That may sound pedestrian (fixing the hen house) but to do so I need to move the big pigs ~ FreeBee and Jude. So there will be ‘backwardsing’ before ‘forwardsing’.
This is a very important repair. Jude has been pulling the wooden barn siding off the back of the building to get to the chook food. And he is destructive and determined so it has to be a very tight patch. I am running this like a military campaign – once the pigs are out – both R and Our John will be waiting with their tools and supplies and run straight in to work on the back wall of the hen house. While they do that I will mow those weeds down and tidy up and put more straw into their root cellar bed.
A lot of straw.
The huge hogs will have been moved (by me) into the big vegetable garden and they will wander about breaking stuff and finish cleaning up the old sweetcorn, maybe muck about in the pumpkin patch. I will sprinkle treats throughout to keep them busy. It will be like an Easter egg hunt!
I will have my mower and a tractor full of straw by my gate and R and John will enter through another gate with the new (old) metal siding and their tools by another.
Once we are all through I will shut us in and the hogs out – I think it will work.
But we have to move fast in case the hogs get bored and cause trouble. They will be confused. So my troops have to work fast.
Anyway I mowed the cows pasture yesterday. Topping it. I used my orange mower because apparently the bush hog is broke. Everything is a little bit broke. But I heard John grinding the stumps of weed trees with the bush mower the other day so it does not surprise me that it is broke.
We have been so dry that the the grass is all brown tops and the thistles are at a perfect stage to be knocked down. My plan is that all the little thistle cuttings the mower produces will dry out before catching and regrowing themselves.
These damn thistles are a scourge – taking up good grazing ground.
Tima and the ducks seem to be hanging out a lot. An odd pairing.
While I was topping the fields yesterday I let the cows into the vege garden field. They started on cleaning up the sweetcorn patch. I hope they left some for Jude and FreeBee.
I love it when a plan works like this. Getting the animals to help with clean up between seasons is perfect.
Later I moved the cows somewhat reluctantly back to the fields.
They have one more big full field to finish before winter. Through the gate above.
That is the old dairy master field that they share with the piglets. I supplement the cows with hay as the dairy masters field is quite deep with crimson clover. Where the crimson clover came from I do not know. Though not too good for bees (the pollen is deep in the flowers) crimson clover does have a microbial compound which is good for cows (and pigs) and is at 25% protein so I saved this field for late summer to fatten a beef who will go into the freezer.
Boo is so helpful with training the turkeys where to sleep at night. But they came in the wrong door yesterday evening which upset his general sense of order. God knows they are going to make a mess in there.
We moved them through( deeper into the barn) – so hopefully they did not return to poop on the feed bags later in the night.
These turkeys. I knew they would be entertaining!
One of the black ones (Spanish turkey) is limping so I hope he is not the next body we find.
Two Toms!
Have a great day!
Celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
11 responses to “Today we are fixing the Back of the Hen House.”
actually now that I look into that field more deeply I have a mix of red clover and crimson clover. Hmm. I need to do more sleuthing.
While I don’t know much about it, as we don’t see Crimson Clover grown here, I do know that Bumble Bees rule on Red (that short vs long-tongue thing; ) Here’s an article I found interesting about various Clover/Vetch species and pollination in Oregon… https://plants.usda.gov/DocumentLibrary/plantguide/pdf/pg_trin3.pdf
So much to accomplish today. My best to the repair crew and you in keeping the big pigs happy while they do it 🙂
Tima is hardly noticeable within the ducks 😉 and seems very happy there. Maybe they understand each other’s language… Boo looks like he wants to say something to that turkey- like “get your turkey butt off that section and go back where you are supposed to be”.
Seems like there are always lots of repairs to make on a farm. We have leaning gates and such, but no more big animals to keep confined though. Finally, finally we got rain yesterday from Hurricane Francine down in the gulf. So needed! Hope you get some soon!!!
Those are lucky hogs – going on a picnic 😉
I expect Tima can secretly speak, talking to the ducks like you would …and those turkeys are looking grown up now!
Hope the hen house repair goes as planned.
What a day of coordination and planning well done! Turkeys are known to have Very Little Brains – I had a friend whose family raised 100’s of them every year and swore that if they were caught in the rain, would stare up curiously with open mouths at it until they drowned – but are delicious and November isn’t far away.
Good luck with your carefully orchestrated project. What could possible go wrong!
orchestrated like a precision operation, bravo and you must be wiped out at the end of a day. I do love hearing all the farm gossip, about who hangs out with who, who runs amok, who eats someone else’s food….
Using animals to clean up crops is such classic permaculture. Weed and feed at the same time. Don’t bend down to pull weeds, get the chooks to do it, they are designed by nature for that purpose. Follow one animal type with another to break the parasite cycle. It all makes such good sense. And you have your animals’ characters down pat: don’t expect moderation from a pig or brains from a turkey.
Hopefully all are back to their quarters and Jude is happy with his new bed! You will sleep well tonight!