Spent some time this week tilling, grading, raking and drag harrowing the big pasture, readying it for seeding in a few weeks.
Second bucket gardening pallet is coming along well. Seedlings in the soil blocks are also doing well, especially the Okra.
Deuce get’s a lot of face time, as usual.
Received and tested our first (of many) Premier 1 electric poultry fence. Works like a charm. Poor Deuce got volunteered to test the fences ability to repel an aggressive predator, and the fence turned his ass around VERY effectively. Thanks Deuce … for taking one for the team.
Caught DJ (male duck) trying to mount the chicken hens again. He damn near drowned one hen. In his defense … I suppose … if you’ve ever seen ducks mate, they often do so floating in a pond, where the drake (male) holds the duck (female) mostly underwater while doing his business. What DJ doesn’t realize is hens are less prone to float. Oh, and that HE’S A DAMN DUCK NOT A CHICKEN!!!
I’ve decided to procure two or three 100′ x 14′ caterpillar tunnels between now and the end of the year. One of them will be used for aquaponic gardening (e.g. eight tilapia fish tanks an twenty-four veggie grow beds). The other tunnels will be used as greenhouses to grow crops year around.
Seems like we packed quite a bit into the last week.
The ducklings have integrated with the two remaining adults, and Bianca is doing a great job of mothering them. Warms my heart to see her leading them around. She tried SO hard to hatch her own eggs naturally, but predators and a hurricane got in the way. Now, she has 15 ‘babies’ to boss around. Statistically, half of them are her offspring.
Deuce succeeded in reaching his 1st birthday without Hooey ripping his face completely off, getting flattened under the tractor, or choking to death on any of the million objects he has chewed up and destroyed. I love the boy, but Lord he can drive me nuts.
Picked up a new Glock 42 (.380 Auto) and put it through its paces. VERY happy with it. I was going to get a Ruger LCP II (2), but I’m glad I went with the ‘baby Glock’ instead. Could not be happier. I plan to pick up and evaluate a Glock 19X next. Stay tuned.
Got the second bucket gardening pallet built. Will be planting the following today: arugula, snap beans, beets, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, bush peas. Need to find some heirloom okra seeds. Nevermind … just found them on Amazon, be here in 2 days.
Just threw DJ (our ‘chuck’ … duck that thinks he’s a chicken) into the duck pond with his biological species mates, and he ran out of there (literally!) like I threw him in a hole filled with Pit Vipers. I think he’s afraid of Bianca, and freaked out by all the ducklings. Then again, I see him chasing hens (best he can, they are way faster and more agile) every evening. He just thinks he’s a damn chicken. Freak-o-Nature … that one.
According to historical data, the hottest day of the year is about 10 days away, then temps will start slowly dropping through mid-September. YAY!!!
I got my soil sample tests back from the County, and the ‘numbers’ were interesting. I sampled my garden (6,000 sq.ft.), big pasture (43,000 sq. ft.) and barn pasture (14,000 sq. ft). The garden plot came back with a significantly higher pH, and phosphorus and potassium indexes well above optimum, likely due to all the compost and manure I’ve tilled into the soil over the last year and a half.
Added 360 pounds of lime and 30 pounds of Group D fertilizer, and that should be enough soil amendments for 2 or 3 years.
Just WAY too hot this weekend to get much else done outside.
When I fed the “puppy ducks” in their small pond enclosure this morning, I noticed the small pond was almost dry again. So, I left the enclosure open to see if they might come out themselves this time. I shoo’d them out the other day, and they didn’t respond well (panic).
Just as I was assembling this video, I looked out and saw all of them playing in the big pond. Before I could get a camera up, our resident deer that seems to be a permanent fixture around the house pretty much every evening, popped her head up from the weeds next to the pond and scared the baby ducks out. But, less than 10 minutes later, they were back in the big pond, so I put the drone up to get some close ups, and more importantly get a good headcount. I’m happy to report that all 15 ducklings are still accounted for.
They have feathered up quite a bit in the last week. I’m surprised by their black and grey coloring. Since Bianca is (statistically) the mother of half the ducklings, I’m guessing that her ‘pure blonde’ coloring is some sort of fluke, a gene expression not exhibited by any of her offspring. I don’t care so much if they get her coloring, but I hope a few of them get her personality, which is just AMAZING for a duck.
Recent up-tic in predator attacks, so I built a new Coyote Interdiction Platform (CIP) and got it ready to go. Daniel Defense DDM4V7, Vortex Razor HD II 1-6×24, Steiner DBAL-D2, Surefire M600DF. I’ve been really impressed with the DBAL. Solid construction, easy to mount, zero the visible laser and the IR laser is automatically zero’d. LOVE IT.
