Once upon a time on hot, hot July, we drilled out 180 holes in the ground with a two-man auger and a 14 inch bit.
If you have never operated this type of auger, with this size bit, in heavy, wet clay soil, you might not understand the issue with this endeavor. This is a tough job for two large men. And there is my 160 lb husband and myself, hearing from people how we couldn’t do it. But we did. This is step one of a pot-in-pot system for one of the irrigated fields for the tree farm. Most operations would use heavy machinery for most of the work we do, but we have no money for that, so manual labor it is! It is not easy, but there is certainly something gained from doing it with our bare (sometimes gloved) hands.
Anyway…….onward.
Look who’s 11 months old this July! As we plan a small birthday party for the three year old, it occurs to me that the baby will be a toddler soon. We have three birthdays in this six week period. That’s a lot of cake.
Although we grown-ups do most of the real work around here, we are not opposed to child labor. Fill that bucket, guys.
We haven’t lost a single bird from the new additions to the flock. The new guys include cream legbars, Easter eggers, olive eggers, blue maran, splash maran, barred rocks, and five pekin ducks.
I know one duck is definitely male. He never stops humping one particular female. Only the same one. Even though he pays no attention to anyone else, I put up a bunch of perches for the chickens to get away from him if they need to.
Despite the new chickens being straight run, only one appears to be a rooster. Although I suspect one of the olive eggers might turn out to be a roo as well. Time will tell.
We are about to move the guinea keets out to the main run to live with the other fowl. They will eventually free range when they are bigger, but I would like to train them to learn where home is first.
Next up is installing irrigation in the first field and drilling fence post holes for an extended animal run. Hopefully, next summer will allow us more down time to enjoy family life.
