Despite it being November, and getting chilly and having frost....The garden is still producing. Inside the greenhouse the volunteer tomato plant is still blooming as is the eggplant.
Tomorrow we shall feast on fried green tomatoes, and eggplant, and I will prepare the peppers for the freezer.
Today was day 3 working on building a chicken pen in the barn. All was well, until my circular saw decided to start acting up. Somehow the guide on it got bent. Now, the saw doesn't want to cut all the way thru the wood.
I have used up all the wood that I purchased, and am now using from our lumber pile. We had 6 sheets of 3/4 inch plywood that I wanted to use on the walls. The bottom 4-6 inches of each piece of plywood was damaged. This was wood we got free years ago when someone else had used it for concrete forms. Only problem is it is too heavy for me to lift and move. I did manage to get a piece up and onto the saw horses, so my solution is to cut the plywood into strips that are 12 inches wide-so basically I am making them into boards, which are lighter and much easier for me to move. I got the first piece up and then on the second cut, the saw started acting up.
As I was fighting the saw, a barn cat was fighting a snake. I thought it had a mouse until I went to look, and discovered she was tossing around a baby snake. Let's just say snakes are not my thing. I assume it came out of the hay,
Since the saw quit, I ended up doing some cleaning up in the barn. My husband came out and talked me though working on the saw. It worked a little better, but I think it is time to replace it.
Since some of the wood had been used before for concrete forms, it had some large holes drilled through it. I covered those with some old license plates that fit just perfectly.
Today was day 2 of the chicken pen build. The bottom row of hardware cloth is now done from the inside of the pen. It still needs to be stapled into place on the backside, then boards screwed in place on the back side. I was prepared to work another hour, but the batteries on both drills were dead, so I called it a night.
We got 2 more eggs today-so 2 more hens are now laying. Todays eggs were white, so it would be my leghorns that laid them. The color of a chickens eggs are determined by their breed. Leghorn chickens originally came from Tuscany Italy. They came to North American by ship in 1828 and were first called "Italians". Later, their name was changed to Leghorn. This group of hens are 5 months old.
Our lab keeps a watchful eye on the hens.
Brownie, and her sisters are getting a new pen. Our chicken coops are outside, enclosed in a fairly large run. Last winter, we had a few days of high winds and 20 below zero. It was hard to get the chores done, and hard on the animals as well. So, we decided to make some changes. We are building a pen inside the barn, stall sized. There will be a chicken door from that pen, that opens into their outside enclosure. The advantages to this are it is predator proof, the barn has electric and water, so their water won't freeze (and we won't be stringing extension cords everywhere), I won't have to deal with frozen hoses or hauling buckets of water to them outside, and I can stay dry, and be out of the wind and weather while feeding them and gathering the eggs. It will also be easier to give them more light in the winter months. Their pen area contains several electrical outlets, so I plan on putting a LED light on a timer in their pen.
I started on it today. The ceiling will be covered with hardware cloth. Hardware cloth also will cover the floor, under their liter. The bottom 2 feet are hardware cloth, then there will be plywood on the upper walls. The chickens and the cat have been trying to help. Several times I had a chicken or barn cat jump up on my back or shoulders while I was drilling a board in place.
I will have to make the gate myself, still deciding on the design for that. I hope to have the majority of the pen done within the next week or two.
