rachels.haven's Journal

[rachels.haven]

Going to vaccinate Sir Finnegan the buckling for CDT today.

I'm also going to be starting our food forest here again. I want to get it back to what I had growing on before I moved. I impulse bought a two seedless concords, another grape of a green table variety (Himrod, I think), a chicago hardy fig, some strawberry roots-one white, one ozark beauty and a blueberry that I regret getting as I found it out it was a low or mid bush instead of high bush. I want them big here to maybe help them with deer survival. I got the blueberry and fig from TSC while my angel husband with infinite patience tried entertain the kids and survive the "I want model farm animals" whining and stop boys from bouncing around the store.
Home depot got me on the grapes and strawberries. I want to go back to HD for better blueberries from them, but then I have to brave the Daniel Webster Highway madness and I'm not doing that alone. DH needs to return a box of shingles...maybe I will get more blueberries then. Wish I had that mini van we're supposed to buy, then I'd buy big apple trees...but both Mark and I are putting off car shopping.

Our Redford/Detroit house sold last week. Cost us $20,000 to convince the city to let us sell it. We weren't in it for 30 days so they had to do a "safety inspection" before it could be sold which meant they got to ding us for anything they didn't like that our move in inspector approved 5 years ago. Nothing was really unsafe. An unpainted shed and ventilation in my chicken shed is very dangerous. They also wanted all my bird fencing out before I could sell it and the list went on and on like that. And steps redone, and plumbing redone, and about a dozen other non-dangerous mostly aesthetic things. Meanwhile our buyers just sat there with money in hand for an extra month and a half while the city made us pay them more and more and more to reinspect so they could fail us and ad to the list. AND the buyers had a dozen ducks they needed to put SOMEWHERE and the city wouldn't let them do it until the house passed and was safe (to look at I guess?), so now they have to put the fencing and the little shed BACK UP that we left in the garage for them. Next time we move DH says he's getting "legal insurance" from his company.

Now that I'm out of there I can say it.

Redford Township in Michigan sucks.

They are incredibly corrupt and have major drug problems. Nice schools. Bad govt. Still not sure what our taxes pay for either as they didn't plow or repair roads or ditches and the library was sad. Cops were okay-a little deadbeat, but okay. Not going to shoot people up, and cared about kids and people. Seemed to turn a blind eye to drug and alcohol issues.

Okay, rant over. I will avoid living in places like that again. Now I live in kind of a snobby over the top place. Kids with horses everywhere. Hope it's better here. Slightly uncomfy considering I grew up empty fridge poor for a lot of it and definitely not on horseback, but could be worse. Hope my kids turn out okay.

The six Whiting chicks are in their new coop. It looks like 4 of the pullets are cockerels and 2 are actually pullets. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'll probably be calling them later for credits. I've got another order of just their ameraukindas coming-1 cockerel, 14 pullets. Let's see if they can do that breed better. We have a serious tick problem so I need those birds. Now I know why the neighbor girl, her parents, and all their horses got lyme when they moved in. Yesterday I picked a basket of morels from a mowed, very short part of our yard and the basket was full of nasty, creepy, wavy armed tiny deer ticks. I've found ticks of various species crawling up my white house walls in random places. HURRYUPandGROWCHICKENS. I'm beginning to reach the "BURNEMWITHFIRE" stage of being grossed out on those ticks. Would rather not get Lyme too.

The chicken coop is nice though. The 8x8 coop has a poly wall floor, painted walls, lights, and an extension cord and power strip. I also put a mineral feeder on the wall, one of my horizontal nipple waterer buckets inside on blocks, and a hook for the feeder. I've learned a few things from my last coop. Now I just have to put in a locking chicken door and the perches...and a run up-not that we want to use it. Those chickens need to go on a tick heavy diet. DH will stop by Lowes on his way home from work to pick up 2 2x4x8's for perches and a jig saw to install a bird door on monday probably (HD is in Nashua unfortunately, Lowe's is by work, we prefer HD). The roof is going on (for a guy with limited sight, DH has become a very good roofer-that I don't want on roofs because of the height, but he didn't want anything but a real shingle roof, so I stopped arguing and let him put a house quality roof on my chicken coop. Could be worse, right?). I really want to paint and trim the outside soon, but that will probably have to wait for next Saturday. Nearest paint store closes at 6 and we only have one car between us and at 6 it's being driven home from a secret not so secret office location nearby. After the perches go in and they start using them I will probably start letting those birds go out.

