Still Alive!

This was a triumph!

I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS! It's hard to overstate my satisfaction!

The bees (now that I'm done channeling GLADos ;-) are still alive and buzzing in BOTH our hives.

One hive hasn't even touched the sugar we put out, while the other (see the picture?) has carved away the mountain and taken the newspaper with it.

But they're still alive!

TRAPPED! With the Chickens, Part III

OK, what were the alternatives? Walls. Floor. Roof. Windows. Door.

To get through the walls, he'd have to knock loose dozens of nails and whole sheets of plywood. The floor was even less likely--he was on the wrong side, he'd have to PULL nails, and there wasn't THAT much room under the coop.

The roof would be hard to get any force applied, and more expensive to fix--new plywood, new tar paper, new shingles. And the windows were already too small.

But the door...

The latch was only held by 2 screws on the door side, and 3 on the latch. If he kicked the door, HARD, something HAD to give.

1... 2... 3!

On the second kick, the door sprang open. He was free!

He inspected the latch. Sure enough, the string was wrapped below the latch. And now the latch was bent, too.

He inspected the door. Every screw on both parts of the latch had held. But the steel post, as thick as his pinky, was bent back 45 degrees. THAT impressed him. Either it was a very MANLY kick, or really WIMPY steel.

Probably wimpy steel.

"G'night, ladies!" he called to the chickens as he closed the door and leaned the ramp up against it. This one was going to have to go in the blog, no question about it.

No question at all.

TRAPPED! With the Chickens, Part II

What had happened?

Steve's best guess was that the string, which was several inches too long, had wrapped itself UNDER the latch. So, every time he pulled the string to lift the latch, he was pulling it down tighter.

He looked around. The walls were all attached, although he supposed he COULD break through one, given time. The windows were jalousie-style, and much too small for him anyway.

He was over 200 feet away from the house. Debbie wouldn't hear him shouting, although the dogs might...

"What's that, Sadie? You say daddy is stuck in the chicken coop? And he's cold?! And his LEG is BROKEN and he needs a shot of INSULIN!?!"

"Woof! Woof!"

Too much to hope for.

He was planning to put a wireless phone extension in the barn, but that wouldn't help him in the chicken coop. If he had his netbook or his PDA, he could try to email for help--he might be in range of the Wi-Fi, there weren't any OTHER networks around to interfere.

And if he were a hen, he could lay eggs.

He remembered that Debbie hadn't waved as he went out. Had she seen him go? He remembered how tired she looked--what if she went to bed? Worse yet, what if she woke up and couldn't FIND him?

He knew exactly how she would react.

She would quickly become convinced he had suffered a heart attack, and was laying somewhere, dead. Panic would ensue.

He had to get out of this alone, and he had to do it soon.

TRAPPED! With The Chickens

"I'm going out to water the chickens and close the coop for the night," said Steve, walking toward the door with a 3-liter bottle of water and a flashlight in his hands. He waved an "I Love You" at Debbie, still sitting at the table after dinner. She didn't wave back, and Steve thought, "Boy, she looks tired. I hope she goes to bed early tonight--we could both use a long sleep."

He trudged through the yard, past the barn and into the darkness. He flicked on his flashlight, and let himself through the gate into the pen around the coop. The chooks were no fools--when the sun went down, they all trooped into the coop and huddled up for warmth. He stepped into the coop and pulled the door around behind himself.

He turned on the 100W bulb they had put in to help warm the coop at night, and turned off the flashlight. December 30, and there were 4 new eggs in the corner! These girls just wouldn't quit laying! 2 dozen eggs a week, even when the temperatures had been below freezing. He picked them up and put them in a plastic bag from his pocket.

Then Steve checked on the level of feed in the hanging feeder. He had filled it the day before, so there was no worry the birds were hungry, but it paid to keep an eye on the level. A couple times, the birds ate the bin dry and he and Debbie had to scramble to come up with short-term substitutes--bird seed, peanuts, sunflower seeds. Once they popped popcorn, which the chickens seemed to really enjoy.

Finally, he picked up the water bowl and turned to the door to empty it. The door had fully closed, but there was a string leading to the latch. He would just pull it, and...

Pull it and...

