Saturday, November 01, 2008

All Saints Day

Our Sarah called this morning from Afghanistan. Tom talked to her. He said she sounded good and told him she wanted cookies. I guess everybody that is getting cookies is sharing them around. Sarah's unit got a gift box from somewhere and when the goodies were divied up Sarah got a pair of hand knit socks. She really likes them. Sooooo, I spent all day making cookies and Tom asked me if I could knit socks. In between cookie batches I worked on the laundry. That is half done. Maybe tomorrow I'll finish cleaning out the chicken coop.

Yes, that's right! I finally gathered up the nerve to go in the coop. You would have laughed: I had a long-handled broom in one hand to poke things with and my machete in the other hand to start swinging. I was banging the walls and tapping around the doors and in nooks and crannies like crazy. And thank God, so far I haven't come across any snakes! You know, I am STILL having nightmares about snakes. I've raked the leaves away and cut down all the brush from around the coop. We have a couple of trees down in the woods that I can easily get to now that everything has died back for the season so I think I'll cut a couple of smaller tree limbs for fence posts and put the chicken wire back up. I am really thinking about only having the fence right around the coop to deter night predators and just letting the chickens out to run around wherever they want during the day. Our Ag Extension Agent thought that keeping the chickens under the trees was a good idea -- they eat bugs, scratch up the duff layer which allows tree seedlings to grow better, and the chickens stay cooler while adding fertility to the soil. They are easy enough to train to return to the coop at night. I don't know though, there are dogs in the neighborhood that do occasionally get loose, and letting the chickens run without a perimeter fence may not be a good idea. Of course, I could always buy that .22 rifle I want and shoot any dog that goes after my chickens. Well, I'm too tired to crunch this topic any more tonight. Talk to you later!

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