Up a Creek

How quickly the weather can turn around. I thought surely we'd be in for another hot long dry summer. So far, I was very mistaken! While one vacation we received at least an inch of rain and in the past week, over 7 inches!

The hail the other night was unreal and we didn't even get the brunt of it. But it's so funny how storms around here can be...it can be raining on one house and be completely dry the next house over. About 5 miles away as the crow flies hail as big as softballs bombarded areas for as long as 6 minutes. Lowes had roof damage so severe the roofing guys lost count at 6,000 dents in the roof and it's so bad, the whole thing will need to be replaced. Even almost a week later there were buckets and cans and every type of container they had lined up side by side all up and down the aisles to catch the dripping water. I am sure they had to keep all employees on staff just to be sure the floor was moped up!

Glass from windshields littered the parking lots of several businesses (Home Depot, Lowes, Walmart, etc.). It was pretty bad! But, we got a lot of good rain out of it, 2.5" from that storm. The past couple of days and nights it has rained and rained and rained! We were getting a bit flooded out going out to the barn. The water comes down off the hills and channels right through the middle of the barnyard and veers east to across the orchard a bit and into the pond.

Jeremiah desperately wants his pond to fill but it's gonna take an awful lot of water to get it started. Everyone north of us has to fill theirs first, not to mention we'd much prefer the aquifer fill first! The Little Arkansas is near flood stage and Jeremiah said the Arkansas is very high too. Everything should subside in the next couple of days though as it looks like we'll be dry for a couple of days. It's a good soaking rain for the most part. The first few storms softened up the ground enough that the next storms to come through had a chance to soak instead of running off, and that's what we need! Everything is SO green! It's gorgeous. Course, with the wetness comes bugs, there's never a happy medium!

The garden has grown leaps and bounds. I'd show you with a photo but I need a new battery for my camera and have been a little slow in getting that done. We still aren't picking a whole lot out of it. It always seems mine takes a little longer than some to get going but once it does, it goes crazy! We have picked lots of peppers and there are lots of tomatoes on the vines, which are HUGE again this year and so healthy, but still green yet.

I have had enough of my make shift milk room and I finally put my foot down 2 Fridays ago and decided it was a task that needed to get started. If it never gets started it certainly won't ever get finished! So at the last minute Friday afternoon Jeremiah was calling around to equipment rental companies and getting estimates for a trencher rental. By Friday evening we Jeremiah had the yard all dug up.

Nothing ever goes as planned however (and it's never as budgeted!) and when we thought we could tie into the existing line to the barn, Jeremiah decided against that. He has visions some day of putting in an ag well and between an ag well and everything I may eventually be running in the new milk house, 30 amps just won't be enough to run the milk house, a well AND existing things out in the barn which isn't a whole lot unless it's winter and then we've got the tank heaters.

Anyway, so we trenched a whole new line from the house out to the milk house site, the old wire and conduit will eventually be cut half way out to the barn and the wire from the house to the cut will be removed and used up front. See, there's not enough amps going out to the shop either. Not enough for Jeremiah anyway so he trenched a line from the house to the shop too! There was plumbing put out there when it was constructed but water was never put in so we put a water line in, then new conduit for electrical too. He's going to take the 30 amps currently going out to the barn and send it to the shop and put in a 100 amp breaker in the box and send it out to the barn. That outta do it! We were working against time to get the conduit and water lines in before the storms filled them back up with dirt but I now have 3 new water hydrants out at the barn (one to the orchard, one to the eastern pasture (where the pigs are now) and one int he northern pasture that he trenched a 300' foot line for). That should be plenty of hydrants!

Snow, the dog, is in heat and I don't want another round of puppies so soon so she's in the garage and driving me insane! She got out once by opening the door and I went chasing her across the yard at 1 AM! She's trying to fit through the cat door as we speak. By the time all is said and done she'll probably destroy it! She's no small dog and I am wishing I had a kennel big enough to put her in. I would put her in one of the goat pens but she'd dig or climb out! She'd probably destroy a kennel too so needless to say, neither of us are happy campers right now. To top it off, we castrated buck kids over the weekend and I have major poison ivy on my forearms from them roaming through it eating and me picking them up! I have not slept well in nights despite taking Benadryl and drinking myself to sleep and now the dog! 

