graduation day

Yesterday did not go as I had planned. My goal had been to finish repairing the chicken coop and move the biddies outside. They've been jumping on top of the brooder box when I go to feed them, so it was more than time. And since yesterday was supposed to be our only good and sunny day, it made sense to do it then. Except I ran out of time. So I went to bed thinking that my window of opportunity was totally gone.

But around 10:30 this morning, the rain stopped. I really only expected to have 15-20 minutes, but I have had ALL AFTERNOON outside working. :)

Freckles wanted to help me move the biddies SO bad. It has been driving her crazy these last few weeks that she can hear commotion and chirping but cannot see what is going on. It doesn't help that my overly jealous dogs think they're getting treats and they're not. (No, I do not think mealworms would be a good treats for dogs!) She finally found a way to jump up and keep her head just over the opening as I was trying to catch the last four. And with each group, she'd follow me from the garage to as far as she could go toward the chicken pen.

But not Little Dog. He stayed where he could observe, but away from the squeaking and chirping.

And the hole? It's not pretty, but it is repaired with hardware cloth (I think that's what it's called), which is very hard, not easily bendable and should be a better deterrent.

If you look closely, you can see the hole in the chicken wire behind the hardware cloth.

And all the biddies now have plenty of room to hop, fly, and move...with the heat lamp on.  They've yet to venture outside and discover the water container yet.

And since the rain still hadn't started when all of that was finished, I tackled pulling down some of the dried bean vines in the garden. I got all of the butterbean plants, but stopped when I got to the fence line with the green beans.

And what we jokingly call "the garden annex"...all but one pile of the hay bales are mucked up and placed in various locations. The pile in the middle is full of ants, so I'm not quite sure how I'll deal with that yet. Some of the landscape fabric underneath has holes, but I think I can make it last one more year. So hopefully I can get more straw bales out this week so they can be weathered before planting time.

Still have several things that need to be done, but not sure if anything else will get done before church tonight. Happy Wednesday!