did a QA check before I could even get there.  She sounded amazed when all three switches turned the lights on or off (I know I was amazed it didn’t require a redo).

Upstairs hallway looking toward master bedroom.  You can see the attic access door.  It has lights, and you will now be able to see in the dark.

Upstairs hallway looking toward the breeze porch. Lights installed and second coat of paint on.

I say it is completed but it still needs baseboards.  Those come after the window casings and those have to come after I get the wood shop up and running which comes after I fix the barn, install new fencing and create a  new bridge walkway.  In other words not happening this year.

We did go pickup our baby chicks today.  There was a catastrophe on Tuesday, the post office crushed my baby chicks.  So when the feed store went to pick them up, most of my order was DOA!  This is the reason to order them from the feed store.  They dealt with it and got more chicks shipped from the hatchery.  I got 12 Brahma chickens (very large 9 pound chicken) and 6 Leghorns.  Looking at the pictures it is hard to tell what is what. The Brahma chickens have feathers on their feet.  So they are all tucked in and we picked up an extra heat lamp bulb just in case our other bulb burns out.  I also closed one of the windows in the coop to get rid of the cross breeze I had going.  They were all  hunkering around the heat lamp.  I will keep everyone updated on the survival rate.

18 baby chicks 3/23/2011 (2 different varieties)

Well I repainted the upstairs hallway today.  I had trimmed out the attic entrance on Saturday and primed it, but I really was not planning on any more inside work.  Spring is here, time to get outside, but Annmarie fell down the stairs at 0430 because there is no light in the upper hallway or in the stair well.  So I taped plastic down, washed the walls with bleach water and painted them tonight.  On Wednesday I will be able to install the four hallway lights.  I had better remember to pick up some light bulbs on the way home.  This way there will be some light.  I need to repaint the stair well, but that is a lot more complicated (20 feet high over stairwell).  So one step at a time.
I did manage to go out and dig out the baby chicken enclosure.  I but in new bedding and chick feeder and fired up the heat lamp so everything will be nice and toasty for the chicks tomorrow.  Annmarie is going to pick them up on the way back from the hospital.  It rained most of the day here so I cannot get to the fencing until it dries out for about a week.  I need to mark all my fence lines and then paint where I am going to install the railroad ties.  Once that is done, I will be ready to rent a tractor for a day.
Later.

We were tired and planning to hit the sack, but Sarah had made us stop the movie and look at the  moon earlier after Grandma had called to say that the moon would be at its closest point in 18 years.  It didn’t look that impressive from the back porch.  So 2.5 hours later as we are gearing up for bed, I looked out the window and decided I had better run out and get some pictures.  Now it never occurred to me to just take a picture of the moon.  Plus, have you ever tried to focus the lens on a camera in the dark?  How do you really do that?  The auto focus mechanism on the camera does not work as there is not enough light available.  It was so bright out that I was able to run the camera and walk around by moonlight only.  I didn’t even take a flashlight out with me.  Now there were a couple of times I thought I saw Bigfoot up the creek, but that could have been the moon playing tricks on me. All these pictures were taken around 2300.  The building pictures got much lighter as the moon rose in the sky and a few clouds dissipated.

Running water by Epigee moonlight.

chicken house, this is the direction I thought I saw bigfoot last night.

Old sheep barn and granary by epigee moonlight.  I thought the white spots were dirty spots on my lens reflector inside the camera.  Annmarie pointed out this morning that they are stars!! I knew that, just had not occurred to me (really I would have thought of it eventually) (probably after I cleaned the lens reflector!!)

It justs keeps getting lighter.  A very nice picture of the Three sisters (star formation) At the far right side you can see our walkway lights are on because it is nighttime!

Here is the house and my future garden (piles of tires)  Annmarie wants me to put a wooden fence around the tires so that they are not such an eyesore.  Unfortunately, that is low on the priority list for this year.  It is not the bridge, fence or barn and I won’t have much quality time with the barn either this year. All these pictures were taken by Epigee moonlight.