We Did It, We Did It, We Did It, Yah!!

This is the view from the chicken door

at the top of the ramp the boys built. You

can see the chicken apartments, and how

the kids can prop open the roof section to

collect eggs. Pretty clever!

There's a little Dora the Explorer intro for you :) We were out the door by 8:30 this morning, up working on the hill. We had good reason, since I had to take Gabby to the orthodontist at 10 and then all the kids had music lessons in the afternoon for a couple hours (the boys ended up shucking corn while the girls worked on piano and brought us home a couple dozen ears for their efforts!)

Buck built the composter today, or at least the frame for where it is going to be, and Caelan painted it for me so that it is cute :) Lots of chicken wire happened today--oh the scratches on our arms and legs--that stuff is sneaky! The girls put their sewing skills to good use, weaving wires together at the seams with more wire, of course! Our goal is to keep out owls and hawks (which we know live on our hill) and hopefully the rats and coyotes our neighbor says he's killed right next door. And then he throws out, "Yeah, heard a growl up here awhile back that I can only relate to the wild cats I've seen heard at the zoo . . . pretty sure there was a MOUNTAIN LION up there recently." WHAT?!!! No more reading in the trees, kids . . . and forget about that tree house we were planning to build. Yikes, stripes!

Graysen finally got to paint the ramp to the barn, since we were able to pack up most of the tools and put them back in the garage. It's nice to finish up projects!! I found out that chickens come in stock possibly late this month or early next month, so we may still be starting the chicken gig this year! Also, our neighbor is going to lend us his tiller this week to get the garden rolling. We're thinking about just planting a crop of pumpkins and see if we can't get them grown by Trick or Treat time :) That would be fun for all the neighborhood kids--to come pick out a pumpkin!

Graysen discovered a perfect lizard that was accidentally killed by hiding under a board that someone must have stepped on. His dream all summer has been to catch one of those little guys we keep seeing and hearing rustling the grasses. Tonight he built a trap and buried it in the ground--he found a grasshopper that was missing some legs as bait for his live lizard box, "That grasshopper probably won't escape, mom." Ha!

I'm hoping to put a hanging plant of pretty flowers on the hook to the right of the barn. Eventually we'll plant berry bushes along that side, but those don't come in til next month at the gardeny stores. We also have some solar lights that we'll put along the ground around the post edges. It was just too hot to assemble them this evening after dinner. But all the major construction is done, now it's just the fine touches! Oh and crazy enough, the tick spray guys showed up today after TWO MONTHS of trying to get them to back their guarantee of "no ticks for a month." The kids had three I think within two weeks after the initial spray, so we asked them to come out, they said they would, then they said they messed up the order, then they said they wouldn't, then we cancelled, then they said they were coming, then we cancelled again, then they said they were coming and didn't show up, then today they actually arrived. Now. Despite all this rigmarole--if the chemical junk actually kills the ticks like it is supposed to, that would be amazing! I didn't have any ticks on me throughout this farm building process--that I know of (I think they know better than to risk crawling on me), but the kids reported nearly a dozen (shudder). We're hoping our chicken ladies will help with the ticks too, but obviously that's a distant hope :)