Now THAT was a problem. The door wasn't opening.

Steve began to laugh. Overconfidence had bitten him right on the keister, and it was his own fault. He had just locked himself into the chicken coop.

On the Third Day of Christmas...

Hope you all are warm and well!

Here on Honeyhill Farm, the temperature is in the high 20's F, but the wind is around 30 with gusts. Our 1" of snow is DRIFTING, for heaven's sake!

We have had to resort to an old-fashioned way of watering the chickens: we carry it out twice a day. They have an annoying habit of tipping over the bowl.

We ran power from the barn to the coop via extension cords, and we have a 100W bulb we turn on at night. It's not much, but we have had fewer frozen water bowls and the chickens aren't all huddled together in the morning.

We poured several pounds of sugar into each hive on the last day we had above 40F. Sometime around the end of this week, it is supposed to be in the 40's again, and we'll have to top them off. But both hives are still alive!

Debbie received a spinning wheel for Christmas--an Ashford Traveller, second-hand but in wonderful condition, off Craigslist. Do yourself a favor and check out Craigslist.

Debbie got me an Android/Linux PDA, which has been interesting because all the documentation is in Chinese.

Today we are both a bit under the weather--fevers, aches, pains, and other unpleasant symptoms--but it seems to be a short-duration illness.

Stay warm and happy!

More about the Chickens...

Well, the back wall got replaced just in time to move the chickens in for the party. 4 months on, and I STILL need to paint it. I added another gate latch to hold the coop door OPEN, as once the chickens were kept OUT of the coop on a windy day. Here's a suggestion for you: paint your doors ASAP. When it's humid, or rainy, the door swells and sticks. Paint helps keep the moisture out, and that means the door doesn't stick! Now, you may remember that I said we weren't ENTIRELY sure about the sex of the chickens. Well, it turns out we had cause to wonder. We had purchased 2 Buff Orphington chicks, because the Buffs will lay longer into the winter. Well, that's not gonna happen, because BOTH the chicks were roosters. But we aren't suffering from any shortage of eggs. Since they started laying, we've been averaging about 5 eggs a day from 6 hens, or THREE DOZEN A WEEK. We have over 6 dozen eggs in the refrigerator, and we can't eat them fast enough. Maybe we need to eat a hen or two. (Just kidding, Debbie!) Getting water to the coop has been interesting, as well. The spigot in the barn, as far as we can tell, attaches to NOTHING. We've never been able to get a trickle of water out of it. On the other hand, there's a valve in the house that leads OUT through the foundation and disappears, and we can't find the other end. And the spigot on the front of the house seems to have been shut off and the control valve walled in, completely inaccessible. So we drag a hose off a reel near the one head we have in the front, across the yard, to a chain of 3 dry hoses. We pulled these out of the barn, where they were left by one or more of the previous owners, added some Y-valves, and VOILA! 200 feet of farm plumbing. That puts the water within 20 feet of the coop, so we don't have to carry it very far, and puts a spigot near the kitchen garden, near the barn, and near the paddock as well. Of course, we can't run them all at the same time, and I have to turn on and off 6 valves to make the water go. And what am I going to do when it gets cold? We've already had one night in the 20's and the oldest hose already has a small crack that bubbles when the pressure is up... By the way, would you like some eggs?

The Housewarming Party

The BIG reason we needed to move the chickens was to get ready for VISITORS.

My kids were coming from Utah, and we needed the sewing room for my daughter. It was kind of Important that she not be sleeping with the chickens.

And we had a party to put together--after all, after living here for 5 months, it was about TIME for our housewarming.

So on July 24, we had about 50 people over for lunch. Of course, it was the HOTTEST day of the summer--about 108F, or over 42C.

It was kind of like Hell.

But it seems--right--in retrospect. I mean, after we froze for 3 weeks trying to move in, we certainly had a houseWARMING.

The next day, we had a windstorm that seemed just shy of tornadoes. Some places HAD tornadoes.

The rented pavilion was torn down. The steel buffet we moved from the back porch for the party turned into a bunch of twisted scrap. The patio table and umbrella were picked up and tossed into a tree. Glass table top shattered everywhere, but the umbrella was STILL in the bracket.

Good thing it was the day AFTER the party.