Deuce seems to get a lot of face time. Go figure.
Baby ducks are getting big, but I think I may have lost a few already. Coyotes can’t get in their fenced enclosure, but a fox can, and I saw the fox prowling around at 4A the other day. Took two shots, but missed. The NV gear I was using was in need of an upgrade, thus the DDM4 above. 😉
4th of July week started off with a bit of a fiasco. As explained in this video, I put a beef brisket in the wood pellet smoker at 11P, and at 2A I was awakened by alarms blaring all over the house. Apparently, the winds were such that carbon monoxide from the smoker (on the porch) flowed into the house and accumulated to hazardous levels, which triggered the “whole house” alarm system to detect and announce the hazard. So, the dogs and I slept (or, at least tried to) outside on the patio.
Spend the 4th with my neighbors. We hung out in their pool … even as a thunderstorm (lightening & thunder) passed overhead. Mother Nature had her own firework show. Pretty cool.
Migrated the 15 ducklings out of the bard stall and into a fenced in duck habitat around the smaller of our two ponds. They seem REALLY happy to be outside. Eating like little piggies, getting big, just now starting to feather up.
Tilled the ‘park’ to flatten out all the plow furrows and get it ready for seeding next month. Broke the PTO shaft on the tractor the first day and had to replace it. Paid a bit more attention to how “cut down” the length of the shaft to make it about 2 o 3 inches longer than the previous shaft. Works like a charm.
Decided to build a new garden infrastructure to allow for 40 to 50 5-gallon buckets to be distributed in rows of ten buckets, 4 feet between each bucket, with a 3 foot path between each row.
Overall, a pretty productive week … given my general aversion to heat and humidity. Had to take a few days “off” to recover from too much heat exposure, but it all worked out.
Long, hot week. I took the week off from work, and planned on getting a bunch of outdoor projects done. Yeah, right. End of June? I think NOT!
Anybody with dental implants knows how expensive they are. I had one (only about a year old) break and fall out, the my dentist was kind enough to fix and reinstall the tooth ‘under warranty’ for $39 out of pocket. Things like that don’t happen enough in life! I don’t mean the tooth failure … I mean the cheap-fix.
Looks like I need a few more months still to get my garden plot adequately soil conditioned … waiting on soil test results … so I decided to do some “bucket gardening.” In this heat, WHO wants to be lugging around a bunch of heavy 5-gallon buckets? So, I conceptualized and prototyped a custom pallet designed to carry 9 5-gallon buckets, each in individual recesses, so they won’t slide off the pallet when moved from point A to point B.
So glad June is about over. 2.5 more months of sweating, then on to an oh-so-can’t-wait-for-it Fall and (ahhhhhh) Winter.
Migrated ducklings from brooders (barn & house) into a dedicated duckling coop in the barn.
Powerful thunderstorm passed through and knocked power out for a few hours.
Then, the Deuce fiasco. He recently started running round with a 8-inch tire/wheel combination, and in about a week’s time managed to shred the tire. So, a few days ago, we rolled out of bed to a BEAUTIFUL day … cooler, clear skies, nice breeze. As we walked round the property after letting the barn animals out for the morning, I kicked another (larger) tractor tire that was just lying around after having been used to boost a bird feeder off the ground (or some such).
Deuce saw me kick the tire, and thought (I’m sure) … GAME ON! As you can see in this video, we basically started playing tractor tire soccer. Unfortunately, I kicked the tire at JUST the wrong moment (in hindsight) causing the rim of the tire to collide with Deuce’s teeth, which were sunk into the rubber tire. I will NEVER forget the sound. First … a loud crack, followed immediately by his yipe. While you (thankfully) can’t see it on the video, blood was pouring out of his mouth like a ‘stuck pig.’
I called the vet and let them know what happened, and that I was rolling their way Code-3. I was pleasantly surprised to see that in the 20 minutes it took me to drive to the vet, the bleeding had mostly stopped.
A quick check by the vet determined that he had sustained 2 or 3 fractured teeth, including his upper-right canine tooth, which I could see was sheared off at about the halfway point.
They immediately sedated him and prepared him for emergency surgery. I got a call about two hours later, once they got him “off the table” (I hate that term), saying he only lost two teeth, his canine incisor and a pre-molar two teeth away. The tooth between them was fine.
Needless to say … I feel just horrible for having caused his injury. We were roughhousing … playing … but that doesn’t change the fact that my pup got f**ked up.
