The various summer projects are slowly being completed. Son 1 with some help from Grandson 1 and from me got most of the staining done. This is the last time he will do it, we will hire it out in the future, it just isn’t fair to him to deal with it.
When he returned home on Tuesday morning, he left me a 16 year old worker, who so far will do just about anything I ask of him.
Son 1 dug out the septic tank top and found the cleanout so we could get it pumped out and to eliminate the hassle in the future of finding it and digging it out of the hard rocky soil, once it was pumped, Grandson 1 and I erected a baffle and filled the parts that wouldn’t have been needed to be dug if we had known. We sorted out rocks and filled in with the soil and gravel sized rock. Yesterday we purchased topsoil in bags, some edging, and a couple large flower pots and some perinnials to plant in them. We also purchased a small bag of grass seed and I seeded around the new bed. It was well watered in yesterday afternoon and straw sprinkled over it. The hens will all remain cooped or penned up until the grass emerges. The topsoil we purchased was all my car could handle and wasn’t enough, so today another load was picked up and we finished placing the edging, filling with soil, mulching over with wood chips, and placing the potted plants on the bed.
There is now a well defined and much smaller area that will have to be dug out of easy to dig soil in a few years when we have to do it again.
Last evening, the tall worker also helped me get hay down in both chicken runs and in the Chicken Palace. Still up on our agenda, next week, is to deconstruct the collapsing Chicken Tractor, salvaging what we can, burning the rest. And to make repairs on the coop and get it stained.
It is nice having a strong back to lift 40-45 pound sacks and work with me to get the jobs done.
The pullets have begun to lay eggs. I have been getting a small blue egg each day from the Easter Eggers. The New Hampshire reds look like they are about to add to it.
The hay guys are finishing up the fields down from us. We should be up next and the fields will again be clear enough to walk.
I have spent the last hour or so setting up two new phones for hubby and me. Our phones were at least 5 years old and failing.