Playing Catch Up

It is very easy to get behind on chores and duties here on our little farm.  I am playing catch up, I always get behind on chores when I build things or it rains a lot.  I take care of live animals first and foremost...so, sometimes other things slide, like folding laundry and putting it away, or scrubbing toilets, maybe dusting...well, I don't like doing that stuff anyway...but, I do it.  I am behind on a lot...but, I try and prioritize things and get some stuff done while the weather is decent.  I weeded the garden I planted...I had to, you could not see anything but weeds...but there is corn planted in there...was green beans, asparagus, carrots, cantaloupe, watermelon...it was covered up with weeds.  I had to hand pull weeds that were 4 feet tall, it took awhile...I was trying not to pull up my vegetables with them.  I think the only reason there were any left was because of the weeds...the gate became unlatched and the chickens and turkeys decided they needed to check out the garden...I got lucky, they ate mostly the weeds.

I worked on watering today, our lawn tractor is broken again...parts are on order...so instead of filling up my pump sprayer, I had to drag hoses and water by hand.  My fruit trees needed it and so did all my potted plants, that took awhile, I transplanted plum trees last year and am trying to keep them alive, my apple trees, pears and grapevines needed it bad too.  I pulled up a bunch of weeds in a flower bed too, trying to find these red Spider Lily things that are blooming in other peoples yards...we had them bloom last year, but I think they may have been mowed over this year...oh well.  One of these days I will do up the flower beds right to keep that from happening...out here I have already gotten poison ivy really bad trying to clean this flower bed.

I decided I needed to work on the chicken coop.  Winter is coming and I need to increase roost space inside my big coop and move chickens around.  I am trying to figure out how to get more roosts the same height with more capacity...but still be able to clean easily.  I moved a 10 hole nest box inside the coop, I will probably remove the smaller ones and use them in the run or another coop.  But I had to clean the walls and didn't get it finished, I had to reinstall a roost tonight in the coop...the second one I put in the run and the chickens started perching on it and it is not attached to anything.  I was worried that they would be confused and not find a place to sleep, but they did good.  I just hope when I finish the modifications more of them will go into that coop!  I am thinking about moving the rain barrel that supplies water to the big coop too, the chickens will stand on the grate underneath the PVC pipe and play with the watering nipples and flood the floor and stand in the water.  They make a big mess and I am trying to think of ways to keep that from happening and make sure they have clean water available all the times.  Right now it takes a long time to fill all of the waterers I have and to clean them out.  But the PVC waterers will explode if they freeze. Ask me how I know this?!