I’m starting seeds indoors under lights today. I’d normally have done this a little earlier, but I didn’t have a place set up to do it in the new house. The greenhouse plastic is in shreds, so I have to do this inside.
Yesterday, I took advantage of the nice weather for as long as the kids would let me, and got three fence posts set (and a fourth post hole dug) for the deer fence I’m putting up around the north garden. I still need to cut a lot more posts and burn the ends of them (to keep them from rotting in the ground), but there are plenty of windblown young trees lying around in the woods here that I can use. On Monday, Mayda and Amalie planted peas in the front garden. I’ve also been cleaning out the hen house over the past couple of weeks and using the composted bedding from there to fertilize the gardens.
We just got a chimney liner and (an EPA-certified) wood stove, so once the weather clears up again, I’ll be installing those. We’ve spent a small fortune this winter trying to heat the place with just electric and propane space heaters, so being able to heat our home with fuel gathered from the property will be a welcome relief. It also means the kids will have a job now: gathering up kindling they see on the ground.
No chicks yet, but I’m working on fortifying the hens’ house and run against thieves. I’m going to be putting a fence wire roof over their run, which will also protect them from hawks and offer further protection against raccoons and opossums. To that end, I’ve cut down a tree that the coons used to descend into the run from the hen house roof. That tree became the fence posts I just set. After I’m done cleaning out and improving the hen house, I want to get a load of sand to use as bedding. You just rake it out every day like kitty litter, so there’s no need for the mountains of sawdust I used to go through. After a year, I’ll scoop out that sand, spread it on our clayey garden soil, and replace it with new sand. I’ve been toying with the idea of building a rocket stove mass heater to heat the hen house, and running an underground water line out there so the birds can still use an automatic waterer in the winter. Once the hen house is finally ready for chicks, I’ve got a coupon from Ridgway for 50% off that I got at this year’s OEFFA conference.
I don’t expect any of the chicken thieves–two-footed or four-footed–to be quite so brazen now that we’re actually living here, but just in case, I’ll have the chickens’ areas covered by cameras and motion-activated lights. We’ve even been (half) joking about putting a zip line or fireman’s pole outside our bedroom window for faster response in case of an intrusion. Rather than trying to fence in the entire property, it looks like it’s going to be more economical and effective to simply catch and eliminate the troublemakers.
