Hump Day

When we moved here 8 summers ago, the people who lived here had no animals but a dog.  Their interest was race cars, and they used the shop to work on same.

They used the big henhouse as a meeting place for teenagers (and left it trashed big time when they moved out).

We fenced the henyard, Keith's very first project, and one that he learned from.  We need to re-do some of that fencing now, but it's down on the "C" list.

In the yard there was nothing but grass.  Eventually, Keith made a large doghouse, which is actually called "The Duck House", because it is there that our ducks and geese took shelter in really bad storms, and laid their eggs.   It still stands, but it's roof never got shingled and is rotting.  Next to it is a cage, made very heavy, that is now the base around the saplings that have grown up.  We used an old patio umbrella for shade that first summer.

This spring, Keith wanted to cut down some of the greenery in the henyards, and I begged him not to.

Boy, are we glad we didn't.

This is a side view.  You can see the duck house, and if you biggify the picture, you will see the standard pullets all perched on it this morning.  The saplings have grown into fine young trees, and provided much shade for our chickens this hot summer. 

Same with the little henyard, sapling willows came from nowhere, and in the last two years, grew into sizeable trees, sheltering the birds there.

You can see how heavy these saplings have become, and we are going to have to trim off some of the lower branches, but we think the damp ground (from dumping the fortexes so often) and the shade has helped the birds immensely through these hot months.

Here is the pasture pen tonight, and I had to shoot this picture through the chain links, because everytime I stepped into the pen, I scared the two little chicks, one brown and one yellow, you see eating from the frisbee feeder.  I set their water inside this morning, so it would not bake, though there is a cover over this pen.  You can see the two white mamas are up... the brown mama, Fleura, is laying on the eggs still in there.  We think probably no others will hatch out. 

I hung the game cam inside the big henyard tonight to see what is running around in there at night.  The batteries had already drained in five days, so I am going to invest in some rechargeables and continue to use it.  It's interesting to see what is visiting us!