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well, got the builder to come back and put up plastic around the first floor of my place. With a plywood door. He called me at work to tell me that he'd leave the key with the chickens...
I went in today to check it out because he also said it was all cleaned up....well if you consider NOT SWEEPING AT ALL to be "all clean" then OK. WHatever. I put one of my tattiest throw rugs from a thrift store (they are woven and washable) in there so once i get it swept up a bit, mud and chicken poo and sawdust all over, I can take off my dirty boots and wear some old but less filthy shoes while in there.
I am glad to get it plastic wrapped though to keep the chickens and larger critters and most birds out. It's a nice shelter for all beings and they were starting to take up residence.
Goal this weekend is to get disks for the new sander and be ready to start sanding the rough surfaces.
The hens are starting to come back on line with the eggs! I had been getting 1 brown egg most days and a large white egg some days. I only have 1 hen who lays big white eggs so I knew that was Pearl. I think the brown one was Gertrude. One day I got 3 jumbo size browns! So Gertrude, Porky and Suzanne are all back laying. Pru, the blue egger, is not on line yet and I think the 5 year old banty, Flora, is not laying yet. Those are little while warty-shelled eggs. Poor thing is SO OLD. We're getting tons and tons of pasta from 2nd harvest. So much that it's hard to pass it on...it's like zucchini in september. A friend gave me a tip that it can be a treat for the hens. Yesterday I boiled some up (I designated a pan for chicken feed) with crushed eggshells. When I brought it out this morning, Gertrude, she's quite a character, and Clyde (the youngest rooster) were quietly eating it and acting like they were being sneaky about it...then they got below the egg shells and saw the pasta. Must have looked like worms. They went BONKERS, especially Gertrude, and got into a feeding frenzy which alerted the other 6 chickens. No more secret treats. Everyone was bunched around the little dinged up soup pan of cold pasta.
Tonight I am boiled some pasta up with the blood from some free bison meat. I didn't want to waste it. Good source of minerals I figured. So I rinsed the package out into the chicken feed pan along with scraps of veg from making buffalo soup and some broken up spaghetti. I'll give it to them in the morning.
I got a fortuitous email newsletter from the community garden lady She reminded us how to make a hugelkultur garden bed (wood, clay-y soil, manure, compost and mulch). I was just about to put manure on my terrace behind the new house. I'll throw on a bunch of the waste lumber, it's all fresh cut fir and pine, untreated, that is too wet to burn. It's so sappy it clogs the stove pipe pretty fast. Maybe half on the garden and half to dry for the stove next winter.
I have some soil (it's all clay) from the excavation of said terrace, and 2 cubic yards of steer manure. In 3 or 4 years that will be a killer garden bed.
I went in today to check it out because he also said it was all cleaned up....well if you consider NOT SWEEPING AT ALL to be "all clean" then OK. WHatever. I put one of my tattiest throw rugs from a thrift store (they are woven and washable) in there so once i get it swept up a bit, mud and chicken poo and sawdust all over, I can take off my dirty boots and wear some old but less filthy shoes while in there.
I am glad to get it plastic wrapped though to keep the chickens and larger critters and most birds out. It's a nice shelter for all beings and they were starting to take up residence.
Goal this weekend is to get disks for the new sander and be ready to start sanding the rough surfaces.
The hens are starting to come back on line with the eggs! I had been getting 1 brown egg most days and a large white egg some days. I only have 1 hen who lays big white eggs so I knew that was Pearl. I think the brown one was Gertrude. One day I got 3 jumbo size browns! So Gertrude, Porky and Suzanne are all back laying. Pru, the blue egger, is not on line yet and I think the 5 year old banty, Flora, is not laying yet. Those are little while warty-shelled eggs. Poor thing is SO OLD. We're getting tons and tons of pasta from 2nd harvest. So much that it's hard to pass it on...it's like zucchini in september. A friend gave me a tip that it can be a treat for the hens. Yesterday I boiled some up (I designated a pan for chicken feed) with crushed eggshells. When I brought it out this morning, Gertrude, she's quite a character, and Clyde (the youngest rooster) were quietly eating it and acting like they were being sneaky about it...then they got below the egg shells and saw the pasta. Must have looked like worms. They went BONKERS, especially Gertrude, and got into a feeding frenzy which alerted the other 6 chickens. No more secret treats. Everyone was bunched around the little dinged up soup pan of cold pasta.
Tonight I am boiled some pasta up with the blood from some free bison meat. I didn't want to waste it. Good source of minerals I figured. So I rinsed the package out into the chicken feed pan along with scraps of veg from making buffalo soup and some broken up spaghetti. I'll give it to them in the morning.
I got a fortuitous email newsletter from the community garden lady She reminded us how to make a hugelkultur garden bed (wood, clay-y soil, manure, compost and mulch). I was just about to put manure on my terrace behind the new house. I'll throw on a bunch of the waste lumber, it's all fresh cut fir and pine, untreated, that is too wet to burn. It's so sappy it clogs the stove pipe pretty fast. Maybe half on the garden and half to dry for the stove next winter.
I have some soil (it's all clay) from the excavation of said terrace, and 2 cubic yards of steer manure. In 3 or 4 years that will be a killer garden bed.
