We woke up at 0130 to the weirdest noise.  It was some animal, but not one either one of us recognized.  I had crawled into bed after midnight and just could not get motivated to go out and check the trap.  I figured it would be there in the morning.  So first thing in the morning I went out to the coop, marked my territory (peed on one corner of the fence) and checked the trap.  NO predator…  my daughter had to empty out and take care of the dead coon.  The trap doors have a flap that pops up and keeps the doors shut.  There is a way to secure those flaps up so that it is easier to empty the trap.  I never use them.  I just use my third arm to hold it all together and empty the trap.  Sarah used the latch and I forgot to check.  The predator got away.  It did eat all the cat food first.  So I fixed that and we will bait the trap again.  I will get it.

I went out this morning to let the chickens out of their run and spotted something in my live trap.  It looked like our cat UAC (ugly ass cat).  It was a raccoon.  So I used the trusty Walther P-22 and shot it one time in the head.  Now if I can just catch a possum and a skunk.  I don’t think it was just the raccoon killing the chickens.  Last time I cleaned out raccoons they were dragging the chickens away and I was just finding feathers.  Now some of my chickens ended up that way, but not all of them.  I think my chicken coop has become the local all you can eat buffet.  I suspect the dogs and daylight are my greatest asset during the daytime.

The picture to the right is an old water pipe that is gravity fed from the original hand dug well.  The pipe has frozen so many times it has holes all along its side.  It only runs in the spring.  Eventually, I want to fix it so that it supplies year round water for the animals.  Way down the road…

Yes, I really have been doing more fencing.  It is an incredibly laborious process.  My young helpers have been busy elsewhere so I have been at it alone.  I did get the corner post pulled over and tied in to a third post.  The come-a-long is starting to become my new friend.  It is much better than using a fence stretcher.  The fence stretcher is better when repairing a break.  I keep using scraps from all over the farm.  One of my railroad ties is pretty rotten near the top, it is missing about 50% of its body, but in a railroad tie that is pretty good, and the part in the ground is 100%.  Some is painted and some is not.  It is definitely different.  One thing about it, the fence has been fairly inexpensive so far.  I have had all the sheep wire on hand.  Which is a good thing since that stuff is around $130 for 100 feet. I truly don’t know how many feet of fencing I have installed.  When I am all done I am thinking about measuring it and counting the pieces just for posterity.  It needs to be recognized as an accomplishment.  One thing for certain, I am getting in shape.  I can feel my upper body and shoulders growing.  Or that could just be the constant pain?

As you can see here I was moving in on the final stretch.  I had to alter my plans.  My fence line had the potential to interfere with other plans so I had to change the angle.  So if you look closely on the left side of the picture you will see where I had cleared a path with the weed eater for the old fence line.  We even got some metal posts in the ground.  Not any more, I ripped the metal posts out yesterday.  Look directly over the center tall pole straight back to the apple tree.  That is my new fence line.  The nice thing is it is a straight line.  The bad thing is it crosses the front creek twice.  Each crossing means four posts, and I need a people gate near the apple tree (extra 2 posts), plus the near post to change the angle back toward the tree (remember the leaning post I just fixed?) for a grand total of 12 post holes to dig and a new line to clear.  I am not going to get much work on the farm completed next week.  We are working at our daughter’s swim meet and I am in charge of the cook shack, so I have to purchase all the food and make it work for 2.5 days.  We will see how good my planning was after that weekend.  I have been bemoaning all the rain and bad weather.  Well I am ready for it to come back.  The ground is drying out.  I am starting to have a very hard time digging.  In a few more weeks I am not going to be able to build any more fence.  I need to get this done!!!  On a positive note, I have the fence 100% completed up to the above corner.  I finished it up today.

My chickens are still alive.  I did a night time count tonight as I was locking them up for the night.  17 hens, 11 pullets and one rooster.  We have started to get a couple of “fairy” eggs (very small eggs typically unformed yolk,eggs from immature chicken usually) so my babies may be trying to start laying.  They would make up for the chickens that were killed.  I tried to get more pullets on Wednesday, but no one has any chicks for sale.  One place I checked had pullets, but they were already sold.  I need another 2 dozen pullets to start up.  I planted grass seeds in the chicken yard this morning.  Not sure whether it will survive the chickens eating it all up.   It looked like they tried mighty hard to eat it all.  Now in the new ultra secure baby pen, there are no chickens so it should grow just fine in there.  I have had to start watering the chicken yard this last week.  It was starting to dry out.

Here is my new baby enclosure.  You can see that it is just part of the chicken yard that I have enclosed both ends and added wire to the top.  The important note here is the electric fence.  I have a line that runs right at the top next to the boards and two feet below that I have a line that sticks out about 6 inches from the wire.  I used to have a line at the bottom, but the weeds kept growing into it and shorting out the fence.  Why is this important?  Because Annmarie saw a raccoon go under her parent’s front porch, I have smelled skunk three times in the last two weeks and when I was at the farm supply store explaining my chicken woes to them the person was sure my description of the eaten chicken was a possum. On top of all that, when I was planting grass today in the chicken yard I noticed a new hole going under the chicken coop.  Around the back, something had moved a few rocks and gotten under the coop.  NO leg traps at that hole.  I will have to change that problem next week.
I am getting my wish.  It is raining here now.  Too bad I couldn’t work on the fence this weekend.

