This Olive Egger discovered his voice last weekend and he is too randy for the much smaller pullets. The other Oliver Egger may also be a young roo who has not yet found his voice. Both are half again larger and are picking on the others. Tonight after it was dark, we went out with a flashlight, only to discover one of the small Buff Orpingtons has been hiding at lock up time and was on the ramp unhappy. I decided to move two of the older Oliver eggers to the coop, they are calm and laying so they will set an example for the pullets who are getting close, and the roo and maybe roo moved to the Palace with the older hens. I don’t know how it will go, but I am hopeful that it will work out. As it was dark, they were easy to catch, but the roo and maybe roo were most unhappy at being grabbed. The two older hens just took it in stride. I’m sure there will be some dominance behaviors demonstrated, but hopefully nothing serious.
We rented a cherry picker and Son 1 came to work on staining the parts of our home that didn’t get done two years ago. The plan had been to finish last summer, then COVID happened. Hubby and I managed the garage doors just before he and the cherry picker arrived within an hour of each other, but neither of us can go up on the scaffolding or the cherry picker and paint higher than our shoulders. It was brutally hot up on the roof areas where he was working and I know he is exhausted. The house looks so much better. There is still some to do, but it can be done with ladders or scaffolding.
My main jobs are keeping him fed and hydrated and being a gofer, opening windows, gathering items he needs. I know he knows how much we appreciate his work, but I want it said out publicly.
He loves this area and helped build this house, doing all the stone work with stone from our farm, doing all the interior carpentry, laying floors, building cabinets, and all of the interior doors, grading and yard work, and started the area that now has my garden, and it is a much loved home.
Last night and tonight, we drove down to get ice cream after dinner and both nights we saw black bears. This is on top of having the bear damage to my bird feeders a couple of weeks ago. There must be a lot of them this year in the area.
Coming in from gathering eggs this afternoon, I spotted my first Day lily of the season.
My little anniversary rose bush from year before last has dozens of flowers and buds.
It is a miniature bush that was thimble sized when he gave it to me. The scent is light and I am saving petals in a bowl.
Well, it turns out that this Olive Egger isn’t a pullet. HE discovered his voice over the weekend. It is like an teenage boy with his changing voice, but I won’t keep a rooster here. That will leave me with 14 egg layers soon to be. Ms. Houdini continued to escape, but two more escape holes have been blocked and she stayed in today after spending last night out in the wild AWOL.
With Son here, I cut lettuce for salad and greens for dinner from the garden. There are lots of pea pods that will fill in and provide us with goodness. The greens were sauteed with a green garlic bulb from the garden as well.
If you ever need to buy faucets and other plumbing items, buy Kohler, they are expensive, but keep reading. After DD and I saturated the valve with PB Blaster this morning, banged on it, both tried to free it, and gave up before we broke it beyond even the trickle and shower capability, we drove to Ferguson with a piece of the handle for color. Telling Sara, the showroom consulant that we needed to buy a new faucet set and why, she looked them up. First they make our faucet still but not in that color anymore, but it is $360+ and a 6 to 8 week wait to receive it. They do make one that would work in the area at the corner of the tub in the correct brushed bronze color, but it started at $800+ just for the faucet, not the handles and also a wait to get it, but she told us that Kohler had a lifetime warranty and to call them, providing us with the model name, number, and color.
I spent 10 minutes on hold listening to various Kohler ads, instructions on using their website after going through all the robot instructions on how to get where I needed to be, but was greeted by a pleasant young woman who promptly ordered a new cold water body and valve cartridge to be shipped directly to our house FREE to us under their warranty. We will still have to hire a plumber, but not to come out and tell us we needed a new unit or to break the one we have so we had to order a new one and wait for it’s arrival. We can still use the trickle and cold water from the shower to cool off the tub water until that can be done. It did give me an opportunity to clean up under and around the handles.
We will wait for the new unit, thankful for two reputable companies and the wisdom to have purchased quality in the first place when we built our house.
