How did it get to be Friday already?
Natures brilliant colour is summers last hurrah. Summers departure is now imminent. Cold is coming.
The chimneys have been cleaned and the big fire is lit.
I had an excellent discussion with a pond person the other day; trying to get my head around preparing the fish pond for freezing weather.
Here are the main points.
- Stop feeding fish when the water temp reaches 55F. (Done).
- Have a bubbler in the water.
- Position the bubbler close to a submersible heater (but not too close).
- The bubbler and heater work together.
The objective is to have a hole in the ice at all times to prevent the accumulation of nasty gases. So the bubbler is equally as important as the heater.
I could not justify the $400 bubbler the expert recommended for the pond (nor could I afford it) but while I search second hand sites we put a smaller bubbler in. The unit is in the basement and the line is running from a small hole in the wall across the rocks and into the pond.
Fingers crossed.
Pop over to The Kitchens Garden Substack to watch the cows eating their bed. It is remarkably soothing. And TKG TAKE TEN is free to all – all this month.
Today R and I are going across to the neighbours to collect the last of his unsold pumpkins. These are the best feed for the winter.
Egg production is rising – slowly.
Dirty eggs from muddy chicken feet. It was a good day on the chook farm yesterday.
Lulu.
R found a poo app. Who knew there was such a thing. She took a photo of the scat up in the barn loft and the app concluded that it IS a raccoon up there.
Raccoons are omnivores, mammals, nocturnal and have little hands. They are probably the culprits who keep pulling the lids off the grain bins. And why the barn chickens are roosting extra high this year.
If there is a family of them living up there they may as well stay the winter. Their hay houses will slowly disappear and hopefully they move on in the spring.
And I will remind everyone to make sure the feed lids are on extra tight.
And to make a lot of noise when throwing down hay.
Sigh.
Good morning.
Have a lovely day.
Celi
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The Kitchen's Garden 
41 responses to “Winterizing the Pond”
Those cows look so cozy!
I’m not surprised that the chicken are roosting up high – raccoons like eggs.
Those cows!
And yes – a racoon in the barn is not ideal at all.
The sneaky critter 🤣
Yikes, raccoons can be deadly to chickens. We had a serious raccoon predator problem in early spring and lost over 10 chickens to them. Then, thought we had the chook house all safe and sound and just last week found a possum in there helping itself to eggs. 😦
I second that ‘raccoons are deadly to chickens’ comment! I was fastidious about removing any raccoons as our neighbour had her complete breeding flock of Cooper Maran chickens wiped out in one night by raccoons. I won’t get into the gory details … I think you had best move your new tenants out of there ASAP.
I can’t find them – and there is no new poo. Boo and I were out twice last night hunting through the barn.
We would have to put out live traps with peanuts dribbled in the floor and sometimes with cat food on a piece of bread. They’d get caught as soon as it was dark. Some nights I moved five or six having captured them one at a time. (Not everyone just moved them… I couldn’t bring myself to do them in. )
They are very cute and tameable – I’m not sure that’s ethical, but they can be quite friendly.
You and I are having quite the summer for critters.
I have been up in the barn again after all these messages and see no sign of our visitor. Fingers crossed we mis read the signs.
Perhaps it came to have a look and has foundsomewhere better…
I’m down on the farm in Cornwall – my step mother is out feeding the badgers and foxes!
Oh no!! What is she like!! 😂
I wish I could talk her into having some pigs – they’d keep the fox away. Though I heard the full duck story today and it sounds more like somebody might have stolen them!
Oh no!! That is awful. Duck thievery.
They seem to have gone missing, without any sign of forced entry and there was no sign of blood or feathers!
Just like my flock of ducks.
Indeed!
Beamed up.
I did suggest, abducted by aliens 👽
Racoons are omnivores and smart. They can upset food cans, climb trees, get onto roofs, and swim. They like chickens and eggs, and they have long claws and agile fingers. In spring, I have seen mother racoons guiding her babies around the marsh, maybe to teach the best places to hunt and fish.
But I like racoons, unfortunately. Good luck.
Yes. I like them too though I have never seen one! Only in pictures or dead on the side of the road. They are so much bigger than I imagined. They will be why there are no eggs up in the loft anymore. We just got the ‘possums out of the barn and now racoons!!
