A Day of Small Accomplishments

But after the past couple of weeks, any accomplishment is a blessed relief. Billy and Sam and I had a pleasant day at home together, enjoying as much of the winter sun as possible. Now that Sam can walk around outside, it's a lot easier to get things done. First we made some necessary repairs to the two chicken tractors; the roosts had fallen down in both, owing to the rough movement to which they're subjected every day, so Billy nailed and screwed manfully to at least temporary success.

In the afternoon we spent some time considering the overgrown thicket of plum trees in the side yard; Billy has long been wanting to thin it out and make it penetrable, so he got a good start on that today, clearing out a large pile of dead branches and sapling shoots. The detritus went on the burn pile, but some of the branches should be usable for building more chicken tractors.

Having a dozen or so chickens running around free-range is fine, but 40+ means--well, no going barefoot, that's for sure. Our current plan for this summer is to get all the chickens into tractors (including 25-50 new layers, to replace the old hens who are headed for the stewpot in the fall, and to increase the egg business slightly), which we'll put down in one of the big hayfields. The fields need some attention and fertilization, and this seems the easiest solution; we'll probably keep the sheep and alpacas down there as well, for protection and grass management.

Maybe tomorrow we'll get started on a new tractor; we also have to get some more firewood from our neighbor. It seems ridiculous to buy firewood when we live on 200 acres of wooded property, but there is just simply too much to do! Hopefully this summer we'll be able to cut and split some of the logs washed up during the flood; there's plenty of firewood down there if we can only find the time to process it.