My Crazy Life Around The Farm...: May 2011

Happy May Everyone!!! Been a very busy few weeks around here with all the spring chores to do. The one that seemed to take the longest was getting the pasture fence ready for the goats. This entailed putting out over 200' of 2' chicken wire folded over then connected to the bottom of the actual fence where there were gaps between the ground and fencing. The goats figured out in places that they could go UNDER the fence. After attaching the chicken wire I nailed in stakes in the middle to hold it down then brought in about 6 or so full size dump carts of dirt to put over the wire where it laid on the ground. Was not a 1 hour project that is for sure! But as of around 7pm April 30th - it was done so the goats went out to pasture - AMEN!!! And I think they were excited. We stayed out there with them for a while till they figured it all out. They would just start running and I thought for sure Mo or I were gonna die as they would start truckin toward us! I think they were just happy to be able to run, which makes me happy. In certain areas the grass is already 6-10" tall so they have plenty to eat out there.

While on the animal topic, we are amazed at how fast the chickens are growing! They are definitely in their weird looking stage where they are losing all their fuzz and growing in their feathers. For those of you who are friends of mine on FB, you know the one got really really sick and we took her to the vet. The medication did the trick and she is still doing well. Here is the change in less than 2 weeks....

I did get their chicken coup in the barn all fenced in along the top of the stall and overhead so they won't be able to fly out and nothing can get in from above either. The door doesn't want to close right now tho - guessing one of the posts settled over the winter so I have to get a large piece of lumber and knock it back into being square/plumb again and reset it by adding more cement mix in the hole if it moves that much. Once that is all done I'll get some pics to share. I have to work on it soon as these birds will being living out there in about a month.

Had our well water pump go out on us the other day. The original one was installed in 1974 so I guess it did its job for a good long time. I never knew exactly how a residential well worked - so I was watching the plumber (our neighbor down the road) and asking questions... In these pics the orange is not the color of the pipe - that is the build up of iron... BLAH!! The pipe is poly so the pipe itself isn't rusting. I didn't realize how long of a pipe goes down in there or how it hooked up to the line going into the house, I get fascinated by learning how things work. Here are some pics of them installing the new submersible pump. Only took like an hour - I think their hardest part was pulling the pipe up out of the well as its heavy and the iron on it made it slippery.

Old dead pump.

this doesn't even show all of the pipe... but you can see where
the water starts down in the well from where the iron is.

Still haven't been able to get rest of garden tilled yet, this rain is just not letting up. I was finally able to mow yesterday but even that took twice as long as it normally does from having to mow slowly since the grass was so long. Still doesn't even look that great - I can't stand when there are any clumps of grass. Below are pictures of veggies/herbs waiting to be planted in the garden in about a month (normally June 1st is safe for maters/peppers)