Heat? What heat?

Sweat was stinging my eyes as I walked away from the grave. Gravedigging. Just another chore that has to be taken care of on the farm. Judge, jury and executioners too are jobs needing to be done. The raccoon had been trapped sometime in the night out in the far back woods along the creek behind the house. We find holes dug under the fence every time we venture out there. Even after we plug up the holes with whatever is at hand, usually fallen branches and limbs from the hundreds of trees all around us, the nocturnal marauders pull them out or push them aside and canvass our property. Raccoons are fierce, smart and bold predators. We have lost chickens in broad daylight when we are home on the weekends. We have lost a rooster (not a big loss) and one of our 10 Barred Rock hens. This is a loss screaming for vengence. The barred rocks aren't even mature yet. We've had them for nearly 5 months we expect them to start laying any day now. Adding to the raccoons crimes, I was bitten by a tick after walking out to check the trap. We baited the trap with part of a chicken back. These and other parts are kept in the freezer for the next time we make stock. Even a small piece is enough to attrack the greedy killers. Saturday we went to check the trap and found the hissing snarling beast. Now we have a problem we have to get rid of it. After discussing options we come up with 3 methods. One is to release it. We could drive out to an area far from any houses and near a creek so the raccoon would have shot at survival, and release it. This is unfortunately illegal and it might create a pest problem for someone else. So that one was dismissed. Option 2 was to shoot it. We have a rifle now, but haven't used it and I have only fired BB guns and the little .22 rifles at carnivals. So I really need some practise before I go after the varmint with guns blazing. So I chose to use carbon monoxide. We put the trap into a large trash can on its side and then taped a plastic trash bag to the opening, sealing it. Next I cut a small hole in the closed end of the bag. The hole was taped to some cardboard that was wrapped around some aluminum foil that covered the end of the exhaust pipe of my truck. The truck was started, in 20 minutes the deed was done. The creature was probably dead in 10 minutes but we wanted to be SURE. It was late in the day Saturday so we waited until Sunday to bury it.

Same song, different day

This past weekend, my friend Mary visited us, wanting to have 'farm therapy' which is to say a day of getting away from all the world you inhabit. We planted jalapenos and tabasco peppers, about 20 plants. This is added to the nearly 200 plants, now -- most of which are tomatoes.

Our Guineas are getting bigger and made their presence known when they could fly up to the top of the coop and see out. Unfortunately, they could fly out if they wanted to, so Mike worked on putting hardware cloth up so they could see out -- but not fly out.

The composting isn't fast enough for what I'm using these days and so I think I'm going to have to start a new pile and let this one be. Maybe get some compost from the forested areas on the farm for a while.

We captured a raccoon in the live trap, one that seems like it's a baby, which can only mean there must be a larger one, the one that killed two of our chickens. Mary went with us to, well, dispose of it, although she prefers this more humane method than the one we first thought we would do --which is to shoot it. We've lost one of the barred rock hens and one of the roosters -- the pretty aurecana with black feathers that had really nice, dark green highlights in them. The rooster's feathers were in a field opposite of where the remaining body parts of it were. Very odd because the rooster was quite a large one. The raccoon had to have been large enough to haul it almost a tenth of a mile.

We caught a possum a few days ago and set it free by one of the creek entryways at the back of the property. It probably won't come back, seeing as it was pretty well pissed off with us for merely capturing it.

Barbecue now knows another few commands -- 'roll over' and 'shake' although she does the 'shake' part whenever she wants to impress us -- without us asking her to. She is getting bigger and more like a dog every week.

Mike busted his balls this weekend. We also bought a new lawnmower. The one we had was from my father's house (after he passed away) and we've already spent enough money on it -- 45 dollars the first time and we got it running the second time -- well, almost. Mike broke the cord on it when he tried to start it. Not sure if it was that he doesn't know his own strength or that the cord was just worn out. Either way, more money would have been spent on the dang thing just to get it back to running condition. Never buy Murray products...

We purchased a Honda, a higher-end model for 500.00 and some change. It works really well and although it surprised us by being self-propelled (a feature Mike scoffs at), I think we both like it that way.

So Mike mowed parts of fields that he could not get with his big mower and one of those areas was my gourd and potato patch. Now I don't have to worry about stickerburs when watering or maintaining the vines. Yay.

Mike also cleaned out the gutters as well as the hottub this weekend, so I know he is sore, sore, sore. But... that's what we're HERE for, isn't it?

Groan......

