I had a somewhat easy day at work today, so it allowed me a little time in the mid-afternoon while I had some daylight left to knock two things off my list. How's your To Do list? If it's anything like mine, I add two things for every one I scratch off. I'm not complaining, though. That gives purpose and ensures productivity. It protects one from the sin of slothfulness!
First item on the list: Move mulch to the garden pile. We have a number of piles of wood chips that have been decomposing. As I make space in the back of the garden, I move it from the yard piles to the big pile in back of the sugarcane in the garden. These piles have reduced significantly in size as they decompose. It's time to go find the right-of-way clearing trucks and get some more.*
The interior of the pile is moist and full of mushrooms. If I rub it all together in my hands, it turns to a rich soil-like substance - a nice growing medium.
In the big pile of wood chips in the back of the garden, I'm working on what I call bacteria compost lasagna. I call it that because I have layered wood chips, cow poop, wood chips, dead chickens that the mink killed, wood chips and cow poop. Today I put a cap on the lasagna but topping it off with wood chips. The bacteria in the cow manure and dead chickens will inoculate the wood chip pile with bacteria. The mushrooms will further break down the pile so that next year some time, I can move all this into the garden. Then we start the process all over again.
Second item on the list was to "secure the hen house." As you saw, the mink murdered a number (about two thirds) of our flock. They did so by accessing the hen house at night by digging under the tin walls that weren't reinforced by bricks and cinder blocks and gaining entry. Today, armed with some self-tapping screws, tin snips, a drill, and tin, I drove the tin into the ground deep and screwed it in securely and then piled bricks and rocks against the wall to discourage them.
I know what you're thinking. "It ain't pretty!" It's not. This is an old hen house that was given to me and moved on site. Over the years, the bottom tin rusted out leaving holes that tempted various varmints and vermin to find their way into the hen house. That ends today. I know it doesn't match and its not even. A friend told me one time, "Animals don't care if it's pretty. They don't care if the wood or tin is cut square. It just has to be functional." I subscribe to that!
It's all patched up. Along the back wall where the roosts are, prior to my patching job, you could see sunlight from where the holes were. Not anymore! The only daylight you see is from the coop door that I have opened.
Third item was to patch up the holes in the rabbit hutches. These are really, really old. There were numerous holes in the roof and in the hardware cloth that would allow critters to get in and kill my chickens. I fixed all of that and worked on latches for the doors.
You can see the hens making their way into the hutch on top. That's where I lock them up for the night, safe from predators. The bottom hutch is not ready so that we can move the hens from the chicken tractor that's in the yard.
I didn't want to move them before I had everything fixed as best as I could. That was an afternoon of fixing things. The next items are much more fun. I'll be digging sweet potatoes and picking pecans. Hope ya'll have a great weekend!
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