May 23, 2014

Today is mine and my husband's 33rd wedding anniversary! We are going to an Italian restaurant, watching a movie, and buying ourselves some fish for our fishpond. Our chicks have been moved to the basement. They are getting larger and one got out of the tub it was in. It looks like we might have two roos out of the nine. When contemplating what to put them in, we decided on a watering trough that someone gave us because the bottom was rusted out. We cut out the rest of the bottom, and as the bottom had a dented spot that we were afraid the chicks would escape from, we made the bottom be the top. To avoid those freshly cut edges, we put some pipe insulation over the edges. We added some pine shavings to the bottom over cardboard, and the chicks had a new home! My husband finished the solar water heater and it is working like a charm. The total cost was $1384.29 and we are expecting about half of that back with a tax credit (state and federal combined), as well as a savings of $30 - $40 per month. I can't wait. We had a meeting with a representative from soil and water conservation to give us some ideas on rotational grazing paddocks. We are already impressed and our next step will be going to tour a farm in mid June that has something like this in place. We bought a dump truck load of compost this week. My main project is to heal the ground outside of the basement so grass will grow. It is our intention to rent out to weddings in the future as part of our effort to be sustainable at the farm, so I must make it look nice. It will also be nice that the red clay will quit being dragged into the house. The weather radio went off a few minutes ago to indicate a severe thunderstorm warning. I had to run out and spread grass seed on those areas that I had covered with compost. I am hoping the rain will water it in and this will keep the chickens from eating it! Only on a farm. . .LOL