Racoons go wherever they want, unfortunately. The chickens are smart to roost up high, but they can’t go far if they are sitting on eggs. Also, racoons can get to them when they are sleeping and groggy. Some people will trap them or hunt them. That’s where coonskin caps come from. My Treasury of American Folklore, written through an FDR project in the 1930s, has seversl tales of people like Davy Crockett, who was a Congressman in the 1830s, hunted racoons and has a story about trying to “grin a racoon” down from a tree, before Crockett died at the Alamo in Texas.
wow, pond care is brand new to me, I had no idea
I felt the same this morning- Friday already? Where has the week gone? Raccoons are really common here. We had a now infamous news story not long ago about a woman who routinely put food out for raccoons for years. The originals made sure to tell their friends. The news video is hilarious (but also speaks volumes about what not to do with wildlife) showing hundreds, literally hundreds of raccoons all over her property.
Ooooh! That first picture of the leaves would make a wonderful jigsaw puzzle!
You can have it! All my pictures are free to anyone who wants them!
Lulu is a beauty! My ex boyfriend had chickens and would get quite a few eggs of a variety of colors. I didn’t realize eggs came in any color except white or beige! I used to think raccoons were cute until one decided to take up residence in my shed. They are not friendly critters.
So I am hearing. I may have to rethink my strategy.
Raccoons ate the corn gluten meal I had stored in its sack on my back screen porch. So I bought a half-sized tin trash can to store the stuff in and bungeed the lid on. All that night I heard “Thrum! Thrum! Thrum” as the raccoon pulled on the bungee cords trying to get that lid off. Back-porch base!
That is so funny! Made me laugh out loud!
Your photo of Summer’s Last Hurrah Is glorious. I’m snitching the palette for an abstract watercolor. Merci beaucoup to you & Mother Nature. Darling Lulu is the picture of my childhood Blondie, immortal in memory for escaping a doll buggy ride downtown in my dolly’s wedding gown. Four days later she was spied sitting in a second story storeroom window over the drugstore & rescued, all dusty & cobwebby, & like Miss Havisham, still arrayed for the bridal.
Oh Blondie! That is the funniest story! And she was still wearing her finery when you found her days later. That cat!!
Unfortunate having the raccoons in the barn. They are distructive and get very bold. It would be best to trap and dispose of them, you’ll have a colony by spring and the more there are the harder to get rid of. They will eventually go after the cats and have no problem attacking dogs if there are more than one raccoon. Considering how small the Pop-Pops are they would be fair game too for the racoons. My late spouse helped a friend get rid of a colony of about 40 raccoons that had commandeered his pole barn, it wasn’t pretty. The raccoons had damaged so much in the pole barn it took a lot of money to put right and that wasn’t the damage to contents of the pole barn. They also area a disease and parasite vector for other animals like the dogs, cats, pigs and cows.The ducks wouldn’t be safe either. Mating season it January through March, 2 to 5 kits arrive about 2 months later. They are mostly nocturnal. Sleep a lot during the winter and like having food close to their den in cold weather.
Oh. Hmm. Well I have not seen one yet – maybe we should put a big trap up there. I certainly don’t want them going after the pigs!
Better to trap and get rid of them.
I like raccoons too. Actually had a pet one years back. Unfortunately I lived in a city so he had to be relocated to my uncle’s farm (at least that’s what I was told). I had one literally eviscerate one of our Rouen ducks a few years back – they can be vicious little beasties. My pet used to sit on top of my dad’s hunting dog’s kennel, just our of reach and drove the dog nuts.
That sounds naughty! Boo and I just went through the barn and the sheds – he was on alert – hunting mode and pointed at nothing so it is possible the scat was from the big possum that we have already relocated to uncles farm!
We have a lot of raccoons here and I am in the city. They are destructive, can be bold and get tamed and bold quickly. We have a large patio stone on top of our green bin so they stay out of there. They can be big, as big or bigger than my Scottish terrier, who losses her mind when she sees them.
Funny story, years ago in the middle of the night, the dog kept barking. The next morning when we went into the back yard there were little footprints all up and down the kids slide. The racoons had been playing on the slide and the dog heard them in the night.
Playing on the slide!!! Oh Lordy! That is nuts!
Racoons are not good, but at least it wasn’t a Bastard Mink.
100% agree!
Gosh 400 sure is a lot for a bubbler! Lulu is just lovely … No raccoons in NZ as you know. But then, we don’t have a barn either ..