Happy to report that he’s doing well after about 48 hours of recovery. He tends to be a VERY ORAL dog, always has something in his mouth (stick, toy, chicken, rocks, Hooey’s neck, whatever …) so it’s been a chore trying to keep him from tearing his stitches open … but so far, so good.
I learned this AM that Deuce ‘has a thing’ for freshly baked sourdough bread. I made 4 loaves this morning and he’s literally crawled over me a few times to get some. It’s soft on his palette, so WFT … he can have some. Makes him happy.
Because I staggered the introduction of duck eggs into the incubator over about a five day period, the “hatch” has also been distributed over about a five day period. Well, duh, right? Down to the last two eggs. I just poked my head in there, observed that at least one of the two eggs is still viable (heard chirping inside), and decided to intervene a little.
Historically, hatch interventions (trying to help a bird out of the egg when they get stuck) have been about a 50-50 prospect. Half the time, they don’t make it.
In this case, it was my assessment the membrane between the shell and duckling was too thick and malleable for the baby duck to break through, so she was likely to suffocate and die. So, I cracked the shell a little around one end, pinched the membrane and tore a small hole in it, then put the egg back in the incubator. At least I know she can get air. I learned the hard way in the past that getting more aggressive against the membrane can be detrimental to the bird for a few different reasons. So, just a minimal change to ensure she can draw air into the otherwise air-tight shell.
Deuce discovered another nest of duck eggs, which I decided (contrary to what I state in this video) to recover and setup of the next incubator run. Had I not, Deuce would have just eaten them.
Also did a quick summary review (limited to “I really LIKE it!”) of a new pair of Trekz Air wireless bone conduction headset by After Shokz, which I use to listen to music on 5-mile “ruck” walks three times a week. REALLY happy with the product.
Biggest ‘news’ is the duck eggs in the incubator started hatching yesterday, with three (of about 15) hatched thus far.
Ducklings are just SO damn cute. I’m always amazed to hear them sounding just like baby chicks, at least for the first few weeks. At some point, they take on the “duck sound” that differs from the “chicken sound” … but it takes them awhile to get there.
Deuce … as always … is just DEUCE (which is to say: a complete knucklehead). I could never hate him, so I’ll define our relationship as one of love-dislike. I love him in the extreme, but I dislike some of his behaviors and personality quirks. For example, he is by far the most vocal dog I’ve ever owned. He doesn’t just bark. No … any ol’ dog can just bark! Deuce yells, screams, sings and somehow vocalizes about a half-dozen other emotions. Can’t say I wasn’t forewarned. The breeder told me he was “very vocal.” He’s also one of the most destructive dogs I’ve ever had. You should see the porch. Absolutely LITTERED with rocks, shredded sticks, torn up boxes, and other random ‘toys’ he’s found around the house and property. I clean it up, and he takes it as a personal challenge to mess it up again, even worse.
Doesn’t matter how many times I correct him with his static shock collar … if he wants to do something, he’s going to do it. “Bring on the SHOCK! … that ALL you got?” … I can almost hear him thinking.
Kitchen counter surfing … check! Can’t leave anything out at night. As soon as I go to bed, he runs a nightly checklist. 1) Scarf any food off the kitchen counter, 2) drink out of the toilet, 3) if the kitchen garbage isn’t closed/secured, rip all the garbage out and distribute it over the front room and outside porch, 4) if the wind blows the front door closed, poop on the hardwood floor, 5) check for ticks, if any found, crawl into bed with Dad, … etc.
Okay, done venting. If you can’t tell by the videos I share, I clearly LOVE him more than I DISLIKE him. My love is unconditional. My dislike is episodic and transient (to use a few temporal geekisms).
As soon as the incubator hatch is completed (maybe about 5 days from now), I plan on putting another 10 duck eggs, and maybe about 10 chicken eggs, down for a second set. Need more ducks, and the chicken flock could use a few new recruits to keep the local hawks, coyotes and lone red wolf busy. 😉
This video covers about 4 days during which I was working through technical issues that prevented me from moving photos and videos from my iPhone to my desktop … so it’s a bit longer than usual.
Topics Covered:
making sourdough starter and breads
love my new aluminum non-stick wok
scary story re: “green eyes” in the dark of night
incubating duck eggs (candling update)
homemade wood-fired pizza
Deuce working through a hanger-on-er
Quick note re: the “green eyes” story. In the beginning of the segment, I said I saw “two pairs of green eyes” but what I meant was I saw one pair, or two eyes, staring back at me. So, there was only one animal, which i strongly suspect was the red wolf I’ve seen here before. SPOOKED the crap out of me. It was like a Stephen King thing … scary. 😉