Maybe I can talk DH into letting me roof too-although he likes to own parts of projects and neither of us are good at sharing work, so maybe not. There are also only 4 more rows left on an 8x8 building, lol. I will at least paint and maybe trim.

Well, my keyboard is failing so I'm going to stop here. Spacebar is starting to give out so I'm done here until I decide to brave the heavy handed typing frustration next. I'm going to have to switch to my account on my husband's home programming computer soon, I think. This poor chromebook's been dropped and typed on too much.

BFN.

 

[Bruce]

Hope my kids turn out okay.

They will, if you keep their heads on straight

You can roof the next outbuilding.

 

[Senile_Texas_Aggie]

Miss @rachels.haven,

Just caught back up. Noticed you haven't posted in awhile. Hope everything's OK.

Senile Texas Aggie

 

[rachels.haven]

Yes! Everything's just settled into a routine and hasn't changed much.
Finnegan and Patrick the bucklings have begun weaning.The biggest thing that's come up is with Finnegan. He's my doe in milk's actual baby, but she's decided he's done nursing at 7 weeks, even if I put her on the stand, so he's become a bottle baby for the next few weeks and all bucks are now in the buck pen, which is good because Finnegan is very bucky now.

Trying to convince my oldest son that we don't need a doeling that will get "as big as a horse" and we definitely don't need an actual horse. The neighbor girl rode her horse down our driveway a few times and now my son has horse envy. Not happening.

I kicked the Whiting chicks out of my house into their mostly finished, but unpainted coop earlier. I've been letting them "out" of the coop during the day. They refused to go out for about 2 weeks. Now I take away the food and by the time they get hungry at around noon they go out and start hunting. Now the space under the coop and within about a 6 foot radius is tick free, lol. Nothing else is though adn ticks are kind of a big deal Yesterday between the 4 of us humans there were 11 ticks dealt with. It's 10 o'clock and I've already flushed one. Deer ticks.

Even though they're not helping much the whiting rooster is doing his job chasing the hens to cover when the bluejays start getting upset about hawks. So they may live. And they've figured out the nipple/button waterer (and are afraid of open water sources now...i'm not sure what to think of these chicken chickens any more).

I also got an order of 12 ameraukindas and 4 not brahma but cochin chicks last friday from Mcmurray to help with the tick problem as soon as they're grown enough to make it back to the coop at night.

I'm trying to find a source for fencing here. It's time to fence some acreage. I've heard rumor that TSC does not to premium delivery here, which means they won't deliver my oversized rolls of fencing or t-posts or cattle panels and leave them by the side of my driveway. We're hunting for a mini van to tote my kids and goats in, but cattle panels won't fit in that, and I'd prefer to use those.

