Aren't they cute?

One of our pullets hatched out some eggs!  We weren’t really expecting anyone to go broody so young, so this was fun!  I’d love to keep them, but I’ve got someone who wants to buy them so they’ll be going to a new home on Friday.  I hope mama hen doesn’t get too upset! She’s doing an amazing job!

 There’s seven of them… hiding in there somewhere.  No special arrangements were made, she brooded them right in the coop with the rest of the chickens running in and out.  Although yesterday while I was in the house sewing, I kept hearing a “cheep, cheep cheep”… and it suddenly dawned on me a baby chicken was out in the orchard!  I’ve no idea how it made it so far from the coop on its own… it sure was happy to go back inside! 

And the learning begins...

Our tractor finally made it back home yesterday, with Jim’s new backhoe attachment installed.

He’s pretty excited… we have and endless amount of backhoe work to be done around here.  Of course Jim’s never operated a backhoe, so there will be a learning curve… I’m thinking while the cat’s away the mice will play… Jim will be gone all next week and in Spain half of next month… oooh the temptation!

I told him to go practice on the stump out in the orchard, an old flowering plum we had to take down this spring due to blight.

Before he started though, I had him butcher a couple of rabbits for me.  Dinner was fabulous, recipe posted here! 

What can he hurt?  The mess will be easily cleaned up with the front end loader when he’s done playing!

Hopefully no chickens will fall in and get stuck! 

More fence down!

I have all the panels removed from the fence now, except for one corner, on each side of the old dog run and the shed, because I really don’t want to have to see them from the front.  They will get moved, as eventually Jim and I plan to put a greenhouse where the old dog run is.

This one is standing next to my clothesline, looking into the backyard.  I don’t know if you can see well enough in the pictures, but there is a stacked retaining wall behind the arborvitaes.  I will have to unstack it and turn all the blocks around.  Either phlox or woolly thyme will get planted there at some point.  Notice my pathetic hydrangeas, barely alive after being burned up all summer?

You can see the portion of the fence I’m leaving up for now… looks pretty awful doesn’t it?  The garden is positively abysmal… I’ve been weeding it and pulling everything out.  Once I’m done, I’ll be top dressing all the beds with rabbit manure, and planting garlic in two of them.  The dog run is directly on the other side of the fence.  Someday, the greenhouse will be in its place, and we plan to add another thirty of these raised beds, continuing on into the back yard.  They will come nearly over to the corner of the house that you see.

Standing in the back yard, looking toward the road.  You can’t really see them, but behind the ornamental grasses, on this side of the fence and between each arborvitae is a blueberry bush.

I ordered a few more trees this morning, and some more asparagus.  We lost every single apple tree in the orchard this year to blight, and all the pears as well.  I found some blight resistant apples and thought we’d try once more.  This is two years running we’ve lost the apples, so if these don’t make it, I think we’ll nix the apples!  I would like to try them somewhere (not sure where yet!) espalier style, as an architectural feature.  If you haven’t ever seen them grown that way, google it, they look so cool! 

Trees... lots of them!

Well I’ve about run out of cool weather.  The fence isn’t completely down yet, and I had high hopes of finishing it this weekend, but Jim’s new backhoe attachment should be delivered today, and I’ve a feeling his butt will be glued to it the entire weekend… no amount of cajoling is likely to get him to work on the fence with his new toy here!

That’s bumps it out into October now, as Jim will be leaving next weekend for a week to go help out his mom up in Columbia.  I’m still waiting for him to announce he really needs the backhoe up there, and that he’ll be hauling it with him!  Actually we can’t haul it anywhere anymore, since someone kindly relieved us of our tractor trailer that we had stored on our place back in Missouri last year.

I spent yesterday morning in the garden, getting it ready for winter.  The only fall crop I’ll be planting this year will be garlic, which I ordered yesterday.  The heat and drought were so bad this summer I let the garden go, and it’s an unholy mess!  It will take me a couple of weeks to get it into shape.

I have never tried transplanting asparagus before, but we have five year old crowns I’d like to dig up and move to a new location, they don’t do very well in the raised beds, and I’d just as soon turn all ten of the raised beds off the kitchen into an herb garden.

Yesterday I ordered another five hundred… yep, you heard me right, five hundred pine seedlings, and a hundred pin oaks for spring delivery.  Last year, I only ordered fifty!  I’m not really insane, honest.  That’s just the only size bundle available this year from the conservation department.  Each year I try and plant at least fifty pine and oak seedlings along our property borders.  Less than half survive, but at ten cents a tree, it’s worth the effort.  They grow amazingly fast!  Some of those we planted two years ago are six feet tall already.

Last night we had the chimney guy out to give us a quote on a wood burning insert.  We’d like to remove our gas fireplace and replace it with the insert, but next we need to get someone out to give us a quote on modifying the chimney and adding a firebox… could be more cost prohibitive than it’s worth.

Back to my coffee, while I ponder the choice of weeding more of the garden today, or trying to get the remaining fence panels down.

Day three...

My right arm is soooo tired… my feet are killing me… was that a whine?  NO!  I am so excited over tearing that dang fence down I’m practically beside myself!

If that weren’t cause enough for celebration, I slept for seven… count em’… seven hours last night!  I woke up feeling like superwoman!  Man if I got that much sleep every night, I could accomplish miracles, I’m sure of it!

Little ones anyway.  Here’s my miracle for today, and a couple hours from yesterday.

That’s a whole lot of nails pulled from the fencing boards.  That’s why my right arm is so tired!

There’s the boards pulled from yesterday and today.  And…

Look at that!  I can see into the woods now, woohoo!  A blank canvas to landscape over the years!
Tomorrow afternoon, we have someone coming out to see if our gas fireplace can be modified to accommodate a wood burning insert.  If it can be done, I might come to love this place after all!