I learn as I go.  I really learn from mistakes, but to do that, I have to first make the mistake.  I was out fencing again today.  I finished up all the minor details on one stretch today.  I added the stabilizer twists and nailed down the loose ends.  So that was good.  On the bad note, my new stretch I am working on turns a corner about 130 degrees.  I kinda figured I would not need to support the corner post on both sides.  Saves me from digging a hole.  Not so much.  When you crank down with the come-along it is cause the post to bend over.  I am now going to have to loosen the fence, back the pickup over there, hook onto the post and the pickup hitch, bend the post back up till it is square and add in the support post I didn’t do the first time.  So from now on all corners get 3 posts regardless of the angle.  The next two pictures are of my completed fence.  Thank goodness it is done.  Hopefully, I will not have to build any more rock jacks.  Very painful to do and then once built, you have to actually fill them with large rocks.

I had to go in and pick up my cut maple.  My parents had to remove another maple tree, this time from a rental property and I had them keep the trunk and a couple of large branches intact.  The custom cut guy has had it done for a couple of weeks so I went over today and picked it up.  I figure I got over 400 board foot (this means the board is 1inch thick and 12 inches by 12 inches wide and long = 1bf.) of maple for $120. Around here it goes for around $3.50-$5 bf.  I paid about 30 cents/bf.  Not too shabby at all.  I stacked it out in the old chicken coop with my other maple and my pine boards and my old scrap pile.  Now this would be way cheaper, but if the guy hits a nail you have to pay $60 for a new bandsaw blade.  I am 2 for 2 in nails.  So I could have had all this maple for $60 if it weren’t for someone banging a nail into the tree.  So now you know, never ever ever put nails in trees.

My new maple pile is dead center in the picture, my old pile (now dried out and ready for use) is in the far back right corner, front left corner is a stack of pine 1×12 to use as siding for an outbuilding and then there are some scraps between the two maple piles.  We have an antisocial cat, Luna who lives out here in the coop all alone. She comes in and visits us every couple of months.  She lets the family just pet on her, but only when she wants it.
I took this picture of the barn in passing as I was getting pictures of the fence.  I love living in the country.  Even if there is cheat grass showing up all over the place in our house.  It is still fantastic!!  I almost forgot to lock the chickens up tonight.  I did a head count and they are all still there.  I am down to around 16 eggs/day now. I hope those babies start laying soon.

It has been a haul.  Trying to catch up with everything and the blog has paid the price.
I still have a chicken killer.  It snagged Puff, the original tree chicken, out of a tree one of the nights I was at work.  When I came home on Friday, Sarah kindly informed me that there was another dead chicken in one of the nest boxes.  It turned out to be one of my Buff Orpington hens (original chicken lineage).  She was the one who had egg duct issues that I thought would die.  So now I have a whopping 17 laying hens left.  I still have all 11 of my babies and they should start producing in a couple of months.  They are out with the other chickens now and a new pecking order is being established.  I had Sarah leave the dead chicken out in the chicken yard and shut the yard gate.  This was so I could be sure that my killer could not get past the electric fence.  The dead chicken was undisturbed this morning.  So I will just start locking the outer gate at night.  That way the chickens are not trapped in the coop until we let them out.  They can just leave the coop at the crack of dawn and wander the yard.  I will start watering the chicken yard so the grass will keep growing.  I also spent part of the last two days using the weedeater (I had to borrow my parents, I break them, had to fix this one twice in last two days) to create a kill zone around the chicken coop.  I am hoping to make it uncomfortable for the killer to return.

If you look on the right side of the picture, you can see how high the grass is.  Today I cleared a 10 foot swath all around the coop and made all the tall grass you can see on this picture go away.  The weed eater finally gave out on me.  The things make me crazy.  I have already broken two in the last 3 weeks.  I had to shut it off today to refill the gas and could not get it restarted!!  So instead I went out and chopped down thistles (broke the blade chopper head yesterday for the weed eater) by hand until dinner.

The sheep are doing great.  I cannot for the life of me figure out why everyone isn’t in love with baby sheep?  They are the cutest little stinkers.  We keep catching them and petting on them. Here is a picture of Lucky, the multicolor ram.

Annmarie named the black one, Blackie.  Not very original, but easy to remember and he is going to be food so a simple name is better.  No name is best, but that didn’t happen.  We don’t get to touch these babies very much any more.  They are quick and jump and leap around.  Plus, we don’t have anything they want.  So for now we will bide our time.  Our first baby, Hershey was the same way and he eats out of our hand now.  He really likes corn, they all do.

Here is a picture of the coffee girls.  Annmarie took this out our front window, the sheep have been banned from the front yard.  Yes, I realize that they were mowing the lawn, but they were also using the back porch as a bathroom.  But most importantly they think roses are a delicacy.  They were going to kill my roses if they were not ejected from the yard.  They can come back in the fall when the trees and bushes are dormant.  

Annmarie drug me out of bed early this morning.  Early being a relative term, it was late if we were going to make the swim team practice, but since it is a weekend there is no practice.  So she drug me out to go to a tool sale/yard sale.  I picked up a large crowbar for $4 and the find of the day!  I bought a 1 gallon coffee container full of old hand drawn reclaimed nails for $15.  Total gold mine!  I was happy.  We drove to Pendleton and by the time all was said and done we visited 12 different yard sales.  We picked up a few goodies and I found a solid metal hammer with forged handle for $4 (another killer find).  We spent all morning doing that and had a good time.

The nails are 1.5 inches long.  They are going to look great in whatever I use them for.  The gal that we bought them from said her husband used to take down old buildings in the midwest and reclaimed the nails whenever he demolished a building.