Catching up with more photos/ projects

New fencing Project

 Favorite Shovel Broken

 Beautiful Fence line

 Tired child

 Working hard moving mexican sunflowers around

 Gate in!

New Birds!

There is always a lot going on at the farm, and keeping record of it is not always on the top of the list of things to do. But new chicks...

They are Black Jersey Giants- which apparently get really really big. I'm both excited and intimidated!

These chicks are only 3 weeks old. They hatched April 6.

They are enclosed completely, to keep predators (i.e. mongoose) out.

There are plans to move them up near our shed when they are bigger and can fend for themselves. Up there needs the fencing to be completed and a new coop built. Plans/ work is underway.

We are hoping to keep one rooster with a flock of hens. The goal is for him to be able to keep his harem safe from mongoose. This will be our first foray into keeping a rooster. I hope it's successful!

What's New

Since our last post about the goats going on a walkabout, we've had more goat issues.

They went missing from another pasture while GB was out of town. I was alone with Luka and was so worried because I had NO idea where they had gone. I started calling around to see who could help me with Luka and/or searching for the goats.

I had just dropped Luka off with Sue and was awaiting Jake to come searching thru the gulches, when my phone rang. Our neighbor, D had received a call that am from his neighbor asking if he knew of anyone missing goats. Our neighbor D had called GB's cell phone, but GB was out of the country. Fortunately his daughter was in a play with Noam and when he dropped her off for rehearsal, Noam gave him my number. The goats were safe and sound at a nursery on the scenic route!

They had followed a bicyclist for a mile before he worried they'd go to the highway, so he brought them to the nursery.

Luckily they had a place to corral them! They gave them some water and ti leaves. Jake and I came and got the naughty kids.

In the meanwhile, Noam and I set out to fix the upper pasture where they first escaped from. I figured we'd find a couple of places where they could get under the fence. What we found was 3 trees that had fallen and messed the fence up. It's a much larger job than Noam and I can fix.

This is the largest tree. You can see below that the fence post is piercing it

This is the 2nd tree. It's a MESS in there. There are all kinds of branches on top of the fence.

Needless to say, we can't put the wily goats in this pasture until the trees are chainsawed and the fence is fixed.

weekend works!

This weekend we embarked on completing the chicken's new run. We had fashioned a makeshift gate last weekend, but needed to fix it up.

Noam learned how to use the circular saw

He looks pretty confident!

We got to pull out the concrete mixer. It's been a couple of months since we've used it. I think it missed us

Contrary to what this picture shows, Ra'am worked really hard.

GB used the extra concrete to fix up some areas around the chicken's water pond.

Fixin the new gate

Painting! The right side there opens

twins! (and a new pasture)

New Pasture is done! Given time issues.... we hired Darrel to fence in a new pasture on the upper property.

GB and Damien are discussing the specifics

2 giant albezia trees are DOWNsee how dense it is in there?

Fenceline complete!

Yesterday we adopted twin goats, Thorn and Tamarind. They are 3 week old nubians from a litter of 4. They need a few more weeks to get more mamas milk and then they'll come home with us. They're going in the new pasture, but we need to make them a shelter. We're "pros" at that!

birds part 2 and more goats

We managed to finish the fencing yesterday and let the birds into their new enclosure. Everyone participated!
So far the hens have only explored the 1st couple of feet of it, and have been mostly concentrating on taking apart the berm they created against the bottom of the old fence.
GB mostly worked on another concrete intensive project- a walkway on 2 sides of the new chicken run. Here's an area he set up where the drainage pipe for the hillside will go under the walkway and then into the chicken run area and into a pond.
Most of his day was framing on this big project that will make it a lot easier to walk around and near the birds.


Our other weekend project was setting up the electric moveable goat fencing. We 1st put them under the big mango tree.... the grass was high there, there's tons of shade, and we could keep an eye on them from the house.

They came easily to the new enclosure and all seemed good until....
They came to the fence-line (to come to us) and when the 1st one got zapped by the fence and screamed, the others freaked and they all ran right into the fence and were immediately entangled! I ran to unplug the electricity and GB and I had a hell of a time trying to untangle them. We were almost ready to scrap the whole thing after that. It was scary.
But we tried again- with GB standing guard (and taking his lunch out with them). They have mostly stayed away from the fence since. They will touch it occasionally, but have seemingly learned their lessons!

We've been putting them in there in the day and then taking them back up to their paddock at night.
Yesterday was so beautiful and GB and I enjoyed the light as we went up to put them to bed.

Here I am feeding them a bit on the way up. They will do anything for food

birds!

There's been a lot of bird related action and activities around here lately!
Firstly our friends were the lucky caregivers of a teeny bird who fell out of her nest. When they came for a visit, so did the birdie, who needed feeding every couple of hours.


Family project #3,462
Expand our chicken run
Our ladies have done a fine job creating all sorts of erosion on their hillside enclosure. There is not one speck of green there and they have made holes and dips.... and they just needed more space!
1st day:
GB, Karen, Noam and Luka are the primary workers. Ra'am is sick this day.
We're lucky.... in a work trade, David has set most of the poles for the fencing in the ground. He's also (with Ra'am's help) dug a trench on the gulch side so we can bury the fence.

Here's were getting ready

Noam tied fence to the T posts. There are a lot of T posts

There's a gate down there at the bottom. GB is on his way back up after helping Noam a bit.

Pau Hana! It's HOT, we're tired and the pool is calling!Expanded run.... more fencing still needed on the bottom (we needed MORE), but this part is done for now. You can see the brown part on the top (old area). The new part is the green to the left and below.

Luka helped for awhile, and then explored what it feels like to drown out sound.

Shortly thereafter, Ra'am found this baby bird under the big mango tree. He's a cardinal who must have fallen out when he tried to fly. The nest is impossibly high, so we cared for him for a couple of hours and then passed him on to the Pelkeys to rear.

Unrelated...

Luka in swimming lessons!

Fencing!

Is almost complete! With a little (lots, actually) help from our friends, we now have an almost goat enclosure. We're waiting on some gates to finish off the area.
We had mucho help from Tom, who after fencing most of his property, is an expert to us, Buck, and John. Many mahalos. Our future goats thank you from the bottoms of their hearts (or hooves?).



Yes, curls are all over his eyes. And yes, that night he had a trim. He's looking very dapper now.