I'm sore this morning. No, not mad at anyone or thing, but sore from a long weekend of labor. It was good labor to be sure as most labor is on the little farm. But when the labor is unaccustomed, well it hurts. This weekend saw a lot of things done. Curiously BOTH mornings we slept in until after 8am! We haven't done that for years and years. Once we got up we hit top gear quickly. First thing we went to what has become one of our favorite stores, Tractor Supply Company. There we took back 2 of the 3 bags of "beef cattle supplement" that we had errantly purchased the last time we were there. One drawback of our particular TSC is that they like to move things around frequently. The did this with the feed bags last week. Where the goat feed usually is, they had stacked bags of beef supplement. The bags and labels are identical except for the 8 point type on the label. The consistancy of this product reminded me of fish food flakes. It was 5 o'clock in the morning when I discovered the error, too late (early?) to do anything about it, so I fed it to the goats anyway. Our older female took a mouthful and the poor thing kept trying to swallow the dry powder. Not much of it got eaten. We still have the opened bag which will get traded to someone at Kristi's work that runs cattle. Anyway, we swapped the unopened bags at TSC for the goat chow that our babies love so much. 5 bags of goat feed and a bag of chicken scratch, a hose end sprayer for plant watering with built in on/off switch completed our purchase. We did a quicky shopping at the grocery store too since the store is a block away from the tractor store. We had 39 chickens left out of the birds we slaughtered and we have to eat our way through them. I had the crazy idea to make Carne Guisada but instead of beef, I substituted chicken. It came out pretty good and we're having it for lunch today (Monday).
Back at the farm, I borrowed Kristi's golf cart - boy, that thing comes in handy - and hauled the bags of feed to the tack room. When I opened the door I took in the sad state of the room after months of work. It needed cleaning up. So the hay was restacked, the empty feed bags were flattened and stacked, unused feeders and waterers were put away and everything was moved, swept under and replaced. Now it looks good for a few more weeks.
The next task for me was to rototill a 50ft x 50ft area for Kristi's goards. With our tiny little tiller this took a while. The dirt was very easy to work here. Very sandy and with very few rocks. This would be great for herbs. Once the tilling was done I raked the weed remnants out and smoothed it in preparation for planting. Then I began building the watering system. This was all made from 1" PVC with several valves for different circuits. I am taking the easy way out this time around and I'm running a hose from the nearest spigot to the PVC part of the system. I'll make it permanent later, digging a trench, altering the plumbing underground and putting in a run of pipe to the gourd field. For now it's quick and, believe me, dirty. Kristi got busy planting before I was finished. A few dozen gourd plants of 2 different kinds were planted. Since there was a lot of room left over, potatoes went in. That was it for yesterday. Today, who knows, peas, beans or more herbs may be planted. Barbecue has to go back into the vet today to have her stitches removed.

Ouch... ouch ouch

Weekends are tough, but Monday mornings, when I have to get up early and then go to work are the worst. Groan, creeeeaaaak, groan. Ouch.

This weekend, Mike cleaned out the tack room which needed it, fer sure. He also tilled another patch of land for my gourds (about the same size as the corn) and I planted them on Sunday, as well as two rows of potatoes. It was a gorgeous day and I have the sunburn to prove it.

The purple martins, fascinatingly fascinated with US, seem fairly ensconced in their way of life in their special purple martin condominiums. We have several hummingbirds, now, and we feel that the hawks that have been flying over are nesting on the creek side of the property.

The guineas are fine, totally afraid of us in the brooder box inside the chicken coop. The chickens don't know where to lay their eggs and found a new spot behind the door in the second stall. We have to go on hunts to find them, especially if their privacy has been 'invaded' and they have to find a new place. Of course, this assumes they can remember where they last laid. They are chickens, after all.

We are weaning Spot, the kid, and are down to feeding it 2 cups of special brew per day, now. It is already eating goat chow and after this batch of milk (2 gallons), we're done with all that nonsense! He will be the first to be sold. Sell your kids.. doesn't that sound like a dream?

I bought more seeds (fennel to keep the bugs off the gourds, and a few other things) and will be having 9 cabernet vines mailed to me soon. That will bring our grape crop up to 16, but the other vines are not wine grapes. One is a concord grape plant that seems to be doing great and the others are Thompson seedless. I mulched a lot of things this weekend, raking leaves from the backyard and using some of that for mulch of the fruit trees and the rest of the leaves I mixed into the compost.

I also cleaned out the non-producing pots in the greenhouse, moved some stuff around and made way for the new batch of stuff I just planted -- beans, cilantro. I still have a bunch of peppers that need to go in the ground.

The watermelon vines have taken off and are doing quite well now that I've gotten rid of the fire ants on the mound.

I asked Mike to check the chipper shredder and I'm glad he did. He found that the plastic gas holder on the outside of the machine was leaking at the midway seal. It will have to be replaced, but in the meantime, we can just fill it up half way so that it doesn't leak over the side.

The corn seems to be doing well and I have to keep fertilizing it (organic fertilizer) so that it stays green and healthy. The tomato plants are doing well, although they're experiencing leaf curl. I may have to fertilize them, as well.