Greenhouse Entrance and The Shaggs

Finished the step to the greenhouse entrance today. I dug a shallow foundation and lined it with landscaping fabric. Then it's basically a border of slate built up in rows, filled in with gravel and sand and then capped with the surface you see in the picture. I just finished reading The Art & Craft of Stonework by David Reed and wanted to try something. Plus I wanted to get this done so I could see how much slate I have leftover. It's a little off-center with the entrance, which is annoying  because I actually measured when I laid it out. I think it has to do w/ how I stacked it, plus the top stone on the right juts out where the one on the left is missing that corner. Like the guy with the portable mill said when he saw how I was building the greenhouse - doesn't look too scientific.

 I think I'm going to pack it in for the winter on the greenhouse. I'm out of sand and will probably save my money (or spend it on heating the house) and get a truckload delivered in the spring.

This is a picture of the Shaggs. We got them back in August from the Amish farm but I think someone else rescued them and gave them to him. They had their beaks clipped and all the guy would tell me is that he didn't know how old they were or what kind of birds they were. They have to be Rhode Island Reds, and I'm guessing they must be somewhere between 16 - 20 weeks old but they haven't started laying eggs yet. Their pal's name is foot-foot.

R.I.P. Sophia

Sadly, we lost our beloved Sophia last night. I found her in our backyard this morning. One of our own dogs may have been the culprit but we can't be sure.

One thing we do know is that she was the most curious and adventurous of all the GGs. Each day when I got home she would have escaped and come running to the back gate to meet me. She would often fly out while I was working in the backyard and follow me around, leaving the other 2 GGs to pace back and forth, cooing along the fence line. When I was working on the roof over their run, she found a way to fly through a two foot opening that I hadn't finished yet, walk over the roof of the coop (about 12 feet high or so), along the cob wall and down into the hay I was using to mix cob. I never worried much about her wandering because it didn't seem like she wanted to escape, it just seemed like she wanted to be where I was. Quite flattering actually. I don't want to say I picked favorites or anything...

I don't know when she got into our backyard or how she died but I'm not surprised that her wandering got the best of her. Poor girl. We will miss her something terrible. We love you Sopia!

Goats and Chickens in the finished Cob Wall

New Chicken Run

The original chicken coop and run I built are about two years old. Within a year, 4 chickens turned the run into a dirt bath. When it rained, they turned it into a mud bath. I put down straw, which would help for awhile, but then another rain and it would be a swamp again. I decided to build a new run to let the old one dry out and recover some growth. Here's the frame for the new run:

New Chicken Run with cob wall foundation in foreground

I used wood leftover from an old shed. There are three cedar posts cemented in the center and some cedar branches finishing off the framing. The coop is raised off of the ground and the new run is framed out from an entrance under the coop.

Unfortunately, before I finished this, one of my chickens got sick and died. I think it must have been a respiratory infection. The front run was almost never dry and the chicken poo wasn't getting turned over very well. She seemed to be eating and drinking fine but was very lethargic for about a week. I honestly didn't think much of it but I came out one morning and she was still laying under the coop where she'd been the night before. R.I.P. Rose.

The loss was pretty upsetting, especially since I knew the front run wasn't healthy and was trying to build a better set up to avoid something like that. I was afraid the remaining 3 might get sick too so I expedited the construction of the 2nd run. I was going to just cover the entire frame with chicken wire but instead of building another mud pit, I put a roof over half of it. I left the south end open b/c a roof there would just drain onto the cob wall. Here's the new run finished: 

Finished run (coop is to right, entry at bottom)

I used metal sheets from the same shed to cover half of it. Eventually I'll have a rain barrel connected to the back of the coop with water feeders to both the front and back run.

The girls seemed to like the new space. There's plenty of grass and weeds under there and I think they like the shade, too.

Girls in their new run

To move the girls into the new run, I closed off their front door and added a new one leading into the back. They learned the route in and out of the coop pretty quickly. Once I closed off the front run, I cleaned out all the poop-straw, turned the earth over, and added some dirt from the compost. I pulled a bunch of weeds from the garden and tossed them in there hoping they'll grow. Once the weeds start to grow (they better grow, they have no problem anywhere else), I'll put a roof on the front run and let the chickens back in there. I think rotating back and forth should work as long as I don't let either run get too eaten up.

Original run after I turned the earth and added weeds.

The coop is a pretty serious structure so rather than tear it down or try to convert it into something mobile, I wanted to try and work with it where it is. Hopefully this will be a long-term healthy set up for the remaining GG's. I may even extend the space on the front run and add a few birds to the gang.

Faulkner-White Invasion

Chris and Stacey came down from Brooklyn for the weekend to meet the goats. We got to hang out with them, too. Hank liked Chris. Julien didn't care much for Chris, but he liked Stacey a lot. He was hanging out with her while she took photos. Even the bottom one.

Hank goes climbing

Hank clears the big chicken

This one doesn't really need explanation, as you can see.

The Tompkins in Park Hall!

Jess and John came over with Dylan and Ryann. It was fun watching the goats run so we played "Ready, Set, Goat!" and got them to chase.

The kids gave the kids their bottles. Ryann fed Hank (Hank Williams) and Dylan fed Julien (Julien Donkey Boy). Hank finished his bottle first. He's won every bottle race so far. Goats really like to climb. They don't even care what they're climbing on -- tree stumps, fences, people. We decided if you get the urge to climb, like Dylan did, it means you have Goat Fever. Dylan and Ryann were yelling, "I have Goat Fever!" and climbing up on John and me.

Goats arrive!

Here are the goats during the first day at their new home. They're only a month old now. They wag their tails and scratch their ears like puppies. They like attention and bleat really loud if you leave them. They're tough to take photos of because they just climb all over you. No names for these boys yet. We were going to call them Tom Petty and Levon Helm but we don't really want to call one Tom. Or Petty. I tried for Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin but got denied. Then I tried Sam and Dave, denied again. At this rate we're just going to call them "hey, goat." We turned the chickens loose in the goat pen for the afternoon. The goats were completely unimpressed. If the chickens fed them, the goats might have noticed they were there. The chickens liked rooting around through the brush but didn't pay any attention to the goats either. I brought the dogs out on leash and they were pretty excited. I kept them outside the fence because the goats went into panic flight at the sight of them (smart goats). The dogs thought it was a great game and darted back and forth along the fence for awhile getting the goats to run.

The GGs

this was back in, you know, summer twenty oh-nine when the Golden Girls first moved in