The baby bunnies are getting very big and soon won’t fit in the little hole we dug for them. What will happen then? They are getting furry, too. I replaced the shovel I had put over them because it was starting to rust. Andy helped me make a little roof out of a board we pulled out of the garden last weekend. I think it will work okay. How long until baby bunnies run off and becoming big bunnies?

Here are two bird pictures since I know my mom likes to see the ducks especially. The ducks’ feathers are getting sort of raggity and pale and we keep saying, “I bet they’ll molt soon!” I also took a picture of one of our chickens (not gimpy chicken) being all broody and sitting on her eggs. I don’t think the eggs are gonna hatch, but she seems pretty happy to sit on them anyhow.

We sold three dozen eggs today, and I’ve got another sale for a dozen lined up for tomorrow. This is a very good thing. Our refrigerator was becoming overrun with eggs. So, so many eggs. How can seven little ducks lay so very many eggs? It wouldn’t be such a big deal if eggs didn’t make me hurl these last few months, but right now we only use three or four a week for baking. The ducks are laying about 6 eggs a day. You can see how things have gotten out of hand.

It’s time to get the garden ready so we’ll have a place to put all those plants we are growing in the office. I spent eight years getting the gardens at the old house to almost perfect condition, and it’s hard to have to start all over again. The dirt here is pretty crappy. We don’t have any beds built. I get tired just thinking about it.

The folks who lived here before did have a garden, so there was a sort of garden-shaped space with an overrun asparagus bed. Last spring my mom and I put fencing up around that area, and Andy planted some tomatoes there, but we didn’t get much. Partially because of the sad dirt. Partially because of the very dry summer. Towards the end of the summer, Andy put in an irrigation system.

This year we decided to pretty much start all over. Here’s how the area looked when we got started.

We pulled up the fence and posts and irrigation system, and while Andy started tilling I dug up the asparagus (and found the bunnies). Andy tilled and tilled and tilled and tilled some more. At one point, Andy yelled, “MOVE!” I think I almost got tilled. That thing is huge and powerful, and it has a mind of its own. Yaieieie.

I decided to seek a safer locale, so I ran off and mowed between Christmas trees. (Mowing is fun. Mowing on a steep slope around a bunch of Christmas trees is less fun.) After an hour or two of backbreaking (and scary) work, the garden area looked like this.

Off in the distance you can see Andy unloading the compost we picked up this weekend from a local farm / organic gardening supply place, Seven Springs Farm. It sure seemed like a big lot of compost until we dumped it onto the garden area. I think we’ll go back next week for another batch.

Two things have happened lately that have made me realize that we’re not real farmers. (Other than the whole not growing tons of stuff to sell for our livelihood.)

Thing One: Gimpy Chicken
Andy was moving the chicken tractors last weekend, and I was watching to make sure he didn’t squish any chickens. White-spotty Jap got very close to the edge of the cage, so I hollered to Andy to stop and he did. I didn’t think she got her foot caught, but she sort of flopped on her side and wiggled her foot in the air. Andy said that white-spotty Jap had about a week ago gotten wedged in behind the perch and maybe she hurt herself then. She seemed mostly okay. The next day when we drove by on our way home from work, white-spotty Jap looked dead. We hopped out of the truck and I was sure we had another dead chicken. She was on her back with her feet straight up in the air. Andy went over and poked at her and she squawked, but she didn’t roll over. We decided we should kill her. A real farmer would probably have just snapped her neck then and there, but not us. Andy went up to the workshop and got a bucket and a rag and some turpentine (or paint thinner or something of that ilk), and headed back down to “put the chicken to sleep.” I went inside and hid. He came back pretty quickly and said he couldn’t do it. White-spotty Jap was up on her feet wobbling around and he couldn’t kill her. She’s made it through the week — though Andy has gone out a few times to flip her over when she seems to get stuck on her back.

Thing Two: Baby Bunnies
We worked on the garden today. Even though I know it’s probably a bad, bad time to do so, I dug up a bunch of the asparagus patch because it was sloppy and annoyed me. While I was digging, I saw what looked like dryer lint and was wondering how it got there. I scooped up a shovel full of dirt / dead plant stuff and pitched it and heard “WEEEP WEEEP WEEP WEEEEP!!!!!” I shrieked and looked down and saw a pile of baby bunnies. Oh no. Andy came over and we scooped the bunnies and their nesting material up and dug a new hole and put them in and put the nesting on and put some rocks around it so we wouldn’t step on it. Hopefully when night comes, mommy bunny will find her moved babies and feed them. Hopefully no one else finds them. Real farmers would probably have smashed them with a shovel.

The last two weeks seem to have been all about the wood.

Wood Part One:
Remember that huge ice storm we had a bit ago? It brought down oodles of branches from the pine trees. I guess living out in the boonies no one would really complain or send the Tidy Neighborhood Brigade after us, but we still figured we should gather the branches up. We spent a couple hours dragging the branches out of the trees and loaded them up in the truck and stacked them up in a pile near the sheeps.

We made four trips and built a huge pile of branches. Andy’s been tossing a few into the sheep area every day or two, and the sheep love it. Soon all that will be left is branches. Then….you are all invited over for a huge bonfire!

Wood Part Two:
We have a wood stove. We haven’t used it yet because…well…we don’t really know how to use it. I also think it would be a good idea to have it cleaned out before we use it. Plus, the wood is sooooooooo far away. However, someday we’d like to use the wood stove to help heat the house in the winter, so we’ve been keeping our eyes open for free wood. A guy in Bburg had a huge walnut tree cut down, so we went and picked up a truckload of the wood. Our need for a chainsaw continues to grow.

Wood Part Three:
I got tired of having piles of paper forming Close Encounter mountains in the kitchen, so I drew up plans for a recycle bin and bid Andy make it. We bought some hinges, but the rest of the materials came from wood we got from freecycle a while ago. It’s painted with “oops” paint, and…oh, yeah, we did buy the polyurethane stuff. The center isn’t painted yet in this picture and the door isn’t on, but if you squint you can imagine it in all it’s crayola yellow and electric green glory. (There’re slots in the top to put the paper in. One slot for glossy paper, one for newspaper, and one for regular paper. The bottom slots are for cardboard and the paper shredder.)

Since we’re pretty much done with wood for a while, we’ll be switching to grass projects this weekend. Anyone wanna come help us mow 3+ acres with a push mower? It’s orange!