We're driving down to Wichita Saturday afternoon to meet someone coming up from Oklahoma to buy a buck kid. Another lady in Amarillo wants the last papered buck kid I have for sale and I said I would meet her half way for gas money. There isn't a whole lot to see in the SW part of the state I don't think and I don't want to cross state lines but I am sure we can find something to do since the trip is paid for. I think we've got that planned for the weekend after next.

We have 2 new foxes back and have lost a few hens. Yesterday morning I found a pile of feathers by the roving coup. The stupid batch of chickens we got in February are pretty much near full grown now, most of which were roosters (!) and they roost out in the open on top of the roving coup! Stupid birds. They won't go into the coup. I counted heads though and everyone still has theirs so I guess it was a thwarted attempt. Still, this evening at dusk I put the hens that roost up there into the coup and the rest of them I put into the roving coup and shut the door. It does not have roosting poles in it, they sit on the ground. It's big enough for 3 full grown birds really.

The second set of meat birds I let out during the day. I hate them. They are awful awful creatures, I call them the minions, they are also referred to as the piranhas too. The other meat bird batch weren't nearly as bad as these guys. They would peck you to death if you let them I swear and they are always under foot! Honestly you feel like the Pied Piper, only they aren't rats their flesh eating chickens! Why do I continue to let them out of the roving coup then? Because they can forage all day long and it's free! I still feed them a lot twice a day, though that's when they are the worst when they are "starving" so I do give them that in their defense. Any idea what it's like to see 75 white chickens all over the yard? On the whole bug issue though, we've had VERY few ticks this year. It's all a give and take, I guess.

I am incubating 22 eggs. We'll see how that goes. I've not had much success with incubation and after 3 attempts and 12 hatching from the last batch of 40 eggs, I gave up for the spring. We lost a few of those once they were feathered out to who knows what the and rest of them went as payment to the person I got fertile eggs from for the first 2 incubation attempts even though none of those eggs even hatched...the eggs that I finally had success on the last batch which were all from my coup after tweaking the incubation method I was using.

We've got a Silver Laced Wyandotte rooster now and mostly SLW hens too. We have 3 golden laced wyandotte hens and more roosters than we need and then just one last blue laced red wyandotte hen and 2 roosters and one of these days I'll put her and a matching fellow into the roving coup and pull some eggs from her to incubate. The golden hens mostly stay with the golden roosters so I am sure, without even having to separate, I should have pure chicks. You'd laugh if I told you I got 6 golden laced wyandotte roosters to 3 females. We'd butcher some of them if we had the time!  At this point I just want replacements in case the foxes get more and I am sick to death of paying an arm and a leg for chicks from the hatchery!

Our girl piggy is due to have piglets any day. We separated the male from her. We're penning them with electric wire, 2 strand for their previous pen and one strand for the male since we ran out and it seems to do the trick and he doesn't test it. They each have a pretty big area of pasture to root up.  Piglets should be an interesting experience. We don't plan to keep them, we'll sell them as weaner pigs after we castrate them. That'll be a new experience too but I figure if we can butcher chickens and pigs and goats and burn baby goat heads to dis-bud, certainly we can castrate some pigs!

Well anyway, we are supposed to be dry here for a couple of days I think. Jeremiah will be in Kansas City Wednesday through Friday evening. He's taking part in the last of that state tech-ed overhaul project. Least you think he didn't pick up another project though but he was volunteered to be president-elect of I don't even remember what now but something having to do with executive decisions on the state level for Kansas Career and Technical Education. Next year he'll move up to president. He said they want new young blood. I wish it were a paying position (but it's not) and it means he'll be spending at least 3 more nights away for conferences in 3 different cities (Topeka, Kansas City and somewhere else) over the course of the year and I am sure there is paperwork that goes along with it! I know it's a huge feather in his cap but to be honest, I am a little perturbed actually. Yet more time away. But anyway, nothing to get all worked up about. I'm thankful he has a good job with people who think so highly of him to put him in these positions. I know it speaks volumes of him.

The dog seems to have settled down...or chewed her way out but at least it's quiet and I am going to try to grab a few more winks of sleep before another day dawns.

Have a great Wednesday!