Another Praying Mantis!

This time it's a big one!

Not Living Up to His Title

Farm dog Kobe isn't that much of a farm dog. Here he lounges on his bed on a perfectly beautiful afternoon.

Chicken Coop Tour

It may be zip-tied together, constructed from old lattice and a cast-off beer pong table, but I think the chicken coop is sort of quaint, who-care-what-it-looks-like-as-long-as-it-works kind of way.

The coop is a converted horse stall that has been reinforced with hardware cloth to thwart any predators who are looking for a chicken dinner. It's currently divided in half to keep the Replacements away from the Originals until they're closer in size.

One of my favorite features is the ADOR1 Automatic Chicken door. The door is battery powered and opens and closes automatically and dusk and dawn each day. That means we can be out late at night and we don't have to worry about nighttime predators getting into the coop.

Amenities in the Originals side of the coop include a hanging feeder, a waterer on a mason block, a bowl of oyster shell, a colorful set of nest boxes, a cat litter pan used for dust baths, and an automatic door.

The Originals' roost (and a stick just for kicks).

The Replacements have a lower roost, a hanging feeder, and a waterer.

The Originals may have the automatic door, but the Replacements have a very stylish Gucci door!

Dead Tree

Last week we had a strong storm blow in, and this dead tree was leaning over the road. This was very dangerous as we live on a major two-lane highway. As I surveyed the situation, I figured the tractor could probably pull it down, but given my lack of experience with felling trees with tractors, I called in a neighbor who supervised the tree pulling.

Fencing Project

One of the big projects on the farm this summer has been to get the former riding arena in shape to be another paddock for the horses to graze. The process started about three weeks ago when I sprayed the arena and west pasture for weeds.

Weeds be gone in the West pasture!

  The spraying worked as most of the weeds have become dried brown twigs.Once you spray a pasture, you have to keep the horses off of it for 30 days to let the treatment take effect and become safe for them to graze.

Now that the arena will be ready to let the horses loose, there are some potential hazards that need to be taken care of. The first of these is the area formerly occupied by a mechanical hot walker. Though the walker is gone, a concrete pad and electric wire (which isn't hot) still remain. Just to be safe, I wanted to move the fence panels that separated the paddock behind the barn from the west pasture to keep the horses away from the wire.

So, last Thursday night I got in the mood to take down six fence panels and replace them with two strings of electric rope. You can see the barrier of panels in this old photo below:

By the time I got finished stringing up the new rope, it was close to 8 p.m. and I still needed to eat dinner, so I called it a night.

The next morning I cranked up the tractor and moved the fence panels. (Tractor? What tractor? Yeah, I bought an old John Deere compact tractor a few months ago and still haven't featured it on the blog. I'll get to that one of these days). Four of them went up to the arena and the remaining two remained by the loafing shed, as they will be used to keep the horses away from the hay that will be stored there for the winter.

The barnyard looks much more open without all those panels, no?

Evidence that the mysterious tractor exists-- the tire tracks prove it.

Filing Out

Snake!