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.
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.
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.
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. 😉
New project … install about 500 feet of 2x4x60″ welded-wire fencing around the garden pasture.
Used a new tractor implement … County Line Fence Stretcher. Overall, very happy with the results.
Got 200 feet installed today, will likely finish it tomorrow … weather permitting.
Deuce started the day off in knuckle-head mode, trying to drag a 30+ foot “stick” (tree) around the property on our morning walk. But, later in the afternoon, he stepped up his game and was all business … clearing a path through the chicken flock for the tractor to pass … repeatedly. He has almost ZERO formal training, but you can see his herding and protective instincts are just amazing. Sir Shitzalot Deuce (his formal AKC registered name) has seemingly endless energy, and is “very talkative” according to the folks that I kenneled him with this last weekend. Talkative … indeed.
Spent some time today finishing the sweeping up of all the crimson clover mulch from the “clover patch” (aka: park) in the neighboring field, and transporting it to the “donkey pasture” that I’m in the process of renovating.
A lot of trial and error involved in figuring out how to spread the mulch evenly around the pasture, before eventually tilling it in.
My biggest lesson learned was I should have let the freshly cut mulch sit idle in the sun for a few days to shed up to 50% of its inherent “green” moisture, which makes it much easier to sweep up and spread. Had a HELLUVA time trying to spread huge, wet piles of mulch … and eventually cried “UNCLE” and just gave up. I’ll till everything in today or tomorrow.
Feels good to have at least finished harvesting the winter cover crop of clover. I figure about 80% (by volume) of the above ground clover (which was between 2 and 3 feet tall!) was mulched and moved to the donkey pasture.
The remaining 20%, and all underground structure (e.g. roots) will be tilled under in the “park” lot. So, one cover crop will benefit two pastures, or roughly 2.5 acres.
I haven’t posted a FCL DITL video in some months. Not sure why … just didn’t.
For awhile now, I’ve had the itch to start blogging again.
Here’s my first foray back into video composition and publication. It’s a bit clunky, because my post-processing “saw” got a little rusty over the last few months of non-use.
In any event, I spent the weekend mulching about an acre and a half of crimson clover with a pair of Husqvarna mowers, a 54″ zero-turn for the first pass down to 3.5 inches, then a regular 54″ ride-on mower to take it down to 2″.
We’re now in the process of sweeping up all the mulch to move most of it into the large donkey pasture that I’m renovating, which desperately needs the additional nutrients and nitrogen from the clover “green manure.”
It’s a lot of work, but thankfully the mowers and tractor do most of the heavy lifting … I’m just along for the ride.
Deuce and Hooey did their part too … keeping the bees off me and fending off any snakes (zero observed). I was actually amazed that I didn’t get stung by a bee (or three). When I started mowing, there were 1000’s of bees out there. The smaller the patch got, the higher the bee density. Spooky near the end.
Total of 4 new baby ducklings hatched by end of day.
I spent most of the day out hand tossing hay over the 1.8 acre ‘park’ pasture to protect the newly seeded winter cover crop (red clover, crimson clover, Austrian winter peas) from Hurricane Michael, which is due to arrive tomorrow or Friday.
It isn’t hard work (per se), but tedious. That said, by the end of the day I was completely bushed, ready to jump into the massage chair and/or jacuzzi. Did neither … fell asleep on the couch with the pup laying on my chest. Yeah, that kind of day.
As I described in the opening segment … I was on my first cup of coffee, doing my morning situational awareness review (SAR) (news, weather, etc.) when it dawned on me that I was hearing something … a bird of some sort … that struck me as … different. I thought, hmmm, sounds like a baby chicken. DOAH! I forgot about the duck eggs in the incubator in the window sill behind me!
Sure enough … first baby duckling had hatched! As you may recall, I found a clutch of duck eggs in a next next to my duck pond, and couldn’t find the mother duck. Thinking perhaps a coyote got her, I moved all 20 of the eggs into an incubator. I’ve incubated over a 100 chicken eggs, but never any duck eggs (until NOW!). I did some research, and estimated their hatch date to be the 10th of October. Obviously, I was only 2 days off. We ended up with three newborn ducklings by the end of the day, and there is still about 7 eggs in the incubator, with one showing signs of hatching now.
Also found that one of my mamma rabbits dropped a litter of 10 to 12 new rabbit kits into a nest box over night.
Then, I found a free-ranging rabbit of mine with a whole nest of maggot larvae in an open wound in her neck. GROSS!
Spent some quality time with the pupperino (Deuce). He and Hooey helped me unfurl a big ol’ hay roll in the freshly seeded ‘park’ next door, which we’ll need to distribute over 1.8 acres today (Tuesday).
Long day … but a good day. Country living at it’s best.
