I sneezed 304 times yesterday...

Well, maybe that is a "bit" of an exageration, but it felt like it!!! Weed and grass were the pollen's of choice in our area yesterday and are forecast to be moderate today. I opted to only cut and trim the back part of the property, for two reason's, that is where we spend most of our time and it was the area that needed it the most...pretty sound reasoning for a man, huh??? I timed it and that took me 4 hours!!!

Oh, and before I forget, Nitschke killed another snake...I need to design a badge for him that I can add to the blog for each kill...kinda like the WWII pilots put on their planes for each plane they shot down...Unfortunately (obviously for the snake) but also for Nitch is that we will really have to watch him very closely now when we travel, because up here in our area, the snakes are non-poisonous, but other regions of the country have both...yikes...

Friday night we went to the Manitowoc County Fair to look at livestock and eat junk food!!!

I think next year we are going to try and expand our flock to include a few ducks and perhaps a few Barred Plymouth Rock's. We saw some really cool ducks, one that caught our eye was entirely black...don't know the breed, but very pretty!!!

If I was to make one improvement at the fair, I would have a booth set up in each livestock area that is manned by experts in that particular livestock breed, so people like us could ask questions...

Today we are going to chill, get some more stuff done, but not exert ourselves too much!!! Sunday's are for relaxation or should be anyway...until later...hope everyone enjoys their day!!!

Peace...R Dean

Breakfast time...

Russell Crow enjoying a soft tomato and one of the girl's enjoying a corn cob from last nights dinner...

Lucky Lucy...

Well, Lucky Lucy is coming around after her "close call" with "suspect to be determined"...hahaha...

She is not roosting yet, but instead, she has made the corner closest to the coop door her temporary quarters.

I think, wait, no...I "know" that she lost so many feathers in the "assault" that she cannot fly up to the roost, so hopefully within a few days or a week or two she will have regained enough feathers to fly up to the roost with the other birds.

After the first night of her return, when she would not go into the coop, I actually thought about building her own coop because I thought the other chickens were shunning her...wow...what a knuckle head idea...Jan convinced me otherwise...remember, they are chickens!!!

Today we plan to remove the tarp and enclose the top of the coop run with some plastic netting we purchased at Fleet Farm. Once that is in place, the coop "should" be completely predator proofed!!!

Other news to report, Nitschke killed two garter snakes over the weekend, he now has four confirmed kills...poor snakes, he just grabs them and shakes the piss out of them, and typically that does them in. However, on Saturday, I took one from him, it looked dead...I tossed him out into the woods but it got hung up on a branch on the sumac tree, about 3 feet from the ground. It actually twisted around the branch, and just lay there, head facing straight to the ground. About an hour later, I saw Nitschke down in that area, so I walked down there, he must have smelled the snake, because if you have ever handled a garter snake, they release a malodorous, musky-scented secretion (it stinks!!!). So he eventually honed in on it hanging in the tree, and it was slowly coming to, it had raised its head and was sticking its tongue out, right about that time, the fearless snake hunter snatched it from the tree, shook it violently and heaved it into the tall grass...Okay Nitschke, it's confirmed, another kill!!!

And finally, a cool book that we found at Tractor Supply..."the joy of keeping chickens" by Jennifer Megyesi. This book seems to be much more thorough than some of the smaller, "magazine style" books we have purchased in the past, and the authors interests parallel ours, self-sustainability and organic living. Her chickens and livestock are raised using the free-range, grass-fed method and other organic farming methods. The only complaint I have with it so far...it was printed in China... :-((

R Dean (cherishing my last day of vacation...)