(worry section, skip this if you're a reasonable creature with less worries about the unknown than myself)
I'm also worried the state won't let me put up livestock fencing without paying a lot in applications for exceptions et c. and still may not even let me do anything. Our property has a creek and a pond in it and the town makes you file permits for doing any work within 150 feet of any water, and the state within 50 feet. Right now the water is high everywhere so nothing is far away from anything. My barn pens where the goats are living now are small, but probably do not comply due to where the barn is set, and at the moment the whole barn that the last occupants built is not far enough from the water either...I need to get to the bottom of this. The barn had permits pulled when it was built so it has permission to exist, so I shouldn't worry about the structure, just the pens. Worried someone will come out and tell me to take down my barn pens and say no to any pens anywhere else on our land. Probably going to talk to the city ag commissioner. I'm hoping things will work out. It's not like I'm setting up pig or cow pens, so maybe it will be fine. The woods really need cleaning out. The invasive asian bittersweet is a plague here and the other invasives have taken over-invasives that my goats like to eat. Maybe I'll get lucky and be allowed to put up my fences. Goats are even supposed to like eating even knotweed, which apparently they hate here (which strikes me as odd because the bittersweet is killing massive amounts of very old forests the landscaping bushes are apparently more of a concern?). We don't have that here for some reason, but we do have barberry, multiflora rose, bittersweet, and japanese honeysuckle like crazy. I'd love to open that salad bar to my crew. The non invasives here are mostly giant trees and ferns that the goats do not care for. I think it could work and I could get the brush cleared out so we can walk through the woods without showering in ticks but still have a forest. it just needs to be fenced.

IN SUMMARY, everything is normal and my fencing project is about to begin one way or another.

Oh, and I should get more pictures. Pictures are what BYH lives on, right?

 

[Bruce]

I've heard rumor that TSC does not to premium delivery here

TSC here doesn't deliver at all.

Regarding the fencing. You will check of course but I would think the setbacks would be related to the normal channel, not flood stage. AND more than likely they would RATHER you fence the animals out of the creek so they won't be walking and pooping in it.

 

[rachels.haven]

Oh rats! Well, home depot sells woven wire horse fencing and delivers. They're my backup plan. I guess it's time to learn to stretch fence. If I wait a few more years for us to pay off this house I could just hire someone to do it, but that's a lot of tick toleration and goats in barn pens. The horse fencing will keep in chickens too so I could trap them in there for the day if I wanted to instead of having them de-tick under their shed over and over again.

I bet that's true and I'm willing to bet they'll work with me to help me make them happy and not just say no. It's not Michigan and the state seems to want to encourage ag here even if it is just gentleman farms like mine. That's a good idea too. I probably will be fencing goats out of the creek, probably x number of feet to each side of normal channel. I hadn't thought about that and haven't devised a way to allow them to jump across without that one crazy one everyone has in their herd figuring out how to swim under any fencing onto freedom and danger (creek is not deep, the goats are short) so that's probably the way to go.

Thanks!

 

[greybeard]

Trying to convince my oldest son that we don't need a doeling that will get "as big as a horse" and we definitely don't need an actual horse. The neighbor girl rode her horse down our driveway a few times and now my son has horse envy. Not happening.

Are you sure it's the horse that stirred his interest..or perhaps the rider?

 

[rachels.haven]

The neighbor is 14 and my son is 5, but I guess you never know. Maybe we'll have to see. Could be amusing.

However I'm relatively sure it was the horse. He seemed pretty smitten with that tall, blond, palomino with long legs and velvety lips, and it was in very good condition, and very large for the rider. It was so big you could hardly see the little girl. Biggest golden goat he's ever seen. Bet he could picture himself up there, just like her (and hopefully not WITH her).

I had to tell him on Sunday that five is a little young for a horse and that he needs to get a job first (and a couple feet taller, and maybe double or triple in weight at least, but don't tell him that), then again on Monday, and again today. Lessons aren't out of the question at some point. It looks like there are plenty of people advertising within a 15 minute radius. But I'd like him to weight more than a sack of feed first-maybe a sack and a half. Curious to see if this fascination lasts. Hope it's not girls already, lol.

 

[Bruce]

Maybe he likes older women He COULD start with a pony you know

You can go look through my journal, starting on page 3, for fencing. I was fencing in an acre and got lots of helpful advice from others here. It takes some effort but isn't really all that technically difficult (unless you have ledge and a lot of rocks).

 

[rachels.haven]

I have rocks. (pretending I don't) Probably going to be adding to the rock walls here and there, and pounding and pounding and pounding to get posts in through rocks and around rocks again (mostly around). But I will do it-just slowly. No ledge thankfully (we looked at houses with ledges and canyons and avoided them). I guess I'll be going through your journal then. Thanks!