Can You Teach a Chicken to Swim?

Buckets of rain greeted me this morning with more to come ~ 1-2 inches. Flooding conditions can be seen all over the farm. It's all one MUDDY mess. I do believe it may well be next year before we dry out. The dampness causes a bone chilling cold and makes the 37* feel like 27*. I wore 2 pairs of socks and rubber boots and my toes still feel frozen. The wind chill encountered while doing chores caused my fingers to burn when I returned to the house this morning.

Unfortunately the fire went out during the night and I haven't any more dry wood on the carport to use. Guess we will have to run the furnace over the next few nights. Which is not good considering that the lows will be hovering around freezing for the next projected 10 days to follow. I have decided what I need for Christmas this year ~ hip boots and the rain poncho seen being worn by cowboys in westerns. At this rate of rainfall we need "swimmies" for our chickens. They still do not know how to swim despite instructions, but are giving us about 2 dozen lovely eggs each day.

All of this cold will keep us inside and make us tackle some of our inside projects for a change. We have plans to go pick up a load of shavings for the chicken coops today. Using a tarp may help to keep it somewhat dry, for the coops need refreshing badly. The babies especially, as they are growing so fast! (And pooping a lot in the process). Counting it as a blessing for next year's garden and free to boot.

I am working on my blog posts that are dated back to October. Wow! did not realized I was that far behind. So glad I kept up my notes about what has been happening here. It is a slow process that requires lots of sitting, which increases my discomfort. From my fractures of the same time frame. I hope they will heal better than this or I will never be able to ride Sassie.

Trying to sit still and catch up,

Deborah

Raining Again!

Today was a challenging day for me. It started off with a bad rain storm passing through in the early morning hours. Accompanied with heavy showers and lots of lightening. I felt bad that we do not have a dry place yet established for Sassie to get into at times like this. The weather was not a good combination for doing the morning chores. The pasture and barnyard are one muddy mess. I don't think the place can handle much more rain at this rate. For the past month it has been a weekly if not almost daily occurrence. I know the past few years we have been in a drought around here. But I believe we have more than made up for the water deficient. Everything is saturated to the point of TOTAL run off. The chicken coop even flooded again this morning, washing the shavings out from under the roosts and laying boxes. Yuk! The flow was so great it washed clean their "play yard" of any thing loose lying on it. The water flowed under the door of the future "barn" and soaked the carpeting the previous owners had in there. I don't think it had even dried out from the last flooding we had. The hole I found in front of the interior side of the door is getting larger, Discover it after I removed the broken tile there. I fear the whole floor will rot right out from under us. It is for sure the sub-flooring will have to be replaced before we can renovate it into a useful room in this make-shift barn. I

I tried making a trip to the next town over from us that has a public library that I have started frequenting. Tried, is the operative word. I needed to return some books that I had checked out and pick up a few that I had placed on hold. But found them closed when I arrived this afternoon. Checking out the sign posted by the door said that they close at lunch time on Wednesdays. I have never know a library to be closed a half day on Wednesdays AND Saturdays. I would have thought Saturdays would be a busy day for libraries. At least it was at the one where I used to live. Guess this is just another aspect of small town life. One that I will have to learn along with all the rest.

Adjusting to life,

Deborah